I always say, "The most deadly foe in any encounter is the enemy's action economy." And by "always say" I mean that I think it on the drive home alone after the game and forget it by the next session.
This is something that I'm starting to think about while playing PF2E. If I have nothing to do for my 3rd action (for reference, I'm playing a sword and pistol Gunslinger with two free archetype feats in Rogue), I've started Stepping away from the enemy I'm fighting, forcing them to use some of their action economy to re-engage with me.
This helps a lot, I learned it from Star Wars Legion. If you can cut down an enemy before he takes his turn in the round, it can make a huge difference
Which is why I ramp up enemies' action economy to match the players. :) "That isn't standard!!" Watch your players panic when you give your bad guys interesting abilities, multi attacks, bonus actions, and reactions.
Another thing some people forget about too (thought I'm sure it's been in many reddit/UA-cam posts) is even your enemies have lots of actions if they can't do anything effective with them you've basically won. Like if they can't catch up to your party to be in melee or a couple of your players are blocking access in very hard to hit
As a DM, the biggest mistake I see, with newcomers in particular, is falling into the mindset that damage is everything, and underestimating the power of battlefield control abilities and spells.
I’m having the reverse problem of all my players taking too many RP and utility spells so they pump out pretty sad damage and nearly got wiped by two animated armors lol
I focused a lot on support spells and some utility. By about Lv.6-7 and some harder bosses was when it really hit me I needed something respectible for damage as well for prolonged fights.
@@ASmashingGentleman2yep depends on your group. I knew my 3 other part members were dps focused so I would take almost all control, illusion spells and maybe like 1 fireball
I see my players sometime value healing way to much. Like healing an injured player when they already know the enemy thats threatening them is bloodied and about to die. Healing is so often way worse than damage and sometimes they heal and the healed player still goes down, when the enemy had just a few HP left.
Biggest mistake I've ever seen: Assuming every encounter must be a battle to the death. I have DMed exactly one TPK, and it was an encounter that wasn't balanced for combat, because it was intended to be a friendly encounter. There were indications that they were potentially friendly, which the players ignored. (Example: The creatures tried to communicate before attacking, although there was a language barrier. The players ignored the communication attempt and launched the first blow.) Up until the last blow, the players could have surrendered, thus avoiding the TPK, but the thought never occurred to them, even when it became obvious that the encounter was unwinnable.
Sounds like you should have just asked them to roll insight, the same way dms ask for perception checks. And if they pass you tell them what they’re doing.
@@misterbxiv As a DM, one of the most difficult things to do is to predict in advance how obvious you need to make things for the players to pick up on what is going on. Usually, though, if I have players make insight rolls, I don't simply reward a successful roll with something blatant like "He's lying to you," but something more subtle like, "You see a twitch in his eye. He licks his lips and glances over at his companion, who is clenching her jaw." In this case, the blatant thing would have been something like, "They're trying to communicate with you." The not-very-subtle alternative was "The first one says something in a language you don't understand. The second one does nothing, waiting for a response." I gave all that to them without an insight roll. (Also, the players did have the means to get around the language barrier.)
@@kclubok not everybody has a theoretical understanding of body languge. With a lot of players, the example you give would be of no help at all. And Characters (not players) who have a good understanding of body language would undersand the blatant part, even if your players don't. You don't ask your players to swing a sword in real life, why play coy with the social cues instead of giving your players the information that they charcters would understand?
THIS! So many crits could have been completely negated or chokepoints held by players that just stood there and say “I dodge” Help actions can also be underused though not as much as Dodge what with familiars and skill checks utilizing them all the time.
@@alanleckert1 I had a fight against adamantine robots (as player). Fully negated damage or else the tougher ones only resisted. Had to stall 4 turns so train could start for escape. Players like to complain when they can't do damage but this was one of the coolest combats of my life. Every turn was either moving evasively or firing flashy attacks to distract bots from civilians. Lots of dodging, lots of fey stepping, lots of drop prone. If I didn't I'm ultra dead to gunfire.
I've found that if you always ask about things in the environment eventually the DM will get better at putting them in before combat happens, if for no other reason that it makes it easier to say no to the request that there is something that gives you a huge advantage.
As a DM, yes! Always looking for input from my players to make the combat experience (and game as a whole) run smoothly, as even minute details can get caught up on for upwards of half an hour
I think one thing you missed is keeping your place in the initiative order in mind. If you push a creature prone with a shove and its their turn next, they are just going to stand up. Any benefit from being prone is lost immediately. But if their turn is right before yours they are going to spend the whole round lying prone and receiving a bunch of attacks at advantage.
Fundamentally this is all metagaming. There is no turn order. Everything happens at the same time. In the real world we have turns to make it more manageable and ordered. Taking advantage of this is a little like opening up the monster manual to look at the enemy stats as soon as the fight starts. It’s not info your character would know.
@@zero11010 Hard disagree. If it was all happening at the same time, your character would be relatively aware of who is with them in the attack. If your nearby melee friends were right with you, then it would make sense to sweep the leg. If you were alone in engaging the target then it would probably make sense that you would keep them occupied for your ranged fellows to help you out. There is 100% a turn order. That's what makes the "game" work. This isn't the real world. It's a game first and foremost and a fantasy one at that, so let that go. And your second to last sentence is hyperbolic, imo. I'm all for separating the character from the player and doing my personal best not to meta game, but the microscopic lens you're putting on this is just silly.
@@jonnielaw Soft disagree with your opening statement. The actions in a round ARE all happening at the same time. In essence, take all of the actions that take place in a round of combat, have them all queued up and then played out in real-time. That is what is happening. Otherwise you end up with battles looking like how Deerstalker Pictures presented turn-based combat in their D&D logic series, and that is absurd. Turn order exists solely to make combat manageable. That said, I agree that not considering turn order as part of a tactical evaluation is getting to granular with the anti-metagaming, and there is no need for that. It can reasonably be said that while the character doesn't "know" that the monster's turn is next, the character would know how quickly the monster could recover from being knocked down. For example, the orc goes immediately after the fighter in initiative. In real-time, the fighter sees that the orc is starting to make a move to [do whatever the orc ends up doing on its turn] and realizes that they could try to knock the orc down, but the orc will be able to easily roll with the momentum and get right back up, though it will slow them down a bit [standing from prone costs half move speed] if the orc tries to run past them. However, it won't do them any good if the orc was just going to try to attack the fighter's flank, as all the fighter will achieve is forcing the orc to roll back onto their feet before attacking. So is it worth knocking them down? On the flip side, the orc goes right before the fighter in initiative. In real-time, the fighter knows that the orc is [doing whatever the orc just did] and can catch them off-balance, and can maybe use that to knock them over so they land face-down. The fighter sees the rogue and paladin running up to help, and knocking the orc down in this way will leave it vulnerable to their attacks.
@@daltigoth3970 I like your descriptions. But, that’s just not how simultaneous actions would work, in my opinion. In 6 seconds these 5 people get to try to do a thing. The difference between … if I trip a person one round 4 of my companions get advantage on attacks vs in another combat if I trip no one gets an attack with advantage … because mechanically my turn is directly before the enemy turn … In both situations the thing was knocked down for the same amount of time. Mechanically they are the same. You can add flavor to describe them differently. But, the same 6 seconds passed. There is no … knock it down so that these 3 allies can attack while vulnerable. That’s not a level of coordination you’re able to really line up intentionally. It sure may work out that way. In previous editions we had the ability to delay turns so you could have one person act, then another could take their delayed turn. THAT would make logical sense without metagaming. Wait for an opening, then act. That’s no longer an option. It’s just everyone acting at the same time. In the game there is virtually no real difference between initiative rolls. Any ability to think … my initiative is 19 and the monster is 5. So, I can attack and set up a situation with the monster that my 3 companions can take advantage of … that’s meta. The rules in previous editions supported it.
I played 4E with a very Tactical-minded group and we actually worked out a code our characters would use in combat to communicate target priorities and other actions so the enemy couldn't understand what we were saying.
"We will be dedicating one hour a day to some basic combat drills to establish a means of communications, signals, etc. to make us more effective" Say that to the DM, and if he doesn't get it- explain to him that it's basically so you can more easily communicate as players without being as restricted. You don't have to actually establish a code system, just tell the DM you are.
I have straight up had a person leave a group because we weren’t efficient in combat because we didn’t “focus fire.” Unless there’s an obvious boss, we were kinda all over the place and hitting what was hitting us. It felt really chaotic but true in a way that was really fun. The funny thing is, after he left, it felt like we tightened up a lot. We started understanding each other’s abilities and thinking beyond the immediate threat. I look back fondly on those first encounters because it felt like genuine character development both on and above board.
Every party I've played in has always started off bad at combat, and then after some moment where someone finally says something, the combat tightens up. The biggest virtue in DnD is patience.
@@robitusinz Definitely, patience is a virtue. The druid that left really missed out on seeing those ragtag adventurers come together as a unit, because he got frustrated over a suboptimal encounter that we still won. Failure and struggle is a part of the narrative.
@@robitusinzthats also incredibly realistic, a bunch of idiots who just met in a bar are just not going to have the trust and knowledge of each other's abilities to be an effective team. Admittedly most of it is the actual players figuring out what everyone in the party actually does and needs in combat, and until that happens you are slightly better off just relying on yourself.
The problem with that is that it's not what people do in real life. Which is an indication something unnatural is happening. The way to fight unnaturally focused fire is to give a +2/+2 bonus to any creature that isn't engaged. If there's any attack on them, (even a Miss) then they don't get the bonus. And that should include spells. Although...in real life, the benefits of suppressive fire are even greater than 10% or a 16% higher damage.
Regarding Target Priority: Old Shadowrun Adage is "Geek the Mage." Casters get priority in targeting because they are a force multiplier. They can drop a lot of damage on multiple targets that is hard to mitigate. Getting them off the field is always a priority.
Even if I didn't already know that adage, I think I would still opt to take out the wizard first, and not necessarily because I think they're the bigger threat. Rather, it's that I'm more confident that's the target an average party of four can drop in one round without knowing specific classes, abilities, etc.
@@ferretrewhanThis is most likely true when it comes to monsters and NPCs, but not so when it comes to player characters. Look up what the squishy caster fallacy is, it’s very interesting.
The biggest mistake I see is players, upon falling to low hp, spending their turn fleeing and healing with whatever they have- spells, items. Theoretically a sound response, but this is 5e, and the healing is usually less than one round of attacks from an enemy. It does not save them, and that action could have been used to down an enemy and reduce the incoming damage.
@@DandDgamer Agreed...running away from zombies and most oozes is definitely a better strategy than standing there and trying to down them before they down you. As is breaking off from an enemy that is also engaged by one of your allies that is at/near full health in many cases. In early levels (1-2), it may be better to cast healing word and take the dodge action instead of disengaging, and at higher levels when ranged enemies are involved, the dodge action may also be a better choice than trying to disengage if it is not possible to break line of sight. All of this is circumstantial, though. If the enemy is nearly defeated, then you are almost always going to be better off just trying to finish it off over trying to heal during battle. On the other hand, trying to dish out as much damage as possible before going down is a terrible strategy when the battle has just begun and you're already nearly dead - retreat and let someone else soak some damage, whether you decide to heal or not.
I wish everyone brought me a chocolate bar. Maybe I wouldn’t TPK them in that case. They’re getting a bit tired of rolling new characters every session but I didn’t get my chocolate so I can’t be blamed for my actions.
I think the next time you run into a boss that could TPK the party, sing what you are going to do using the avocados from Mexico jingle and pull out a bowl of freshly made guacamole with chips... works on TV...
One thing I would add, on the subject of prioritizing who to focus on, sometimes you might NOT want to focus on the biggest guy right away. If the big thing is doing a lot of damage but also has a lot of hit points, you could all be focusing on him while a there are still other enemies hurting you too. You might be able to pick off some of them first, and then you're dealing with less damage coming at you. It's all really situational.
12:08 this is something I love with my fighter with a rogue dip. Run in, so a butt tonof damage to one enemy and draw all the minions to me. As my spellcaster going before me in initiative, you can go ahead and ready your action for that fireball. Because My very next turn is going to be to throw a couple more attacks and then disengage as a bonus action and book it out of the AOE
I think forgetting options, especially for new players, is a function of how the player sheets are organized. I think skills should be at the end of the sheet, cause the DM is going to ask for those rolls anyway. Put a section for actions at the top. Start with universal action like dodge, hide, dash, etc. Then have custom areas for class, race, and feats. Put the things the player is most likely to forget front and center. And I have been toying with the idea of consumable bandoliers. Have an accessible storage item for potions or scrolls, that the players could prep in advance. I think it's kind of immersive and it could encourage players to move some of their consumables to the front of their mind. Plus if there is a limit on what they can make reasonably accessible, you can give potions and scrolls more freely with less of a worry that they will down them all in one fight
Honestly, AoE positioning is why I really love the evoker wizard and think it's underrated. I play a wizard in a very chaotic group and everyone is in melee all the time, but I don't let that bother me. I especially love putting down Sickening Radiance and carving my friends out.
@@MayHugger that seems awfully negative. I have seen a lot of creative play that is enabled by this subclass - I've played other wizard subclasses as well and they play very differently which I think is a feature, not a bug.
@@starsapart9311 Well, at first it just makes allies immune to your evocation AOEs, so you can just spam them without thinking, your level 6 one just might make you use like….Acid Splash? I guess? This feature pretty much requires you to multiclass to get anything of worth out of it. Your level 10 feature is just adding a bit of damage to what you were already doing, and your level 14 feature lets you maximise your evocation spell damage essentially once per long rest unless you want to take unresisted damage, so it MIGHT make you actually consider something when hurling Fireballs everywhere. So for 10 levels, you just spam evocation aoes and the features don’t really make you change what you’re doing beyond letting you turn your brain off. And it’s not like the spells it wants you to use are niche otherwise like Necromancy encouraging you to use Ray of Sickness and Animate Dead, which are both pretty mid on any pretty much anyone else. Evocation spells are some of the best damage spells at most levels, you were already gonna use them for your primary source of big damage. So yeah, it’s boring. It doesn’t really add anything to what most player’s were already wanting to do, at best it just encourages them to be less supportive. And the best part of all? It’s still not an amazing subclass. It’s certainly not bad, but it’s not really great either. It just leaves me feeling…meh. It’s like the textbook definition of B tier.
12:00 I can definitely relate. Also this for me is the perfect counter argument for all DMs who demand that when your turn starts you have have your actions planned so it doesn't slow down the game. When both your allies and the enemies do their thing on their turns, you need to rethink it every time the situation changes and sometimes you need to completly change your plans last second. Yes, you need to think about what you want to do, but NO, you don't have to have a perfect plan of action as if it's a turn-based rpg.
I see both sides, spellcasters just generally have a lot going on so it takes time to figure out exactly what to do, and you don't wamt to waste everyone's time and drag out combat by having 10min turns. But the battlefield is chaotic and always changing so if you have a perfect plan at the start of a round it could be ruined by the time your turn comes around, so some decision making must be done on your turn. Personally, a fair balance is to identify what your goals are on other people's turns. "Deal with the horde of goblins to the north" has multiple options and is less likely to be ruined than "drop a fireball on this tile to hit 7 goblins and no allies". A good quote to keep in mind is that "plans are useless but planning is essential, because it identifies your goals"
Isn't DnD a turn based rpg, tho? I understand that decision paralysis can be a thing (this is why of the reasons I don't play full casters), but there's only so much time a situation needs to be reread and your plans adapted, even for classes that have truckloads of very specifically situational effects like full casters. It's not rocket science xD just a matter of having the right fallback ("When in doubt, do X").
@@talscorner3696 There's a difference between decision paralysis and taking a moment for evaluating a situation. I can give 2 examples I've experienced: 1. The wizard planned to Vortex Warp a Warlock next to the main bad guy, but turn before that, the bad guy cast Spirit Guardians, meaning the Warlock would 3d8 damage and possibly got knocked out. 2. The Barbarian got knocked out. The Cleric intended to revive him, but before he got his turn he got critted and knocked out. The Monk and the Paladin went into panic mode and had to completely revise their strategy. So, it's not about casters having decision paralysis. In fact, most people who like playing casters that I know, have pretty good ideas what they want to do. It's the adjusting on the fly, like if a fighter runs into the spot they wanted to cast fireball for a mass sweep. Putting them on a timer does not help.
Biggest life-threatening mistake I ever made was undervaluing the importance of the dodge/ disengage actions and foregoing damage dealing when you’re surrounded and up a creek 😂
When a spellcaster is concentrating on an important spell, Dodge is often the best action they can take. What's more useful: the minor damage of a Firebolt or the defensive benefits of Dodge?
@@elementzero3379 Important to remember that at best Dodge translates to a +5 bonus, however, disadvantage does not always equal +5 and could at times be irrelevant. If the enemy has a +10 to hit, disadvantage is largely useless, with most ACs, especially the ACs typical of a spellcaster. A Firebolt could be more advantageous if it takes out an enemy who is getting ready to make 3 attacks. Especially with high to hit bonuses and low AC. A silly example is that if your AC is 10 and their to hit bonus is +10, then disadvantage is probably not going to help you. Even a +6 to hit is likely going to still hit you. If your AC is 13-14, Disadvantage is still unlikely to help with a +10 to hit. If the opponent has a +5 to hit, Dodge will still only help you 50% of the time. The higher your AC, the more useful Dodge becomes.
@@bradleyhurley6755 It's humorous that I said +5 AC. I've been playing SW Saga Edition of late, so that was on my mind. 😄 I understand the math of Advantage/Disadvantage, and the situational tactics you describe. I'm an optimizer. I probably put too much thought into this type of stuff, but it's a part of the game that I love. 👍🏻
@@elementzero3379 I think its fairly easy to focus on advantage/disadvantage granting roughly a +5 or -5 bonus because most of the time that is what it translates to. I only ever tested it against Monsters in the DMG who tend to have roughly 15 AC. For the most part Monsters with higher ACs tend to be at higher CRs and the increase of Prof. Bonus roughly balances that out. (At least for my purposes of looking at it when 5e first launched). And the few monsters that have a higher AC at lowers levels are so uncommon it wasn't really worth it. It gets so much more complicated with players. Players tend to keep the same AC for most of the game. The fighter is probably the biggest exception who is just trying to get full plate. How you make ability scores, the classes that are being played and so much more goes into it that your opponents having disadvantage to hit you matters a lot more early levels, and because a lot less helpful at later levels because AC doesn't grow with levels. I think the other side of it is that the Average AC for a player (Unless they rolled really good stats) is probably 14-15. I think its fair to say that with dodge you are trading all of your attacks for at best the 50% chance of being missed on one attack. WIth that only going down the higher level you go. I guess in the end what I'm really saying is that unfortunately Rogue's are the only class that can reasonably benefit from the dodge action. I try to not be an optimizer, but my brain always goes to optimization.
@@bradleyhurley6755 I don't agree that Rogues benefit more from Dodge than others. I'm sure we could come up with circumstances in which any character might find it an optimal choice, but it's particularly useful for casters. If your caster is concentrating on a critical spell, maintaining concentration is usually going to be far more important than anything else they might do. Going to cast another powerful spell? By all means do so. Thinking of casting a cantrip? Don't bother. The benefits of Dodge are usually going to be far better than the minor damage of a cantrip.
I have one for AOE Positioning and Environment. It’s situational awareness. I missed my last session and another player played my character. What happened was that my character got surrounded by cultist while protecting a caravan and he decided to thunder wave. (I’m an Artificer) And he was not aware of the cart full of innocent civilians in the path of the thunder wave. So my character became a murder hobo without me.
I’d never let another player play someone else’s character. If you can’t figure out a way to write them out of that session, then at the very least make them an NPC.
@@cherylrosbak4092I mean, it would really depend on the cohesion of your group, imo. But for me, both as a GM and as a player, I would not think it’s cool to remove that player’s agency in the story. Anything that they did as an NPC can be easily respun or retconned, but that which another player, someone who is supposed to be your compatriot, does is locked in the game’s history. Just my $0.02.
obviously I don't know the overall vibe of your table, but that sounds like a pretty shitty thing to force upon your character when neither you nor the person in control of your character intended that result. in-universe, your character would obviously know what their spell does!
One game I was in, the party liked to "bait" the enemy hordes by sending the monk or rogue straight into the middle of them then having the wizard drop a fireball on top of them. Thanks to evasion ( and good rolls) they almost never suffered damage.
Solid video. Another mistake I see at the table is forgetting to take into account other turns when planning ahead, and having a backup plan. Kind of the reverse of the Spoiling AoE positioning, players will make a plan, be ready to implement it, and then the person before them moves in an unexpected direction or blocks a certain spot and "all is lost" and they don't have a backup plan.
Shorter section 5-7: You gotta know when to hold 'em Know when to fold 'em Know when to walk away And know when to run... :) Also: Knowing is half the battle. the other half of the battle is 40% superior firepower, and 10% cool nicknames. :)
I think the hardest one for me is forgetting my own abilities. We rotate through several campaigns with totally different characters, and every game session I realize towards the end of the game session that I had an ability that would have been incredibly useful, but I never used it.
Just saying, if you have Mage Armor, that should be a spell you cast at the BEGINNING of the day. And if you can cast it at will, cast it at least three times a day.
I often forget about my feats and abilities, especially those I took at early levels. For example, I have a Paladin with heavy armor mastery, and it was not until level 12 that I started using the damage reduction (which by then did not mean much). Another easy-to-forget thing is using the Bardic Inspiration my teammate gave me.
For target priority, you can use a colour change or rooting spell to identify a target, message spell to tell others who to target, or follow the leader or crowd who engages first and when there decide together while fighting who the next target is.
One very important addition I'd like to make is that tactics are a group responsibility. As Kelly mentioned, if someone is targeting the "wrong" enemy, it is often better to focus fire on that enemy, than to split damage - but there's more to it. Even if you're not the cause of a problem, you can often still contribute to solving it. - If you're a sorcerer pick up Careful Spell. This will make your control party-agnostic. For every control caster that has access to it: pick up Slow. Druids and clerics have the most OP party agnostic spells in Conjure Animals and Spirit Guardians that can exert a ton of control also. You can't expect your martials to always be playing tiefling devotion paladins. - If you've got a very SR reliant party with monks and warlocks, something like Dreams Druid or Genie Warlock, or Tiny Hut, all help making a SR safer. - Adjust your resource pool. If you've got 2 monks in your party, that hexblade 1 dip (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry) will get any character a 1/SR Shield spell. Anyone loves action surge and War Cleric is amazing for power attack builds. If you're that monk in a party full of full casters, consider playing a rogue instead. Many DM's will let you flavour a shortsword like a tabaxi claw swipe, and you can flavour a sneak attack as a series of blows. Just ask about it. - If you're a melee martial, pick up ranged options. Carry a bow if you didn't dump DEX. Grab Toll the Dead from Blessed Warrior or Magic Stone from Druidic Warrior otherwise. Many enemies need to be in melee, and if you can spend your action on a suboptimal attack while they need to spend theirs on a dash: you win. Not to even mention the positioning advantage. But most of all; talk to your group. Plan stuff out in a session 0. Ask people what they wanna play as, strategise around, etc. Building a team together is incredibly rewarding - and can make for great story moments too.
Another big one in my experience is not unnecessarily closing with enemies, especially if they’re in some kind of control effect. So many enemies only have melee attacks that sometimes keeping distance is the best move, even on a melee character. The number of times I’ve put a melee enemy in a web, or frightened them, or hit them with a mind whip, effectively removing them as a threat until they can break out, only for the barbarian or fighter to run up to them and make themselves an available target.
Yuuuup. My bard literally dropped Hypnotic Pattern because I couldn't keep the paladin and wizard from blowing the effect straight to he🏑🏑 right after I cast it. It should have been one of his best spells, but it was just wasteful to cast in that party.
Ive been running a campaign for a few months now with many newer characters. A huge thing I see is a lack of coordinating their attacks. But the most memorable fight was when the enemy was immune to all damage and spread poison debuffs that duffered depending on the enemy. The party had to collect some antidotes and mix together a potion in order to stop the source. My rogue (who never takes any damage whatsoever because of uncanny dodge) was taking 8d6 per turn and had half speed. If a party member hadnt helped him out he wouldve absolutely been a goner. Not only that but they were passing ingredients around between themselves and the cleric was using greater restoration. As a DM there is nothing more satisfying and amazing to watch than a party who is working together and crushing a combat encounter you place before them.
The upcoming game from MCDM seems like it might be solving some of the issues with players sequencing their actions during a turn; with players getting to chose who goes next on the fly. They look to be coming up with mechanisms to avoid players hoarding their resources and not getting to use their big, impressive, limited-use abilities. The Dusk Wardens and Drakken Force continuingly forgetting their useful loot is one of the many funny running gags in the series.
I have issues with the concept of focus fire. When you watch the Avengers, every avenger takes on their own Ultron bot. When you watch an anime about pirates, each crew member squares up against an opponent on the enemy crew. The phrase “you take the one in the left, I’ll take the one in the right” just feels good to say. Yes, it’s not as tactical, but this is a fantasy game about cooperative story telling. And sometimes, the fantasy is for each member of your 4 party team to take on their own ogre
I also think that focus makes sense when initiating a fight, but after that fights can be chaotic and the wizard shooting firebolt at someone 30 feet away while a wolf is trying to kill him, just feels absolutely wrong
Rune Knight with Shield Master is one of my favorite builds for abusing the environment. Bonus Action push with a shield and advantage for being a size larger (against most creatures) makes being next to ledges and traps such a fun time.
9:47 Leaders/controllers can also be a priority, as taking them out can also defeat other enemies. After all, you don't need to kill all your enemies, just get them to stop attacking (keeping in mind potential future conflicts).
Funnily enough, while I did recently play a typical Greatsword fighter, i always carried Caltrops and tanglefoot bags to help direct the flow of combat in our favor if necessary. They were not always used, but during one engagement the party was huddled in a bottleneck and to heavily delay the enemy, i had a large glass bottle filled with lamp oil and caltrops. I flung the bottle into the doorway and chucked a torch to light it on fire. The ambush that was planned for us was stoppwd dead in its tracks, because if they had gotten too close they would have ignited, moved half speed, and then had to either use an action to power through, at which point they cant act because their turn is over, or they hung back and were picked off by our ranged attacks and egregious use of caltrops. I should add we were securing a lesser artifact and needed to buy time to escape.
In a D&D game year ago, I was the tank of the party, using a literal tank. The cannon had a cool-down period which actually made the tank more effective. Rather than sit in one spot and shoot at enemies the entire encounter, the cool-down forced the tank to move between attacks. The tank would zip across the map to find new angle to attack the enemy, using the cannon's line-of-effect attack to hit three or four targets at once.
One thing about AOE issues that isn't often brought up is using verticality. It's not super useful for smaller foes (curse you swarms of little minions!) but if your foes are a size larger than your allies who got in too close to them, asking the DM if you can place the center of your AOE spell 'higher' to only scorch the enemies heads is a pretty handy trick to keep in mind. Made my tebaxi cleric/wizard much scarier with fireball usage than she had any right being with all her allies being the 'runs in without thinking' types~ XD Often times my biggest issue in combat though is that sometimes I forget what passive abilities my enemies might have. Probably the funniest moment of this was when I had my Tebaxi cleric/wizard try to Shocking Grasp a Phoenix... At the time I blamed it on 'bird got too close to cat and cat's brain went out the window in her need to catch it' (it was very on brand for her honestly; being a 'former heroic caster who keeps forgetting she's nowhere near as OP as she used to be' and 'mad scientist who loves to try new things out while actively under in combat' only kept out of 'actively a risk to herself' range due to not wanting her infant child to be an orphan leads to a lot of fun stupid) but like, you'd think the bird being made of LITERAL FIRE would've been something of a deterrent~ XDDD
@@talscorner3696 *weeps* I miss RPing her live experimentation with spells so so much! Especially abusing Shape Water for mundane utility - my fav was using the animate water section to make sheets of spinning water to act as an umbrella when caught out in the rain. Might not have been practical as just shaping one out of water, freezing it into ice and using some cloth to act as a handle but finding ways to get around the 'can only use two effects and can't have effect area move' was so much fun~
Knowing the rest of the party's abilities is also super helpful. Not just for staying out of their AOE, but also for thinking of ways that you can use your abilities together in ways that multiply their effectiveness. An idea like holding a turn until later in initiative to let a comrade tee up some extra damage, like a rogue laying down some grease before your wizard throws that fireball, is also something that a group can RP around the campfire between battles. It's not metagaming if you & your party come up with combo moves in game, it's teamwork. Also, if you can come up with names for the combos, you can call them out on the battlefield without enemies knowing what to expect.
One great thing about lists like this is as DM... these tactical mistakes are like a list of things to do to prevent a TPK if it looks like the players are doing unexpectedly poorly in the fight.
Thank you for including a summary at the end. This is the number 1 mistake UA-cam list-makers constantly make. I want to watch your video once. But I don't want to have to watch the whole thing again and again to find the key information!
1v1ing is hilarious to me as a DM. My monsters will absolutely use focus fire on the party, typically as soon as the healer reveals themselves. BUT, if the party will 1v1 the bad guys? OH I will leave that play running as long as the party is willing. My other favorite error is when players blow their entire resource wad on the session's opening encounter. "You swing mightily, but this goblin is a shifty one. It slides to the left ever so slightly and avoids your attack." "I use a lucky." "On a to hit roll? On a goblin?" "Yes" "OK? Go ahead and mark the lucky off....." "Dang, a 1! OK lets use another lucky." "...... Mark it off?"
8:20 How is "Hey guys we should be taking the spellcaster out first" metagaming? It's something that could easily be shouted in combat ("Get the wizard!"). If you are worried about the enemies hearing you, it could even be a code ("Plan Alfa!" or "Remember that battle under Negron's Keep? Same thing!"). Plus, we have to assume that our party has had hours and hours of "off camera" time while resting or traveling. Surely they would discuss tactics and strategies? What do we do if faced with a caster supported by a lot of minions? What do if the caster has a big strong bodyguard like a fire giant? What if the caster is a healer vs a nuker vs a charmer? Who buffs and who attacks and who controls? Talking about that in the battle seems perfectly reasonable to me. Edit: I see Monty addressed this a few minutes later.
Agreed, the characters aren't (usually) complete idiots. I got called out one time for "metagaming", there was a portal my party was trying to close that would weaken at night. I had my character cast "dispel magic" numerous times when night fell but I kept rolling low so I decided that my character would go to sleep early and he could catch it again before the sun rise. Somehow that was metagaming.... wouldn't characters understand the concept of "early to bed, early to rise"?
This is so good and I’ve got a few house rules that allow tactics to be better incorporated into battle such called ‘knowledge of the opponent’ (a way for any class to use their bonus action to use skills to know a variety of information about their opponents w/ a DC check) and a pre-initiative ‘strategy’ turn’ to discuss tactics (timed) and even to use a bonus action to assess how difficult this encounter may be (CR). One thing I find missing from many groups is the power of a leader in encounters (one mind) so I’m coming up with an idea of how to incentivize the idea akin to how a battle master’s abilities but it’s still a WIP
To do that, I think you need to work on both mechanics and people. Many players don't take leadership positions for the added responsibility in their escapism, others do try to take positions of leadership because they want to be the one in charge (and often fail miserably when put to the test xD) It's definitely not easy, but working at both levels should help.
@@talscorner3696 you’re 100% right it’s not. I find the best thing to do is to sit back and watch the players, sometimes a natural leader emerges even though it’s still a cooperative game for sure. If I feel there’s a character who the rest of the party seems to turn to (and what I love about this is that it has nothing to do with their class or stats), I may turn to them when I see the rest of the party doing so on what they want to do next. If it’s ‘one of those’ ppl who want to be a ‘boss’ but no one wants to actually follow them or they’re just selfish, I ask the entire party. I think leaders appear organically, but also require encouragement to do so. As a DM I find cultivating that process slowly and carefully to be a good way to see if it’s viable. That said, mechanically, Iile to find each character’s area of expertise and give them a chance to ‘lead’ in their area which is why I made the knowledge homebrew rule above. Maybe I don’t need another layer of rules actually, just that and inspiration can be enough. Hmmm.
Loving Kelly's AFI hoodie. Used to be my favorite band, I still like them. great music. another amazing video, glad to see you two on my recommended again!
I know this advice was mostly for the players but as a DM for so long I realized I haven't really been using the environment for my enemies' best opportunities as well. Thanks, guys, for going over this love almost every video you do.
A big mistake I often see happen is one player crossing the battlefield to meet the enemy where the rest of the party can't follow. In a game where I was a player, a barbarian with winged boots kept engaging enemies in the air, way out of range of the rest of the party, and the player didn't understand why they were the ONLY one getting targeted. In a session I recently GMed, the Monk ran up the wall to meet the bad guy, who was a Salamander with a grapple/restrain on a hit; the rest of the party had to use the paths encircling the room and wouldn't have made it up in time to save her, except that the Druid had Spider Climb active and managed to knock the Salamander back/break the grapple with a spell.
My fighter went first on initiative while my party was in a tight hallway with an ongoing trap effect that nullified magic of spellcasters. We knew the switch to deactivate the trap was in the next room, so instead of attacking the monsters that appeared, my character dashed to the end of the hallway then used action surge to deactivate the trap. It was really helpful for the casters in my party and it let them use their crowd control AOE spells, which then ended the fight quickly.
Starting the vid, but one of the things I saw in your campaign and in mine is "don't fly if you're low on HP. If you go down to 0, you're giving yourself a free failed death save when you fall down" lol. A player of mine lost a character in this way, because she fell right next to the monster and it still had their second attack. The hit gave her another 2 fails to her death saves and she died right there
Another time for me was playing my paladin defensively for a Level 4 siege adventure. Focusing on this support playstyle had me being on high alert the whole time, paying attention to positioning and turn order, which is tiring but rewarding! She did not attack/smite once in that siege, and instead prioritized concentrating on Bless and using the Help Action to benefit our party's rogue and monk. She also made sure to be within 5ft. of as many party members as possible for the Interception fighting style. Reduced damage per turn was invaluable in the battle of attrition.
Many moons ago, when Interception wasn't a thing yet (2017 or something like that), I had a one shot session with a friend of mine in which we both brought Shield Master Paladins with the Protection fighting style... completely by accident xD I think he was Oath of the Crown and I was Conquest The session was spent basically me and him phalanxing down any encounter by imposing disadvantage on anything coming to each other. Man, that was fun!
At higher levels for me, it’s remembering casting times. I’m so used to 1 action spells that I forget some more powerful, yet really useful situational spells come with a loading time. It’s like, “I finally get to use magic circle!”, but oh yeah, it’s designed for defending a place ahead of time, not combats.
I will never forget that time me and another player had to go full METAgaming and basically BEG for a full 5 minutes our sorcerer's player to throw a fucking fireball at the 18 wolves munching on us for 3 turns straight. We alteady had a "talk" with her in and out of game about how it's ok to hit the frontline barbarian and paladin with aoe if that means she hits dozens of ennemies in the process. Very next encounter swarms of locusts. Takes 4 turn of us pulling out our hair, having our characters scream "do it, every second you hesitate we take way more punishment from them than your spell could ever do". Next and last encounter. She hits both of us, without a second of hesitation or any consultation, with a fireball to hit a SINGLE flaming skull. It had been a year of that shit, we both have had enough, we both quit on the spot. She could absolutely not comprehend why hitting us to kill 18 ennemies was ok but hitting us to hit a single monster litterally made of flames with fireball was a big no-no.
I had a game VERY recently where two of the biggest damage dealers in the party (the Fighter Cavalier and the Rogue Thief) were wasting their attacks on two "enemies" that had no interest in joining the fight (until they were attacked...before that they were simply maintaining the library the party was in) while letting the Twilight Cleric, the Gloom Stalker Ranger, and the Paladin/Warlock take on the ACTUAL enemy by themselves (and it was moping the floor with them). The party managed to survive...just...but the Cleric, Ranger, and Paladin were all down to about 1/4 hp with no spells/resources left while the Fighter and Rogue were nearly unscathed and had full resources. If the two non-enemies' had been ignored, nothing negative would have happened. If all of the party had ganged up on the actual enemy, they would have likely dropped it in no time whatsoever. Like the guys said: Pick your target(s) tactically, concentrate fire on them, then move on to the next threat. Action economy is king, and disrupting it is the way to win encounters. (I can see a good tactic where a tank with Misty Step as a racial feature rushes in, draws all the melee attackers to it, then on their next action attacks then bonus teleports 30' away as the Wizard/Sorcerer drops the 20' radius fireball on the group of foes left behind. 😈)
My husband's first character was a variant human rogue who had the telepathic feat ftom level 1, and *completely* forgot about it until we were in our 2nd or 3rd campaign with that group of characters. The rest of us hadn't looked at his character sheet (Apart from our DM, we were all brand new to D&D) so one day, (after the DM reminded him) he jumpscared the party with sudden telepathy. Our half-orc barbarian still doesn't know that our rogue is the voice he sometimes hears in his head. 😂
My biggest problem is trying to not be overly conservative. VERY simple example - I use my Action Surge and then later in the battle a situation comes up where I wish I would have waited because I sure need it now. Then next encounter you hold off on using it until the right time and then a party member rolls both a Nat 20 and Max damage to finish off that last troublesome monster and then you're cussing at yourself for not using it sooner. Got to love the "Damned if you do - Damned if you don't" situation. I'm 73 and play every week with my son and his friends and this type of situation happens all too often for me. ROFL
This is another area where 4E really got things right. They gave encounter based abilities. As soon as the encounter begins you have them and can use them. The things that recharged at the start of each day were different. But, with those they EITHER didn’t get used if you missed your attack, or they would at least do half damage on a miss … so even if you miss it’s still a good turn for you (more than a generic weapon attack or cantrip spell).
I feel like you can’t be blamed for keeping an Action Surge in the tank. Using an Action Surge when it isn’t necessary seems like the more egregious error. Better to have it for a clutch moment than to use it “just to use it” in my humble opinion.
@@atherton01 I disagree. This recharged on short rest, right? The goal for an ability like this is to kill a thing quickly so it gets fewer actions and does less damage to the party. There is almost no way to use it badly. Especially before level 5 when it does so little. The worst thing you can do with it is just … hold on to it and not use it. Don’t worry about finding the perfect time for it. Maybe don’t blow it in the first round of every fight after a short rest. But, even that is better than not using it at all.
@@zero11010 I’m glad we can disagree on this, as I think the game is complex enough to support different approaches. I honestly don’t play a lot of fighters, so my opinion was based as a party member seeing our fighter have it available in moments when we really need it, usually not to pile on damage but to do something that requires two actions. I agree you don’t want abilities to go to waste when the consequences of not using them on the front end result in using more resources on the back end. Thanks for phrasing your disagreement in a respectful manner.
Favorite tactical Mistake - Don’t get tunnel vision. In one campaign, we were being attacked Helmsdeep Style and we were holding the line and I had everyone that could move Helping man the wall, even my Drow ward was going to town tossing my Javlins as I was shooting at the mass of enemies trying to get to and up the Wall. We had barely beaten them back off the wall when the DM rolled to see if I noticed that mayor of the town had opened the door and the horde was coming in the side gate! The DM said, hey you are so good at tactics, how did you not protect your back? I had tunnel vision and was looking at what was in front and not using my people resources well. He had expected me to have the Drow girl and her very good dark vision keeping an eye on our back and not tossing Javelins but I had gotten so focused on holding the wall that I had no one in reserve or watching out behind where we could not see (Drow girl was a actual girl fyi but she can see things around the corner)
Solid list that I've either made myself or have seen made. I'm probably most guilty of being conservative with spells, I always have the mindset that no matter what we're fighting right now, there could be something far worse in the room next door. Also I guess I'm very guilty of meta-gaming because I'm often discussing who we should target and throwing out ideas on how to proceed. My thinking is 4-6 actual combatants in a party would definitely be doing that so I think it's ok?
My biggest bugbear as a spell caster is that the party never scout out opposition first. So I cannot select the most effective spells for the situation and have to stick a standard all purpose selection as they just charge headlong into every situation.
This! As a DM i am constantly giving my party opportunities to scout. But they always just charge ahead without considering that they may not be prepared.
As a bugbear barbarian with racial proficiency in stealth I resemble this remark, my team includes a rogue and ranger/rogue and the 3 of us do all the scouting work for our paladin, artificer and wizard
Another one to remember and it falls under Target Prioritization: sometimes taking out the highest damage dealing enemy first is best, sometimes taking out the enemy arcane caster who is preparing a nasty spell first is best, but all of that is for naught if the enemy has a healer who can pop back up the target you just dropped. Often, taking out the enemy healer is the best thing to do first. I didn't hear that mentioned during the segment on target prioritization but it is important to remember.
This ties into several of the points regarding resource usage, target priority, and forgetting features, but another big mistake a lot of players make is *misusing* resources. The meme examples are the Wizard that casts Fireball at single targets or Paladins that only ever use their spell slots for Divine Smite, but misusing resources can take several forms. For example, consider a Wizard, Sorcerer, or Warlock that gets hit by an attack. If the attack is coming from a single minion, and the player is in good enough shape that they aren't going to be dropped by it, blowing their reaction casting Shield can be a massive mistake if the Lich's turn is coming up next and they're likely going to be casting a devastating spell. Or if you are a heavily armored Fighter or Paladin, taking the Dodge action while blocking a hallway can actually be a more efficient use of your action than attacking if it gives the casters room to use their resources on their big control or damage spells instead of needing to use them on mitigation or healing. Or if you are a character capable of healing, your front liner is low on health, and some big scary enemy that's not about to die is going to go next, it can be better to heal the front liner to ensure they survive the next attack rather than having them get knocked out, since that would result in them missing their next turn and *also* use up your next turn healing them to bring them back up. A good question to keep in mind as a player is how using your resources can help the rest of the team better use their resources. If you can use a minor resource to enable another player to maximize the effectiveness of one of their major resources, or even not need to use their major resources, that's usually a pretty good return on your investment.
At 15:50 Had a variant Human barbarian with Shield Mastery in DDAL. When introducing my character I would always tell the casters that I hald Shield Mastery and that if they dropped dex-based AOEs that they could aim for my shield. We never had any problems. But yeah, the Clerics sometimes complained...
Regarding “Ignoring the environment”. Sometimes the environment can be your treasure; in a campaign I was in we had bought some land and were building a house. We learned marble was vary expensive for the house. Later while exploring an ancient coastal temple we found great big pillars of marble, so we hired a ship & workmen to collect the pillars & sold them for a fairly large profit.
My first character is a warforged necromancy wizard i had just picked up the spell MELF'S MINUTE METEORS (meteors that swirl around you, and as a BA can send 1-2 flying in a 120ft line then explode on impact dealing damage to everyone in a 5ft AOE) I had this spell up and kept trying to get an enemy that was away from any friendly but one monk in particular would not give me the space for my spell so i finally just kicked a couple at an enemy hitting the monk in the process. The characters then had a talk once the combat had ended. Got some things cleared up between them and they have been good since.
In my LMoP game, the PCs were in Wave Echo Cave and when dealing with Bugbears, the front liner was down and doing death saves. Two characters wanted to end it with AOE attacks and the downed player was fine, cause it would leave him with one throw to spare. Not only did the two attacks not end the conflict but the ranger, whose turn was last, forgot she had prepped hail of thorns, which never triggered for lack of hits. So she forgot, I remembered, and I told her to roll the extra die, which freaked everyone out as their forgetfulness lead to killing a teammate.
At my table I have a frenzy barbarian who uses his frenzies in the first two encounters of every single adventure day and then complains about being totally useless because of the exorbitant levels of exhaustion he’s carting around because he wanted to get that extra attack against stuff that has half the points he has. And if I have extra monsters because they had to take a long rest, and the monsters had chance to regroup, or if I don’t give them a chance to take a long rest because they’re in a large dungeon with a lot of other things that aren’t gonna wait eight hours for them to have all the abilities again, suddenly I’m a bad DM and I’m not letting him play the game he wants to play.
Greatest moment in a dnd campaign about forgetting how abilities work. We had a cleric that did not heal (warlock lying down making survival checks), did not use turn undead (quite desperate moment) and than used Sanctuary on our raging Barbarian - next in iniative order. Hell, that was a mess
I have a few key principles that address most of these, though admittedly they're more about build optimization (aka strategy) to enable good tactics than being good tactics in and of themselves. 1. Play a caster. Casters unilaterally have more resources to throw at problems (even at level 1), and are the only classes to ever get class features stronger than 4th level spells. Spend those resources in combat rather than spending HP. 1a. In general, your highest level spells should go toward your encounter-winning concentration spells, and your lowest level slots toward defensive reactions like Shield, Absorb Elements, and Silvery Barbs. Your mid-level slots, when your budget frees up, are for useful utility effects and non-concentration spells to replace your cantrips. 1b: If your enemy might have Legendary Resistance (which can start happening at way lower levels than you might think, especially if your tactics are good enough to trivialize level-appropriate CR encounters), don't allow your enemies to make saves. Targeting ability checks or AC, or casting buffs, or summoning minions, or using spells like Sleet Storm or Spirit Guardians that have a useful effect regardless of whether a save succeeds or fails, is a far better and more reliable use of resources than trying to burn through LRs (especially in that it will affect the enemy right now instead of in a few rounds). 1c. Blasting spells have really bad damage scaling, and instantaneous effects are generally a really inefficient use of spell slots. That's not to say Fireball and Synaptic Static aren't good spells that are very efficient against hordes of mooks, just that you're going to want to use them very sparingly until high levels when you have more spell slots than you know what to do with and are in need of a stronger action than Dodge or your cantrip of choice. 2. Stay out of melee. Attacking from range pretty much guarantees you don't spoil AoEs, prevents loss of HP (and spell slots used to recover it) thanks to cover and most enemies being melee only, reduces the number of rounds spent not attacking as you move between enemies (ie you'll deal more damage), and makes it far, far easier to focus fire. While it's not *quite* accurate to say melee is unilaterally a trap in 5e, the exceptions are rare enough to be far outside the scope of this margin (no, not even Paladin smites are worth the danger of melee, especially not when Aura of Protection could instead be used to protect the other casters' concentration on the backline). 2a. This isn't to say having a front line isn't extremely useful. It's just that there's zero good reason to risk a valuable PC in the role when disposable (and generally more effective) frontlines like Web, Sleet Storm, Conjure Animals, the Steel Defender, Animate Dead, and hired/Dominated goons exist. 3. Invest heavily in defence. 5e makes it very cheap and easy (especially for spellcasters, who generally only need a 1-2 level dip and a couple of feats to far exceed what's possible as a non-caster), good AC and saves will save you a lot of resources in the long run (that you can in turn use to deal more damage), and protecting concentration is of paramount importance. While it remains true that the best defence is a good offence (the best condition is dead, and other aphorisms about action denial), in 5e the best offence is frequently a good defence (due to how offensively impactful protecting concentration usually is).
5:50 Having all party members focused on combat (as opposed to taking non-combat actions) is one of the major strategic mistakes: losing sight of the goal of the encounter.
For much of our campaign, I played a Tiefling Cleric, and she was the most heavily armored, and so the most capable taking a beating. Our other PCs were a Wizard, Bard, and a Monk. So I would often be the one trying to draw the most targets onto me, and it took quite a few encounters before I convinced the Wizard player (who happened to be my son), that he could hit me with AOEs.. Tiefling fire resistance, and also electricity resistance, so I would try to group enemies in optimal fireball or lightning bolt formations... And since as a Life Cleric, she had healing abilities that would heal her when she healed others, as well as the channel divinity heal.. so yeah, taking some damage in return for taking some enemies out was almost always worth it.
In my most recent game (lvl 13 in a 5e wrath of the righteous conversion) me cleric and the ranger we trapped in a prismatic wall, and we were racking our brains on how to get out and ranger had the best cartoon idea, he conjured a bunch of giant badgers and they dug a tunnel for us to get out, most of our party was getting beat to hell by a couple of pit fiends and a devil general, I held my turn till after the badgers so I could get out and heal my team that had two ppl already unconscious so with my magic robes that let's me do some sorcerer meta magics so I twin upcasted heal for 80 hp to each of my downned teammates and this combo from me and ranger turned the whole fight around and we rallied and won the day loosing no one... :)
I would love advice on how to deal with players that front take combat seriously. I warned my party that a head on assault against this target would likely be deadly. They did exactly that, but then got indignant when someone actually died. They even got downed, brought back up, and the bbeg warned they would put them down for good, and they didn't flee. After which they killed the fighter.
Thinking of this in a more positive light (Do's instead of Don't's), I've edited this list for myself thus: 1 - Communicate and strategize with other players 2 - Establish target priority and focus attacks 3 - Respect area of effect targeting 4 - Buff before combat 5 - Balance use of resources and conservation of resources 6 - Take advantage of abilities, feats, class features 7 - Remember magic items, potions, consumables 8 - Take advantage of the environment
21:49…27:45 This is similar to forgetting that a creature is suffering from a condition, and similar tools can be used as reminders. When buffed (whether temporarily, such as by a spell or aura, or permanently, such as a resistance from a race or class), you can put a marker/token on a figure or the character sheet. Another tool is to have situation-specific lists, such as abilities you can use when attacking, or abilities when attacked, or what affects you're under. They don't need many details, just the briefest of descriptions to remind you when they apply & what they do. There are probably some good digital tools to track some of these details. As much fun as the physical tools are, if you find you're forgetting things a significant portion of time, digital aids might be just the ticket.
You talk about remembering your features and stuff. I had one time when I was playing a Life Domain Cleric and my healing had pretty much made my DM hate me as no one would ever really get close to dying and he was struggling to make an encounter challenging because of it. So one encounter he has a wizard and a war vehicle pretty much spam fireball on me every turn. My Dex was -1 but I still managed to make an occasionally save here and there and with my healing I actually kept myself standing for about 2-3 turns of this before he finally managed to down me. It was only after all this I remember "oh yeah I'm a Tiefling with fire resistance."
Telekinetic Feat not for moving the enemy, but to push willing allies out of immediate danger or incoming danger. In theory you can grapple and pull back an ally, but that is an Athletics contest that can't be auto-failed.
I'm playing an Armorer/Battlewarden in the campaign I'm in right now that's entirely built around tanking and movement abilities/ spells, especially off-turn with maneuvers and Sentinel/Polearm Master/Spear Mastery
I’ve used Telekinetic to good effect in the early game as a Bonus Action, but it was ruled by our DM to not automatically break grapples (the grappler could save against the DC), so I mostly used it to pull our ranged fighters from melee so that they didn’t provoke attacks of opportunity, or could use Steady Aim for our rogue. But its effectiveness was dramatically affected by turn order and worked best if the ranged party members came right after me in initiative (or, at least, before our foes had a turn).
in regards to your comments about buffing before battle. I recently ran across the idea of character competency; even if we humans forget things, the characters are professional at what they do, and that's my litmus test for recons like, "Oh, I should've done that before battle". If I think the character as a professional wizard would have done that or because of previous roleplay or background I'll let it happen.
As a dm I use the rule of you get to say a message worth of words between characters for tactics, your character can speak 25 words during your turn to convey the tactics they spoke about on their turn. If a character wants to say something in game during someone else’s turn, they can sacrifice their reaction to call something out their character noticed. I still allow for out of character talk but they still role play their characters well enough to not use their out of character talk to influence their fighting. They also only get like 1-2 minutes a round before I try to move them along with their turn. If they do nothing for 3 minutes then they pass their turn.
Taking that brief pause before you know you're heading into a big fight to do any prep if always forgotten. We just did a one shot and all of the stuff we had on us could have been used without future consideration, but we didn't burn all the potions we could have for advantage. In our normal campaign, our wizard is constantly unsure of what to do in battle. I think part of it is that he doesn't have much in the way of attack spells, but he has some cantrips he could do at the very least and it irks when when he choses to do something that's not helpful at all. I don't confront him about it as part of it is how he plays his character, but there are a few times it would have been nice to end combat one round earlier. ...and Spartan kicking people off of cliffs is so much fun.
I find that if there is a party bank or someone that takes notes of what the party has for consumables or treasures like scrolls or potions and they announce it with the start of every session with the ole discussion of what transpired before it helps a lot.
Pre-Buffing hits home. My last game was a one-shot at lvl 3 where I had a 1peace cleric/2chrono wizard, so I could slap embolding bond onto bless onto gift of alacrity... And our paladin just rushed into the room that had basically "bossmonster" written all over it. It was completely fine in the end as it was well within reason of the character itself and our DM planned with overall good but not optimized play.
I know that conventional wisdom is the Oath of Vengeance is the best Paladin subclass, but I really felt like Oath of Enmity was almost a waste. I played from level 1 to level 12 and I used it....maybe 6 or 7 times. We didn't have that many really crucial combats with an enemy I couldn't just beat down normally. I did use it on boss encounters, but otherwise I really felt like my oath was a waste. Channel Divinity more to regain spellslots for extra smites WAY more than I ever did for Oath of Enmity.
I’ve DMed before, and I think the biggest tactical mistake I’ve ever seen, is the players not giving me snacks. If I obtained food from a player, free inspiration.
one thing I learned from BG3 is to look at your bonus actions before actions as sometimes you could have been more effective with your action if you did something with your bonus action first
Recently had a session where after a rough combat, we were heading out of the dungeon and something happened that did a bunch of damage. As we were looking at our character sheets, the cleric realized it was enough damage to kill them outright (Pathfinder) because they were still heavily wounded, at which point even the DM/GM was like, "You all have healed up after every combat for the last 3-4 levels. So... uh... party SOP has always been healing and you have a wand of cure light. So go ahead and burn a couple of charges so that you're only unconscious." Don't forget your own party standard operating procedures! If you always search the bodies for cult markings and use wands of cure light wounds before you leave a room? Make sure you don't forget just because you just killed the dungeon boss and are casually walking back out.
In regards to forgetting abilities, I was playing a cleric in a Curse of Strahd campaign, and for at least half of the campaign I forgot that "Turn Undead" was a thing…
The problem with focus fire is turn order. I love helping our barbarian with my paladin, but I can't always get to him without provoking attacks on myself. Then again our party is loaded for bear with the lineup. I've never forgotten my inspiring leader feat. I make sure we venture out with extra HP.
Ignoring the environment is such a common mistake. My current character (basically a Human Paladin) has now used the tactic of bull-rushing, with his shield, into an enemy and slamming them into a nearby wall. One such enemy ended up with all its fight knocked out of it (it ran away) from this move... while another didn't have the means to do anything while pinned. In each case, the enemy in question was out of the fight for a full turn, at minimum... and was put into a position of my choosing (battlefield control) with no expenditure of resources. Definitely something that more people need to consider... even with a "standard" sword/board character.
I always say, "The most deadly foe in any encounter is the enemy's action economy." And by "always say" I mean that I think it on the drive home alone after the game and forget it by the next session.
This is something that I'm starting to think about while playing PF2E. If I have nothing to do for my 3rd action (for reference, I'm playing a sword and pistol Gunslinger with two free archetype feats in Rogue), I've started Stepping away from the enemy I'm fighting, forcing them to use some of their action economy to re-engage with me.
That’s why “Slow,” is such a great spell!!
This helps a lot, I learned it from Star Wars Legion. If you can cut down an enemy before he takes his turn in the round, it can make a huge difference
Which is why I ramp up enemies' action economy to match the players. :) "That isn't standard!!"
Watch your players panic when you give your bad guys interesting abilities, multi attacks, bonus actions, and reactions.
Another thing some people forget about too (thought I'm sure it's been in many reddit/UA-cam posts) is even your enemies have lots of actions if they can't do anything effective with them you've basically won. Like if they can't catch up to your party to be in melee or a couple of your players are blocking access in very hard to hit
As a DM, the biggest mistake I see, with newcomers in particular, is falling into the mindset that damage is everything, and underestimating the power of battlefield control abilities and spells.
I’m having the reverse problem of all my players taking too many RP and utility spells so they pump out pretty sad damage and nearly got wiped by two animated armors lol
I focused a lot on support spells and some utility. By about Lv.6-7 and some harder bosses was when it really hit me I needed something respectible for damage as well for prolonged fights.
@@WhiskeySins Fair enough, it depends on your party composition.
@@ASmashingGentleman2yep depends on your group. I knew my 3 other part members were dps focused so I would take almost all control, illusion spells and maybe like 1 fireball
I see my players sometime value healing way to much. Like healing an injured player when they already know the enemy thats threatening them is bloodied and about to die. Healing is so often way worse than damage and sometimes they heal and the healed player still goes down, when the enemy had just a few HP left.
Biggest mistake I've ever seen: Assuming every encounter must be a battle to the death. I have DMed exactly one TPK, and it was an encounter that wasn't balanced for combat, because it was intended to be a friendly encounter. There were indications that they were potentially friendly, which the players ignored. (Example: The creatures tried to communicate before attacking, although there was a language barrier. The players ignored the communication attempt and launched the first blow.) Up until the last blow, the players could have surrendered, thus avoiding the TPK, but the thought never occurred to them, even when it became obvious that the encounter was unwinnable.
Sounds like you should have just asked them to roll insight, the same way dms ask for perception checks. And if they pass you tell them what they’re doing.
They could have dine what!? Can you do that in DnD? Its about winning ;)
@@misterbxiv As a DM, one of the most difficult things to do is to predict in advance how obvious you need to make things for the players to pick up on what is going on. Usually, though, if I have players make insight rolls, I don't simply reward a successful roll with something blatant like "He's lying to you," but something more subtle like, "You see a twitch in his eye. He licks his lips and glances over at his companion, who is clenching her jaw." In this case, the blatant thing would have been something like, "They're trying to communicate with you." The not-very-subtle alternative was "The first one says something in a language you don't understand. The second one does nothing, waiting for a response." I gave all that to them without an insight roll. (Also, the players did have the means to get around the language barrier.)
@@kclubok not everybody has a theoretical understanding of body languge. With a lot of players, the example you give would be of no help at all. And Characters (not players) who have a good understanding of body language would undersand the blatant part, even if your players don't. You don't ask your players to swing a sword in real life, why play coy with the social cues instead of giving your players the information that they charcters would understand?
"Bonjour."
"A foul demon! I roll to attack!"
Don't forget about the Help and Dodge actions. In some situations they can be better than attacking or casting a spell.
THIS! So many crits could have been completely negated or chokepoints held by players that just stood there and say “I dodge”
Help actions can also be underused though not as much as Dodge what with familiars and skill checks utilizing them all the time.
In this vein, if you are at range drop prone is a free action dodge
@@DandDgamerI had a player do this once in a fight against all ranged and then another person followed suit. Worked out well for them!
Dodge feels very under appreciated by many players. I use it a lot
@@alanleckert1 I had a fight against adamantine robots (as player). Fully negated damage or else the tougher ones only resisted. Had to stall 4 turns so train could start for escape. Players like to complain when they can't do damage but this was one of the coolest combats of my life. Every turn was either moving evasively or firing flashy attacks to distract bots from civilians. Lots of dodging, lots of fey stepping, lots of drop prone. If I didn't I'm ultra dead to gunfire.
How epic that even in a video like this, on this subject, BARDIC INSPIRATION is forgotten.
Wait, we had inspiration?
I would think point 7 covers this- but yes, explicitly being said would be useful.
@@iakan6937 lol this singlehandedly describes why the self-buffing bard classes are so popular
I've found that if you always ask about things in the environment eventually the DM will get better at putting them in before combat happens, if for no other reason that it makes it easier to say no to the request that there is something that gives you a huge advantage.
As a DM, yes! Always looking for input from my players to make the combat experience (and game as a whole) run smoothly, as even minute details can get caught up on for upwards of half an hour
I think one thing you missed is keeping your place in the initiative order in mind. If you push a creature prone with a shove and its their turn next, they are just going to stand up. Any benefit from being prone is lost immediately.
But if their turn is right before yours they are going to spend the whole round lying prone and receiving a bunch of attacks at advantage.
But also keep in mind how many ranged comrades are going in between you in them (assuming they are a focus target).
Fundamentally this is all metagaming.
There is no turn order. Everything happens at the same time.
In the real world we have turns to make it more manageable and ordered. Taking advantage of this is a little like opening up the monster manual to look at the enemy stats as soon as the fight starts.
It’s not info your character would know.
@@zero11010 Hard disagree. If it was all happening at the same time, your character would be relatively aware of who is with them in the attack. If your nearby melee friends were right with you, then it would make sense to sweep the leg. If you were alone in engaging the target then it would probably make sense that you would keep them occupied for your ranged fellows to help you out.
There is 100% a turn order. That's what makes the "game" work. This isn't the real world. It's a game first and foremost and a fantasy one at that, so let that go. And your second to last sentence is hyperbolic, imo.
I'm all for separating the character from the player and doing my personal best not to meta game, but the microscopic lens you're putting on this is just silly.
@@jonnielaw Soft disagree with your opening statement. The actions in a round ARE all happening at the same time. In essence, take all of the actions that take place in a round of combat, have them all queued up and then played out in real-time. That is what is happening. Otherwise you end up with battles looking like how Deerstalker Pictures presented turn-based combat in their D&D logic series, and that is absurd.
Turn order exists solely to make combat manageable. That said, I agree that not considering turn order as part of a tactical evaluation is getting to granular with the anti-metagaming, and there is no need for that. It can reasonably be said that while the character doesn't "know" that the monster's turn is next, the character would know how quickly the monster could recover from being knocked down.
For example, the orc goes immediately after the fighter in initiative. In real-time, the fighter sees that the orc is starting to make a move to [do whatever the orc ends up doing on its turn] and realizes that they could try to knock the orc down, but the orc will be able to easily roll with the momentum and get right back up, though it will slow them down a bit [standing from prone costs half move speed] if the orc tries to run past them. However, it won't do them any good if the orc was just going to try to attack the fighter's flank, as all the fighter will achieve is forcing the orc to roll back onto their feet before attacking. So is it worth knocking them down?
On the flip side, the orc goes right before the fighter in initiative. In real-time, the fighter knows that the orc is [doing whatever the orc just did] and can catch them off-balance, and can maybe use that to knock them over so they land face-down. The fighter sees the rogue and paladin running up to help, and knocking the orc down in this way will leave it vulnerable to their attacks.
@@daltigoth3970 I like your descriptions. But, that’s just not how simultaneous actions would work, in my opinion.
In 6 seconds these 5 people get to try to do a thing.
The difference between … if I trip a person one round 4 of my companions get advantage on attacks vs in another combat if I trip no one gets an attack with advantage … because mechanically my turn is directly before the enemy turn …
In both situations the thing was knocked down for the same amount of time.
Mechanically they are the same.
You can add flavor to describe them differently. But, the same 6 seconds passed.
There is no … knock it down so that these 3 allies can attack while vulnerable.
That’s not a level of coordination you’re able to really line up intentionally. It sure may work out that way.
In previous editions we had the ability to delay turns so you could have one person act, then another could take their delayed turn. THAT would make logical sense without metagaming. Wait for an opening, then act.
That’s no longer an option. It’s just everyone acting at the same time.
In the game there is virtually no real difference between initiative rolls.
Any ability to think … my initiative is 19 and the monster is 5. So, I can attack and set up a situation with the monster that my 3 companions can take advantage of … that’s meta. The rules in previous editions supported it.
I played 4E with a very Tactical-minded group and we actually worked out a code our characters would use in combat to communicate target priorities and other actions so the enemy couldn't understand what we were saying.
All the Great Houses safeguard a battle language.
"We will be dedicating one hour a day to some basic combat drills to establish a means of communications, signals, etc. to make us more effective"
Say that to the DM, and if he doesn't get it- explain to him that it's basically so you can more easily communicate as players without being as restricted. You don't have to actually establish a code system, just tell the DM you are.
I have straight up had a person leave a group because we weren’t efficient in combat because we didn’t “focus fire.” Unless there’s an obvious boss, we were kinda all over the place and hitting what was hitting us. It felt really chaotic but true in a way that was really fun. The funny thing is, after he left, it felt like we tightened up a lot. We started understanding each other’s abilities and thinking beyond the immediate threat. I look back fondly on those first encounters because it felt like genuine character development both on and above board.
Every party I've played in has always started off bad at combat, and then after some moment where someone finally says something, the combat tightens up. The biggest virtue in DnD is patience.
@@robitusinz Definitely, patience is a virtue. The druid that left really missed out on seeing those ragtag adventurers come together as a unit, because he got frustrated over a suboptimal encounter that we still won. Failure and struggle is a part of the narrative.
@@robitusinzthats also incredibly realistic, a bunch of idiots who just met in a bar are just not going to have the trust and knowledge of each other's abilities to be an effective team.
Admittedly most of it is the actual players figuring out what everyone in the party actually does and needs in combat, and until that happens you are slightly better off just relying on yourself.
The problem with that is that it's not what people do in real life. Which is an indication something unnatural is happening.
The way to fight unnaturally focused fire is to give a +2/+2 bonus to any creature that isn't engaged. If there's any attack on them, (even a Miss) then they don't get the bonus. And that should include spells.
Although...in real life, the benefits of suppressive fire are even greater than 10% or a 16% higher damage.
Regarding Target Priority: Old Shadowrun Adage is "Geek the Mage." Casters get priority in targeting because they are a force multiplier. They can drop a lot of damage on multiple targets that is hard to mitigate. Getting them off the field is always a priority.
Even if I didn't already know that adage, I think I would still opt to take out the wizard first, and not necessarily because I think they're the bigger threat. Rather, it's that I'm more confident that's the target an average party of four can drop in one round without knowing specific classes, abilities, etc.
@@ferretrewhanThis is most likely true when it comes to monsters and NPCs, but not so when it comes to player characters. Look up what the squishy caster fallacy is, it’s very interesting.
The biggest mistake I see is players, upon falling to low hp, spending their turn fleeing and healing with whatever they have- spells, items.
Theoretically a sound response, but this is 5e, and the healing is usually less than one round of attacks from an enemy. It does not save them, and that action could have been used to down an enemy and reduce the incoming damage.
Depends on the enemies. If they are melee locked than running off and playing conservative is the same as denying them actions.
I think that is a bad game design. 😂
@@DandDgamer Agreed...running away from zombies and most oozes is definitely a better strategy than standing there and trying to down them before they down you. As is breaking off from an enemy that is also engaged by one of your allies that is at/near full health in many cases.
In early levels (1-2), it may be better to cast healing word and take the dodge action instead of disengaging, and at higher levels when ranged enemies are involved, the dodge action may also be a better choice than trying to disengage if it is not possible to break line of sight.
All of this is circumstantial, though. If the enemy is nearly defeated, then you are almost always going to be better off just trying to finish it off over trying to heal during battle. On the other hand, trying to dish out as much damage as possible before going down is a terrible strategy when the battle has just begun and you're already nearly dead - retreat and let someone else soak some damage, whether you decide to heal or not.
"Uhg why don't you heal us until we go down?!"
-my party yelling at me, a Grave Cleric.
Or heal them waaaay before it got to the point that they’ll keep getting downed.
I think the biggest mistake you can do in dnd is not bring your dm a candy bar, so then he's nice that day.
I wish everyone brought me a chocolate bar. Maybe I wouldn’t TPK them in that case. They’re getting a bit tired of rolling new characters every session but I didn’t get my chocolate so I can’t be blamed for my actions.
I think the next time you run into a boss that could TPK the party, sing what you are going to do using the avocados from Mexico jingle and pull out a bowl of freshly made guacamole with chips... works on TV...
Good advice.
bribing the DM with food. Munchkin game has a card for it.
I bribe my DM with Big Red
One thing I would add, on the subject of prioritizing who to focus on, sometimes you might NOT want to focus on the biggest guy right away. If the big thing is doing a lot of damage but also has a lot of hit points, you could all be focusing on him while a there are still other enemies hurting you too. You might be able to pick off some of them first, and then you're dealing with less damage coming at you. It's all really situational.
Our group tends to focus the minions first as they die easiest while if possible having our highest HP/AC characters try to take the big guys hits.
This... XD they forget that they are falling on the TANK syndrome...
@@spatha08Ah, MMO style.
@@MayHugger we were doing that back in the 80's when playing AD&D long before MMO's were a thing. Smart game play is just smart game play.
Yes, if you're doing concentration of fire, pick targets you think you can drop quickly.
12:08 this is something I love with my fighter with a rogue dip. Run in, so a butt tonof damage to one enemy and draw all the minions to me. As my spellcaster going before me in initiative, you can go ahead and ready your action for that fireball. Because My very next turn is going to be to throw a couple more attacks and then disengage as a bonus action and book it out of the AOE
I think forgetting options, especially for new players, is a function of how the player sheets are organized. I think skills should be at the end of the sheet, cause the DM is going to ask for those rolls anyway. Put a section for actions at the top. Start with universal action like dodge, hide, dash, etc. Then have custom areas for class, race, and feats. Put the things the player is most likely to forget front and center. And I have been toying with the idea of consumable bandoliers. Have an accessible storage item for potions or scrolls, that the players could prep in advance. I think it's kind of immersive and it could encourage players to move some of their consumables to the front of their mind. Plus if there is a limit on what they can make reasonably accessible, you can give potions and scrolls more freely with less of a worry that they will down them all in one fight
Honestly, AoE positioning is why I really love the evoker wizard and think it's underrated. I play a wizard in a very chaotic group and everyone is in melee all the time, but I don't let that bother me. I especially love putting down Sickening Radiance and carving my friends out.
Evo wizard appreciation!
It’s fine mechanically, it’s just really boring, all it mostly does is let you think less.
@@MayHugger that seems awfully negative. I have seen a lot of creative play that is enabled by this subclass - I've played other wizard subclasses as well and they play very differently which I think is a feature, not a bug.
@@starsapart9311 Well, at first it just makes allies immune to your evocation AOEs, so you can just spam them without thinking, your level 6 one just might make you use like….Acid Splash? I guess? This feature pretty much requires you to multiclass to get anything of worth out of it. Your level 10 feature is just adding a bit of damage to what you were already doing, and your level 14 feature lets you maximise your evocation spell damage essentially once per long rest unless you want to take unresisted damage, so it MIGHT make you actually consider something when hurling Fireballs everywhere.
So for 10 levels, you just spam evocation aoes and the features don’t really make you change what you’re doing beyond letting you turn your brain off. And it’s not like the spells it wants you to use are niche otherwise like Necromancy encouraging you to use Ray of Sickness and Animate Dead, which are both pretty mid on any pretty much anyone else. Evocation spells are some of the best damage spells at most levels, you were already gonna use them for your primary source of big damage.
So yeah, it’s boring. It doesn’t really add anything to what most player’s were already wanting to do, at best it just encourages them to be less supportive.
And the best part of all? It’s still not an amazing subclass. It’s certainly not bad, but it’s not really great either. It just leaves me feeling…meh. It’s like the textbook definition of B tier.
@@starsapart9311 Tl;dr It just encourages you to spam damaging AOEs more without thinking, all it’s features do nothing really beyond that.
12:00 I can definitely relate. Also this for me is the perfect counter argument for all DMs who demand that when your turn starts you have have your actions planned so it doesn't slow down the game. When both your allies and the enemies do their thing on their turns, you need to rethink it every time the situation changes and sometimes you need to completly change your plans last second. Yes, you need to think about what you want to do, but NO, you don't have to have a perfect plan of action as if it's a turn-based rpg.
I see both sides, spellcasters just generally have a lot going on so it takes time to figure out exactly what to do, and you don't wamt to waste everyone's time and drag out combat by having 10min turns.
But the battlefield is chaotic and always changing so if you have a perfect plan at the start of a round it could be ruined by the time your turn comes around, so some decision making must be done on your turn.
Personally, a fair balance is to identify what your goals are on other people's turns. "Deal with the horde of goblins to the north" has multiple options and is less likely to be ruined than "drop a fireball on this tile to hit 7 goblins and no allies". A good quote to keep in mind is that "plans are useless but planning is essential, because it identifies your goals"
Isn't DnD a turn based rpg, tho?
I understand that decision paralysis can be a thing (this is why of the reasons I don't play full casters), but there's only so much time a situation needs to be reread and your plans adapted, even for classes that have truckloads of very specifically situational effects like full casters.
It's not rocket science xD just a matter of having the right fallback ("When in doubt, do X").
@@talscorner3696 There's a difference between decision paralysis and taking a moment for evaluating a situation.
I can give 2 examples I've experienced:
1. The wizard planned to Vortex Warp a Warlock next to the main bad guy, but turn before that, the bad guy cast Spirit Guardians, meaning the Warlock would 3d8 damage and possibly got knocked out.
2. The Barbarian got knocked out. The Cleric intended to revive him, but before he got his turn he got critted and knocked out. The Monk and the Paladin went into panic mode and had to completely revise their strategy.
So, it's not about casters having decision paralysis. In fact, most people who like playing casters that I know, have pretty good ideas what they want to do. It's the adjusting on the fly, like if a fighter runs into the spot they wanted to cast fireball for a mass sweep. Putting them on a timer does not help.
Biggest life-threatening mistake I ever made was undervaluing the importance of the dodge/ disengage actions and foregoing damage dealing when you’re surrounded and up a creek 😂
When a spellcaster is concentrating on an important spell, Dodge is often the best action they can take. What's more useful: the minor damage of a Firebolt or the defensive benefits of Dodge?
@@elementzero3379 Important to remember that at best Dodge translates to a +5 bonus, however, disadvantage does not always equal +5 and could at times be irrelevant. If the enemy has a +10 to hit, disadvantage is largely useless, with most ACs, especially the ACs typical of a spellcaster.
A Firebolt could be more advantageous if it takes out an enemy who is getting ready to make 3 attacks. Especially with high to hit bonuses and low AC.
A silly example is that if your AC is 10 and their to hit bonus is +10, then disadvantage is probably not going to help you. Even a +6 to hit is likely going to still hit you. If your AC is 13-14, Disadvantage is still unlikely to help with a +10 to hit. If the opponent has a +5 to hit, Dodge will still only help you 50% of the time. The higher your AC, the more useful Dodge becomes.
@@bradleyhurley6755 It's humorous that I said +5 AC. I've been playing SW Saga Edition of late, so that was on my mind. 😄
I understand the math of Advantage/Disadvantage, and the situational tactics you describe. I'm an optimizer. I probably put too much thought into this type of stuff, but it's a part of the game that I love. 👍🏻
@@elementzero3379 I think its fairly easy to focus on advantage/disadvantage granting roughly a +5 or -5 bonus because most of the time that is what it translates to. I only ever tested it against Monsters in the DMG who tend to have roughly 15 AC. For the most part Monsters with higher ACs tend to be at higher CRs and the increase of Prof. Bonus roughly balances that out. (At least for my purposes of looking at it when 5e first launched). And the few monsters that have a higher AC at lowers levels are so uncommon it wasn't really worth it.
It gets so much more complicated with players. Players tend to keep the same AC for most of the game. The fighter is probably the biggest exception who is just trying to get full plate. How you make ability scores, the classes that are being played and so much more goes into it that your opponents having disadvantage to hit you matters a lot more early levels, and because a lot less helpful at later levels because AC doesn't grow with levels.
I think the other side of it is that the Average AC for a player (Unless they rolled really good stats) is probably 14-15.
I think its fair to say that with dodge you are trading all of your attacks for at best the 50% chance of being missed on one attack. WIth that only going down the higher level you go.
I guess in the end what I'm really saying is that unfortunately Rogue's are the only class that can reasonably benefit from the dodge action. I try to not be an optimizer, but my brain always goes to optimization.
@@bradleyhurley6755 I don't agree that Rogues benefit more from Dodge than others. I'm sure we could come up with circumstances in which any character might find it an optimal choice, but it's particularly useful for casters.
If your caster is concentrating on a critical spell, maintaining concentration is usually going to be far more important than anything else they might do. Going to cast another powerful spell? By all means do so. Thinking of casting a cantrip? Don't bother. The benefits of Dodge are usually going to be far better than the minor damage of a cantrip.
I have one for AOE Positioning and Environment. It’s situational awareness. I missed my last session and another player played my character. What happened was that my character got surrounded by cultist while protecting a caravan and he decided to thunder wave. (I’m an Artificer) And he was not aware of the cart full of innocent civilians in the path of the thunder wave. So my character became a murder hobo without me.
I’d never let another player play someone else’s character. If you can’t figure out a way to write them out of that session, then at the very least make them an NPC.
@@jonnielaw My former group used to do that a lot. There was never any trouble.
@@cherylrosbak4092I mean, it would really depend on the cohesion of your group, imo. But for me, both as a GM and as a player, I would not think it’s cool to remove that player’s agency in the story. Anything that they did as an NPC can be easily respun or retconned, but that which another player, someone who is supposed to be your compatriot, does is locked in the game’s history.
Just my $0.02.
obviously I don't know the overall vibe of your table, but that sounds like a pretty shitty thing to force upon your character when neither you nor the person in control of your character intended that result. in-universe, your character would obviously know what their spell does!
Write'em out of the session or make'em an agentless NPC and never let them do or be a part of sth with co sequences in future sessions
"Check in with your meatshields and ask them if they are okay being fireballed." -The Dungeon Dude
Seems like a good idea
One game I was in, the party liked to "bait" the enemy hordes by sending the monk or rogue straight into the middle of them then having the wizard drop a fireball on top of them. Thanks to evasion ( and good rolls) they almost never suffered damage.
Solid video. Another mistake I see at the table is forgetting to take into account other turns when planning ahead, and having a backup plan. Kind of the reverse of the Spoiling AoE positioning, players will make a plan, be ready to implement it, and then the person before them moves in an unexpected direction or blocks a certain spot and "all is lost" and they don't have a backup plan.
Taliesin from CR is the posterchild of this
Shorter section 5-7:
You gotta know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run...
:)
Also: Knowing is half the battle. the other half of the battle is 40% superior firepower, and 10% cool nicknames. :)
Proven fact that if you don’t call out a cool spell-name or attack before rolling, your rolls will suck
Knowing is half the battle. The other half is extreme violence 👍
I think the hardest one for me is forgetting my own abilities. We rotate through several campaigns with totally different characters, and every game session I realize towards the end of the game session that I had an ability that would have been incredibly useful, but I never used it.
Just saying, if you have Mage Armor, that should be a spell you cast at the BEGINNING of the day. And if you can cast it at will, cast it at least three times a day.
I often forget about my feats and abilities, especially those I took at early levels. For example, I have a Paladin with heavy armor mastery, and it was not until level 12 that I started using the damage reduction (which by then did not mean much).
Another easy-to-forget thing is using the Bardic Inspiration my teammate gave me.
For target priority, you can use a colour change or rooting spell to identify a target, message spell to tell others who to target, or follow the leader or crowd who engages first and when there decide together while fighting who the next target is.
One very important addition I'd like to make is that tactics are a group responsibility. As Kelly mentioned, if someone is targeting the "wrong" enemy, it is often better to focus fire on that enemy, than to split damage - but there's more to it. Even if you're not the cause of a problem, you can often still contribute to solving it.
- If you're a sorcerer pick up Careful Spell. This will make your control party-agnostic. For every control caster that has access to it: pick up Slow. Druids and clerics have the most OP party agnostic spells in Conjure Animals and Spirit Guardians that can exert a ton of control also. You can't expect your martials to always be playing tiefling devotion paladins.
- If you've got a very SR reliant party with monks and warlocks, something like Dreams Druid or Genie Warlock, or Tiny Hut, all help making a SR safer.
- Adjust your resource pool. If you've got 2 monks in your party, that hexblade 1 dip (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry) will get any character a 1/SR Shield spell. Anyone loves action surge and War Cleric is amazing for power attack builds. If you're that monk in a party full of full casters, consider playing a rogue instead. Many DM's will let you flavour a shortsword like a tabaxi claw swipe, and you can flavour a sneak attack as a series of blows. Just ask about it.
- If you're a melee martial, pick up ranged options. Carry a bow if you didn't dump DEX. Grab Toll the Dead from Blessed Warrior or Magic Stone from Druidic Warrior otherwise. Many enemies need to be in melee, and if you can spend your action on a suboptimal attack while they need to spend theirs on a dash: you win. Not to even mention the positioning advantage.
But most of all; talk to your group. Plan stuff out in a session 0. Ask people what they wanna play as, strategise around, etc. Building a team together is incredibly rewarding - and can make for great story moments too.
Another big one in my experience is not unnecessarily closing with enemies, especially if they’re in some kind of control effect. So many enemies only have melee attacks that sometimes keeping distance is the best move, even on a melee character. The number of times I’ve put a melee enemy in a web, or frightened them, or hit them with a mind whip, effectively removing them as a threat until they can break out, only for the barbarian or fighter to run up to them and make themselves an available target.
Yuuuup. My bard literally dropped Hypnotic Pattern because I couldn't keep the paladin and wizard from blowing the effect straight to he🏑🏑 right after I cast it. It should have been one of his best spells, but it was just wasteful to cast in that party.
Ive been running a campaign for a few months now with many newer characters. A huge thing I see is a lack of coordinating their attacks. But the most memorable fight was when the enemy was immune to all damage and spread poison debuffs that duffered depending on the enemy.
The party had to collect some antidotes and mix together a potion in order to stop the source.
My rogue (who never takes any damage whatsoever because of uncanny dodge) was taking 8d6 per turn and had half speed. If a party member hadnt helped him out he wouldve absolutely been a goner. Not only that but they were passing ingredients around between themselves and the cleric was using greater restoration.
As a DM there is nothing more satisfying and amazing to watch than a party who is working together and crushing a combat encounter you place before them.
The upcoming game from MCDM seems like it might be solving some of the issues with players sequencing their actions during a turn; with players getting to chose who goes next on the fly. They look to be coming up with mechanisms to avoid players hoarding their resources and not getting to use their big, impressive, limited-use abilities.
The Dusk Wardens and Drakken Force continuingly forgetting their useful loot is one of the many funny running gags in the series.
I'm definitely excited to see how the MCDM teams game works out. Definitely planning on contributing to the crowd funding with my Christmas moneys
I have issues with the concept of focus fire. When you watch the Avengers, every avenger takes on their own Ultron bot. When you watch an anime about pirates, each crew member squares up against an opponent on the enemy crew. The phrase “you take the one in the left, I’ll take the one in the right” just feels good to say.
Yes, it’s not as tactical, but this is a fantasy game about cooperative story telling. And sometimes, the fantasy is for each member of your 4 party team to take on their own ogre
Separating the enemies and spreading out damage can definitely be 100% an even better strategy in a lot of cases
I also think that focus makes sense when initiating a fight, but after that fights can be chaotic and the wizard shooting firebolt at someone 30 feet away while a wolf is trying to kill him, just feels absolutely wrong
Rune Knight with Shield Master is one of my favorite builds for abusing the environment. Bonus Action push with a shield and advantage for being a size larger (against most creatures) makes being next to ledges and traps such a fun time.
9:47 Leaders/controllers can also be a priority, as taking them out can also defeat other enemies. After all, you don't need to kill all your enemies, just get them to stop attacking (keeping in mind potential future conflicts).
Funnily enough, while I did recently play a typical Greatsword fighter, i always carried Caltrops and tanglefoot bags to help direct the flow of combat in our favor if necessary. They were not always used, but during one engagement the party was huddled in a bottleneck and to heavily delay the enemy, i had a large glass bottle filled with lamp oil and caltrops. I flung the bottle into the doorway and chucked a torch to light it on fire. The ambush that was planned for us was stoppwd dead in its tracks, because if they had gotten too close they would have ignited, moved half speed, and then had to either use an action to power through, at which point they cant act because their turn is over, or they hung back and were picked off by our ranged attacks and egregious use of caltrops.
I should add we were securing a lesser artifact and needed to buy time to escape.
In a D&D game year ago, I was the tank of the party, using a literal tank. The cannon had a cool-down period which actually made the tank more effective. Rather than sit in one spot and shoot at enemies the entire encounter, the cool-down forced the tank to move between attacks. The tank would zip across the map to find new angle to attack the enemy, using the cannon's line-of-effect attack to hit three or four targets at once.
you guys make great videos
keep it up
been watching for three or four years now
excellent stuff
😊
One thing about AOE issues that isn't often brought up is using verticality. It's not super useful for smaller foes (curse you swarms of little minions!) but if your foes are a size larger than your allies who got in too close to them, asking the DM if you can place the center of your AOE spell 'higher' to only scorch the enemies heads is a pretty handy trick to keep in mind.
Made my tebaxi cleric/wizard much scarier with fireball usage than she had any right being with all her allies being the 'runs in without thinking' types~ XD
Often times my biggest issue in combat though is that sometimes I forget what passive abilities my enemies might have.
Probably the funniest moment of this was when I had my Tebaxi cleric/wizard try to Shocking Grasp a Phoenix... At the time I blamed it on 'bird got too close to cat and cat's brain went out the window in her need to catch it' (it was very on brand for her honestly; being a 'former heroic caster who keeps forgetting she's nowhere near as OP as she used to be' and 'mad scientist who loves to try new things out while actively under in combat' only kept out of 'actively a risk to herself' range due to not wanting her infant child to be an orphan leads to a lot of fun stupid) but like, you'd think the bird being made of LITERAL FIRE would've been something of a deterrent~ XDDD
A moment of silence for all the science she made (and open the bloody window, burnt fur smells horrid...)
@@talscorner3696 *weeps* I miss RPing her live experimentation with spells so so much! Especially abusing Shape Water for mundane utility - my fav was using the animate water section to make sheets of spinning water to act as an umbrella when caught out in the rain. Might not have been practical as just shaping one out of water, freezing it into ice and using some cloth to act as a handle but finding ways to get around the 'can only use two effects and can't have effect area move' was so much fun~
Knowing the rest of the party's abilities is also super helpful. Not just for staying out of their AOE, but also for thinking of ways that you can use your abilities together in ways that multiply their effectiveness. An idea like holding a turn until later in initiative to let a comrade tee up some extra damage, like a rogue laying down some grease before your wizard throws that fireball, is also something that a group can RP around the campfire between battles. It's not metagaming if you & your party come up with combo moves in game, it's teamwork. Also, if you can come up with names for the combos, you can call them out on the battlefield without enemies knowing what to expect.
One great thing about lists like this is as DM... these tactical mistakes are like a list of things to do to prevent a TPK if it looks like the players are doing unexpectedly poorly in the fight.
Thank you for including a summary at the end. This is the number 1 mistake UA-cam list-makers constantly make. I want to watch your video once. But I don't want to have to watch the whole thing again and again to find the key information!
1v1ing is hilarious to me as a DM. My monsters will absolutely use focus fire on the party, typically as soon as the healer reveals themselves. BUT, if the party will 1v1 the bad guys? OH I will leave that play running as long as the party is willing. My other favorite error is when players blow their entire resource wad on the session's opening encounter.
"You swing mightily, but this goblin is a shifty one. It slides to the left ever so slightly and avoids your attack."
"I use a lucky."
"On a to hit roll? On a goblin?"
"Yes"
"OK? Go ahead and mark the lucky off....."
"Dang, a 1! OK lets use another lucky."
"...... Mark it off?"
8:20 How is "Hey guys we should be taking the spellcaster out first" metagaming? It's something that could easily be shouted in combat ("Get the wizard!"). If you are worried about the enemies hearing you, it could even be a code ("Plan Alfa!" or "Remember that battle under Negron's Keep? Same thing!"). Plus, we have to assume that our party has had hours and hours of "off camera" time while resting or traveling. Surely they would discuss tactics and strategies? What do we do if faced with a caster supported by a lot of minions? What do if the caster has a big strong bodyguard like a fire giant? What if the caster is a healer vs a nuker vs a charmer? Who buffs and who attacks and who controls? Talking about that in the battle seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Edit: I see Monty addressed this a few minutes later.
Agreed, the characters aren't (usually) complete idiots. I got called out one time for "metagaming", there was a portal my party was trying to close that would weaken at night. I had my character cast "dispel magic" numerous times when night fell but I kept rolling low so I decided that my character would go to sleep early and he could catch it again before the sun rise. Somehow that was metagaming.... wouldn't characters understand the concept of "early to bed, early to rise"?
This is so good and I’ve got a few house rules that allow tactics to be better incorporated into battle such called ‘knowledge of the opponent’ (a way for any class to use their bonus action to use skills to know a variety of information about their opponents w/ a DC check) and a pre-initiative ‘strategy’ turn’ to discuss tactics (timed) and even to use a bonus action to assess how difficult this encounter may be (CR).
One thing I find missing from many groups is the power of a leader in encounters (one mind) so I’m coming up with an idea of how to incentivize the idea akin to how a battle master’s abilities but it’s still a WIP
To do that, I think you need to work on both mechanics and people.
Many players don't take leadership positions for the added responsibility in their escapism, others do try to take positions of leadership because they want to be the one in charge (and often fail miserably when put to the test xD)
It's definitely not easy, but working at both levels should help.
@@talscorner3696 you’re 100% right it’s not.
I find the best thing to do is to sit back and watch the players, sometimes a natural leader emerges even though it’s still a cooperative game for sure. If I feel there’s a character who the rest of the party seems to turn to (and what I love about this is that it has nothing to do with their class or stats), I may turn to them when I see the rest of the party doing so on what they want to do next. If it’s ‘one of those’ ppl who want to be a ‘boss’ but no one wants to actually follow them or they’re just selfish, I ask the entire party. I think leaders appear organically, but also require encouragement to do so. As a DM I find cultivating that process slowly and carefully to be a good way to see if it’s viable.
That said, mechanically, Iile to find each character’s area of expertise and give them a chance to ‘lead’ in their area which is why I made the knowledge homebrew rule above. Maybe I don’t need another layer of rules actually, just that and inspiration can be enough. Hmmm.
11. Don't ignore opportunities to use cover.
Loving Kelly's AFI hoodie. Used to be my favorite band, I still like them. great music. another amazing video, glad to see you two on my recommended again!
I know this advice was mostly for the players but as a DM for so long I realized I haven't really been using the environment for my enemies' best opportunities as well. Thanks, guys, for going over this love almost every video you do.
almost?
Just remember that an enemy being tactical is probably at least one cr higher than the stats would suggest unless the party is too.
A big mistake I often see happen is one player crossing the battlefield to meet the enemy where the rest of the party can't follow. In a game where I was a player, a barbarian with winged boots kept engaging enemies in the air, way out of range of the rest of the party, and the player didn't understand why they were the ONLY one getting targeted.
In a session I recently GMed, the Monk ran up the wall to meet the bad guy, who was a Salamander with a grapple/restrain on a hit; the rest of the party had to use the paths encircling the room and wouldn't have made it up in time to save her, except that the Druid had Spider Climb active and managed to knock the Salamander back/break the grapple with a spell.
Monks are the WORST about this. Lol
"I blame Joe on that one"
-The most forgetful "luckiest" rogue.
😂
Haha love you guys.
My fighter went first on initiative while my party was in a tight hallway with an ongoing trap effect that nullified magic of spellcasters. We knew the switch to deactivate the trap was in the next room, so instead of attacking the monsters that appeared, my character dashed to the end of the hallway then used action surge to deactivate the trap.
It was really helpful for the casters in my party and it let them use their crowd control AOE spells, which then ended the fight quickly.
Starting the vid, but one of the things I saw in your campaign and in mine is "don't fly if you're low on HP. If you go down to 0, you're giving yourself a free failed death save when you fall down" lol.
A player of mine lost a character in this way, because she fell right next to the monster and it still had their second attack. The hit gave her another 2 fails to her death saves and she died right there
Another great video, Dudes! Saw you at PAX w/ Ginny Di! Keep up the excellent work!
Another time for me was playing my paladin defensively for a Level 4 siege adventure. Focusing on this support playstyle had me being on high alert the whole time, paying attention to positioning and turn order, which is tiring but rewarding!
She did not attack/smite once in that siege, and instead prioritized concentrating on Bless and using the Help Action to benefit our party's rogue and monk. She also made sure to be within 5ft. of as many party members as possible for the Interception fighting style. Reduced damage per turn was invaluable in the battle of attrition.
Many moons ago, when Interception wasn't a thing yet (2017 or something like that), I had a one shot session with a friend of mine in which we both brought Shield Master Paladins with the Protection fighting style... completely by accident xD I think he was Oath of the Crown and I was Conquest
The session was spent basically me and him phalanxing down any encounter by imposing disadvantage on anything coming to each other.
Man, that was fun!
At higher levels for me, it’s remembering casting times. I’m so used to 1 action spells that I forget some more powerful, yet really useful situational spells come with a loading time. It’s like, “I finally get to use magic circle!”, but oh yeah, it’s designed for defending a place ahead of time, not combats.
I will never forget that time me and another player had to go full METAgaming and basically BEG for a full 5 minutes our sorcerer's player to throw a fucking fireball at the 18 wolves munching on us for 3 turns straight.
We alteady had a "talk" with her in and out of game about how it's ok to hit the frontline barbarian and paladin with aoe if that means she hits dozens of ennemies in the process.
Very next encounter swarms of locusts. Takes 4 turn of us pulling out our hair, having our characters scream "do it, every second you hesitate we take way more punishment from them than your spell could ever do".
Next and last encounter. She hits both of us, without a second of hesitation or any consultation, with a fireball to hit a SINGLE flaming skull.
It had been a year of that shit, we both have had enough, we both quit on the spot.
She could absolutely not comprehend why hitting us to kill 18 ennemies was ok but hitting us to hit a single monster litterally made of flames with fireball was a big no-no.
I had a game VERY recently where two of the biggest damage dealers in the party (the Fighter Cavalier and the Rogue Thief) were wasting their attacks on two "enemies" that had no interest in joining the fight (until they were attacked...before that they were simply maintaining the library the party was in) while letting the Twilight Cleric, the Gloom Stalker Ranger, and the Paladin/Warlock take on the ACTUAL enemy by themselves (and it was moping the floor with them). The party managed to survive...just...but the Cleric, Ranger, and Paladin were all down to about 1/4 hp with no spells/resources left while the Fighter and Rogue were nearly unscathed and had full resources. If the two non-enemies' had been ignored, nothing negative would have happened. If all of the party had ganged up on the actual enemy, they would have likely dropped it in no time whatsoever.
Like the guys said: Pick your target(s) tactically, concentrate fire on them, then move on to the next threat. Action economy is king, and disrupting it is the way to win encounters.
(I can see a good tactic where a tank with Misty Step as a racial feature rushes in, draws all the melee attackers to it, then on their next action attacks then bonus teleports 30' away as the Wizard/Sorcerer drops the 20' radius fireball on the group of foes left behind. 😈)
My husband's first character was a variant human rogue who had the telepathic feat ftom level 1, and *completely* forgot about it until we were in our 2nd or 3rd campaign with that group of characters. The rest of us hadn't looked at his character sheet (Apart from our DM, we were all brand new to D&D) so one day, (after the DM reminded him) he jumpscared the party with sudden telepathy. Our half-orc barbarian still doesn't know that our rogue is the voice he sometimes hears in his head. 😂
My biggest problem is trying to not be overly conservative.
VERY simple example - I use my Action Surge and then later in the battle a situation comes up where I wish I would have waited because I sure need it now. Then next encounter you hold off on using it until the right time and then a party member rolls both a Nat 20 and Max damage to finish off that last troublesome monster and then you're cussing at yourself for not using it sooner. Got to love the "Damned if you do - Damned if you don't" situation. I'm 73 and play every week with my son and his friends and this type of situation happens all too often for me. ROFL
This is another area where 4E really got things right.
They gave encounter based abilities. As soon as the encounter begins you have them and can use them.
The things that recharged at the start of each day were different. But, with those they EITHER didn’t get used if you missed your attack, or they would at least do half damage on a miss … so even if you miss it’s still a good turn for you (more than a generic weapon attack or cantrip spell).
I feel like you can’t be blamed for keeping an Action Surge in the tank. Using an Action Surge when it isn’t necessary seems like the more egregious error. Better to have it for a clutch moment than to use it “just to use it” in my humble opinion.
@@atherton01 I disagree. This recharged on short rest, right? The goal for an ability like this is to kill a thing quickly so it gets fewer actions and does less damage to the party.
There is almost no way to use it badly. Especially before level 5 when it does so little. The worst thing you can do with it is just … hold on to it and not use it.
Don’t worry about finding the perfect time for it.
Maybe don’t blow it in the first round of every fight after a short rest. But, even that is better than not using it at all.
@@zero11010 I’m glad we can disagree on this, as I think the game is complex enough to support different approaches. I honestly don’t play a lot of fighters, so my opinion was based as a party member seeing our fighter have it available in moments when we really need it, usually not to pile on damage but to do something that requires two actions. I agree you don’t want abilities to go to waste when the consequences of not using them on the front end result in using more resources on the back end. Thanks for phrasing your disagreement in a respectful manner.
Favorite tactical Mistake - Don’t get tunnel vision.
In one campaign, we were being attacked Helmsdeep Style and we were holding the line and I had everyone that could move
Helping man the wall, even my Drow ward was going to town tossing my Javlins as I was shooting at the mass of enemies trying to get to and up the Wall.
We had barely beaten them back off the wall when the DM rolled to see if I noticed that mayor of the town had opened the door and the horde was coming in the side gate!
The DM said, hey you are so good at tactics, how did you not protect your back? I had tunnel vision and was looking at what was in front and not using my people resources well. He had expected me to have the Drow girl and her very good dark vision keeping an eye on our back and not tossing Javelins but I had gotten so focused on holding the wall that I had no one in reserve or watching out behind where we could not see (Drow girl was a actual girl fyi but she can see things around the corner)
Solid list that I've either made myself or have seen made. I'm probably most guilty of being conservative with spells, I always have the mindset that no matter what we're fighting right now, there could be something far worse in the room next door. Also I guess I'm very guilty of meta-gaming because I'm often discussing who we should target and throwing out ideas on how to proceed. My thinking is 4-6 actual combatants in a party would definitely be doing that so I think it's ok?
My biggest bugbear as a spell caster is that the party never scout out opposition first. So I cannot select the most effective spells for the situation and have to stick a standard all purpose selection as they just charge headlong into every situation.
This! As a DM i am constantly giving my party opportunities to scout. But they always just charge ahead without considering that they may not be prepared.
Lol, nothing worse than a character with a +12 to stealth, but they will not scout.
As a bugbear barbarian with racial proficiency in stealth I resemble this remark, my team includes a rogue and ranger/rogue and the 3 of us do all the scouting work for our paladin, artificer and wizard
That said having bugbear used as a synonym for problem is hilarious and I appreciate you
Another one to remember and it falls under Target Prioritization: sometimes taking out the highest damage dealing enemy first is best, sometimes taking out the enemy arcane caster who is preparing a nasty spell first is best, but all of that is for naught if the enemy has a healer who can pop back up the target you just dropped. Often, taking out the enemy healer is the best thing to do first. I didn't hear that mentioned during the segment on target prioritization but it is important to remember.
In other words, the Geneva Convention don't mean nothing, in DnD xD
This ties into several of the points regarding resource usage, target priority, and forgetting features, but another big mistake a lot of players make is *misusing* resources. The meme examples are the Wizard that casts Fireball at single targets or Paladins that only ever use their spell slots for Divine Smite, but misusing resources can take several forms.
For example, consider a Wizard, Sorcerer, or Warlock that gets hit by an attack. If the attack is coming from a single minion, and the player is in good enough shape that they aren't going to be dropped by it, blowing their reaction casting Shield can be a massive mistake if the Lich's turn is coming up next and they're likely going to be casting a devastating spell.
Or if you are a heavily armored Fighter or Paladin, taking the Dodge action while blocking a hallway can actually be a more efficient use of your action than attacking if it gives the casters room to use their resources on their big control or damage spells instead of needing to use them on mitigation or healing.
Or if you are a character capable of healing, your front liner is low on health, and some big scary enemy that's not about to die is going to go next, it can be better to heal the front liner to ensure they survive the next attack rather than having them get knocked out, since that would result in them missing their next turn and *also* use up your next turn healing them to bring them back up.
A good question to keep in mind as a player is how using your resources can help the rest of the team better use their resources. If you can use a minor resource to enable another player to maximize the effectiveness of one of their major resources, or even not need to use their major resources, that's usually a pretty good return on your investment.
At 15:50 Had a variant Human barbarian with Shield Mastery in DDAL. When introducing my character I would always tell the casters that I hald Shield Mastery and that if they dropped dex-based AOEs that they could aim for my shield. We never had any problems. But yeah, the Clerics sometimes complained...
Awesome video. As a DM I often am guilty of forgetting some of the monster/bad guy's abilities
Those glasses look great! You guys both look really sharp.
Right? The coincidental(?) color coordination is pretty nice!
Don’t forget the biggest tactical advantage you can get. Simply bribe the DM
Regarding “Ignoring the environment”. Sometimes the environment can be your treasure; in a campaign I was in we had bought some land and were building a house. We learned marble was vary expensive for the house. Later while exploring an ancient coastal temple we found great big pillars of marble, so we hired a ship & workmen to collect the pillars & sold them for a fairly large profit.
My first character is a warforged necromancy wizard i had just picked up the spell MELF'S MINUTE METEORS (meteors that swirl around you, and as a BA can send 1-2 flying in a 120ft line then explode on impact dealing damage to everyone in a 5ft AOE) I had this spell up and kept trying to get an enemy that was away from any friendly but one monk in particular would not give me the space for my spell so i finally just kicked a couple at an enemy hitting the monk in the process. The characters then had a talk once the combat had ended. Got some things cleared up between them and they have been good since.
In my LMoP game, the PCs were in Wave Echo Cave and when dealing with Bugbears, the front liner was down and doing death saves. Two characters wanted to end it with AOE attacks and the downed player was fine, cause it would leave him with one throw to spare. Not only did the two attacks not end the conflict but the ranger, whose turn was last, forgot she had prepped hail of thorns, which never triggered for lack of hits. So she forgot, I remembered, and I told her to roll the extra die, which freaked everyone out as their forgetfulness lead to killing a teammate.
At my table I have a frenzy barbarian who uses his frenzies in the first two encounters of every single adventure day and then complains about being totally useless because of the exorbitant levels of exhaustion he’s carting around because he wanted to get that extra attack against stuff that has half the points he has. And if I have extra monsters because they had to take a long rest, and the monsters had chance to regroup, or if I don’t give them a chance to take a long rest because they’re in a large dungeon with a lot of other things that aren’t gonna wait eight hours for them to have all the abilities again, suddenly I’m a bad DM and I’m not letting him play the game he wants to play.
Berserker Barbarian is the worst subclass for any class. Period.
Greatest moment in a dnd campaign about forgetting how abilities work. We had a cleric that did not heal (warlock lying down making survival checks), did not use turn undead (quite desperate moment) and than used Sanctuary on our raging Barbarian - next in iniative order. Hell, that was a mess
Nice AFI hoodie!! My pal plays guitar for that band… and we used to have all night D&D seshs!!
I have a few key principles that address most of these, though admittedly they're more about build optimization (aka strategy) to enable good tactics than being good tactics in and of themselves.
1. Play a caster. Casters unilaterally have more resources to throw at problems (even at level 1), and are the only classes to ever get class features stronger than 4th level spells. Spend those resources in combat rather than spending HP.
1a. In general, your highest level spells should go toward your encounter-winning concentration spells, and your lowest level slots toward defensive reactions like Shield, Absorb Elements, and Silvery Barbs. Your mid-level slots, when your budget frees up, are for useful utility effects and non-concentration spells to replace your cantrips.
1b: If your enemy might have Legendary Resistance (which can start happening at way lower levels than you might think, especially if your tactics are good enough to trivialize level-appropriate CR encounters), don't allow your enemies to make saves. Targeting ability checks or AC, or casting buffs, or summoning minions, or using spells like Sleet Storm or Spirit Guardians that have a useful effect regardless of whether a save succeeds or fails, is a far better and more reliable use of resources than trying to burn through LRs (especially in that it will affect the enemy right now instead of in a few rounds).
1c. Blasting spells have really bad damage scaling, and instantaneous effects are generally a really inefficient use of spell slots. That's not to say Fireball and Synaptic Static aren't good spells that are very efficient against hordes of mooks, just that you're going to want to use them very sparingly until high levels when you have more spell slots than you know what to do with and are in need of a stronger action than Dodge or your cantrip of choice.
2. Stay out of melee. Attacking from range pretty much guarantees you don't spoil AoEs, prevents loss of HP (and spell slots used to recover it) thanks to cover and most enemies being melee only, reduces the number of rounds spent not attacking as you move between enemies (ie you'll deal more damage), and makes it far, far easier to focus fire. While it's not *quite* accurate to say melee is unilaterally a trap in 5e, the exceptions are rare enough to be far outside the scope of this margin (no, not even Paladin smites are worth the danger of melee, especially not when Aura of Protection could instead be used to protect the other casters' concentration on the backline).
2a. This isn't to say having a front line isn't extremely useful. It's just that there's zero good reason to risk a valuable PC in the role when disposable (and generally more effective) frontlines like Web, Sleet Storm, Conjure Animals, the Steel Defender, Animate Dead, and hired/Dominated goons exist.
3. Invest heavily in defence. 5e makes it very cheap and easy (especially for spellcasters, who generally only need a 1-2 level dip and a couple of feats to far exceed what's possible as a non-caster), good AC and saves will save you a lot of resources in the long run (that you can in turn use to deal more damage), and protecting concentration is of paramount importance. While it remains true that the best defence is a good offence (the best condition is dead, and other aphorisms about action denial), in 5e the best offence is frequently a good defence (due to how offensively impactful protecting concentration usually is).
As a DM I allow some out of combat talk as I find it does help speed up play plus if it was RL the party would be more effective as a team in combat.
Omg the “strength of the grave” had me dead 😂
5:50 Having all party members focused on combat (as opposed to taking non-combat actions) is one of the major strategic mistakes: losing sight of the goal of the encounter.
For much of our campaign, I played a Tiefling Cleric, and she was the most heavily armored, and so the most capable taking a beating. Our other PCs were a Wizard, Bard, and a Monk. So I would often be the one trying to draw the most targets onto me, and it took quite a few encounters before I convinced the Wizard player (who happened to be my son), that he could hit me with AOEs.. Tiefling fire resistance, and also electricity resistance, so I would try to group enemies in optimal fireball or lightning bolt formations... And since as a Life Cleric, she had healing abilities that would heal her when she healed others, as well as the channel divinity heal.. so yeah, taking some damage in return for taking some enemies out was almost always worth it.
In my most recent game (lvl 13 in a 5e wrath of the righteous conversion) me cleric and the ranger we trapped in a prismatic wall, and we were racking our brains on how to get out and ranger had the best cartoon idea, he conjured a bunch of giant badgers and they dug a tunnel for us to get out, most of our party was getting beat to hell by a couple of pit fiends and a devil general, I held my turn till after the badgers so I could get out and heal my team that had two ppl already unconscious so with my magic robes that let's me do some sorcerer meta magics so I twin upcasted heal for 80 hp to each of my downned teammates and this combo from me and ranger turned the whole fight around and we rallied and won the day loosing no one... :)
I would love advice on how to deal with players that front take combat seriously. I warned my party that a head on assault against this target would likely be deadly. They did exactly that, but then got indignant when someone actually died. They even got downed, brought back up, and the bbeg warned they would put them down for good, and they didn't flee. After which they killed the fighter.
Deserved.
Thinking of this in a more positive light (Do's instead of Don't's), I've edited this list for myself thus:
1 - Communicate and strategize with other players
2 - Establish target priority and focus attacks
3 - Respect area of effect targeting
4 - Buff before combat
5 - Balance use of resources and conservation of resources
6 - Take advantage of abilities, feats, class features
7 - Remember magic items, potions, consumables
8 - Take advantage of the environment
There was a campaign that i was always forgetting favored by the gods it was insane i always remembered the turn after it mattered
I just TPKd my players last session due to bad tactics and worse rolls. I hope this video will help them prevent another disaster 😅
21:49…27:45 This is similar to forgetting that a creature is suffering from a condition, and similar tools can be used as reminders. When buffed (whether temporarily, such as by a spell or aura, or permanently, such as a resistance from a race or class), you can put a marker/token on a figure or the character sheet.
Another tool is to have situation-specific lists, such as abilities you can use when attacking, or abilities when attacked, or what affects you're under. They don't need many details, just the briefest of descriptions to remind you when they apply & what they do.
There are probably some good digital tools to track some of these details. As much fun as the physical tools are, if you find you're forgetting things a significant portion of time, digital aids might be just the ticket.
You talk about remembering your features and stuff. I had one time when I was playing a Life Domain Cleric and my healing had pretty much made my DM hate me as no one would ever really get close to dying and he was struggling to make an encounter challenging because of it. So one encounter he has a wizard and a war vehicle pretty much spam fireball on me every turn. My Dex was -1 but I still managed to make an occasionally save here and there and with my healing I actually kept myself standing for about 2-3 turns of this before he finally managed to down me.
It was only after all this I remember "oh yeah I'm a Tiefling with fire resistance."
Telekinetic Feat not for moving the enemy, but to push willing allies out of immediate danger or incoming danger. In theory you can grapple and pull back an ally, but that is an Athletics contest that can't be auto-failed.
I'm playing an Armorer/Battlewarden in the campaign I'm in right now that's entirely built around tanking and movement abilities/ spells, especially off-turn with maneuvers and Sentinel/Polearm Master/Spear Mastery
I’ve used Telekinetic to good effect in the early game as a Bonus Action, but it was ruled by our DM to not automatically break grapples (the grappler could save against the DC), so I mostly used it to pull our ranged fighters from melee so that they didn’t provoke attacks of opportunity, or could use Steady Aim for our rogue. But its effectiveness was dramatically affected by turn order and worked best if the ranged party members came right after me in initiative (or, at least, before our foes had a turn).
in regards to your comments about buffing before battle. I recently ran across the idea of character competency; even if we humans forget things, the characters are professional at what they do, and that's my litmus test for recons like, "Oh, I should've done that before battle". If I think the character as a professional wizard would have done that or because of previous roleplay or background I'll let it happen.
As a dm I use the rule of you get to say a message worth of words between characters for tactics, your character can speak 25 words during your turn to convey the tactics they spoke about on their turn. If a character wants to say something in game during someone else’s turn, they can sacrifice their reaction to call something out their character noticed. I still allow for out of character talk but they still role play their characters well enough to not use their out of character talk to influence their fighting. They also only get like 1-2 minutes a round before I try to move them along with their turn. If they do nothing for 3 minutes then they pass their turn.
Taking that brief pause before you know you're heading into a big fight to do any prep if always forgotten. We just did a one shot and all of the stuff we had on us could have been used without future consideration, but we didn't burn all the potions we could have for advantage.
In our normal campaign, our wizard is constantly unsure of what to do in battle. I think part of it is that he doesn't have much in the way of attack spells, but he has some cantrips he could do at the very least and it irks when when he choses to do something that's not helpful at all. I don't confront him about it as part of it is how he plays his character, but there are a few times it would have been nice to end combat one round earlier.
...and Spartan kicking people off of cliffs is so much fun.
I find that if there is a party bank or someone that takes notes of what the party has for consumables or treasures like scrolls or potions and they announce it with the start of every session with the ole discussion of what transpired before it helps a lot.
Pre-Buffing hits home.
My last game was a one-shot at lvl 3 where I had a 1peace cleric/2chrono wizard, so I could slap embolding bond onto bless onto gift of alacrity... And our paladin just rushed into the room that had basically "bossmonster" written all over it.
It was completely fine in the end as it was well within reason of the character itself and our DM planned with overall good but not optimized play.
I know that conventional wisdom is the Oath of Vengeance is the best Paladin subclass, but I really felt like Oath of Enmity was almost a waste. I played from level 1 to level 12 and I used it....maybe 6 or 7 times. We didn't have that many really crucial combats with an enemy I couldn't just beat down normally. I did use it on boss encounters, but otherwise I really felt like my oath was a waste. Channel Divinity more to regain spellslots for extra smites WAY more than I ever did for Oath of Enmity.
I’ve DMed before, and I think the biggest tactical mistake I’ve ever seen, is the players not giving me snacks. If I obtained food from a player, free inspiration.
one thing I learned from BG3 is to look at your bonus actions before actions as sometimes you could have been more effective with your action if you did something with your bonus action first
Recently had a session where after a rough combat, we were heading out of the dungeon and something happened that did a bunch of damage. As we were looking at our character sheets, the cleric realized it was enough damage to kill them outright (Pathfinder) because they were still heavily wounded, at which point even the DM/GM was like, "You all have healed up after every combat for the last 3-4 levels. So... uh... party SOP has always been healing and you have a wand of cure light. So go ahead and burn a couple of charges so that you're only unconscious."
Don't forget your own party standard operating procedures! If you always search the bodies for cult markings and use wands of cure light wounds before you leave a room? Make sure you don't forget just because you just killed the dungeon boss and are casually walking back out.
In regards to forgetting abilities, I was playing a cleric in a Curse of Strahd campaign, and for at least half of the campaign I forgot that "Turn Undead" was a thing…
Yooooooooo, that AFI hoodie! Black Sails in the Sunset is still my favorite album from that band.
The problem with focus fire is turn order. I love helping our barbarian with my paladin, but I can't always get to him without provoking attacks on myself. Then again our party is loaded for bear with the lineup. I've never forgotten my inspiring leader feat. I make sure we venture out with extra HP.
Ignoring the environment is such a common mistake. My current character (basically a Human Paladin) has now used the tactic of bull-rushing, with his shield, into an enemy and slamming them into a nearby wall. One such enemy ended up with all its fight knocked out of it (it ran away) from this move... while another didn't have the means to do anything while pinned. In each case, the enemy in question was out of the fight for a full turn, at minimum... and was put into a position of my choosing (battlefield control) with no expenditure of resources.
Definitely something that more people need to consider... even with a "standard" sword/board character.