as a dm of a party of six level 11’s, legendary actions (especially on multiple creatures) have been huge. if a monster isn’t legendary, i’ll usually let it attack and move once or twice per round so that it can kinda keep up with the hundreds of damage points the party does. additionally, giving the monsters a goal outside of killing the party or giving the party an objective outside of killing the monsters really helps makes things quite a bit more tense.
wondering here if you've ever heard of action oriented design! It sounds like that could be a good idea for you if you enjoy all your legendary actions and stuff.
@@rainnever it's been a God-send for me with my monsters. From Coleville and Coach. The bestial goblin boss would call in reinforcements, be able to legendary make them jump to him, and swap places when an enemy attacks him, and can whip the goblins he summons at people to try and knock them prone with bonus action jumps.
I have a party of six level 7’s (first time DM) and I can relate. I thought a pair of wyverns would be a scary encounter for them when they were level 6, and they knocked both of them out of the sky before they could even attack. It was a real learning moment for me as a DM.
A DM that I've played with has a really good solution for new players who forget abilities like Action Surge, Rage, etc. He printed out and laminated cards that had the ability's name and a brief description on the front and how they recharged (ie: short rest, long rest, etc.) on the back. The player would keep these cards face up on the table, and when they used the ability they would turn the card face-down. When we did something that let us restore abilities the card would be turned face up again.
@@seeker296 This is specifically a comment about new players. Expecting a brand new player to have enough foresight and pre-existing game knowledge to design cards like this is unrealistic. It's also easy enough to do with a fighter or a barbarian because you only have to deal with rage or action surge, maybe reckless attacks.
I have a large party (8 players). To make it faster, I let them pair up and take their initiative and turns in teams. It keeps everyone engaged and speeds up encounters. It's awesome to see how the players come up with combos. I just make them pick a different teammate each time.
Average the 2 closest PCs starting from the top (perhaps let the first 2 use the first player's initiative so you don't nerf assassin rogue unintentionally)
Look, as cliche as this sounds, I just wanna say thanks Dungeon Dudes. I have been a 3.5 DM since I was 13, only recently switching to 5ed last year, and between you two and Mark Hulmes, it has made the transition so much easier. I absolutely love these kind of videos, and appreciate them so much. So again, thank you.
Thanks. My party has just reached level 10, and it definitely feels like these ideas are going to be progressively more useful. Right now one of my main tricks is to give them situations where simple combat skills don't help them. For example, they had to save a village. Turns out the village was mind controlled by a powerful hag. The weak villagers were getting aggressive and paranoid towards the party. Then most the party Drank water from the cursed well, and all of a sudden the villagers seemed reasonable and friendly and the few party members and sane villagers who didn't drink from the well seemed insane and threatening. Also the water was so good that it gave a bunch of bonuses to those who drank it, but also had a withdrawal clock that started causing problems for the players who were trying to let the water wear off. Both sides saw the other side as cursed and insane. Almost had a failed mission as both groups (cursed and uncursed) actually got into a struggle. Thankfully there were no fatalities, though there were players grappling and restraining players and a bunch of villagers put to sleep. When they finally met the big bad, most of the party were overwhelmed by her beauty and had to make wisdom savings throws whenever they tried to harm her or when she gave them commands. It was really challenging for the players, even though the actual fight wasn't. Afterwards it led to a interesting discussion on how to mediate between different perspectives. I love dnd 😅
This is soooo cool! I might borrow this idea for the high level homebrew I'm planning after we finish Curse of Strahd (they'll hit level 10 next session). 🥰
At the end of Curse of Strahd my players were incredibly powerful. They were only level 12 but had powerful combos between them and incredible magic items. I chose to make Strahd a multi fased boss fight, culminating with him becoming the essence of vampirism and sucking the life out of Krezk to create a army of shadowy minions. These minions could be medium, large or huge, and two could fuse to make a bigger one. I made their attacks incredibly simple, 1d10+2, 2d10+4 or 3d10+6 respectively, and no HP. Instead 1 hit would kill a medium, 2 hits a large, and so on. This way I could throw huge numbers of these guys at them making them problematic as they would quickly overrun them if ignored.
X number of hits instead of X number of HP. That is a fascinating idea. It requires the players to use actions but makes for more manageable crowd-control for the party. It also makes for much simpler book-keeping for the DM.
10:45 Never, ever, run an encounter where there is only a single path for your players to victory, especially if that single path is obscure. We all love the endgame 1 chance to unsnap everyone, but in reality if you as the DM have to tell your players how to win, or the key to their winning dies before they have a chance, you will cheapen or tarnish the challenge.
My players once decided to flee from the final battle and trash the lair instead, Accidentally finding a way to just move the problem elsewhere in the process.
I think it’s important to remember too that sometimes, particularly with veteran players or especially players who typically DM, they may just be fine playing a character that is weaker than the rest of their party. They may want to be a more background character to support the story or just not powerful in combat. Just because Sam is no match for Aragorn with a sword doesn’t mean he’s any less of a main character. Please don’t take that away from your players without asking/talking with them!
I've always felt very intimidated about running high level combat, even though I always wanted to, so I didn't do it very often. This very well may be life-changing to my games!! Keep rolling high, Dudes
Hi Dungeon Dudes. I do not normally comment in any way, but I thought I would try it out. I recently DM'd a combat encounter for a group that had a large diversity of character abilities and focuses. I scaled back the combat, and focused on environmental threat. I did this......... A large party had to retrieve some information from an underwater sea cave (in a water sealed weighted chest). There was a limited ability to travel to the environment to get down to the area of interest. They did there prep work and headed off. The balance of the PCs stayed on the surface. But there was an ambush set. A bad guy with a ring of water elemental control, used control water to have a huge wave wave the PCs off the deck and into the water, getting all but 2. 2 spear and shield veterans from the MM, engaged those 2 on land, with the addition of one of them would through a net and retract it on misses. The next round, the trickster cast wall of ice over the surface to create a barrier to get to the air. Half of the in water PCs managed to catch a breath before being dunked under water. One of the guys, a Dwarf wearing Full plate quickly sank to the 30 foot bottom by his full plate while he was knocked silly. Waiting in the water was a swarm of quippers, which harassed the PCs attempting to deal with the puzzle question, without one shotting anybody. It was just enough to distract and frustrate them without derailing them. In the meanwhile, the bad guy veterans with spear shield focused on a couple of attacked, then attempt to push the PCs on the deck off into the water. I used the spellcasting Bad Guy, to use spells to keep the combat and puzzle balanced and the threat relatively balanced. For instance, the PCs fighting got a grease spell on the deck under their feet when they started to dominate the combat. It set them back for about 2 rounds, which let the puzzle group catch up. The bard under the ice sheet, who had not caught his breath before being dunked, used thunderwave to knock out the quippers, and saw the crack form in the ice. He repeated a little for form a crack in the ice that he eventually was able to crawl through. Several others were knocked around, but saw the line on the surface that was the edge of the ice sheet, and feeling the intense cold, swam for it. Difficult, but were able to get to the edge and start to climb up. The bad guy dropped a darkness spell in the center of his ice sheet, which made it a little more difficult to see and assist each other out of water, which they soon did (get out of the water). In the meanwhile, the armored Dwarf on the bottom saw the anchor chain, which he was able to move to on the bottom, and climb up it to the surface. Shield spear guys were dispatched, bad guy spellcaster escaped by running across the water and diving in, to be seen again as a recurrent villain. All of these PCs have different combat and utility capabilities. I also did not have to just stack more meat for them to hack apart, and they wren't limited by what magic they know. Then, we returned to normally scheduled programming with the other team in the sea cave (fought a water elemental in the dark murky underwater cave). It was a good session, but you can imagine the difficulties to overcome, to keep things moving in an exciting way. I think there is a larger impact on the players ability to play creatively, than the capabilities of their PCs. Some want to rely just on their sword swing and spell list, instead of just creative play and solutions. Please give me some suggestions. Thanks.
Hi. I don't have any suggestions, and I realize this post is two years ago now, but I can't help but commend you. That is some really well made and satisfying DMing. I love how you set up the encounter. Hats off to you man!
There was this game where we spent a whole arc of the campaign fighting a gang of mindflayers. My character was a barbarian. You can imagine what was happening in every single combat. I ended up talking to the DM, saying that I knew it was part of the challenge and all, but that spending whole combats not having a turn was getting a bit old. I'm glad I did, after that we figured some solutions and I was able to do stuff again.
One thing I have encountered in the climactic moments of campaigns is that I have a tendency to want a really big set-piece battle. The forces of good v. the forces of evil, defending the hometown/kingdom/whatever. It makes for great stakes...but a really massive bookkeeping headache. So, while I am guilty of having way too many things on the board to keep track of, I have simplified what happens when the various NPCs interact with each other; they just automatically do some kind of average damage. Then I don't have to roll any dice when the horde of orcs battles the horde of zombies; they just wear each other down a set amount, and we all move on. When the PCs interact, either attacking or getting attacked, they use the actual stat block, though. Real DnD combat, as opposed to simplified because no one wants to just watch the DM fight with themselves.
NPC's fighting each other should be background, not DM rolled. That's basically you sitting there playing against yourself, which isn't your job. Isolate your focus on what the players are interacting with, and handwave the background as you see fit. This is also a very good policy if the players happen to be with a higher level character. Always give the tag-along something else in the background that they can be doing while the players deal with the main problem.
I also love large set piece battles, and I sometimes just say “and these two parties engage over here” then don’t keep up with what’s literally going on. I zoom in on where the characters are. I might roll a d20 to see which “side” won one of the “off-screen” battles
I've been DM'ing for a long time and I will say that my design goal is for combat to be three to four rounds, even in 3rd edition in my big level 20 fights. If it's going to be longer I feel it should noticeably shift in some way, such as a gate breaking from damage and sewage water spraying out covering the battlefield. If it goes longer, people start to feel their attention wander or resources start to become hoarded in a way that I don't feel is beneficial to larger enjoyment. Additionally, you're able to have more combats, role-play moments, etc, so the game feels more textured in general.
Hey, I just wanted to piggyback on your design philosophy. My players know that combat is a fast and intense sequence. Oddly enough, 30 seconds of the same things loses intensity withouth some dynamic shift. (If you're using mouthwash, 5 rounds feels like too much). The Dudes have said it before, but sometimes when the battlefield doesn't change, add an explosion (earthquake, magic portal, the sound of a war horn) to shake things up. This reintroduces the environment and encourages PCs to make choices, tactical or moral. At our table, combat needs to have a dramatic question or a noncombat goal. Without either both sides are just bags of hit points with very little story to remember. Killing a dragon is much less memorable than beheading the dragon just before it could breathe fire across the village of evacuating people
@@Renglish92 I one hundred percent love that encapsulation of "dramatic question" and that's exactly what I do. Skill-based characters and utility spells become a lot more important if there's some non hit point based peril or aspect that needs to be dealt with. Especially if that's just as much a determiner of success or failure as the vampire's ability to do damage.
Great content as always! My friend to me when watching this: "Monty looks like the actor who plays Jaskier from the Witcher if he was the DM and not the chaotic bard." I never noticed it before, but Monty does look like Jaskier a fair bit!
I cheated myself of what little free time I have as a father and started designing my own RPG. So although I plan to only play D&D when my fellow players won't accept another system, Iwatch your channel a lot, because it is my favorite inspiration for thinking about what options my own system must offer.
Really like that you are referring to events that has happened in your livestream campaign when giving some of the advice! Makes it easy to also check out a practical example of how it comes in to play during an actual session. Great content as always! 👍
Exactly what I need! Hope this is going to be a series on high level stuff. How about details of any home brew adventures at high level (even third tier)?
For the second problem, I think the best solution is to find a way to telegraph those abilities such as the frightful presence. Have the party see the dragon scouting when they are approaching, and it flies right past them and make them all make a save for the frightful presence.
One trick I do is to use a large number of glass cannon enemies. They deal a huge amount of damage in their turns, but are very easy to one shot or two shot. Since there's a lot of them, the party won't escape unscathed, but they get to feel badass, and not much time is wasted on drawn out fights.
When I DM and have lots of dice to roll for damage, I roll them and make a quick show of counting, but just eyeball it and adjust a little up or down of average. That way I get to give them the dread of hearing and seeing that many dice but have the damage ready to tell them before the tension wears off. If you're good at reading your players, you'll know exactly how long to wait, and when to tell.
In Curse of Strahd, players get a fated ally. I made a character sheet for that ally and gave it to one of the experienced players to run. This did 2 things--it gave me less to do in a complex battle, and it gave the players some agency with the friendly NPC so that there's never a question on if the DM had the ally pull punches. Also, I always use average damage for minions and reserve rolling for just the bosses. I'll be incorporating some of your ideas when the players get to the battle with Count Strahd, so thanks for this!
My cousin asked me to DM. I jokingly said yes, we start at level 21. Now I'm planning to actually run a One Shot for that lol. This should hopefully help. Thank you
Good advice I’m looking forward to using. I feel like you guys are leveling up lately. I especially like the recognition of how the less-optimization-focused players start to feel less important.
One way to speed up high level fights is to have fewer minions which then deal more damage to the PCs. Don't give the Fire Giant Lord 20 orc minions with 1d8 damage longbows. Instead use 2 ogre minions each with 10d8 damage blackpowder cannons.
you could also have the 20 orc minions attack as one, for a storm of arrows that deal 10d8 damage twice. for each orc that dies, the group deals one less die of damage. this is in fact how minions in mcdm’s Flee Mortals! preview works, though with flat damage instead of dice to further streamline it
Or take a page from 4e where minions were literally 1 HP creatures that didn't take damage from succeeding on saving throws against spells, had appropriate attack modifiers for tiers of play, and did a set amount of damage based on the tier of play. Those 20 orc minions each roll with a +7 modifier and deal 8 damage per hit. But the party's fighter with 4 attacks gets the pleasure of diving headfirst into the group and hacking down up to four or even eight of them in a single round like a fantasy hero in a large battle lord of the rings style.
@@InfinityKrompt if you’re going to do that you might as well just grab the Flee Mortals! preview pdf, as that is exactly how it works (except the hp rules have been slightly altered for 5e, because 1 hp can cause a lot of issues in modern rules)
With regard to forgetting I have stuff, I have started making a cheat sheet for every character I play that has a list of Actions, Bonus Actions, Reactions, and any other miscellaneous. Really helps me organize my thoughts.
This is definitely something I needed. I am a brand new DM and my players just hit LVL 11 in a campaign that will for sure take them to at LEAST 20. I have definitely been struggling with having multiple types of stat blocks (as it is a Demon and Devil heavy war campaign). I kept wanting to throw in different demons and devils to represent where they are in terms of skill and importance, but I think just sticking with 2 and at MOST 3 different types will go a long way in making sure I don't mix up abilities or big down the combat.
I like the idea of 'coaching' because for some parties it even includes low level play that it's needed. This could be expanded as having a rules librarian in the group, someone who knows a good amount of the rules and when asked to refer to for said rules
My players love to plan, they often take alot of time scouting and planning, then the encounter I had ready is altered significantly because they attack it in strange or particularly effective ways. The planning might take an hour and the combat is over in 3 rounds. They all seem to love this so I don't mind at all. The one thing they seem to consistently forget is noise. So 2nd and 3rd waves often blow out the combat times. There are some great tips in this video for speeding those waves up. Thanks again for all the thought and work you put into your videos. Love this channel ❤️
Finally some recourses for high level play! 5e has been out several years now and we barely have anything resource wise for high level play. I hope you make more videos about it!
Our DM was trying out a new thing where when there were a lot of monsters in play, he was playing it like they were all just one monster. So all the rolls were compressed into a single action. The problem with that is when it crits, this can kill a player outright. So just take note of things like that when running mosters as a pool, you might nuke someone and as a result, you will likely end up making additional rules to prevent this from happening...IE, if a group of mobs crit, only one of the damage dice for them is doubled, etc.
Depending on the situations grouping the monsters and creatures work and in large scale combat it's the only way that works fairly well. Group by climps or type can also work in some situations, but usually there will be in every group those that will need to have their own initiative place.
@@taleg1 Ya, we It think I might try is if I am grouping things, and damage happens in such a way that ruins fun by just nuking people, I might doll out the damage as a pool at my discression.
@@BeCurieUs I personally use changing groupings as the battlefield changes and both sides get's hurt. It tends to work fairly well as long as there's a limit to my mental noise and the number of players. If it's to much the whole ting takes forever and get's very boring with limited fluidity. Basically it's a flowchart like they use in nuclear reactor testing where every instance is tracked (aka what any one is doing , their initiative and where.) Keep that straight and every battle flows smoothly and there is an absolute need to have a choice cut of. It that runs out the player or creature or monster stands there wondering what to do in the chaos. I like to use a small hourglass that's very visible and has a nice easy way to see how much time is left. It's adds to the pressure too.
once i played in a party where every single character had a companion (we had a necromancer, beast master ranger, battle smith artificer, druid sheperd) and believe me, every, single, batlle was LOOOOOOONG like you cannot imagine, thats why it was mostly roleplay until it was over.
I hope they got to have an adventure playing as their companions. If not, have the companions captured by the evil guy getting annoyed by the pets the players have. That's how I'd spin it.
@@trevorgreenough6141 seems like a good idea, the first one is like those episodes of pokemon where the pokemons are doing their own life away for the trainers and the second one is like an entire party of jhon wicks.
@@afasdfasafd314 yup, I can imagine how players would behave if companions got taken. One of my players (vampire wizard artificer) destroyed an entire camp of bandits (some were spell casters) so completely now a few years later its covered in moss, lichen, in a heavy state of disrepair, with a rumour that the very shadows protect innocents. Bandits and such like haven't been seen in the city for 18 or so months. That is; in the city borders, not the walls.
Hey @dungeondudes ! I only found you guys a few months ago and cant get enough of it. You guys are my go to for dnd guides and discussion. Keep on rockin!
Dudes, great video! Having just finished a level 20 campaign, I can say so many of these things are totally on point! Regarding long turns, we had to skip people’s turn if they repeatedly take a long time to do that turn. Players should be awarded for creative play, but it’s NOT fun when people look for obscure rules to gain an advantage and look stuff up online during their turn while everyone waits for them to figure out what they are doing! Character dialogue is great! Creative play is great! I make all of my players put the complete spell or ability on an index card that they can read right away on their turn. Everyone knows that if it’s not on a card, your character doesn’t have the ability! All rules outside of what is on the cards must be known by ALL players OR adjudicated by a die roll! Implement a ‘shot clock’ and force people to loose their turn if they can’t get it done in the time allotted. I guarantee other players will help count dice or whatever is needed so the turn is not lost. It brings everyone together more and increases the camaraderie at the table! One or two times of loosing your turn or being told you don’t have a spell or ability if you can’t accurately answer DM questions on the fly will absolutely change the way players organize things!
it's always a delicate balance! building high level encounters (or any encounter) is a science experiment. a little bit of this, a dash of that, take that out. it's an art form. gotta be challenging and rewarding but not impossible. thanks for the tips guys! love the channel!
I moved at one point and made a round of people to talk to before I left. One was a guy that was the best DM but I was not really close to. I thanked him for all of the fun and told him how much I really respected his ability to run a game. He was always on point and seemed to pull things out of his rear on quick plays or really make things fun on more set piece ones. He showed me his secret. He had things mapped out on 3x5 cards and triggers for backing off or adding on depending on how things were playing. He also had a list of every "odd" thing that the player had. So if we were doing good at round three of encounter he would trigger x, but if we were getting our head handed to us he would not or it would trigger y. The thing that really stuck was how simple the little boxes were with there codes for him to quickly know what needed to happen. That was all his own index to this card or that or to do some role playing change. Still, there were times that we would lose members in combat and even lose the whole party. That tells me he never disrespected the dice.
So much this. Running a campaign of 6 players that started at LVL 1 three years ago and is about to turn lvl 19. I wish I had seen this when they were lvl 11. I learned a lot of this through trial and error through gameplay. It was extremely frustrating as a DM to pit them against a suicidal encounter they had to run from and then see them stand their ground and burn the monster down before it even reached them because of an unfortunate initiative. Or, simply have one player unleash a volley of arrows taking it from full to 1/4 hit points and giving the monster only one turn before the rest finished it off. Thank you for the good video, I am sharing with my D&D FB group where we share tips between DMs and players.
what you expressed as the #2 problem used to be a problem for our DM. what he's done that we enjoy (and also saves him bookkeeping headaches) is to never have a lone bbeg with minions. it's always 2-4 bbegs. the minions are typically not present/run away/doing something else/insignificant. a level 10 party for example taking on a young red dragon with a bunch of minions will have an easy time once the party's controller casts hypnotic pattern. facing 2-4 young red dragons each with almost 200 hp you need to knock down is much tougher as they are not as susceptible to the party's typical countermeasures and have more varied offense than minions. on the plus side for the DM, he doesn't need to refer to multiple stat blocks and keep track of multiple initiatives. less clutter on the field as well.
I had 2 players join my campaign at level 7. One of them is a bard and is not too experienced in D&D, so I let her redo her spells during long rests. It lets her experiment with new spells and find the playstyle she likes.
As a dm I love running high level encounters with the only caveat being the number of players. When multiple enemies and party have a ton of magic and abilities fights tend to drag.
If you're a DM who's slow at counting, just use a dice-rolling app. However, I'd still recommend rolling physical dice just because part of the fun of being a player is the panic that sets in when you hear the DM roll a lot of dice. Or if the app simulates the sound of the dice being rolled, all the better.
Best fight I ran against six level 10 pcs used a relatively small arena against 5 kobold press Smargadine Golems. Drawing them into the trap with a halberd within one of the golems which themselves were disguised as simple crystal formations but they were on dais's. They would have remained motionless until one of the character inevitably casted Detect Magic activating one of them and it used it's ability to send magical lightning damage hitting and activating one other them. Best part was when someone casted Banish on one of them and while banished it used it's ability to eat the spell pop back into existence sending lightning damage everywhere and activating the rest.
This came at exactly the right time. I’ve been watching all of your videos relevant to my first attempt at DMing a dungeon for 5 Level 14 characters in just a couple weekends. Great work!
14:30 Last night during a boss battle against an acid hydra, one of our guys got grabbed and thrown up in the air. Instead of just falling into the acid below, they grabbed onto a stalactite and started chipping away at it. When my turn came around, I shot an eldritch blast at it to finish breaking it off, and it impaled the hydra for like 40-something damage in one hit. It was awesome, we all loved it. Rule of Cool > RAW
I like what you said on fast rolling and taking averages. My group now rolls ahead of their turn so long as we declare or roll with that certain intent to remain truthful to the group. This was after the one mistake we made was when my necromancer had 16 skeletons and my DM said ‘eh just make them all hit or miss on one d20 roll. It’ll be faster’ and I critical hit a Planetar for over 230 damage nearly killing it on the second round of combat.
This is very timely because my players are level 17 and a few nights ago they absolutely DEMOLISHED a combat encounter I was worried was going to be too difficult ! Thanks for posting!
High level combat definitely takes forever. I just had a party of 4 lvl 15 characters assault the keep of one of the major villains between just having enough enemies to actually be a threat on the field and the traps of her lair it took nearly over two months of weekly (3+ hr) sessions to finish. And that was with me having halved the HP of all the enemies around week 6 and cutting the bosses second form.
Yeah, for high level play I really appreciate playing virtual where the programs count up all the dice for you. Its not that big of an issue for when you only roll 2 dice, but when counting up paladin smites, barbarian crits, sneak attacks, or dragon's breath attack, it is super nice to have all of the counting automatically done for you.
I used to run high level encounters all the time. When the players know what they’re doing and are kitted out with magical items normal encounters aren’t satisfying for either side. I often find that encounter creators like Kobold Fight Club are useful but need tweaking. Set the encounter to deadly and add 1 more creature. This is usually enough to balance out vs a group with magic items.
Excellent video, Dudes! The topic was mostly technical. The end of an epic campaign is the best time to remember this game is a collaborative story. Throwing tension and narrative and humor can make the event more memorable. In a recent campaign, our party cleared a field of undead. The BBEG had a bird drop a sending stone near us to taunt us, followed by the undead coming together into a giant amalgamation of undead! My lizard barbarian called out to our artificer, “Make me big!” and charged the form. The artificer actually actually cast reduce on the form, which made my lizard think it was larger. So with lots of roaring and references to Godzilla and other monster movies, the not-giant lizard raged and helped slay the shrunken undead. Turning back to the friends, he realized he had “returned” to his normal size again... unaware that he never changed sizes that day. 😂
it's also helpful to remind your players of their early level abilities that can become incredibly powerful as they stack things on top of it, I have an arcane trickster bladesinger who is really(deservedly) proud of his build who forgot for a while that if he just let his friend attack first and he flanked with them he gets a bunch of d6s on top of everything else
This was awesome and I'm definitely gonna use alot of this stuff High level play is my favorite part of D&D and it frustrates me to no end how criminally unsupported it is! Would love a episode on running a high level campaign as in maybe you start at high level or leveling to tier 3-4 was sped up and now we enter the meat of the campaign where the party is basically super heros but thus dealing with super threats. Comics are a great example of how high level play can be done with local and planar threats. Some combats can be easy stomps and some can be nail bitters but embrace being legendary!
While re-watching this I'm reminded of the spell Ed Greenwood described as coming from an ancient Netherese wizard. "Sardra's Chain" is a dweomer that "chains" specific spells to go off if a condition is met. Being a Netherese spell it could be reintroduced into any campaign not just a FR campaign as many Netherese wizards went plane hopping back in the day. Chaining mid to high level spell effects can also cause the PCs to change their focus.
well here is the thing a lot of DM's don't know. If a monster stat block has resistances or immunities that reduce or ignore a damage type, WotC reduce that monsters HP by an amount depending on CR and if it is a resistance or immunity, could be as much as a 50% reduction. here is the thing... most monsters that have resistances or immunities are designed for parties that most likely have the means to bypass the damage reduction so they are just fighting a nerfed encounter. there is a chart hiding in the DMG (pg. 277). so honestly when ever a DM builds an encounter they need to look at the stat block for the resistances and immunities, and see if the party has the means to bypass the damage reduction and if so need to adjust the HP by the chart in the book.
Gosh I really got to get on your peatron. So I’m running a 4lvl 3 character party against a young green dragon. Iv set this up accordingly to their character abilities, charter resources, character knowledge of dragons, and a little healing potion assistance. I’m trimming the breathe damage a little bit but not much. I have good hopes that they will preserver. They are good players and as their characters ego/id they are true to form so some love from the dm will no doubt happen. Much love dudes and world.
I gave my party 6 orcs, 6 half-ogres, and 6 ogres (all homebrewed with special abilities), plus an orc shaman and a goblin shaman. To fight against a goblin necromancer with a super troll mount, skeletal Bulettes, skeletal Minotaurs, ogre zombies, skeletons, zombies and ghosts. It took 2 rounds over 2.5 hours lol. I’ve never been such an efficient DM but gosh dang. No more friendly NPCs at the very least lol
I'm a big advocate for more waves of monsters. Not just in high levels either. I find it hard to justify 4-6 encounters per day so I tend to go for compound encounters: you have multiple complete encounters arriving roughly when the previous one has lost combat effectiveness (this can be when it's dead or when the only survivors are CC'd/stuck in melee with the tank/etc.). Sometimes these arrive as a surprise from 'offscreen' but I prefer it if they're on the map but with some natural delay. As some examples (pathfinder but the point stands): - The player's inner-city base is being attacked by goblins, roughly 3 CR-appropriate encounter's worth. A bugbear fighter is battering down the door and will need to spend some turns after that coming up the stairs. Basic goblins with a couple of alchemists and pistoliers are jumping in through the top-floor windows, a few stragglers are coming from ground-floor windows. A goblin assassin is hiding on a rooftop lining up a kill (3-turn setup unreliable save-or-die that was most likely to hit an NPC tank). In an open field this would be a deadly encounter, but because the party can choose chokepoints it naturally splits itself into a few separate fights. - 2 boarding ships full of undead are moving to flank the party's ship on a foggy day, their ship's main cannon can potentially sink and definitely slow one ship on the way in or could kill most of the chaff undead on the way in but probably not both. The ships each contained far too many zombies in order to stuff up the npc crew as well as a couple of fairly weak but still threatening Wights (negative levels are spooky and the party was low enough level that they'd be a long-term debuff). The ships' captains were the scariest melee combatants but they'd take a couple of turns to get past the zombies after the ships were grappled. Turns out the party Wizard had just got Web and Fireball so none of the zombies got a turn, the party Alchemist could CC the threatening enemies to uselessness and the party archer Fighter got caught in melee trying to protect the crew from Wights who could only hit him on a crit then when he got free to shoot the enemy captains he evaporated them. The theoretically deadly encounter ended up being a massive power trip for everyone involved, really needed a caster on each ship to counterbalance the chaos of the Wizard, but it did burn their resources without letting them nova as if it were multiple encounters.
If you're like me and want to speed up combat but still want variance in damage that's lost when just taking the average, here's a trick I use. Roll a d4 and a d8. On the d4, 1 or 2 means subtract the d8 from the average damage, 3 or 4 means add the d8 to the average damage. You can easily adjust the d8 to a bigger or smaller die too to account for the kind of attack being done. Now you've got damage variance that can be applied quickly without needing to add 20 dice together!
My party recently reached level 11 on my first time DMing campaign. When I started having trouble giving the players a challenge, one thing that I found useful is to plan multiple versions of the big combat encounters-- an easy, medium and hard version. Then, if the party just isn't managing their combat strategies well enough and are having enough trouble on the encounter at its easiest version, I'm just leave it at that. If in the first 2 rounds of combat they're already starting to make the big encounter feel trivial, I'll go ahead and unleash the backup elements, such as more minions arriving, a bigger monster that was the "real threat", hiding and waiting to see what would happen, environmental hazards or lair actions, etc.
High level abilities as a /requirement/ is the key thing. It is the kind of thing that SOUNDS obvious in hindsight, but is actually brilliant. Instead of short-circuiting a puzzle or encounter etc. this is necessary just to get in the door. Like a boss has this bodyguard creature that can't be harmed conventionally, and /has/ to be banished or polymorphed, or force-caged etc. to get at the boss. Of course, don't do this if your party doesn't have these spells and use them regularly, or perhaps clue them in that such a creature exists so they can prepare
thanks for the tips, ive gotten stuck in mass encounters with large number of monsters and initiative rounds of 10 people plus npcs and 6 different monster types... Ill boil it down and have different types of monsters come and go and change the texture of the room - moving rooms, flooding, lava coming in, players loosing magic abilities etc to make it more challenging!
I once ran a tier 3 combat encounter with just 5 party members versus an archmage, a blackguard in a cramped 6x6 room with a giant floor rune that cancelled out radiant damage. Due to the archmage using prismatic wall to divide the room in half, that one encounter took 12 rounds and nearly 3 hours to resolve.
I have 5 lvl 14 players vs a buffed and altered lvl 20 vengeance paladin. I plan to have 8 crystals of power that will give them buff if they use actions to absorb them and the BBEG can also do this. So I'm hoping it'd a balance of trying to buff themselves and prevent him from getting those buffs. Glad TDD put this up, defo gave me inspiration.
My dnd group always plays at super high levels, me and the other DM balance the encounters flying by the seats of our pants and it works out basically every time. Experience really helps!
Great topic. Personally, I have never gotten a character over 8th level playing “normally “. Usually, party disengagement, character death , stuff like that happens and new characters/ campaign get rolled up/ started
Wild Magic Surge for every spell cast is a fun mechanic to add, and like every combat solution presented, there are ways to run it efficiently without it being "too much." It can go in the party's favor or the DM's favor depending on the rolls, and that's a fun external factor to said high-level combat encounter. Spoilers for some Adventurers League content incoming: . . . . . In some modules, if a player character ends their turn adjacent to a fellow player character or other creature afflicted by an in-game effect, they make a saving throw or take one level of exhaustion right off the bat. It forces players to strategize and consider positioning and be mentally present at all times, which adds to the excitement of said high-level encounter.
A mid-high level session break time skip with retraining is always nice. Feels like a level or two but just a retool for higher level efficiency. Changing subclasses or retraining a small dip into another class can work wonders.
I always create situations whare there is more to do than just kill the monster. Stoping a ritual, dealing with the environment, saving npcs and so on. Give the players other uses for their actions than just attacking.
Agreed, there is a real gap in D&D material for high level, and virtually nothing for going epic level. Here's hoping WOTC brings some material for this area of the game. That said, thanks for this video!
I'm not sure if you've addressed this in a video before or not. I've seen most of your guys' stuff and I don't recall it. But I'd like to see a topic-specific video where the Dungeon Dudes talk about fixing/mitigating meta-gaming at the table. I feel like it'd be a great guide for DMs and players alike and it deserves its own video.
I do enjoy listening to this kind of content and watching your role play...i havent played 5E at all yet but it looks fun...i have ran ALOT of games even taking 2 characters to level 50 in 3.5 to me it was kind of liberating to throw the worst of everything i wanted to at them (within reason) and not have to worry near as much about the perfect balance...tho 1 of them did die at level 50 brought back by a set of armor which only had 1 use ever to raise the wearer...which we had almost forgot about.
Split the 'Boss' fight up into 'phases' and manage Resources. have the party fight some minions at the beginning, and then have the minions 'flee' forcing the party to chase them. (this adds a break in the combat and not let the party rest to recuperate resources. The party then catches up and finishes off the escaping minions only to encounter the next 'wave/phase' of minions/leaders/generals to take care of before having to chase the few whom escape or trigger a ritual or time event the party have to stop before the Boss shows up.
A standard Level 13 Encounter I run is a Terasque, the point is to show the players combat is basically a done deal now unless I have alternative win/lose requirements.
I love love LOVE marital classes, sword fighting has always been one of my favorite things. I will always buff up my melee players with sweet armor and weapons, hell I've even written up complete named sets of gear specifically directed for certain players
There is a reason that the High Level games are so popular at Conventions! Lower level combats can be pretty predictable, but high level combats are so unpredictable! There is a reason that in AD&D, the high level adventures were in areas where many spells were modified or unusable, or on other planes where many magic weapons were diminished. Magic weapons got a -1 for each plane they are away from where it was created!
What I have done more and more as we climb into the higher levels is that, now that I am familiar with the parties limitations, I have stopped paying attention to CR and now look roughly at the damage output and HP of the monster as the ballpark as to how difficult it is. It can be difficult to gauge, especially when the enemy may rely on sneak attack for big bursts of damage, or maybe can cast Greater Invisibility as a bonus action once a day, or something like that. But being familiar with what your party can or cannot take on is more important that listening to a graph.
I usually run a large group game (6-8 PCs) and in order to make things easier on me I often have the monsters all have the same initiative. I also know ahead of schedule my PC's AC and then let them know when they have been hit by the monsters and the damage they take. It just helps with flow.
I hope you guys don't mind but I absolutely plan on using that matching tiles with water elementals puzzle idea for a campaign of mine! Such an awesome creation!
When counting up large dice pools, I find it faster and easier to pull aside groups of 10 (6&4, 5&5, 3331...), then I can look at the dice groupings and quickly go forty- uhhh-six.
The mob attacks help keeping the hoards of minions too, just keep a counter on a huge creature like if it was a swarm and keep like 3 or 4 pf those around to mess with players each round using the mob rules of the dmg
I DM for a party of lvl13 characters. +Traps indeed become a huge part of making game interesting. One can't kick rising lava to submission :D I remember them laughing ehen they've stumbled upon kobold caves with enemies they can kill with gentle poke of a stick. Laughter soon stopped, since kobolds are really good at making their living space a death maze. +Initiative order becomes even deadlier. Ensuring that at least some enemies get to move first is a must. +Breaking encounter into smaller stages really helps. Some players tend to spend some valuable resource on minions, thinking there won't be BBEG foght in a round or two :) +Lair actions and Legendary actions. Those do really play out nice, if used well :) In short. Make them think, make them spend resources by wearing the party down a bit. Let their victory feel like they overcame something deadly against all odds.
This video and the one about legendary monsters, have made the end of my campaign much better. I can't wait for my players to see the new craziness I'll be bringing. Thanks so much for the tips Dudes!!!!!!!!
I've changed how Legendary creatures function. Giving them multiple turns instead being able to act off turn. This gives them more saves against dibiliting effects. At the same time I've changed Legendary resistance, so instead of auto succeeding, the effect only lasts for one turn. This might kill a turn where they are paralysed or banished, making the spell the player used actually helpful, but doesn't end the fight.
as a dm of a party of six level 11’s, legendary actions (especially on multiple creatures) have been huge. if a monster isn’t legendary, i’ll usually let it attack and move once or twice per round so that it can kinda keep up with the hundreds of damage points the party does. additionally, giving the monsters a goal outside of killing the party or giving the party an objective outside of killing the monsters really helps makes things quite a bit more tense.
wondering here if you've ever heard of action oriented design! It sounds like that could be a good idea for you if you enjoy all your legendary actions and stuff.
@@rainnever it's been a God-send for me with my monsters. From Coleville and Coach. The bestial goblin boss would call in reinforcements, be able to legendary make them jump to him, and swap places when an enemy attacks him, and can whip the goblins he summons at people to try and knock them prone with bonus action jumps.
I have a party of six level 7’s (first time DM) and I can relate. I thought a pair of wyverns would be a scary encounter for them when they were level 6, and they knocked both of them out of the sky before they could even attack. It was a real learning moment for me as a DM.
A DM that I've played with has a really good solution for new players who forget abilities like Action Surge, Rage, etc. He printed out and laminated cards that had the ability's name and a brief description on the front and how they recharged (ie: short rest, long rest, etc.) on the back. The player would keep these cards face up on the table, and when they used the ability they would turn the card face-down. When we did something that let us restore abilities the card would be turned face up again.
Really neat for when you're playing at the table!
Players can do that too. Why is it always the dm...
@@seeker296because the DM brings the work amd effort and the players bring the scheduling conflicts
@@seeker296 This is specifically a comment about new players. Expecting a brand new player to have enough foresight and pre-existing game knowledge to design cards like this is unrealistic.
It's also easy enough to do with a fighter or a barbarian because you only have to deal with rage or action surge, maybe reckless attacks.
I have a large party (8 players). To make it faster, I let them pair up and take their initiative and turns in teams. It keeps everyone engaged and speeds up encounters. It's awesome to see how the players come up with combos. I just make them pick a different teammate each time.
Average the 2 closest PCs starting from the top (perhaps let the first 2 use the first player's initiative so you don't nerf assassin rogue unintentionally)
This is a really interesting idea. Gonna try this!
@@Southpaw_Blueagreed
Look, as cliche as this sounds, I just wanna say thanks Dungeon Dudes. I have been a 3.5 DM since I was 13, only recently switching to 5ed last year, and between you two and Mark Hulmes, it has made the transition so much easier. I absolutely love these kind of videos, and appreciate them so much. So again, thank you.
Thanks. My party has just reached level 10, and it definitely feels like these ideas are going to be progressively more useful.
Right now one of my main tricks is to give them situations where simple combat skills don't help them.
For example, they had to save a village. Turns out the village was mind controlled by a powerful hag. The weak villagers were getting aggressive and paranoid towards the party. Then most the party Drank water from the cursed well, and all of a sudden the villagers seemed reasonable and friendly and the few party members and sane villagers who didn't drink from the well seemed insane and threatening. Also the water was so good that it gave a bunch of bonuses to those who drank it, but also had a withdrawal clock that started causing problems for the players who were trying to let the water wear off.
Both sides saw the other side as cursed and insane.
Almost had a failed mission as both groups (cursed and uncursed) actually got into a struggle. Thankfully there were no fatalities, though there were players grappling and restraining players and a bunch of villagers put to sleep.
When they finally met the big bad, most of the party were overwhelmed by her beauty and had to make wisdom savings throws whenever they tried to harm her or when she gave them commands. It was really challenging for the players, even though the actual fight wasn't.
Afterwards it led to a interesting discussion on how to mediate between different perspectives.
I love dnd 😅
This is soooo cool! I might borrow this idea for the high level homebrew I'm planning after we finish Curse of Strahd (they'll hit level 10 next session). 🥰
At the end of Curse of Strahd my players were incredibly powerful. They were only level 12 but had powerful combos between them and incredible magic items. I chose to make Strahd a multi fased boss fight, culminating with him becoming the essence of vampirism and sucking the life out of Krezk to create a army of shadowy minions. These minions could be medium, large or huge, and two could fuse to make a bigger one. I made their attacks incredibly simple, 1d10+2, 2d10+4 or 3d10+6 respectively, and no HP. Instead 1 hit would kill a medium, 2 hits a large, and so on. This way I could throw huge numbers of these guys at them making them problematic as they would quickly overrun them if ignored.
X number of hits instead of X number of HP. That is a fascinating idea. It requires the players to use actions but makes for more manageable crowd-control for the party. It also makes for much simpler book-keeping for the DM.
10:45 Never, ever, run an encounter where there is only a single path for your players to victory, especially if that single path is obscure. We all love the endgame 1 chance to unsnap everyone, but in reality if you as the DM have to tell your players how to win, or the key to their winning dies before they have a chance, you will cheapen or tarnish the challenge.
My players once decided to flee from the final battle and trash the lair instead,
Accidentally finding a way to just move the problem elsewhere in the process.
I think it’s important to remember too that sometimes, particularly with veteran players or especially players who typically DM, they may just be fine playing a character that is weaker than the rest of their party. They may want to be a more background character to support the story or just not powerful in combat. Just because Sam is no match for Aragorn with a sword doesn’t mean he’s any less of a main character. Please don’t take that away from your players without asking/talking with them!
I've always felt very intimidated about running high level combat, even though I always wanted to, so I didn't do it very often. This very well may be life-changing to my games!!
Keep rolling high, Dudes
Hi Dungeon Dudes. I do not normally comment in any way, but I thought I would try it out. I recently DM'd a combat encounter for a group that had a large diversity of character abilities and focuses. I scaled back the combat, and focused on environmental threat. I did this......... A large party had to retrieve some information from an underwater sea cave (in a water sealed weighted chest). There was a limited ability to travel to the environment to get down to the area of interest. They did there prep work and headed off. The balance of the PCs stayed on the surface. But there was an ambush set. A bad guy with a ring of water elemental control, used control water to have a huge wave wave the PCs off the deck and into the water, getting all but 2. 2 spear and shield veterans from the MM, engaged those 2 on land, with the addition of one of them would through a net and retract it on misses. The next round, the trickster cast wall of ice over the surface to create a barrier to get to the air. Half of the in water PCs managed to catch a breath before being dunked under water. One of the guys, a Dwarf wearing Full plate quickly sank to the 30 foot bottom by his full plate while he was knocked silly. Waiting in the water was a swarm of quippers, which harassed the PCs attempting to deal with the puzzle question, without one shotting anybody. It was just enough to distract and frustrate them without derailing them. In the meanwhile, the bad guy veterans with spear shield focused on a couple of attacked, then attempt to push the PCs on the deck off into the water. I used the spellcasting Bad Guy, to use spells to keep the combat and puzzle balanced and the threat relatively balanced. For instance, the PCs fighting got a grease spell on the deck under their feet when they started to dominate the combat. It set them back for about 2 rounds, which let the puzzle group catch up. The bard under the ice sheet, who had not caught his breath before being dunked, used thunderwave to knock out the quippers, and saw the crack form in the ice. He repeated a little for form a crack in the ice that he eventually was able to crawl through. Several others were knocked around, but saw the line on the surface that was the edge of the ice sheet, and feeling the intense cold, swam for it. Difficult, but were able to get to the edge and start to climb up. The bad guy dropped a darkness spell in the center of his ice sheet, which made it a little more difficult to see and assist each other out of water, which they soon did (get out of the water). In the meanwhile, the armored Dwarf on the bottom saw the anchor chain, which he was able to move to on the bottom, and climb up it to the surface. Shield spear guys were dispatched, bad guy spellcaster escaped by running across the water and diving in, to be seen again as a recurrent villain. All of these PCs have different combat and utility capabilities. I also did not have to just stack more meat for them to hack apart, and they wren't limited by what magic they know. Then, we returned to normally scheduled programming with the other team in the sea cave (fought a water elemental in the dark murky underwater cave). It was a good session, but you can imagine the difficulties to overcome, to keep things moving in an exciting way. I think there is a larger impact on the players ability to play creatively, than the capabilities of their PCs. Some want to rely just on their sword swing and spell list, instead of just creative play and solutions. Please give me some suggestions. Thanks.
Hi. I don't have any suggestions, and I realize this post is two years ago now, but I can't help but commend you. That is some really well made and satisfying DMing. I love how you set up the encounter. Hats off to you man!
There was this game where we spent a whole arc of the campaign fighting a gang of mindflayers. My character was a barbarian. You can imagine what was happening in every single combat. I ended up talking to the DM, saying that I knew it was part of the challenge and all, but that spending whole combats not having a turn was getting a bit old.
I'm glad I did, after that we figured some solutions and I was able to do stuff again.
Somehow, the algorithm knew that my party just entered this phase of play, and I needed to see this, specifically today. Thank you!
One thing I have encountered in the climactic moments of campaigns is that I have a tendency to want a really big set-piece battle. The forces of good v. the forces of evil, defending the hometown/kingdom/whatever. It makes for great stakes...but a really massive bookkeeping headache. So, while I am guilty of having way too many things on the board to keep track of, I have simplified what happens when the various NPCs interact with each other; they just automatically do some kind of average damage. Then I don't have to roll any dice when the horde of orcs battles the horde of zombies; they just wear each other down a set amount, and we all move on.
When the PCs interact, either attacking or getting attacked, they use the actual stat block, though. Real DnD combat, as opposed to simplified because no one wants to just watch the DM fight with themselves.
NPC's fighting each other should be background, not DM rolled. That's basically you sitting there playing against yourself, which isn't your job. Isolate your focus on what the players are interacting with, and handwave the background as you see fit.
This is also a very good policy if the players happen to be with a higher level character. Always give the tag-along something else in the background that they can be doing while the players deal with the main problem.
I also love large set piece battles, and I sometimes just say “and these two parties engage over here” then don’t keep up with what’s literally going on. I zoom in on where the characters are. I might roll a d20 to see which “side” won one of the “off-screen” battles
I've been DM'ing for a long time and I will say that my design goal is for combat to be three to four rounds, even in 3rd edition in my big level 20 fights. If it's going to be longer I feel it should noticeably shift in some way, such as a gate breaking from damage and sewage water spraying out covering the battlefield. If it goes longer, people start to feel their attention wander or resources start to become hoarded in a way that I don't feel is beneficial to larger enjoyment. Additionally, you're able to have more combats, role-play moments, etc, so the game feels more textured in general.
Hey, I just wanted to piggyback on your design philosophy. My players know that combat is a fast and intense sequence. Oddly enough, 30 seconds of the same things loses intensity withouth some dynamic shift. (If you're using mouthwash, 5 rounds feels like too much). The Dudes have said it before, but sometimes when the battlefield doesn't change, add an explosion (earthquake, magic portal, the sound of a war horn) to shake things up. This reintroduces the environment and encourages PCs to make choices, tactical or moral.
At our table, combat needs to have a dramatic question or a noncombat goal. Without either both sides are just bags of hit points with very little story to remember. Killing a dragon is much less memorable than beheading the dragon just before it could breathe fire across the village of evacuating people
@@Renglish92 I one hundred percent love that encapsulation of "dramatic question" and that's exactly what I do. Skill-based characters and utility spells become a lot more important if there's some non hit point based peril or aspect that needs to be dealt with. Especially if that's just as much a determiner of success or failure as the vampire's ability to do damage.
Great content as always!
My friend to me when watching this: "Monty looks like the actor who plays Jaskier from the Witcher if he was the DM and not the chaotic bard."
I never noticed it before, but Monty does look like Jaskier a fair bit!
I cheated myself of what little free time I have as a father and started designing my own RPG. So although I plan to only play D&D when my fellow players won't accept another system, Iwatch your channel a lot, because it is my favorite inspiration for thinking about what options my own system must offer.
Really like that you are referring to events that has happened in your livestream campaign when giving some of the advice! Makes it easy to also check out a practical example of how it comes in to play during an actual session. Great content as always! 👍
Exactly what I need! Hope this is going to be a series on high level stuff. How about details of any home brew adventures at high level (even third tier)?
For the second problem, I think the best solution is to find a way to telegraph those abilities such as the frightful presence. Have the party see the dragon scouting when they are approaching, and it flies right past them and make them all make a save for the frightful presence.
One trick I do is to use a large number of glass cannon enemies. They deal a huge amount of damage in their turns, but are very easy to one shot or two shot.
Since there's a lot of them, the party won't escape unscathed, but they get to feel badass, and not much time is wasted on drawn out fights.
When I DM and have lots of dice to roll for damage, I roll them and make a quick show of counting, but just eyeball it and adjust a little up or down of average. That way I get to give them the dread of hearing and seeing that many dice but have the damage ready to tell them before the tension wears off. If you're good at reading your players, you'll know exactly how long to wait, and when to tell.
I really hope Drakkenhiem goes into a high level place situation,
especially with spell jammer right now officially
The setting is not meant to have super high level characters.
In Curse of Strahd, players get a fated ally. I made a character sheet for that ally and gave it to one of the experienced players to run. This did 2 things--it gave me less to do in a complex battle, and it gave the players some agency with the friendly NPC so that there's never a question on if the DM had the ally pull punches. Also, I always use average damage for minions and reserve rolling for just the bosses. I'll be incorporating some of your ideas when the players get to the battle with Count Strahd, so thanks for this!
My cousin asked me to DM. I jokingly said yes, we start at level 21.
Now I'm planning to actually run a One Shot for that lol.
This should hopefully help. Thank you
Good advice I’m looking forward to using. I feel like you guys are leveling up lately. I especially like the recognition of how the less-optimization-focused players start to feel less important.
One way to speed up high level fights is to have fewer minions which then deal more damage to the PCs. Don't give the Fire Giant Lord 20 orc minions with 1d8 damage longbows. Instead use 2 ogre minions each with 10d8 damage blackpowder cannons.
you could also have the 20 orc minions attack as one, for a storm of arrows that deal 10d8 damage twice. for each orc that dies, the group deals one less die of damage.
this is in fact how minions in mcdm’s Flee Mortals! preview works, though with flat damage instead of dice to further streamline it
Or take a page from 4e where minions were literally 1 HP creatures that didn't take damage from succeeding on saving throws against spells, had appropriate attack modifiers for tiers of play, and did a set amount of damage based on the tier of play. Those 20 orc minions each roll with a +7 modifier and deal 8 damage per hit. But the party's fighter with 4 attacks gets the pleasure of diving headfirst into the group and hacking down up to four or even eight of them in a single round like a fantasy hero in a large battle lord of the rings style.
@@InfinityKrompt if you’re going to do that you might as well just grab the Flee Mortals! preview pdf, as that is exactly how it works (except the hp rules have been slightly altered for 5e, because 1 hp can cause a lot of issues in modern rules)
With regard to forgetting I have stuff, I have started making a cheat sheet for every character I play that has a list of Actions, Bonus Actions, Reactions, and any other miscellaneous. Really helps me organize my thoughts.
This is definitely something I needed. I am a brand new DM and my players just hit LVL 11 in a campaign that will for sure take them to at LEAST 20. I have definitely been struggling with having multiple types of stat blocks (as it is a Demon and Devil heavy war campaign). I kept wanting to throw in different demons and devils to represent where they are in terms of skill and importance, but I think just sticking with 2 and at MOST 3 different types will go a long way in making sure I don't mix up abilities or big down the combat.
I like the idea of 'coaching' because for some parties it even includes low level play that it's needed. This could be expanded as having a rules librarian in the group, someone who knows a good amount of the rules and when asked to refer to for said rules
My players love to plan, they often take alot of time scouting and planning, then the encounter I had ready is altered significantly because they attack it in strange or particularly effective ways. The planning might take an hour and the combat is over in 3 rounds. They all seem to love this so I don't mind at all. The one thing they seem to consistently forget is noise. So 2nd and 3rd waves often blow out the combat times. There are some great tips in this video for speeding those waves up. Thanks again for all the thought and work you put into your videos. Love this channel ❤️
Finally some recourses for high level play! 5e has been out several years now and we barely have anything resource wise for high level play. I hope you make more videos about it!
Our DM was trying out a new thing where when there were a lot of monsters in play, he was playing it like they were all just one monster. So all the rolls were compressed into a single action.
The problem with that is when it crits, this can kill a player outright. So just take note of things like that when running mosters as a pool, you might nuke someone and as a result, you will likely end up making additional rules to prevent this from happening...IE, if a group of mobs crit, only one of the damage dice for them is doubled, etc.
Depending on the situations grouping the monsters and creatures work and in large scale combat it's the only way that works fairly well. Group by climps or type can also work in some situations, but usually there will be in every group those that will need to have their own initiative place.
@@taleg1 Ya, we It think I might try is if I am grouping things, and damage happens in such a way that ruins fun by just nuking people, I might doll out the damage as a pool at my discression.
@@BeCurieUs I personally use changing groupings as the battlefield changes and both sides get's hurt. It tends to work fairly well as long as there's a limit to my mental noise and the number of players. If it's to much the whole ting takes forever and get's very boring with limited fluidity. Basically it's a flowchart like they use in nuclear reactor testing where every instance is tracked (aka what any one is doing , their initiative and where.) Keep that straight and every battle flows smoothly and there is an absolute need to have a choice cut of. It that runs out the player or creature or monster stands there wondering what to do in the chaos.
I like to use a small hourglass that's very visible and has a nice easy way to see how much time is left. It's adds to the pressure too.
once i played in a party where every single character had a companion (we had a necromancer, beast master ranger, battle smith artificer, druid sheperd) and believe me, every, single, batlle was LOOOOOOONG like you cannot imagine, thats why it was mostly roleplay until it was over.
I hope they got to have an adventure playing as their companions.
If not, have the companions captured by the evil guy getting annoyed by the pets the players have. That's how I'd spin it.
@@trevorgreenough6141 seems like a good idea, the first one is like those episodes of pokemon where the pokemons are doing their own life away for the trainers and the second one is like an entire party of jhon wicks.
@@afasdfasafd314 yup, I can imagine how players would behave if companions got taken.
One of my players (vampire wizard artificer) destroyed an entire camp of bandits (some were spell casters) so completely now a few years later its covered in moss, lichen, in a heavy state of disrepair, with a rumour that the very shadows protect innocents. Bandits and such like haven't been seen in the city for 18 or so months. That is; in the city borders, not the walls.
@@trevorgreenough6141 thats insane lol
Perfect timing dudes; running for high levels for the first time tonight. Hat off to you guys!
Hey @dungeondudes ! I only found you guys a few months ago and cant get enough of it. You guys are my go to for dnd guides and discussion. Keep on rockin!
Dudes, great video! Having just finished a level 20 campaign, I can say so many of these things are totally on point! Regarding long turns, we had to skip people’s turn if they repeatedly take a long time to do that turn. Players should be awarded for creative play, but it’s NOT fun when people look for obscure rules to gain an advantage and look stuff up online during their turn while everyone waits for them to figure out what they are doing! Character dialogue is great! Creative play is great! I make all of my players put the complete spell or ability on an index card that they can read right away on their turn. Everyone knows that if it’s not on a card, your character doesn’t have the ability! All rules outside of what is on the cards must be known by ALL players OR adjudicated by a die roll! Implement a ‘shot clock’ and force people to loose their turn if they can’t get it done in the time allotted. I guarantee other players will help count dice or whatever is needed so the turn is not lost. It brings everyone together more and increases the camaraderie at the table! One or two times of loosing your turn or being told you don’t have a spell or ability if you can’t accurately answer DM questions on the fly will absolutely change the way players organize things!
Above 5 dice to roll i use a digital dice roller that adds the numbers up for me - so i still get the randomness without loosing to much time.
it's always a delicate balance! building high level encounters (or any encounter) is a science experiment. a little bit of this, a dash of that, take that out. it's an art form. gotta be challenging and rewarding but not impossible. thanks for the tips guys! love the channel!
I moved at one point and made a round of people to talk to before I left. One was a guy that was the best DM but I was not really close to. I thanked him for all of the fun and told him how much I really respected his ability to run a game. He was always on point and seemed to pull things out of his rear on quick plays or really make things fun on more set piece ones. He showed me his secret. He had things mapped out on 3x5 cards and triggers for backing off or adding on depending on how things were playing. He also had a list of every "odd" thing that the player had. So if we were doing good at round three of encounter he would trigger x, but if we were getting our head handed to us he would not or it would trigger y. The thing that really stuck was how simple the little boxes were with there codes for him to quickly know what needed to happen. That was all his own index to this card or that or to do some role playing change. Still, there were times that we would lose members in combat and even lose the whole party. That tells me he never disrespected the dice.
So much this. Running a campaign of 6 players that started at LVL 1 three years ago and is about to turn lvl 19. I wish I had seen this when they were lvl 11. I learned a lot of this through trial and error through gameplay. It was extremely frustrating as a DM to pit them against a suicidal encounter they had to run from and then see them stand their ground and burn the monster down before it even reached them because of an unfortunate initiative. Or, simply have one player unleash a volley of arrows taking it from full to 1/4 hit points and giving the monster only one turn before the rest finished it off. Thank you for the good video, I am sharing with my D&D FB group where we share tips between DMs and players.
what you expressed as the #2 problem used to be a problem for our DM. what he's done that we enjoy (and also saves him bookkeeping headaches) is to never have a lone bbeg with minions. it's always 2-4 bbegs. the minions are typically not present/run away/doing something else/insignificant. a level 10 party for example taking on a young red dragon with a bunch of minions will have an easy time once the party's controller casts hypnotic pattern. facing 2-4 young red dragons each with almost 200 hp you need to knock down is much tougher as they are not as susceptible to the party's typical countermeasures and have more varied offense than minions. on the plus side for the DM, he doesn't need to refer to multiple stat blocks and keep track of multiple initiatives. less clutter on the field as well.
I had 2 players join my campaign at level 7. One of them is a bard and is not too experienced in D&D, so I let her redo her spells during long rests. It lets her experiment with new spells and find the playstyle she likes.
As a dm I love running high level encounters with the only caveat being the number of players. When multiple enemies and party have a ton of magic and abilities fights tend to drag.
If you're a DM who's slow at counting, just use a dice-rolling app. However, I'd still recommend rolling physical dice just because part of the fun of being a player is the panic that sets in when you hear the DM roll a lot of dice. Or if the app simulates the sound of the dice being rolled, all the better.
One of the best feelings is listening to the app start to chug at all the D6 rolling
That's an awesome idea, why in the nine hells have I not thought of that lol
My favorite line as a DM with a character with Lucky is “man that was really unlucky. Such a shame.”
Best fight I ran against six level 10 pcs used a relatively small arena against 5 kobold press Smargadine Golems. Drawing them into the trap with a halberd within one of the golems which themselves were disguised as simple crystal formations but they were on dais's. They would have remained motionless until one of the character inevitably casted Detect Magic activating one of them and it used it's ability to send magical lightning damage hitting and activating one other them.
Best part was when someone casted Banish on one of them and while banished it used it's ability to eat the spell pop back into existence sending lightning damage everywhere and activating the rest.
This came at exactly the right time. I’ve been watching all of your videos relevant to my first attempt at DMing a dungeon for 5 Level 14 characters in just a couple weekends. Great work!
14:30 Last night during a boss battle against an acid hydra, one of our guys got grabbed and thrown up in the air. Instead of just falling into the acid below, they grabbed onto a stalactite and started chipping away at it. When my turn came around, I shot an eldritch blast at it to finish breaking it off, and it impaled the hydra for like 40-something damage in one hit. It was awesome, we all loved it. Rule of Cool > RAW
I like what you said on fast rolling and taking averages. My group now rolls ahead of their turn so long as we declare or roll with that certain intent to remain truthful to the group. This was after the one mistake we made was when my necromancer had 16 skeletons and my DM said ‘eh just make them all hit or miss on one d20 roll. It’ll be faster’ and I critical hit a Planetar for over 230 damage nearly killing it on the second round of combat.
This is very timely because my players are level 17 and a few nights ago they absolutely DEMOLISHED a combat encounter I was worried was going to be too difficult ! Thanks for posting!
High level combat definitely takes forever. I just had a party of 4 lvl 15 characters assault the keep of one of the major villains between just having enough enemies to actually be a threat on the field and the traps of her lair it took nearly over two months of weekly (3+ hr) sessions to finish. And that was with me having halved the HP of all the enemies around week 6 and cutting the bosses second form.
Amazing video, thanks! Instead of rolling dice you can just use digital dice if you have to roll a lot at once. Makes it much faster.
Perfect timing...I got a party that just hit level 10, yesterday.
Yeah, for high level play I really appreciate playing virtual where the programs count up all the dice for you. Its not that big of an issue for when you only roll 2 dice, but when counting up paladin smites, barbarian crits, sneak attacks, or dragon's breath attack, it is super nice to have all of the counting automatically done for you.
I used to run high level encounters all the time. When the players know what they’re doing and are kitted out with magical items normal encounters aren’t satisfying for either side.
I often find that encounter creators like Kobold Fight Club are useful but need tweaking. Set the encounter to deadly and add 1 more creature. This is usually enough to balance out vs a group with magic items.
No matter what help I'm looking for, I'm always sent back to y'all. Thanks for all the help!
Excellent video, Dudes! The topic was mostly technical. The end of an epic campaign is the best time to remember this game is a collaborative story. Throwing tension and narrative and humor can make the event more memorable.
In a recent campaign, our party cleared a field of undead. The BBEG had a bird drop a sending stone near us to taunt us, followed by the undead coming together into a giant amalgamation of undead!
My lizard barbarian called out to our artificer, “Make me big!” and charged the form.
The artificer actually actually cast reduce on the form, which made my lizard think it was larger.
So with lots of roaring and references to Godzilla and other monster movies, the not-giant lizard raged and helped slay the shrunken undead. Turning back to the friends, he realized he had “returned” to his normal size again... unaware that he never changed sizes that day. 😂
All of these are tips and guides I have used before. Absolutely well explained.
it's also helpful to remind your players of their early level abilities that can become incredibly powerful as they stack things on top of it, I have an arcane trickster bladesinger who is really(deservedly) proud of his build who forgot for a while that if he just let his friend attack first and he flanked with them he gets a bunch of d6s on top of everything else
These ideas are awesome! My party is level 1 but i am brainstorming how long I want my campaign to run and this helps. Thanks!
This was awesome and I'm definitely gonna use alot of this stuff High level play is my favorite part of D&D and it frustrates me to no end how criminally unsupported it is! Would love a episode on running a high level campaign as in maybe you start at high level or leveling to tier 3-4 was sped up and now we enter the meat of the campaign where the party is basically super heros but thus dealing with super threats. Comics are a great example of how high level play can be done with local and planar threats. Some combats can be easy stomps and some can be nail bitters but embrace being legendary!
While re-watching this I'm reminded of the spell Ed Greenwood described as coming from an ancient Netherese wizard. "Sardra's Chain" is a dweomer that "chains" specific spells to go off if a condition is met. Being a Netherese spell it could be reintroduced into any campaign not just a FR campaign as many Netherese wizards went plane hopping back in the day.
Chaining mid to high level spell effects can also cause the PCs to change their focus.
Playing an old character (or similiar foe) the DM has as an antagonist helps the DM a lot, the DM already knows how to play the character in combat!
well here is the thing a lot of DM's don't know. If a monster stat block has resistances or immunities that reduce or ignore a damage type, WotC reduce that monsters HP by an amount depending on CR and if it is a resistance or immunity, could be as much as a 50% reduction. here is the thing... most monsters that have resistances or immunities are designed for parties that most likely have the means to bypass the damage reduction so they are just fighting a nerfed encounter. there is a chart hiding in the DMG (pg. 277). so honestly when ever a DM builds an encounter they need to look at the stat block for the resistances and immunities, and see if the party has the means to bypass the damage reduction and if so need to adjust the HP by the chart in the book.
I love the idea of having only a couple rounds of combat and using all the high level spells and abilities... And then phase 2 begins
This is a very timely video as I have a party of 6 level 12 PCs and I really need to up my high-level combat game. Thanks!
Gosh I really got to get on your peatron. So I’m running a 4lvl 3 character party against a young green dragon. Iv set this up accordingly to their character abilities, charter resources, character knowledge of dragons, and a little healing potion assistance. I’m trimming the breathe damage a little bit but not much. I have good hopes that they will preserver. They are good players and as their characters ego/id they are true to form so some love from the dm will no doubt happen. Much love dudes and world.
I gave my party 6 orcs, 6 half-ogres, and 6 ogres (all homebrewed with special abilities), plus an orc shaman and a goblin shaman. To fight against a goblin necromancer with a super troll mount, skeletal Bulettes, skeletal Minotaurs, ogre zombies, skeletons, zombies and ghosts. It took 2 rounds over 2.5 hours lol. I’ve never been such an efficient DM but gosh dang. No more friendly NPCs at the very least lol
I'm a big advocate for more waves of monsters. Not just in high levels either.
I find it hard to justify 4-6 encounters per day so I tend to go for compound encounters: you have multiple complete encounters arriving roughly when the previous one has lost combat effectiveness (this can be when it's dead or when the only survivors are CC'd/stuck in melee with the tank/etc.). Sometimes these arrive as a surprise from 'offscreen' but I prefer it if they're on the map but with some natural delay. As some examples (pathfinder but the point stands):
- The player's inner-city base is being attacked by goblins, roughly 3 CR-appropriate encounter's worth. A bugbear fighter is battering down the door and will need to spend some turns after that coming up the stairs. Basic goblins with a couple of alchemists and pistoliers are jumping in through the top-floor windows, a few stragglers are coming from ground-floor windows. A goblin assassin is hiding on a rooftop lining up a kill (3-turn setup unreliable save-or-die that was most likely to hit an NPC tank). In an open field this would be a deadly encounter, but because the party can choose chokepoints it naturally splits itself into a few separate fights.
- 2 boarding ships full of undead are moving to flank the party's ship on a foggy day, their ship's main cannon can potentially sink and definitely slow one ship on the way in or could kill most of the chaff undead on the way in but probably not both. The ships each contained far too many zombies in order to stuff up the npc crew as well as a couple of fairly weak but still threatening Wights (negative levels are spooky and the party was low enough level that they'd be a long-term debuff). The ships' captains were the scariest melee combatants but they'd take a couple of turns to get past the zombies after the ships were grappled. Turns out the party Wizard had just got Web and Fireball so none of the zombies got a turn, the party Alchemist could CC the threatening enemies to uselessness and the party archer Fighter got caught in melee trying to protect the crew from Wights who could only hit him on a crit then when he got free to shoot the enemy captains he evaporated them. The theoretically deadly encounter ended up being a massive power trip for everyone involved, really needed a caster on each ship to counterbalance the chaos of the Wizard, but it did burn their resources without letting them nova as if it were multiple encounters.
If you're like me and want to speed up combat but still want variance in damage that's lost when just taking the average, here's a trick I use.
Roll a d4 and a d8. On the d4, 1 or 2 means subtract the d8 from the average damage, 3 or 4 means add the d8 to the average damage. You can easily adjust the d8 to a bigger or smaller die too to account for the kind of attack being done.
Now you've got damage variance that can be applied quickly without needing to add 20 dice together!
My party recently reached level 11 on my first time DMing campaign. When I started having trouble giving the players a challenge, one thing that I found useful is to plan multiple versions of the big combat encounters-- an easy, medium and hard version. Then, if the party just isn't managing their combat strategies well enough and are having enough trouble on the encounter at its easiest version, I'm just leave it at that. If in the first 2 rounds of combat they're already starting to make the big encounter feel trivial, I'll go ahead and unleash the backup elements, such as more minions arriving, a bigger monster that was the "real threat", hiding and waiting to see what would happen, environmental hazards or lair actions, etc.
High level abilities as a /requirement/ is the key thing. It is the kind of thing that SOUNDS obvious in hindsight, but is actually brilliant. Instead of short-circuiting a puzzle or encounter etc. this is necessary just to get in the door. Like a boss has this bodyguard creature that can't be harmed conventionally, and /has/ to be banished or polymorphed, or force-caged etc. to get at the boss. Of course, don't do this if your party doesn't have these spells and use them regularly, or perhaps clue them in that such a creature exists so they can prepare
thanks for the tips, ive gotten stuck in mass encounters with large number of monsters and initiative rounds of 10 people plus npcs and 6 different monster types... Ill boil it down and have different types of monsters come and go and change the texture of the room - moving rooms, flooding, lava coming in, players loosing magic abilities etc to make it more challenging!
I once ran a tier 3 combat encounter with just 5 party members versus an archmage, a blackguard in a cramped 6x6 room with a giant floor rune that cancelled out radiant damage. Due to the archmage using prismatic wall to divide the room in half, that one encounter took 12 rounds and nearly 3 hours to resolve.
I have 5 lvl 14 players vs a buffed and altered lvl 20 vengeance paladin. I plan to have 8 crystals of power that will give them buff if they use actions to absorb them and the BBEG can also do this. So I'm hoping it'd a balance of trying to buff themselves and prevent him from getting those buffs. Glad TDD put this up, defo gave me inspiration.
My dnd group always plays at super high levels, me and the other DM balance the encounters flying by the seats of our pants and it works out basically every time. Experience really helps!
Great topic. Personally, I have never gotten a character over 8th level playing “normally “.
Usually, party disengagement, character death , stuff like that happens and new characters/ campaign get rolled up/ started
Wild Magic Surge for every spell cast is a fun mechanic to add, and like every combat solution presented, there are ways to run it efficiently without it being "too much." It can go in the party's favor or the DM's favor depending on the rolls, and that's a fun external factor to said high-level combat encounter.
Spoilers for some Adventurers League content incoming:
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In some modules, if a player character ends their turn adjacent to a fellow player character or other creature afflicted by an in-game effect, they make a saving throw or take one level of exhaustion right off the bat. It forces players to strategize and consider positioning and be mentally present at all times, which adds to the excitement of said high-level encounter.
A mid-high level session break time skip with retraining is always nice. Feels like a level or two but just a retool for higher level efficiency. Changing subclasses or retraining a small dip into another class can work wonders.
I always create situations whare there is more to do than just kill the monster. Stoping a ritual, dealing with the environment, saving npcs and so on. Give the players other uses for their actions than just attacking.
Agreed, there is a real gap in D&D material for high level, and virtually nothing for going epic level. Here's hoping WOTC brings some material for this area of the game. That said, thanks for this video!
I'm not sure if you've addressed this in a video before or not. I've seen most of your guys' stuff and I don't recall it. But I'd like to see a topic-specific video where the Dungeon Dudes talk about fixing/mitigating meta-gaming at the table. I feel like it'd be a great guide for DMs and players alike and it deserves its own video.
I do enjoy listening to this kind of content and watching your role play...i havent played 5E at all yet but it looks fun...i have ran ALOT of games even taking 2 characters to level 50 in 3.5 to me it was kind of liberating to throw the worst of everything i wanted to at them (within reason) and not have to worry near as much about the perfect balance...tho 1 of them did die at level 50 brought back by a set of armor which only had 1 use ever to raise the wearer...which we had almost forgot about.
Split the 'Boss' fight up into 'phases' and manage Resources. have the party fight some minions at the beginning, and then have the minions 'flee' forcing the party to chase them. (this adds a break in the combat and not let the party rest to recuperate resources. The party then catches up and finishes off the escaping minions only to encounter the next 'wave/phase' of minions/leaders/generals to take care of before having to chase the few whom escape or trigger a ritual or time event the party have to stop before the Boss shows up.
As a DM of 8 level 15’s, this was DESPERATELY needed.
A standard Level 13 Encounter I run is a Terasque, the point is to show the players combat is basically a done deal now unless I have alternative win/lose requirements.
I love love LOVE marital classes, sword fighting has always been one of my favorite things. I will always buff up my melee players with sweet armor and weapons, hell I've even written up complete named sets of gear specifically directed for certain players
There is a reason that the High Level games are so popular at Conventions!
Lower level combats can be pretty predictable, but high level combats are so unpredictable!
There is a reason that in AD&D, the high level adventures were in areas where many spells were modified or unusable, or on other planes where many magic weapons were diminished. Magic weapons got a -1 for each plane they are away from where it was created!
What I have done more and more as we climb into the higher levels is that, now that I am familiar with the parties limitations, I have stopped paying attention to CR and now look roughly at the damage output and HP of the monster as the ballpark as to how difficult it is. It can be difficult to gauge, especially when the enemy may rely on sneak attack for big bursts of damage, or maybe can cast Greater Invisibility as a bonus action once a day, or something like that. But being familiar with what your party can or cannot take on is more important that listening to a graph.
I usually run a large group game (6-8 PCs) and in order to make things easier on me I often have the monsters all have the same initiative. I also know ahead of schedule my PC's AC and then let them know when they have been hit by the monsters and the damage they take. It just helps with flow.
I hope you guys don't mind but I absolutely plan on using that matching tiles with water elementals puzzle idea for a campaign of mine! Such an awesome creation!
That was fun to watch!
I love that encounter in the sewers Monty ran in FoD. I’m going to use that myself one day!
I am struggling with this in my home game, thanks dudes.
When counting up large dice pools, I find it faster and easier to pull aside groups of 10 (6&4, 5&5, 3331...), then I can look at the dice groupings and quickly go forty- uhhh-six.
Use sly flourish's tip of static damage to speed things up when damage dice start mount up and arithmetic slows you down.
The mob attacks help keeping the hoards of minions too, just keep a counter on a huge creature like if it was a swarm and keep like 3 or 4 pf those around to mess with players each round using the mob rules of the dmg
I DM for a party of lvl13 characters.
+Traps indeed become a huge part of making game interesting. One can't kick rising lava to submission :D I remember them laughing ehen they've stumbled upon kobold caves with enemies they can kill with gentle poke of a stick. Laughter soon stopped, since kobolds are really good at making their living space a death maze.
+Initiative order becomes even deadlier. Ensuring that at least some enemies get to move first is a must.
+Breaking encounter into smaller stages really helps. Some players tend to spend some valuable resource on minions, thinking there won't be BBEG foght in a round or two :)
+Lair actions and Legendary actions. Those do really play out nice, if used well :)
In short. Make them think, make them spend resources by wearing the party down a bit. Let their victory feel like they overcame something deadly against all odds.
Did you guys see the Direct. Spell Jammer is going to be amazing
This video and the one about legendary monsters, have made the end of my campaign much better. I can't wait for my players to see the new craziness I'll be bringing. Thanks so much for the tips Dudes!!!!!!!!
I've changed how Legendary creatures function. Giving them multiple turns instead being able to act off turn. This gives them more saves against dibiliting effects. At the same time I've changed Legendary resistance, so instead of auto succeeding, the effect only lasts for one turn. This might kill a turn where they are paralysed or banished, making the spell the player used actually helpful, but doesn't end the fight.