Seth: "Imagine if every player at the table took ten seconds to make their action." Me: "OMG right?! That would be *amazing*! I can only dream of my group acting that quickly and..." Seth: "Yeah that's way too long." Me: "............"
I know, right? I'm use to ten minutes as they all take turns digging through their character sheets, reading spells, again, or trying to figure where the optimal place for them to stand is. I swear, I could smoke an entire cigar while waiting for one them to take a turn.
From the angry gm If they're taking too long "um" ing and "err" ing then role play that, state they are overtaken by the encounter and take the parry action. It'll only happen a time or two before they get it.
"I hold my action" is something GMs should always teach newbies they can do. Most of time players just play by the default turns and expect the retreat scenario to take into account the dissonance between coordinated actions and turn based gameplay. Same for "alternative methods of action" like disarm/deflect, alot of players fear actions to not be allowed because they're not listed in the chara'sheet, and players who started like that may become too rigid when come their turn to GM.
Combat 101: Ten Tips for Better Combats - Playing RPGs (Summary) 1. Stick together. 2. Combine Attacks on one Enemy. 3. Retreating is OK. 4. Use your terrain. 5. Plan your move before your turn. 6. Make a Battle Plan and be willing to change it. 7. Strategize your attack order. 8. Sometimes the best option is to remove an opponents ability to attack. (knock down, disarm) 9. Don't be Afraid to Take the Penalty. Love of bonus can lead players to take bad choices. 10. Know your Group's assets. Ie know what your allies can do (spells, powers, special ability) 11. (bonus) Sometimes your job is to take the Hit. Distributing enemy hits allows everyone to surive.
While combining attacks is going to make you more effective, I don't really think it makes for "better" combats. I mean from a narrative standpoint it's kind of stupid if a big group suddenly ignores everyone to single out and focus target one creature unless there's a really good reason to do so, and it's likely to get your DM to start doing it back to you, which really isn't much fun at all, especially if you're the poor guy getting focused fired all the time. Really I kind of thing it's best to have a gentleman's agreement not to just focus things down and play it more like an action movie where the heroes generally pair off into their own fights.
@@taragnor - Analogous to the argument against critical hits doing some massive damage or special effect up to and including decapitation. If it works both ways, eventually one of the PCs is going to have their head lopped off.
What's weird is how quickly veteran players forget. Part of that is due to strategies changing as a group and game becomes more powerful and a world of new options becomes available. It's dramatic to see when they switch from a powerful High-Level game to a weaker Low-Level one, and all of a sudden all that strategy they used to use when they were low level before is forgotten. It can take them a while to remember how they used to deal with swarms of bad guys before they had their fireball miniguns. Then you have the change of systems. Very often I've seen players either A: Forget all strategy altogether and they flail around like they've never played a TTRPG before until they begin to re-learn it, or B: They rigidly stick to a tactic that worked in the previous system and fail to take into account the mechanic differences until after they've gotten their teeth kicked in a few times.
Seth Skorkowsky Thanks for all the great advice. It’s nice to have these refresher courses. I’ve seen many veteran players (myself the included) fall into these pitfalls because they didn’t adapt to the situation. One example: I was late joining a group of newbies. (2e DnD). The group was struggling with the basics (like tying knots in a rope to make the climb up a mountain) and I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. So, the DM made me create a character. So, quick, down and dirty, I rolled up a one trick pony double scimitar specialist. My characters first encounter was with a aerial gargoyle that had been his captor for several years. He picked up his scimitars (ignoring the +1 magical longsword. I never thought to check the longsword) and went to town dealing multiple attacks and massive damage on a creature that regenerated anything but magical damage. When the party finally arrived, the fighter picked up the longsword and killed it in two hits. I ran with it. From that point on my character refused to use anything but scimitars...until he was forced to use a hammer by a god. It forced him become its cleric. Ty Windswords hated that god. But, that’s another story for another time. I miss Ty Windswords and his magic scimitars Gyre and Gimble.
Loving this so far, but had to comment on a coincidence that happened because my ISP is trash. Just after you said, "each player spends an average of 10 seconds at the beginning of their turn deciding what to do." my network had lost connection and the video had only buffered to that point. So I thought, "Wow that's a great way to emphasize how long that is" with the YT buffering 2/3 circle and everything. So I hover over the video and that time has stopped. This might be one of those you had to be there things, but it seemed pretty funny to me. Thanks for the effort you put into all of your videos, always informative and entertaining!
Awesome! Tactics I like to teach people, based on what I have learned in the military and applying them to D&D type games... (1) "Battle of Thermopylea" -- Do not rush into a confined area, especially when you can be outnumbered there. Use terrain to set up a choke point with the tanks up front to block a door to limit the number of attacks against you, and let the ranged characters blast. Plus it leaves you a retreat route behind you -- always leave an exit route! (Just as the outnumbered Spartans did in Thermopylea to prevent being surrounded.) (2) "Fling fuel on the fire. Stand back to back!" -- If surrounded, stay together in a small pack with the strongest characters on the outside of the huddle. The party becomes like a little multi-headed monster. (Go back to Gandalf's orders on top of Weathertop when surrounded by wolves.) (3) "Protect the quarterback." -- In 5e D&D, tanks should use "dodge" to extend their ability to block for other players who do damage. Tanks don't have to damage, but they do have to protect the others by pinning down the monster or restricting their ability to move or attack defensively weaker party members. (In my opinion, the most tactically smart player should be the tank until the others learn how to do it by watching. Most players I see do not have the foggiest idea what a tank is; they see a fighter as a damage dealer instead of an enabler for others.) (4) "Air forces disperse troops." -- When being attacked by something that drops big area of effect bombs (e.g., fireball, dragon breath), then you need to disperse (rather than stick together) so that they cant get the whole party in one blast. (5) "Hit and run." -- If fighting things that move slower than you, then used ranged weapons and wait for them to come to you. As they get closer, move away. (6) "Decoy and destroy." -- Another split up tactic (if you have at least equal speed to the monster) is to have one character (or small group) "kite" by running one way, and the another going another way. Force the monster to chase one group that keeps running away while the other pelts it with ranged weapons. Lastly, always remember your objective. If your job is to retrieve a magic ring, then don't worry about killing monsters unless they put you in a position where you must kill them to attain your objective. Just go around them or leave. Don't waste resources and risk death when you don't need to. If you can get the ring without killing any monsters, that's efficient. (No one who has been in the military really wants to fight if they can avoid it.)
@@greggyp8265 Thanks! When I DM i use a set of tactics too. My fav is to intentionally put monster encounters that are to be avoided or run from. I love the sense that you (i.e., your character) could die, that sense of intense fear. Infinite monster spawns are a great trick to do that -- a few monsters becomes overwhelming after a few rounds. Soon the payers realize that trying to kill the monsters is not going to be possible, and they get on with what they were there to do in the first place (if it is not too late). If you do that, you have to give them an escape route (and they have to be smart enough to preserve it).
This is great advice! I noticed you didn't say which edition of D&D nor do I know how you build encounters, but for protecting the football in 5e a tank dodging is typically suboptimal because of the importance of action economy. It's hard for tanks to draw the attention of enemies and not attacking enemies lowers the tank's percieved threat level. Dodging also has the action economy result of a negative if the tank isn't targeted or is the victim of a saving throw that's not dexterity.
@@anthonynorman7545 I think dodging is great in 5e if you have others that can do damage while the blocker blocks. These are tactics I tend to like as player. As a DM, many of my encounters so that they are obstacles to attain milestones more so than objectives themselves. I like it when players do NOT attack things, but find other ways around them. The only exception is a quest where the players are tasked by a quest giver to rid the world of something. The rest of the time, I see encounters more as a problem to solve and they are often too hard to win by fighting. They are there to kick the intensity up a notch. In general I do not like 5e though -- too many player options that break the game, too much emphasis on power gaming super-hero individualism (i.e., level up and gain more power as the object of the game, rather than team problem solving/going to war with the army you have rather than the army you want, not enough mystery in the magic or rich enough description to make people feel awe or fear), and preference for farcically flawed (rather than heroically brave) characters. I am more partial to my own home brew systems that borrow form different games. My goal is to to create a sense of wonder, awe, and fear -- which means that a lot of stuff players can't know, such as a spell list with all the rules in the Player's Handbook. I think that is the biggest mistake Gygax made, and all other D&D editions have that same problem. In my opinion, the players should not know what magic is until the DM reveals it to them. Magic is the source of mystery in fantasy, and player's rule books turn it into a tool or new weapon for the power gamer instead of something that is "unknown" (in the HP Lovecraft sense). As a side note, if you read the details of the fantasy stories and to whine about how long winded Tolkein is (for example, as people like Matthew Colville have), you can learn a lot of things you can adopt or adapt for your game -- whether it be flavor, hardcore content, or even game mechanics.
I can definitely attest to the power of using the terrain and removing the ability to hit you. In a semi-recent D&D game, my Barbarian had some beef with a corrupted angel after she showed up out of nowhere (really the Greater Invisible Monk used an item to summon her, but no one thought to explain that to her and the party actively kept the item a secret from me in-character) while we were fighting some devil cultists. She was claiming not just the cult's entire stash of treasure, but also the party's indentured servitude for her deigning to help out when she arrived. Initiative was declared by the DM at my outburst, and the other party members chose to not roll, as this was my action and they don't want any of the consequences of picking a fight with a celestial, especially a mean one. Winning initiative, my Barbarian (who had seen her fighting with a wicked battle scythe not ten minutes prior, talking 2d4+6d8+4 on two attacks) disarms the angel of her weapon, grapples her, and then drags her away from her weapon. The DM, not really expecting that to happen, has the angel try to escape the grapple, (as by 5e rules when you're grappled you get no movement, even flight) but fails in the attempt due to massive Barbarian strength. I then drag her to a nearby lava fixture (as this cult is wont to have, devils generally being immune to fire damage so it's a good place to hide) and lower her in, doing obscene amounts of damage and killing her in the follow-up hit. This was a creature that was intended to be a match for a party a full 8 levels higher, and while she was moderately wounded from the prior fight, so was my Barbarian after being SET ON FIRE and basically being the Wall of Damage Sponging between the cultists and the party's casters. So even with whatever factors may or may not have made it easier, it was still a one-on-one fight with a far stronger opponent that was effectively beaten by thinking outside the usual strategy of just hitting things. "This thing is great at fighting with this weapon, maybe don't let her have it." "It can fly, but I can't, so try to keep it on the ground." "Lava does lots of damage to bad guys, maybe it does the same to used-to-be-good-guys." All thoughts that even an 8 INT tribal Barbarian can think of if you remember half their lives are spent fighting in harsh conditions where every edge is necessary.
Another helpful tip for combat: Kill the "Force Multiplier." It's a variation on the Shadowrun classic "Geek the Mage." Find the enemy that can drop the most damage or can keep others fighting and end them quickly. In a lot of fantasy inspired games, this is the caster classes. In more tech heavy games, this is the person either lobbing or directing explosives, or firing the automatic weapon. If the enemy has low intelligence and a single director, kill them. Assess the situation and find the thing causing the most trouble on the field, then put the boot to them.
I like what you said about taking penalties. New D&D players will almost never incur opportunity attacks on themselves, even when doing so will give them a huge advantage.
The battle plan section reminded me of one of my Earthdawn parties. They were so in sync that they fell into roles during combat, adapting to situations and opponents, all without any discussion. They just trusted each other to cover their roles no matter what they are up against. It was beautiful.
That last advice is pure gold. I love playing ranged characters, but in D&D, I was recently playing a Ranger for a three sessions game and I figured that damned they can be an excellent "switch-hitter". Ranged at first, then when needed drop the bow, draw the sword and plunge into melee. Mixed with their small spellcasting abilities which allows them to heal themselves and boy can they take a hit. Much more than I would have expected. My go to from now on whenever I play a ranged character in D&D(specifically)
Believe it or not, in AD&D many rangers were pure melee fighters that excelled at killing dangerous monsters quickly, usually with the biggest greatsword they could find. They were much more directly tied to the "Aragorn" style of ranger than the "Legolas" style of ranger. They do have a wide and useful array of skills that come in handy, and are also excellent at going solo for periods of time if need be.
#2 is a point that even experienced players can miss. I think it's because people instinctively operate on the assumption that wounding an enemy reduces their effectiveness. That _can_ work in systems that track damage effects. In games like D&D though, a Goblin with 1HP hits as accurately and as hard as an uninjured Goblin. The way I explained it to my current group was to think of a group of adversaries as a single creature with multiple attacks per round. Each adversary they take out of the fight means one less attack to a party member.
I'm a relatively new player playing in two different systems with two different groups. One is vanilla D&D, which, like in this video, requires us to gang up on enemies and not try to solo them especially if outnumbered, but otherwise, isn't very complex mechanics wise. The other one is a much less forgiving system where everyone has a pretty constant, but much lower overall pool of hitpoints. Not only do you gradually become less effective depending on your health percentage, but it also has a wound system that will cripple your future attacks, parries and movement speed with just one wound. The more you get hit, the worse you fight, and the more likely you are of going down. This is hell for an unequipped and unprepared party, but we can also use it to our advantage on our enemies. In such systems, it is much more important to play tactically and try to get the drop on our enemies, especially if they hit harder than you and we know that one hit from an orcish waraxe or one bolt from a heavy crossbow WILL cause a wound, that are a bitch to fight with and also a bitch to heal afterwards.
Nick Williams Nick Williams speaking of that, I have someone in Shadowrun who I allowed to have a few abilities that make called shots amazing to try to encourage others to learn that not only do they exist, but that they’re awesome.
@@magiv4205 Yes, Shadowrun is another popular system that uses this sort of game design. You have a "Damage track" which starts at 0 and goes up to a value based on your stats before you fall down and are in danger of dying, and for every 3 damage you take, you get -1 die to all tests. This also adds more mechanical depth to the game because you can use things like drugs to increase pain tolerance and remove those wound penalties, while still being actually wounded, much like a "berserker" effect.
@@crazyeyes8962 First of all, I really have to play Shadowrun sometime, and second of all, I love the berserker effect! Not only because it is very useful, but also because it is an awesome rp element. In my system, DSA, after you recieve a wound, you have to make a saving throw after every wound recieved to not be immediately incapacitated by the pain for 5 rounds. You are still conscious, but pretty much only able to crawl. First of all, 5 rounds is a LOT, often an entire combat, and second of all, It's hard to correct, as there are very few effective healing spells in this system. And all but the most expensive ones heal gradually, and not instantly. There are several insta heal potions, but you still need someone to administer them in the middle of the fray. So if you go down, it's likely you stay down for the rest of the combat. If you manage to stay up and make a second successful grit save, you can ignore the penalty caused by the wound alltogether, and fight on normally. So it is very important to level up your grit and pain tolerance if you plan on doing any kind of melee combat, and always use buff spells before combat. Or do it like us, and have one character invest in alchemy/brewing to make potions of what we scavenge in the wilderness and on quests, to keep us supplied on drugs, buffs and heals.
Thats why I homebrewed the fleeing/faking death/begging for mercy for majority of npcs when npc has low health while also giving them disadvantages on majority of actions and removing their modifiers from actions during it. Some creatures that go berserk or hellbent on killing, of course, ignore it, but for others its much more natural and immersive to see common animals to try to run away and bandits dropping their weapons begging for forgiveness, and even undeads like ghosts try to shift the planes and disappear or possess the item or tiny creature and hide in it. So far my players love it, and the choice deciding the npcs fate is a great roleplay fuel that also cuts and forms the alignments better.
On thing to consider. In the focus attacks example, if the final round had gone with the monsters attacking the more wounded character instead of the less wounded character (which is the same concept as having the players focus their attacks), it would still have been a TPK.
Says the wizard while he turns invisible and is about to cast flight to go back to town becaus ehe burned all of his spells in the first 5 rounds of combat and he doens't want to use a crossbow. True story, sadly, wasn't that fun to play with.
@@TERMINATOR3900 Yes, but since they lacked punch he did not waste time casting them,...so our adventurers were basically we fight once, got to rest 8 hours, fight again, rest for 8 hours etc etc...needless to say it was boring as hell...not to mnetion he was metagaming @Oh, it's a dire wolf, they only got XYZ hit points, you can fight them alone...oh no a Gooey Blob! Got to use fire for that one since he's immune to anything else!@ etc etc...
I've plowed through all your videos ever since I stumbled upon your channel. I've mostly played D&D and not once have I encountered anyone who has heard of Call of Cuthulu other than the movie oh so long ago. You, Jack & co. have a great place. Thanks for the tips, reviews & fun for us who have a hard time getting groups together or just the time for said gaming sessions.
Mark Medina There are people who have not heard of CoC RPG?!? All my gamer friends know of it, but none of them are mad enough to run it. (Well, there was the one guy in college). When I run it, my player don’t like me much. They keep coming back, though. Except that one person. If you read this, I really am sorry about that. I didn’t know you had that trigger. :/
Best combat video I have seen to date. Having played with many military players, even those intricately planning "L-shaped ambushes", etc., it is remarkable how often the tips here have been ignored. Sometimes it's just not realizing how the game mechanics work (vice "real-world experience"), but this video should be beneficial to ANY party finding themselves in combat together.
What exceptional videos. I know Seth doesn’t play 5e as often as other systems, but I treasure his takes on D&D. But videos like this transcend systems and are truly invaluable. Please keep making these universal rpg videos! Thank you again!
Thank you Seth! I have players who have not figured out these moves. Any of these moves. I say things like, "Remember the creature with one hit point can still kill you." Then I sigh and watch them injure each opponent, but not take anyone out. Aaaaah! I will suggest this video to all of them. Hopefully someone will watch this before this Thursday Game night. I have only been gaming 42 years, yet I still Found this great!
Dear Seth: has been a while since I commented on your videos but thanks for this, I truly appreciate your efforts, andyou are alife saber, I Will make all my players watch this, our main game is cyberpunk, but we Branch out to D and D and now we start Pulp and Call of Cthulhu, but really we need more videos like thanks alot Seth, you are the best and say hi from me to Jack and the BoneSaw and the agent from Scott Bronw kisses and hugs
Great job on this one, Seth. My players just accidentally started a war during thier last session. Something tells me that these tips will useful for them. 😁 I'm going to show then this video before our next session.
In the system my group uses, Rolemaster, most of the weapons have the ability to be used in non-optimal ways for a minor penalty, such as hitting with the flat of a blade or throwing a short sword (NOT a minor penalty!) or using a spear like a staff to help with that skeleton.
This is why all my characters have a mix of weapons to be able to deal all the different physical damage types. In Pathfinder that is Slashing, Bludgeoning, and Piercing. If nothing else, a dagger gets you piercing or slashing. and in a pinch a gauntlet get you the bludgeoning. But I usually include a kunai which does P or B, can be thrown, and can be used as a piton or crowbar without being damaged.
@@MonkeyJedi99 i dunno why but hitting with the flat side of a sword is my favorite thing. it's like slapping someone except you're doing it with something that very well could be lethal. obviously, the only proper term for hitting someone with the flat of a sword is to "clap" them.
Great video as always Seth. I have to admit that I was actually expecting a video for combat on the GM's side of the screen, and any insight you had on how to run them more smoothly and efficiently without taking away from the players. I hope you do something like this soon!
A lot of these were trueisms to me even before I started TTRPGs - focus fire has been a classic tactic in basically all video game RPGs, for example. But I think the easiest one to forget is the last tip, which goes by the mantra 'HP is a Resource' in my groups. The first long-term character I played was a D&D5e Barbarian in a six-character campaign with only one other frontliner. We always did our jobs, but that other frontliner also stressed the importance of the guys in the backline to occasionally attract stray hits in big fights - where we coined the term. Now that I'm playing a ranged character in Pathfinder 2e, I play as basically a skirmisher - always able to position myself to 'peel' for my 'tanks' if necessary (and including a lot of short-ranged attacks to boot). The party was surprised when I threw an oathbow in a bag of holding specifically because to use it effectively I'd have to stand beyond my preferred range due to the minimum range penalties of longbows in that system. (though to be fair, oathbows aren't quite as amazing as their ancestral equivalents in Pathfinder 2e). also, minor trivia/fun fact related to video game RPG knowledge having cross-over: the original Final Fantasy also had mechanics that let you manage HP by controlling where damage went - the character at the top of the screen was hit 50% of the time, the next 25%, and the final two 12.5%. So if you let your weaker characters take beatings for a fight or two, then put the tankier ones in front, you could much more effectively get through dungeons without just brute-force outleveling htem.
I come back to this video now and then when I'm designing bigger combat scenarios, it would be really cool to see a combat video from a gm point of view, thanks so much for the wonderful videos
@10:00 There's an old joke: two men are walking down a highway with shovels. They stop every mile or so, one digs a hole, and the other fills the hole back in. Someone approaches the two and asks what they're doing. They explain that they're supposed to putting up mile markers, but their coworker - the one who places the signs - is out sick. Don't let that be your party.
In my college's DnD club I played a mastermind rogue/grave cleric. My character was effectively a utility bot. I could bonus action help against the boss and use the grave cleric's channel divinity to make that monster take double damage on the next attack. Was a lot of fun because the character could always be useful in any situation. Have various control spells ready to go and just keep throwing out bonus action helps. Managed to completely neutralize a final boss once by casting silence in a small room where the boss couldn't do much. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed playing a utility based character
Good rundown of basics for combat. I'd really like to see you give advice on how to run good - and faster! - combats as a GM. I find it a bit of a struggle to get strike a balance between fun, challenge and reasonable time and would love to see what advice you've picked up over the years
get rid of the mat and figures and run a wuxia style / theater of the mind battle. Every few rounds use dice, bottle caps, etc to provide a visual of what's happened so far. Also, having PCs and opponents taking their turns at the same time can be fun.
We had a one-shot last night where our characters are all members of the River District Watch. It reached a point where Sahuagin appeared and they were clearly wanting something or someone. In the cells were three "privateers", so my Halfling Rogue went to question them rather than standing by at the barred and bolted entrance to the Watch-house. The other two players had completely forgotten about the prisoners but at least had the sense to maintain a choke-point at the now battered entrance. Polberry (my character) spent the entire combat encounter racing around trying to find a particular object, succeeded, and threw it to the Sahuagin. Then the Sahuagin priestess demanded the privateer captain as well. My character is a rather unscrupulous sort and gladly handed over this captain. During the combat, the DM pulled a couple of tricks which PCs often do. The first was that the priestess cast "Spiritual Weapon" next to the other two PCs. The second was "Hold Person" on the prisoner as he was resisting being handed over. The choke-point worked very well, giving the two PC Fighters Flanking. The DM was on the ball with his monsters using a few of the spells often used by PCs.
Great stuff as always One thing I'd always recommend is "don't be afraid to be a little suboptimal/not do your coolest move every round" A good example from a recent game: in a fight with a grappling vine monster, who was getting dangerously close to murdering our guide, I considered taking an action to assist the guide's escape attempt, but opted to attack instead. The guide did thankfully survive, but it wasn't because of my moderately damaging plink attack. I struggle with this a lot myself cuz I'm very big on _gaaame feeeel,_ and doing something where you don't get to be quite as active or roll can naturally be a less attractive option. What helps me to counter this instinct is to put in extra work on the description: maybe my lizard warlock didn't just "help the guide," she "bit and clawed at the vines to create an opening to escape." Something like that would be more fun to act out, really places others in the scenario, and gives them stuff to possibly work with themselves.
Great tips fot players. The difference between a tpk and a harrowing but survivable event is often great teamwork or a remarkably creative approach. Once your team knows how to be team its an unlimited resource. Remarkably creative plans are rare in comparison. Both are rewarding for the DM and the players.
Awesome as always with some great advice. My favorite part was the bit where one of your players took over your game and you got to play. That made me happy. I never get to play, it seems. I'm always running. Both characters looked so stoked!
Excellent video, Seth, thanks for making it. As a gamer for more years experience than I care to admit, I can honestly think of war stories to each of your 10+1 examples and it was nice to be reminded of them. (An instance where a PC with a large 2-handed warhammer refused to switch to a silver dagger whilst fighting a lycanthrope comes to mind.) I can also remember more than one occasion when my group totally failed as well. It’s always good to be reminded on how to play smart.
The 5:50 scenario is exactly what happened last saturday. My players were fighting a hydra (an encounter they had no chance of beating head-on at their level, they needed something resembling a tactic), except they didn't decide they were gonna run. One guy decided to run. Then the other guy, who later told me he had the idea of using readied actions to all run at the same time, figured "without him to divvy up the damage, I'm dead", and abandoned the third player. Then the Hydra, that had an 80% chance to hit him, succeeded 4 attacks and he died.
All your videos are great and this one is especially sublime for being so practical and common-sense, and yet I’ve never played in a game where players did any of these things, haha! If all players watched this, the level of gaming in combat would rise suddenly and dramatically.
I like that you gave a name to many of the things that players do to help their party. We are playing through a rough modual in Pathfinder and our party has no dedicated tank! My rouge character has been doing the "take the hit" as he has the best AC in the party. He just does not have the hit points to back it up. Luckily we have 2 healers, one stays close to keeping me on my feet when my Dex is not enough while the other can cover the rest of the party.
wonderful video, thanks! Some of these I already knew, and others I kinda knew through instinct and common sense, but it helps to reinforce them when they're verbalized like this.
The nice thing about my players is that they generally try to keep themselves to tactics like this. Players who have characters more likely to take an enemy out in a single hit generally jump to be the wall that defends party members that don't have as much offensive output, spellcasters try to take out groups of enemies at once or possibly even use status effects to restrain enemies or buff allies in order to keep the more powerful characters alive and able to continue defending the noodles in robes.
I have idea that might counter this issue but I don't think it is practical nor would it be fun for the person who has to implement it. In the Inheritance Trilogy, magic is prevalent in the setting and powerful magicians can wipe out a whole army of non-magic users if they have the right spell. Hence armies have magicians who have the sole job to protect their squadron from magical attacks, with a lesser priority on dealing with non-magical attacks. They use a combination of protective spells and debilitating spells to do this. So my idea is that a party wizard could be given this role where they would just reserve most of their spell slots for Counter Spell and buff their team mates who will be the damage user. The problems I can forsee beforehand are... 1) Is there a Wizard in the party and do they have the required spells to do this? 2) Would the party wizard be cool with it? This job sounds boring on paper as a Wizard would simply be reserving actions or using attack cantrips if they are not Counter Spelling. 3) Counterspelling is not fool proof. If there more magical attacks than Wizards to cast reactions the party will get hit. Not to mention if the wizard can only use a spell slot of a lower level for the Counter Spell to ward of a higher level spell there is a chance it can fail. 4) I'm only level 3 so my experience is limited but based on seeing how DMs run adventure I believe they would find ways to counter this tactic relatively quickly once they got use to it. Meaning it might be a one trick wonder.
In that situation there are two things to consider. Is the splash damage small enough to only effect the players. Will this allow player characters to better assist each other? Ultimately while splash damage may go off with the party scattered, you are still risking having one or more party members going down without any chance of support and ending up in a bad position in the example above. In my experience the only way to effectively deal with splash damage is to either negate the source, or to get into a position where the source cannot use it effectively (either because of terrain or because of allies/themselves)
Guys, remember that TEAMWORK is important for the game. It is just as important to be supportive of your teammates in combat as being the one delivering the killing blow.
Seth... you are a national treasure and I am a necroposter... maybe start responding to necroposters sometimes, cause we all weren't lucky enough to find you when the vids were fresh? Anyway, I have played around 80 ttrpg in my time and your insight and presentation are phenomenal---keep it up
15:00 This is why all my warrior characters have multiple types of weapons that all have similar stats but different damage types (longsword/warhammer, greatsword/maul), same bonuses, no problem.
Great advice here. I don't care how poor your character is or their class. You ALWAYS carry dagger and club. Dagger is as much a tool as it is a weapon. Sling is also a really good, low cost, emergency weapon. There are rocks everywhere. Later on, look into cold iron and silver (about lvl 3-5)
@@gentlemanbear Yes, a handaxe/hatchet is one-handed, but woodsmen/firemen have need for multiple axes of various sizes. You can use a hatchet for chopping off limbs of a downed tree easier than if you used a two-handed axe, for instance. And if you are holding something with one of your hands, you definitely don't have the second hand free to chop things with.
Seth, love your videos man. Came back to rewatch this one so I can keep the concepts in mind as I plan certain encounters. You get me excited to sit down and work on my campaign for my players. Soon as I'm done reading the Neuromancer series your books are next. Need to support my favorite D&D youtuber. 👊🏻 I think I'm also going to send this vid to my players a few days after a more roleplay heavy session just so they don't think I'm bashing them. 😂 They aren't bad by any means but they could be a little more tactical.
About the "Sometimes your job is to take a hit" point, I remember playing 3.5. I was a Fighter, and one of my party members was a Sorcerer. His only useful attack was his Dragon Breath. At one point a giant monster grabs me with its jaws and grapples me, and the sorcerer is standing there doing nothing, because he's afraid of hitting me, so I (as my character) shout "SET IT ON FIRE, DAMMIT!!!". Thankfully, I got out of the grapple immediately after that.
I was told once that sometimes a player decides that for his character, specifically, to do only what is best for him as a individual is more coherent with his personality, archetype, blood type, etc, than actually play as part of something bigger. So when is time to take some damage for the sake of other characters those players decide their character will do the hard and right thing, which in their case is to be true with their plot and concept: and flee, leaving the losers behind.
This is something I need to share with my gaming group. I recently started DnD 5e with noob players. I am long time player and first time live DM and am still struggling at learning the new system. I am currently having to dial back my own combat tactics to make up for the fact my players have zero sense of tactics. Hopefully, it will prove useful to them and allow me to run better combats. Thank you!
We play The One Ring. Focusing Fire is hard there, when close combat starts, as each player engage with an enemy if the numbers match. Then, if there are more adversaries than players left, the Loremaster divide them up among the players. If there are more players than adversaries it's easier though. You van, however, work together in combat in some meaningful ways.
@@evilscientistrecords 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣💖 No, in fact I'm planning on a video (in spanish) about this very same topic, and Seth's analysis are usually invaluable 😊 But I will keep your idea! -OK guys, let's just do a quick break and.. In the meanwhile, maybe you want to go check this video 😁😁😁
One of the things a lot of new players fail to understand is the power of action economy. If you are new, action economy refers to the ratio of actions taken by two sides of a combat (i.e # of turns/actions you and your allies get vs how much your enemies get in a round) This is why focusing your attacks to bring down enemies rather than spreading your damage across them is so important, you want to lower the action economy of your opponents by reducing the number of enemies who get to make attacks. Action economy really swings the way combat goes. In this same vein I see a lot of more experienced players who say healing in combat is stupid, because most enemies deal more damage than a healer can restore. However, you can have players who get multiple attacks, some who can regularly get 4 or more. A healer who uses an action to keep an action-heavy player up on their feet is way better than the healer attacking the enemy with one action while the fighter is down, costing the group 4 attacks they would have dealt.
Totally. I think movies are to blame. In pop culture heroes always face off against different opponents instead of focus firing, so players, particularly new ones, don't even think to do it
It's great when players combine attacks. Just don't forget that opponents can do the same thing. In Seth's example, if the goblins had combined attacks optimally, they would have beaten the party that did the same.
Our group ended up making an all ranged party. Between us all, we were kinda tired of min-maxing party balance, so we all just made what we wanted to. So our tank actually ended up being a ranged character. XD He has hellish rebuke too, so it works quite well. And of course he took point blank shot (homebrewed for 5e).
Great advice as always! I feel like even veteran DMs could use an occasional reminder of things like that (not that I would consider myself a veteran DM yet...) I'm not sure if this will help anybody in the comments section, but I found a trick for running "boss fights" that works really well for me personally. If players gang up on the boss, it'll die in just a couple rounds. Giving the boss monster a lot of hit points just drags out the battle and it can get boring. Instead, I make the primary enemy only slightly tougher than the party's average stats and I throw in a bunch of minions that die in one hit. This way, my players COULD focus on the boss and kill it quickly, but they'd be at risk of getting wiped out by the dozen or so minions, since their numbers make them the greatest threat at the start of the battle. I found that this keeps combat running quickly and smoothly, and the players always feel like they're making progress instead of just mindlessly trading punches for 45 minutes. Like I said, I'm not sure if this will be a huge help for anyone (I only know that it works pretty well in my own home-brew system), but I'd recommend giving it a shot if you have a hard time balancing encounters with boss monsters!
I do hope you continue doing these battle tutorials, both from the player's side of acting in them as well as the GM's side of how to design them. As I have been cautiously teetering towards becoming a regular GM, a big hurdle I have been faced with is finding balance in encounter design. How do I make an encounter that's fun and involving? How do I make a high-stakes, dangerous battle not feel like unfair dogpiling? How do you use mechanics to set a tone for a fight (How to split the difference between a Doomesque disorganized bloodbath and a suspenseful, methodical operation a la Rainbow Six without necessarily stating it, letting the action speak for itself)? For the moment, I have been keeping my players entertained at the very least, but I always hold the notion that you can entertain a person by just sitting down and talking or watching funny videos online, so I'm always looking for ways to push the envelope and make my games as entertaining as they possibly can be in order to make sure that the game itself was worth dedicating to for a day and getting hyped for the whole week.
15:21 this goes for what die you roll. I have a warlock in my game that used eldritch blast (deals 1d10 damage) when fighting shadows (undead) but could have used chill touch (deals 1d8 damage but gives undead enemies disadvantage) both of those spells are cantrips that she had but didn't think to use the lesser damaging one until the fourth time we encountered undead. Disclaimer: I am the one that controlled the warlock and I'm dumb.
I can definitely understand the mentality of not wanting to take a minus. In Open Legend, for instance, we've simplified the system a bit to make it so that your hit chance and damage both come from the same roll, so stacking Advantage and upping your primary attack attribute to high hell becomes eminently more appealing the more points you have to spend on such a thing. Since so much is running on that one roll, for every action you take, you definitely can't afford a minus or disadvantage unless you have plenty of advantage already stacked up and the situation looks right to allow for that. For instance, I have two characters in mind. My bog-standard mercenary and my cataphract character, from two different campaigns. Bearing in mind that the GM has to base the difficulty of an encounter around the group at large, it's understandable that they wouldn't spend every waking moment considering every possible action my characters can take, and might just look at my favoured actions and what I'm likely to do with my characters' strengths. So, my mercenary. He's a balanced dude with offence and defence in mind, meant to serve as the heal dump and primary melee fighter of the group. One thing he can do is counterattack using his defend interrupt action, or as I like to call it, the single-tempo riposte. That uses his main attribute, Might, but if he wants to defend a party member who isn't right next to him, he has to use his lower Agility instead, because he has to run or move quickly to intercept. Because the GM likely only took his Might into consideration when determining the enemy's strengths, using his Agility will likely result in a poor scenario where he fails the check (that is, beating the enemy's attack roll), so he'll have ended up wasting his major action for the next turn while either taking damage for his party member or failing to stop any damage coming their way, which could result in their death. To the cataphract, I've attributed lots of Might and several layers of advantage on fighting with a lance from horseback. She only receives that advantage when fighting from horseback, but it's a lot. So, when the time comes to decide if I want to use the Charge focus action, which doubles your Speed (movement range) at the cost of one disadvantage on your ensuing attack (you can't make any other actions but an attack after moving beyond normal Speed), I still have net advantage and can afford to go charging in at full gallop. Were she to try to fight from a position not on the back of her horse, or if she tried to use an attribute other than Might, I'd consider it too risky, due to the encounter being balanced around highs rather than lows. tl;dr: Accepting minuses becomes more worrying of a decision the more streamlined the system is, as much more can be affected by any one roll. Add in the chaos factor of the dice, and it's understandable that divorcing yourself, even for a moment, from what you consider to be your A-game can be a difficult choice. Really, the dice probably play a major role in that mentality. We live in constant fear of the dreaded nat 1, and naturally want to put as much distance between it and us as possible. Stacking pluses seems like a logical way to do that, or so we non-mathematicians think.
Unconventional attacks are great but some systems take better advantage of them than others. If you like CoC, check out Mythras. Special Effects are awarded on winning a combat contest [using differential roll results]. The Special Effects in the Mythras/Legend system are game-changers and chosen by the player (allowing you to select the SE to best suited the current combat situation).
Problem with the tactical retreat is, it doesn't work in some systems. If you can Delay your whole turn, perfect. D&D 5e however only allows to Hold Action, so you could Hold a Disengage and then... that's it....can't move. The only way to do a proper tactical retreat in 5e is to use something like Thunderwave to push the enemies back, to be rogues and use Disengage as a bonus action, or to risk the opportunity attack.
It is why Seth suggested letting the slowest character run first, then having everyone else retreat on their own turn. Might also not work if the initiatives are very spread, but it is what it is.
While it's not RAW, since the PC is sacrificing their action to Ready a move action once someone else has retreated, I treat the Ready action as a sort of delayed disengage, justifying it by assuming that in the act of readying they have gauged how best to avoid opportunity attack during their impending move.
Yeah, the entire point is to figure out a way to get the players to move as close in time as each other and not let some poor sod just stand there alone to get the brunt of the enemy attacks. It's up to players of whatever game it is to figure out how that works in their own game's mechanics. Originally I'd planned to use Conan as the game in the skit, but I had to rule that out at the last minute because PCs always have initiative in that particular game. Tactical retreats are very easy in Conan. D&D combat is actually pretty goofy once you start comparing it to other systems.
My own recommendation: While you're waiting for your turn, once you have your plan in mind, double-check all the rules involved. Especially if you have your own rulebook - digital or physical. Like with having your move planned out before your turn comes up, knowing exactly what you need to roll and what happens can save you a lot of time, and keep the combat fast and exciting.
The "easy fight goes wrong" And the other way is something of a speciality of my players. Most likely noone will read this but here's the story. We are playing Warhammer 2ed: Ashes of Middenheim (heavily changed by me, as some players already knew the og module). Low fantasy, with a lot of realism. Basically, it is entirely possible in this system that your character will die of pneumonia... or heart attack... or festered wound. Thats why we like it :). Setup: City after siege by Chaos armies, lots of dead mutants and monsters around, lots of destruction, social unrest. Group is on track of a baddie who kicked their asses in previous module. They go to sewers. In sewers they encounter 3 ghouls, which are basically a cannon fodder for any character that lived trough session 1-2. 1st ghoul got dispatched, 2nd one got shot with a crossbow that basically ripped the head off of his neck. And then... then there was Konrad, the group "muscle". Konrad wanted to end the third ghoul rightly. With gusto. Konrad attacked ghoul with rapier and missed... twice.... Ghoul retaliated, and despite the fact that ghouls are easliy killed... well... in such close quarters the can be a bit dangerous. By "a bit" i mean that ghoul attacked with such ferocity that it would basically kill Konrad twice over, if he didnt use his "destiny points" (for those who didnt play WH 2ed. its basically get out of jail card for situations like that.). So instead of dying he fell unconcious... with ripped faced... by a ghoul... into the sewer... which led into a gangrene afterwards, giving him permanent disadvantages on charisma related throws with uncovered face... And then the Dwarf panicked and reloaded the blunderbuss. He shot and blunderbuss exploded, blowing off his right arm up to the elbow.... aaand the sonic blast rendered everyone legally deaf. Conclusion: 1 character disfigured permanently, miraculously avoiding death. One permanently disabled and nearly bled out. 5 all together went nearly deaf. Same session, time skip, same group, dwarf got a prosthetic. They found a Ratogre. A hulking beast of pure feral anger fueled by litres of some alchemical stimulants. A beast that wipes entire squads of trained men in lore. They dispatched it in a single round, without it being even able to re-act (they executed a great ambush/trap so i wasnt even mad).
Great tips!! I am running my 2nd campaign as DM next month and I'm going to make my players watch this during Session Zero, so they don't make these mistakes during my game!! :)
For those wanting more Player Combat Tips, and even Game Master Combat Tips, check out my Combat 201 video. ua-cam.com/video/gxfenhHVLFM/v-deo.html
Seth: "Imagine if every player at the table took ten seconds to make their action."
Me: "OMG right?! That would be *amazing*! I can only dream of my group acting that quickly and..."
Seth: "Yeah that's way too long."
Me: "............"
I know, right? I'm use to ten minutes as they all take turns digging through their character sheets, reading spells, again, or trying to figure where the optimal place for them to stand is. I swear, I could smoke an entire cigar while waiting for one them to take a turn.
Lol omg yes.i dm for my kids 9 to 21 and my oldest will take 5 minutes to say I swing my sword...and he's a wizard..yeah the pain lol
When I played in the 80s we lost our turn if we did not state our action in 10 seconds.
I use a 6...5.... 4.... 3... Countdown. PC's will always decide quickly! 😂 😂 😂 Rather than risk losing a turn.
From the angry gm
If they're taking too long "um" ing and "err" ing then role play that, state they are overtaken by the encounter and take the parry action. It'll only happen a time or two before they get it.
"I hold my action" is something GMs should always teach newbies they can do. Most of time players just play by the default turns and expect the retreat scenario to take into account the dissonance between coordinated actions and turn based gameplay. Same for "alternative methods of action" like disarm/deflect, alot of players fear actions to not be allowed because they're not listed in the chara'sheet, and players who started like that may become too rigid when come their turn to GM.
Combat 101: Ten Tips for Better Combats - Playing RPGs (Summary)
1. Stick together.
2. Combine Attacks on one Enemy.
3. Retreating is OK.
4. Use your terrain.
5. Plan your move before your turn.
6. Make a Battle Plan and be willing to change it.
7. Strategize your attack order.
8. Sometimes the best option is to remove an opponents ability to attack. (knock down, disarm)
9. Don't be Afraid to Take the Penalty. Love of bonus can lead players to take bad choices.
10. Know your Group's assets. Ie know what your allies can do (spells, powers, special ability)
11. (bonus) Sometimes your job is to take the Hit. Distributing enemy hits allows everyone to surive.
i like suriveing
While combining attacks is going to make you more effective, I don't really think it makes for "better" combats. I mean from a narrative standpoint it's kind of stupid if a big group suddenly ignores everyone to single out and focus target one creature unless there's a really good reason to do so, and it's likely to get your DM to start doing it back to you, which really isn't much fun at all, especially if you're the poor guy getting focused fired all the time. Really I kind of thing it's best to have a gentleman's agreement not to just focus things down and play it more like an action movie where the heroes generally pair off into their own fights.
@@taragnor - Analogous to the argument against critical hits doing some massive damage or special effect up to and including decapitation. If it works both ways, eventually one of the PCs is going to have their head lopped off.
Dude.. I don't even play tabletop and I cannot get enough of this channel.
As a “veteran” player these tips and advice as always welcome. I like to think I know what I am doing, but there is always places to improve
What's weird is how quickly veteran players forget. Part of that is due to strategies changing as a group and game becomes more powerful and a world of new options becomes available. It's dramatic to see when they switch from a powerful High-Level game to a weaker Low-Level one, and all of a sudden all that strategy they used to use when they were low level before is forgotten. It can take them a while to remember how they used to deal with swarms of bad guys before they had their fireball miniguns.
Then you have the change of systems. Very often I've seen players either A: Forget all strategy altogether and they flail around like they've never played a TTRPG before until they begin to re-learn it, or B: They rigidly stick to a tactic that worked in the previous system and fail to take into account the mechanic differences until after they've gotten their teeth kicked in a few times.
Seth Skorkowsky Thanks for all the great advice. It’s nice to have these refresher courses.
I’ve seen many veteran players (myself the included) fall into these pitfalls because they didn’t adapt to the situation.
One example: I was late joining a group of newbies. (2e DnD). The group was struggling with the basics (like tying knots in a rope to make the climb up a mountain) and I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. So, the DM made me create a character. So, quick, down and dirty, I rolled up a one trick pony double scimitar specialist.
My characters first encounter was with a aerial gargoyle that had been his captor for several years. He picked up his scimitars (ignoring the +1 magical longsword. I never thought to check the longsword) and went to town dealing multiple attacks and massive damage on a creature that regenerated anything but magical damage. When the party finally arrived, the fighter picked up the longsword and killed it in two hits.
I ran with it. From that point on my character refused to use anything but scimitars...until he was forced to use a hammer by a god. It forced him become its cleric. Ty Windswords hated that god. But, that’s another story for another time.
I miss Ty Windswords and his magic scimitars Gyre and Gimble.
I've been playing for 35 years and all these videos do is make me realize that I know nothing!
Loving this so far, but had to comment on a coincidence that happened because my ISP is trash. Just after you said, "each player spends an average of 10 seconds at the beginning of their turn deciding what to do." my network had lost connection and the video had only buffered to that point. So I thought, "Wow that's a great way to emphasize how long that is" with the YT buffering 2/3 circle and everything. So I hover over the video and that time has stopped. This might be one of those you had to be there things, but it seemed pretty funny to me.
Thanks for the effort you put into all of your videos, always informative and entertaining!
I need a gif of Todd thinking, its too perfect.
@@Dorian_sapiens I just came back here to recommend this to my players for an upcoming event and damn brother you pulled through.
John Coleman this is really good
Use the right weapon for the job; fire for trolls, silver for vampire, cold iron for fey, bludgeoning for skeletons.
Or flamethrowers for shoggoths, shotguns from Crawling Ones, axes for Dark Young, and machine guns for T-Rexes.
@@SSkorkowsky Kryptonite for Kryptonians, Yellow for Green Lanterns
Or axes for enemies. Sheesh.
And flashlights for politicians.
Silver for monsters. Steel for humans
Awesome! Tactics I like to teach people, based on what I have learned in the military and applying them to D&D type games...
(1) "Battle of Thermopylea" -- Do not rush into a confined area, especially when you can be outnumbered there. Use terrain to set up a choke point with the tanks up front to block a door to limit the number of attacks against you, and let the ranged characters blast. Plus it leaves you a retreat route behind you -- always leave an exit route! (Just as the outnumbered Spartans did in Thermopylea to prevent being surrounded.)
(2) "Fling fuel on the fire. Stand back to back!" -- If surrounded, stay together in a small pack with the strongest characters on the outside of the huddle. The party becomes like a little multi-headed monster. (Go back to Gandalf's orders on top of Weathertop when surrounded by wolves.)
(3) "Protect the quarterback." -- In 5e D&D, tanks should use "dodge" to extend their ability to block for other players who do damage. Tanks don't have to damage, but they do have to protect the others by pinning down the monster or restricting their ability to move or attack defensively weaker party members. (In my opinion, the most tactically smart player should be the tank until the others learn how to do it by watching. Most players I see do not have the foggiest idea what a tank is; they see a fighter as a damage dealer instead of an enabler for others.)
(4) "Air forces disperse troops." -- When being attacked by something that drops big area of effect bombs (e.g., fireball, dragon breath), then you need to disperse (rather than stick together) so that they cant get the whole party in one blast.
(5) "Hit and run." -- If fighting things that move slower than you, then used ranged weapons and wait for them to come to you. As they get closer, move away.
(6) "Decoy and destroy." -- Another split up tactic (if you have at least equal speed to the monster) is to have one character (or small group) "kite" by running one way, and the another going another way. Force the monster to chase one group that keeps running away while the other pelts it with ranged weapons.
Lastly, always remember your objective. If your job is to retrieve a magic ring, then don't worry about killing monsters unless they put you in a position where you must kill them to attain your objective. Just go around them or leave. Don't waste resources and risk death when you don't need to. If you can get the ring without killing any monsters, that's efficient. (No one who has been in the military really wants to fight if they can avoid it.)
I would love to play DnD with you.
@@greggyp8265 Thanks! When I DM i use a set of tactics too. My fav is to intentionally put monster encounters that are to be avoided or run from. I love the sense that you (i.e., your character) could die, that sense of intense fear. Infinite monster spawns are a great trick to do that -- a few monsters becomes overwhelming after a few rounds. Soon the payers realize that trying to kill the monsters is not going to be possible, and they get on with what they were there to do in the first place (if it is not too late). If you do that, you have to give them an escape route (and they have to be smart enough to preserve it).
@@BTsMusicChannel Most of my player would just be stubborn, and try to kill all of the monsters😂
This is great advice!
I noticed you didn't say which edition of D&D nor do I know how you build encounters, but for protecting the football in 5e a tank dodging is typically suboptimal because of the importance of action economy. It's hard for tanks to draw the attention of enemies and not attacking enemies lowers the tank's percieved threat level. Dodging also has the action economy result of a negative if the tank isn't targeted or is the victim of a saving throw that's not dexterity.
@@anthonynorman7545 I think dodging is great in 5e if you have others that can do damage while the blocker blocks. These are tactics I tend to like as player. As a DM, many of my encounters so that they are obstacles to attain milestones more so than objectives themselves. I like it when players do NOT attack things, but find other ways around them. The only exception is a quest where the players are tasked by a quest giver to rid the world of something. The rest of the time, I see encounters more as a problem to solve and they are often too hard to win by fighting. They are there to kick the intensity up a notch.
In general I do not like 5e though -- too many player options that break the game, too much emphasis on power gaming super-hero individualism (i.e., level up and gain more power as the object of the game, rather than team problem solving/going to war with the army you have rather than the army you want, not enough mystery in the magic or rich enough description to make people feel awe or fear), and preference for farcically flawed (rather than heroically brave) characters. I am more partial to my own home brew systems that borrow form different games. My goal is to to create a sense of wonder, awe, and fear -- which means that a lot of stuff players can't know, such as a spell list with all the rules in the Player's Handbook. I think that is the biggest mistake Gygax made, and all other D&D editions have that same problem. In my opinion, the players should not know what magic is until the DM reveals it to them. Magic is the source of mystery in fantasy, and player's rule books turn it into a tool or new weapon for the power gamer instead of something that is "unknown" (in the HP Lovecraft sense).
As a side note, if you read the details of the fantasy stories and to whine about how long winded Tolkein is (for example, as people like Matthew Colville have), you can learn a lot of things you can adopt or adapt for your game -- whether it be flavor, hardcore content, or even game mechanics.
I can definitely attest to the power of using the terrain and removing the ability to hit you. In a semi-recent D&D game, my Barbarian had some beef with a corrupted angel after she showed up out of nowhere (really the Greater Invisible Monk used an item to summon her, but no one thought to explain that to her and the party actively kept the item a secret from me in-character) while we were fighting some devil cultists. She was claiming not just the cult's entire stash of treasure, but also the party's indentured servitude for her deigning to help out when she arrived. Initiative was declared by the DM at my outburst, and the other party members chose to not roll, as this was my action and they don't want any of the consequences of picking a fight with a celestial, especially a mean one.
Winning initiative, my Barbarian (who had seen her fighting with a wicked battle scythe not ten minutes prior, talking 2d4+6d8+4 on two attacks) disarms the angel of her weapon, grapples her, and then drags her away from her weapon. The DM, not really expecting that to happen, has the angel try to escape the grapple, (as by 5e rules when you're grappled you get no movement, even flight) but fails in the attempt due to massive Barbarian strength. I then drag her to a nearby lava fixture (as this cult is wont to have, devils generally being immune to fire damage so it's a good place to hide) and lower her in, doing obscene amounts of damage and killing her in the follow-up hit.
This was a creature that was intended to be a match for a party a full 8 levels higher, and while she was moderately wounded from the prior fight, so was my Barbarian after being SET ON FIRE and basically being the Wall of Damage Sponging between the cultists and the party's casters. So even with whatever factors may or may not have made it easier, it was still a one-on-one fight with a far stronger opponent that was effectively beaten by thinking outside the usual strategy of just hitting things. "This thing is great at fighting with this weapon, maybe don't let her have it." "It can fly, but I can't, so try to keep it on the ground." "Lava does lots of damage to bad guys, maybe it does the same to used-to-be-good-guys." All thoughts that even an 8 INT tribal Barbarian can think of if you remember half their lives are spent fighting in harsh conditions where every edge is necessary.
Another helpful tip for combat: Kill the "Force Multiplier." It's a variation on the Shadowrun classic "Geek the Mage." Find the enemy that can drop the most damage or can keep others fighting and end them quickly. In a lot of fantasy inspired games, this is the caster classes. In more tech heavy games, this is the person either lobbing or directing explosives, or firing the automatic weapon. If the enemy has low intelligence and a single director, kill them. Assess the situation and find the thing causing the most trouble on the field, then put the boot to them.
Bingo,
I like what you said about taking penalties. New D&D players will almost never incur opportunity attacks on themselves, even when doing so will give them a huge advantage.
Oh man! Now I want a full video with Todd as DM! That would be hysterical!
Good advice as usual! :)
Todd should pick on Seth the whole time.
Spider-Man and his amazing friends! Nah, Todd would spread it equally throughout the group. Though not to be an asshole.
That would be great! An episode on how to guest DM!
The battle plan section reminded me of one of my Earthdawn parties. They were so in sync that they fell into roles during combat, adapting to situations and opponents, all without any discussion. They just trusted each other to cover their roles no matter what they are up against. It was beautiful.
Imagine skipping a game to have a baby, priorities dude
It's their own lack of imagination, there are no rules against RPG's in the hospital baby.
I’m not sure he’s a “dude” if he’s “having a baby”
I’m not great at geography, but i’m pretty sure that’s not how it works...
@@Tony-dh7mz It's just a sign of lack of commitment
@Sofus, I thought it was about math and biology,
You're gonna be stuck with that kid the rest of your life. The adventure comes but only once.
That last advice is pure gold.
I love playing ranged characters, but in D&D, I was recently playing a Ranger for a three sessions game and I figured that damned they can be an excellent "switch-hitter". Ranged at first, then when needed drop the bow, draw the sword and plunge into melee. Mixed with their small spellcasting abilities which allows them to heal themselves and boy can they take a hit. Much more than I would have expected. My go to from now on whenever I play a ranged character in D&D(specifically)
Rangers are good off-tanks and even pure tanks if built for it
Believe it or not, in AD&D many rangers were pure melee fighters that excelled at killing dangerous monsters quickly, usually with the biggest greatsword they could find. They were much more directly tied to the "Aragorn" style of ranger than the "Legolas" style of ranger. They do have a wide and useful array of skills that come in handy, and are also excellent at going solo for periods of time if need be.
#2 is a point that even experienced players can miss. I think it's because people instinctively operate on the assumption that wounding an enemy reduces their effectiveness. That _can_ work in systems that track damage effects.
In games like D&D though, a Goblin with 1HP hits as accurately and as hard as an uninjured Goblin.
The way I explained it to my current group was to think of a group of adversaries as a single creature with multiple attacks per round. Each adversary they take out of the fight means one less attack to a party member.
I'm a relatively new player playing in two different systems with two different groups. One is vanilla D&D, which, like in this video, requires us to gang up on enemies and not try to solo them especially if outnumbered, but otherwise, isn't very complex mechanics wise. The other one is a much less forgiving system where everyone has a pretty constant, but much lower overall pool of hitpoints. Not only do you gradually become less effective depending on your health percentage, but it also has a wound system that will cripple your future attacks, parries and movement speed with just one wound. The more you get hit, the worse you fight, and the more likely you are of going down. This is hell for an unequipped and unprepared party, but we can also use it to our advantage on our enemies. In such systems, it is much more important to play tactically and try to get the drop on our enemies, especially if they hit harder than you and we know that one hit from an orcish waraxe or one bolt from a heavy crossbow WILL cause a wound, that are a bitch to fight with and also a bitch to heal afterwards.
Nick Williams Nick Williams speaking of that, I have someone in Shadowrun who I allowed to have a few abilities that make called shots amazing to try to encourage others to learn that not only do they exist, but that they’re awesome.
@@magiv4205 Yes, Shadowrun is another popular system that uses this sort of game design. You have a "Damage track" which starts at 0 and goes up to a value based on your stats before you fall down and are in danger of dying, and for every 3 damage you take, you get -1 die to all tests. This also adds more mechanical depth to the game because you can use things like drugs to increase pain tolerance and remove those wound penalties, while still being actually wounded, much like a "berserker" effect.
@@crazyeyes8962 First of all, I really have to play Shadowrun sometime, and second of all, I love the berserker effect! Not only because it is very useful, but also because it is an awesome rp element. In my system, DSA, after you recieve a wound, you have to make a saving throw after every wound recieved to not be immediately incapacitated by the pain for 5 rounds. You are still conscious, but pretty much only able to crawl. First of all, 5 rounds is a LOT, often an entire combat, and second of all, It's hard to correct, as there are very few effective healing spells in this system. And all but the most expensive ones heal gradually, and not instantly. There are several insta heal potions, but you still need someone to administer them in the middle of the fray. So if you go down, it's likely you stay down for the rest of the combat. If you manage to stay up and make a second successful grit save, you can ignore the penalty caused by the wound alltogether, and fight on normally. So it is very important to level up your grit and pain tolerance if you plan on doing any kind of melee combat, and always use buff spells before combat. Or do it like us, and have one character invest in alchemy/brewing to make potions of what we scavenge in the wilderness and on quests, to keep us supplied on drugs, buffs and heals.
Thats why I homebrewed the fleeing/faking death/begging for mercy for majority of npcs when npc has low health while also giving them disadvantages on majority of actions and removing their modifiers from actions during it. Some creatures that go berserk or hellbent on killing, of course, ignore it, but for others its much more natural and immersive to see common animals to try to run away and bandits dropping their weapons begging for forgiveness, and even undeads like ghosts try to shift the planes and disappear or possess the item or tiny creature and hide in it.
So far my players love it, and the choice deciding the npcs fate is a great roleplay fuel that also cuts and forms the alignments better.
On thing to consider. In the focus attacks example, if the final round had gone with the monsters attacking the more wounded character instead of the less wounded character (which is the same concept as having the players focus their attacks), it would still have been a TPK.
"Step up and take one for the team!"
said the player who never does. :)
Says the wizard while he turns invisible and is about to cast flight to go back to town becaus ehe burned all of his spells in the first 5 rounds of combat and he doens't want to use a crossbow. True story, sadly, wasn't that fun to play with.
@@braddoc4087 Did he not have any cantrips? O.o
@@TERMINATOR3900 Yes, but since they lacked punch he did not waste time casting them,...so our adventurers were basically we fight once, got to rest 8 hours, fight again, rest for 8 hours etc etc...needless to say it was boring as hell...not to mnetion he was metagaming @Oh, it's a dire wolf, they only got XYZ hit points, you can fight them alone...oh no a Gooey Blob! Got to use fire for that one since he's immune to anything else!@ etc etc...
I've plowed through all your videos ever since I stumbled upon your channel.
I've mostly played D&D and not once have I encountered anyone who has heard of Call of Cuthulu other than the movie oh so long ago.
You, Jack & co. have a great place. Thanks for the tips, reviews & fun for us who have a hard time getting groups together or just the time for said gaming sessions.
Mark Medina There are people who have not heard of CoC RPG?!?
All my gamer friends know of it, but none of them are mad enough to run it. (Well, there was the one guy in college). When I run it, my player don’t like me much. They keep coming back, though.
Except that one person. If you read this, I really am sorry about that. I didn’t know you had that trigger. :/
I'm going to share this with my friends, we've just started a new d&d campaign with a lot more players that we're used to
Seth, you have such an excellent voice!
Best combat video I have seen to date. Having played with many military players, even those intricately planning "L-shaped ambushes", etc., it is remarkable how often the tips here have been ignored. Sometimes it's just not realizing how the game mechanics work (vice "real-world experience"), but this video should be beneficial to ANY party finding themselves in combat together.
This video validates my decision last session to charge into combat with my warlock and do some knife work. Huzzah.
What exceptional videos. I know Seth doesn’t play 5e as often as other systems, but I treasure his takes on D&D. But videos like this transcend systems and are truly invaluable. Please keep making these universal rpg videos! Thank you again!
Thank you Seth! I have players who have not figured out these moves. Any of these moves. I say things like, "Remember the creature with one hit point can still kill you." Then I sigh and watch them injure each opponent, but not take anyone out. Aaaaah! I will suggest this video to all of them. Hopefully someone will watch this before this Thursday Game night. I have only been gaming 42 years, yet I still Found this great!
It was so weird seeing 'you' as a player and one of your characters as the GM.
Maybe his ‘problem player’ wanted to switch seats again.
I love the skits, so creative.
Dear Seth: has been a while since I commented on your videos but thanks for this, I truly appreciate your efforts, andyou are alife saber, I Will make all my players watch this, our main game is cyberpunk, but we Branch out to D and D and now we start Pulp and Call of Cthulhu, but really we need more videos like thanks alot Seth, you are the best and say hi from me to Jack and the BoneSaw and the agent from Scott Bronw kisses and hugs
Great job on this one, Seth. My players just accidentally started a war during thier last session. Something tells me that these tips will useful for them. 😁 I'm going to show then this video before our next session.
DM: I know you are specialized with the greatsword, but this monster is resistant to edged weapons.
Player: Mordhau!
Halfswording is the solution ♣
In the system my group uses, Rolemaster, most of the weapons have the ability to be used in non-optimal ways for a minor penalty, such as hitting with the flat of a blade or throwing a short sword (NOT a minor penalty!) or using a spear like a staff to help with that skeleton.
I am that player.
This is why all my characters have a mix of weapons to be able to deal all the different physical damage types. In Pathfinder that is Slashing, Bludgeoning, and Piercing. If nothing else, a dagger gets you piercing or slashing. and in a pinch a gauntlet get you the bludgeoning. But I usually include a kunai which does P or B, can be thrown, and can be used as a piton or crowbar without being damaged.
@@MonkeyJedi99 i dunno why but hitting with the flat side of a sword is my favorite thing. it's like slapping someone except you're doing it with something that very well could be lethal.
obviously, the only proper term for hitting someone with the flat of a sword is to "clap" them.
14:55 this opponent clearly has seen Surviving Edged Weapons
How does this not have *any* likes?! I'll fix that egregious error.
Remember: SMENS
Great video as always Seth. I have to admit that I was actually expecting a video for combat on the GM's side of the screen, and any insight you had on how to run them more smoothly and efficiently without taking away from the players. I hope you do something like this soon!
Regarding terrain and chokepoints, I had to gently instruct my players about that after an unnecessary TPK. They definitely learned their lesson.
A lot of these were trueisms to me even before I started TTRPGs - focus fire has been a classic tactic in basically all video game RPGs, for example. But I think the easiest one to forget is the last tip, which goes by the mantra 'HP is a Resource' in my groups. The first long-term character I played was a D&D5e Barbarian in a six-character campaign with only one other frontliner. We always did our jobs, but that other frontliner also stressed the importance of the guys in the backline to occasionally attract stray hits in big fights - where we coined the term.
Now that I'm playing a ranged character in Pathfinder 2e, I play as basically a skirmisher - always able to position myself to 'peel' for my 'tanks' if necessary (and including a lot of short-ranged attacks to boot). The party was surprised when I threw an oathbow in a bag of holding specifically because to use it effectively I'd have to stand beyond my preferred range due to the minimum range penalties of longbows in that system. (though to be fair, oathbows aren't quite as amazing as their ancestral equivalents in Pathfinder 2e).
also, minor trivia/fun fact related to video game RPG knowledge having cross-over: the original Final Fantasy also had mechanics that let you manage HP by controlling where damage went - the character at the top of the screen was hit 50% of the time, the next 25%, and the final two 12.5%. So if you let your weaker characters take beatings for a fight or two, then put the tankier ones in front, you could much more effectively get through dungeons without just brute-force outleveling htem.
I come back to this video now and then when I'm designing bigger combat scenarios, it would be really cool to see a combat video from a gm point of view, thanks so much for the wonderful videos
M.T Black's the Art of War for D&D Players is also very useful for party/player combat tactics. Love the video Seth
@10:00 There's an old joke: two men are walking down a highway with shovels. They stop every mile or so, one digs a hole, and the other fills the hole back in. Someone approaches the two and asks what they're doing. They explain that they're supposed to putting up mile markers, but their coworker - the one who places the signs - is out sick. Don't let that be your party.
I'm about to get into a new game and these are such great tips. Will definitely help me avoid some basic beginner errors and get the most out of my PC
How did it go for you?
In my college's DnD club I played a mastermind rogue/grave cleric. My character was effectively a utility bot. I could bonus action help against the boss and use the grave cleric's channel divinity to make that monster take double damage on the next attack. Was a lot of fun because the character could always be useful in any situation. Have various control spells ready to go and just keep throwing out bonus action helps. Managed to completely neutralize a final boss once by casting silence in a small room where the boss couldn't do much. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed playing a utility based character
Good rundown of basics for combat. I'd really like to see you give advice on how to run good - and faster! - combats as a GM. I find it a bit of a struggle to get strike a balance between fun, challenge and reasonable time and would love to see what advice you've picked up over the years
get rid of the mat and figures and run a wuxia style / theater of the mind battle. Every few rounds use dice, bottle caps, etc to provide a visual of what's happened so far. Also, having PCs and opponents taking their turns at the same time can be fun.
this is one of the best dnd videos i have encountered. good stuff. Lots of sage advice and sincerely funny, too.
We had a one-shot last night where our characters are all members of the River District Watch. It reached a point where Sahuagin appeared and they were clearly wanting something or someone. In the cells were three "privateers", so my Halfling Rogue went to question them rather than standing by at the barred and bolted entrance to the Watch-house.
The other two players had completely forgotten about the prisoners but at least had the sense to maintain a choke-point at the now battered entrance. Polberry (my character) spent the entire combat encounter racing around trying to find a particular object, succeeded, and threw it to the Sahuagin. Then the Sahuagin priestess demanded the privateer captain as well. My character is a rather unscrupulous sort and gladly handed over this captain.
During the combat, the DM pulled a couple of tricks which PCs often do. The first was that the priestess cast "Spiritual Weapon" next to the other two PCs. The second was "Hold Person" on the prisoner as he was resisting being handed over.
The choke-point worked very well, giving the two PC Fighters Flanking. The DM was on the ball with his monsters using a few of the spells often used by PCs.
Great stuff as always
One thing I'd always recommend is "don't be afraid to be a little suboptimal/not do your coolest move every round"
A good example from a recent game: in a fight with a grappling vine monster, who was getting dangerously close to murdering our guide, I considered taking an action to assist the guide's escape attempt, but opted to attack instead. The guide did thankfully survive, but it wasn't because of my moderately damaging plink attack.
I struggle with this a lot myself cuz I'm very big on _gaaame feeeel,_ and doing something where you don't get to be quite as active or roll can naturally be a less attractive option.
What helps me to counter this instinct is to put in extra work on the description: maybe my lizard warlock didn't just "help the guide," she "bit and clawed at the vines to create an opening to escape." Something like that would be more fun to act out, really places others in the scenario, and gives them stuff to possibly work with themselves.
Great tips fot players. The difference between a tpk and a harrowing but survivable event is often great teamwork or a remarkably creative approach. Once your team knows how to be team its an unlimited resource. Remarkably creative plans are rare in comparison. Both are rewarding for the DM and the players.
This is fantastic! I know who to share this with.
Awesome as always with some great advice. My favorite part was the bit where one of your players took over your game and you got to play. That made me happy. I never get to play, it seems. I'm always running. Both characters looked so stoked!
Thank you very much Mr Skorkowsky,
Thanks to this video, I could rescue one of my comrads this evening.
You saved a life in Barovia!!!
THX my players need those tips if they want to survive Barovia
If you're playing DnD, the Shield Master feat is really fun. You can attack something and then shove them or smack them onto the ground.
Excellent video, Seth, thanks for making it. As a gamer for more years experience than I care to admit, I can honestly think of war stories to each of your 10+1 examples and it was nice to be reminded of them. (An instance where a PC with a large 2-handed warhammer refused to switch to a silver dagger whilst fighting a lycanthrope comes to mind.) I can also remember more than one occasion when my group totally failed as well. It’s always good to be reminded on how to play smart.
The 5:50 scenario is exactly what happened last saturday. My players were fighting a hydra (an encounter they had no chance of beating head-on at their level, they needed something resembling a tactic), except they didn't decide they were gonna run. One guy decided to run. Then the other guy, who later told me he had the idea of using readied actions to all run at the same time, figured "without him to divvy up the damage, I'm dead", and abandoned the third player. Then the Hydra, that had an 80% chance to hit him, succeeded 4 attacks and he died.
All your videos are great and this one is especially sublime for being so practical and common-sense, and yet I’ve never played in a game where players did any of these things, haha! If all players watched this, the level of gaming in combat would rise suddenly and dramatically.
Dude, your videos are awesome, definetly one of the channels that most help me as a dm
I like that you gave a name to many of the things that players do to help their party. We are playing through a rough modual in Pathfinder and our party has no dedicated tank! My rouge character has been doing the "take the hit" as he has the best AC in the party. He just does not have the hit points to back it up. Luckily we have 2 healers, one stays close to keeping me on my feet when my Dex is not enough while the other can cover the rest of the party.
wonderful video, thanks! Some of these I already knew, and others I kinda knew through instinct and common sense, but it helps to reinforce them when they're verbalized like this.
The nice thing about my players is that they generally try to keep themselves to tactics like this. Players who have characters more likely to take an enemy out in a single hit generally jump to be the wall that defends party members that don't have as much offensive output, spellcasters try to take out groups of enemies at once or possibly even use status effects to restrain enemies or buff allies in order to keep the more powerful characters alive and able to continue defending the noodles in robes.
Great video, Seth! Definitely gives me some ideas next time I run combat.
Back to back formations are great, unless the enemy has splash damage to throw at you...
I have idea that might counter this issue but I don't think it is practical nor would it be fun for the person who has to implement it.
In the Inheritance Trilogy, magic is prevalent in the setting and powerful magicians can wipe out a whole army of non-magic users if they have the right spell. Hence armies have magicians who have the sole job to protect their squadron from magical attacks, with a lesser priority on dealing with non-magical attacks. They use a combination of protective spells and debilitating spells to do this.
So my idea is that a party wizard could be given this role where they would just reserve most of their spell slots for Counter Spell and buff their team mates who will be the damage user. The problems I can forsee beforehand are...
1) Is there a Wizard in the party and do they have the required spells to do this?
2) Would the party wizard be cool with it? This job sounds boring on paper as a Wizard would simply be reserving actions or using attack cantrips if they are not Counter Spelling.
3) Counterspelling is not fool proof. If there more magical attacks than Wizards to cast reactions the party will get hit. Not to mention if the wizard can only use a spell slot of a lower level for the Counter Spell to ward of a higher level spell there is a chance it can fail.
4) I'm only level 3 so my experience is limited but based on seeing how DMs run adventure I believe they would find ways to counter this tactic relatively quickly once they got use to it. Meaning it might be a one trick wonder.
In that situation there are two things to consider.
Is the splash damage small enough to only effect the players. Will this allow player characters to better assist each other?
Ultimately while splash damage may go off with the party scattered, you are still risking having one or more party members going down without any chance of support and ending up in a bad position in the example above.
In my experience the only way to effectively deal with splash damage is to either negate the source, or to get into a position where the source cannot use it effectively (either because of terrain or because of allies/themselves)
@@jianhaotoh4010 Man, those books are actually really good. Except the first one. But we don't talk about that one.
@@RobinNashVideos Eh true to that. At least it is better than the film adaptation.
Jian Hao Toh there’s also the classic rule of any shadowrunner. “Geek the mage
Best combat strategy vid I have seen yet. Bravo.
Thank you very much.
Guys, remember that TEAMWORK is important for the game. It is just as important to be supportive of your teammates in combat as being the one delivering the killing blow.
Great examples and love the use of simple math explanations.
That music lol good stuff and the skits are always funny.
I haven't watched this guy in a while. I'd forgotten how wonderfully reasonable he is.
Seth... you are a national treasure and I am a necroposter... maybe start responding to necroposters sometimes, cause we all weren't lucky enough to find you when the vids were fresh? Anyway, I have played around 80 ttrpg in my time and your insight and presentation are phenomenal---keep it up
15:00 This is why all my warrior characters have multiple types of weapons that all have similar stats but different damage types (longsword/warhammer, greatsword/maul), same bonuses, no problem.
Great advice here.
I don't care how poor your character is or their class. You ALWAYS carry dagger and club. Dagger is as much a tool as it is a weapon. Sling is also a really good, low cost, emergency weapon. There are rocks everywhere. Later on, look into cold iron and silver (about lvl 3-5)
I agree, a dagger or handaxe (woodsman/fireman) and a club are great tools if not used as backup weapons.
@@gentlemanbear Yes, a handaxe/hatchet is one-handed, but woodsmen/firemen have need for multiple axes of various sizes. You can use a hatchet for chopping off limbs of a downed tree easier than if you used a two-handed axe, for instance. And if you are holding something with one of your hands, you definitely don't have the second hand free to chop things with.
Wow. Insightful info. This will take my DMing to a new level. Thanks!
Found your videos today and got to say i absolutely adore them. it's easy to follow. you edit fairly well. good job.
Seth, love your videos man. Came back to rewatch this one so I can keep the concepts in mind as I plan certain encounters. You get me excited to sit down and work on my campaign for my players. Soon as I'm done reading the Neuromancer series your books are next. Need to support my favorite D&D youtuber. 👊🏻
I think I'm also going to send this vid to my players a few days after a more roleplay heavy session just so they don't think I'm bashing them. 😂 They aren't bad by any means but they could be a little more tactical.
This is my first time here on this channel. I love it. Great tips and great video. Can’t wait to check out the rest of your videos.
About the "Sometimes your job is to take a hit" point, I remember playing 3.5. I was a Fighter, and one of my party members was a Sorcerer. His only useful attack was his Dragon Breath. At one point a giant monster grabs me with its jaws and grapples me, and the sorcerer is standing there doing nothing, because he's afraid of hitting me, so I (as my character) shout "SET IT ON FIRE, DAMMIT!!!". Thankfully, I got out of the grapple immediately after that.
I must admit the first tip were for me.. even though, I am supposed 'veteran" so thanks!
06:02 Aww Dweebles. I'm sorry. :( But yeah, as Seth said, you need to remember the importance of covering fire while trying to fall back.
Oh yeah the high point of that vid!
I was told once that sometimes a player decides that for his character, specifically, to do only what is best for him as a individual is more coherent with his personality, archetype, blood type, etc, than actually play as part of something bigger. So when is time to take some damage for the sake of other characters those players decide their character will do the hard and right thing, which in their case is to be true with their plot and concept: and flee, leaving the losers behind.
This is something I need to share with my gaming group. I recently started DnD 5e with noob players. I am long time player and first time live DM and am still struggling at learning the new system. I am currently having to dial back my own combat tactics to make up for the fact my players have zero sense of tactics. Hopefully, it will prove useful to them and allow me to run better combats. Thank you!
We play The One Ring. Focusing Fire is hard there, when close combat starts, as each player engage with an enemy if the numbers match. Then, if there are more adversaries than players left, the Loremaster divide them up among the players. If there are more players than adversaries it's easier though. You van, however, work together in combat in some meaningful ways.
This video comes in the best moment 😁😁😍
Thank you soooo much 😍👍
I imagine you guys having a break during a big combat and you jumping on youtube to get some advice :D
@@evilscientistrecords 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣💖
No, in fact I'm planning on a video (in spanish) about this very same topic, and Seth's analysis are usually invaluable 😊
But I will keep your idea!
-OK guys, let's just do a quick break and.. In the meanwhile, maybe you want to go check this video 😁😁😁
One of the things a lot of new players fail to understand is the power of action economy. If you are new, action economy refers to the ratio of actions taken by two sides of a combat (i.e # of turns/actions you and your allies get vs how much your enemies get in a round) This is why focusing your attacks to bring down enemies rather than spreading your damage across them is so important, you want to lower the action economy of your opponents by reducing the number of enemies who get to make attacks. Action economy really swings the way combat goes. In this same vein I see a lot of more experienced players who say healing in combat is stupid, because most enemies deal more damage than a healer can restore. However, you can have players who get multiple attacks, some who can regularly get 4 or more. A healer who uses an action to keep an action-heavy player up on their feet is way better than the healer attacking the enemy with one action while the fighter is down, costing the group 4 attacks they would have dealt.
Totally. I think movies are to blame. In pop culture heroes always face off against different opponents instead of focus firing, so players, particularly new ones, don't even think to do it
Nice seeing you again Seth.
Nice review even for long time players just cause sometimes they do get tunnel vision and just slash, slash, slash.
Thanks for making the video. Inspired!
It's great when players combine attacks. Just don't forget that opponents can do the same thing. In Seth's example, if the goblins had combined attacks optimally, they would have beaten the party that did the same.
Grand job. These are useful tips indeed.
Our group ended up making an all ranged party. Between us all, we were kinda tired of min-maxing party balance, so we all just made what we wanted to. So our tank actually ended up being a ranged character. XD He has hellish rebuke too, so it works quite well. And of course he took point blank shot (homebrewed for 5e).
Great advice as always! I feel like even veteran DMs could use an occasional reminder of things like that (not that I would consider myself a veteran DM yet...) I'm not sure if this will help anybody in the comments section, but I found a trick for running "boss fights" that works really well for me personally. If players gang up on the boss, it'll die in just a couple rounds. Giving the boss monster a lot of hit points just drags out the battle and it can get boring. Instead, I make the primary enemy only slightly tougher than the party's average stats and I throw in a bunch of minions that die in one hit. This way, my players COULD focus on the boss and kill it quickly, but they'd be at risk of getting wiped out by the dozen or so minions, since their numbers make them the greatest threat at the start of the battle. I found that this keeps combat running quickly and smoothly, and the players always feel like they're making progress instead of just mindlessly trading punches for 45 minutes. Like I said, I'm not sure if this will be a huge help for anyone (I only know that it works pretty well in my own home-brew system), but I'd recommend giving it a shot if you have a hard time balancing encounters with boss monsters!
I do hope you continue doing these battle tutorials, both from the player's side of acting in them as well as the GM's side of how to design them. As I have been cautiously teetering towards becoming a regular GM, a big hurdle I have been faced with is finding balance in encounter design. How do I make an encounter that's fun and involving? How do I make a high-stakes, dangerous battle not feel like unfair dogpiling? How do you use mechanics to set a tone for a fight (How to split the difference between a Doomesque disorganized bloodbath and a suspenseful, methodical operation a la Rainbow Six without necessarily stating it, letting the action speak for itself)?
For the moment, I have been keeping my players entertained at the very least, but I always hold the notion that you can entertain a person by just sitting down and talking or watching funny videos online, so I'm always looking for ways to push the envelope and make my games as entertaining as they possibly can be in order to make sure that the game itself was worth dedicating to for a day and getting hyped for the whole week.
Great Job, I have forwarded this video to all my players to remind them of some basics.
I love the effects at 8:07 so much, lol…
15:21 this goes for what die you roll. I have a warlock in my game that used eldritch blast (deals 1d10 damage) when fighting shadows (undead) but could have used chill touch (deals 1d8 damage but gives undead enemies disadvantage) both of those spells are cantrips that she had but didn't think to use the lesser damaging one until the fourth time we encountered undead.
Disclaimer: I am the one that controlled the warlock and I'm dumb.
What a twist!
Seth! I totally needed this! I am about to be able to play and this was some great advice!
Enjoying your videos. @15:09 I own both of those weapons! lol. Thanks for sharing.
I can definitely understand the mentality of not wanting to take a minus. In Open Legend, for instance, we've simplified the system a bit to make it so that your hit chance and damage both come from the same roll, so stacking Advantage and upping your primary attack attribute to high hell becomes eminently more appealing the more points you have to spend on such a thing. Since so much is running on that one roll, for every action you take, you definitely can't afford a minus or disadvantage unless you have plenty of advantage already stacked up and the situation looks right to allow for that.
For instance, I have two characters in mind. My bog-standard mercenary and my cataphract character, from two different campaigns. Bearing in mind that the GM has to base the difficulty of an encounter around the group at large, it's understandable that they wouldn't spend every waking moment considering every possible action my characters can take, and might just look at my favoured actions and what I'm likely to do with my characters' strengths.
So, my mercenary. He's a balanced dude with offence and defence in mind, meant to serve as the heal dump and primary melee fighter of the group. One thing he can do is counterattack using his defend interrupt action, or as I like to call it, the single-tempo riposte. That uses his main attribute, Might, but if he wants to defend a party member who isn't right next to him, he has to use his lower Agility instead, because he has to run or move quickly to intercept. Because the GM likely only took his Might into consideration when determining the enemy's strengths, using his Agility will likely result in a poor scenario where he fails the check (that is, beating the enemy's attack roll), so he'll have ended up wasting his major action for the next turn while either taking damage for his party member or failing to stop any damage coming their way, which could result in their death.
To the cataphract, I've attributed lots of Might and several layers of advantage on fighting with a lance from horseback. She only receives that advantage when fighting from horseback, but it's a lot. So, when the time comes to decide if I want to use the Charge focus action, which doubles your Speed (movement range) at the cost of one disadvantage on your ensuing attack (you can't make any other actions but an attack after moving beyond normal Speed), I still have net advantage and can afford to go charging in at full gallop. Were she to try to fight from a position not on the back of her horse, or if she tried to use an attribute other than Might, I'd consider it too risky, due to the encounter being balanced around highs rather than lows.
tl;dr: Accepting minuses becomes more worrying of a decision the more streamlined the system is, as much more can be affected by any one roll. Add in the chaos factor of the dice, and it's understandable that divorcing yourself, even for a moment, from what you consider to be your A-game can be a difficult choice.
Really, the dice probably play a major role in that mentality. We live in constant fear of the dreaded nat 1, and naturally want to put as much distance between it and us as possible. Stacking pluses seems like a logical way to do that, or so we non-mathematicians think.
Unconventional attacks are great but some systems take better advantage of them than others. If you like CoC, check out Mythras. Special Effects are awarded on winning a combat contest [using differential roll results]. The Special Effects in the Mythras/Legend system are game-changers and chosen by the player (allowing you to select the SE to best suited the current combat situation).
Problem with the tactical retreat is, it doesn't work in some systems.
If you can Delay your whole turn, perfect.
D&D 5e however only allows to Hold Action, so you could Hold a Disengage and then... that's it....can't move.
The only way to do a proper tactical retreat in 5e is to use something like Thunderwave to push the enemies back, to be rogues and use Disengage as a bonus action, or to risk the opportunity attack.
I hated that change from 4e.
It is why Seth suggested letting the slowest character run first, then having everyone else retreat on their own turn. Might also not work if the initiatives are very spread, but it is what it is.
While it's not RAW, since the PC is sacrificing their action to Ready a move action once someone else has retreated, I treat the Ready action as a sort of delayed disengage, justifying it by assuming that in the act of readying they have gauged how best to avoid opportunity attack during their impending move.
Yeah, the entire point is to figure out a way to get the players to move as close in time as each other and not let some poor sod just stand there alone to get the brunt of the enemy attacks. It's up to players of whatever game it is to figure out how that works in their own game's mechanics. Originally I'd planned to use Conan as the game in the skit, but I had to rule that out at the last minute because PCs always have initiative in that particular game. Tactical retreats are very easy in Conan. D&D combat is actually pretty goofy once you start comparing it to other systems.
My own recommendation: While you're waiting for your turn, once you have your plan in mind, double-check all the rules involved. Especially if you have your own rulebook - digital or physical. Like with having your move planned out before your turn comes up, knowing exactly what you need to roll and what happens can save you a lot of time, and keep the combat fast and exciting.
The "easy fight goes wrong" And the other way is something of a speciality of my players. Most likely noone will read this but here's the story.
We are playing Warhammer 2ed: Ashes of Middenheim (heavily changed by me, as some players already knew the og module). Low fantasy, with a lot of realism. Basically, it is entirely possible in this system that your character will die of pneumonia... or heart attack... or festered wound. Thats why we like it :).
Setup: City after siege by Chaos armies, lots of dead mutants and monsters around, lots of destruction, social unrest.
Group is on track of a baddie who kicked their asses in previous module. They go to sewers.
In sewers they encounter 3 ghouls, which are basically a cannon fodder for any character that lived trough session 1-2.
1st ghoul got dispatched, 2nd one got shot with a crossbow that basically ripped the head off of his neck.
And then... then there was Konrad, the group "muscle". Konrad wanted to end the third ghoul rightly. With gusto.
Konrad attacked ghoul with rapier and missed... twice....
Ghoul retaliated, and despite the fact that ghouls are easliy killed... well... in such close quarters the can be a bit dangerous.
By "a bit" i mean that ghoul attacked with such ferocity that it would basically kill Konrad twice over, if he didnt use his "destiny points" (for those who didnt play WH 2ed. its basically get out of jail card for situations like that.). So instead of dying he fell unconcious... with ripped faced... by a ghoul... into the sewer... which led into a gangrene afterwards, giving him permanent disadvantages on charisma related throws with uncovered face...
And then the Dwarf panicked and reloaded the blunderbuss. He shot and blunderbuss exploded, blowing off his right arm up to the elbow.... aaand the sonic blast rendered everyone legally deaf.
Conclusion: 1 character disfigured permanently, miraculously avoiding death. One permanently disabled and nearly bled out. 5 all together went nearly deaf.
Same session, time skip, same group, dwarf got a prosthetic. They found a Ratogre. A hulking beast of pure feral anger fueled by litres of some alchemical stimulants. A beast that wipes entire squads of trained men in lore.
They dispatched it in a single round, without it being even able to re-act (they executed a great ambush/trap so i wasnt even mad).
Brilliant advice. This is a great asset for any player/group.
Very digestible video! You do a great job of the cutaway PC scenes
Great tips!! I am running my 2nd campaign as DM next month and I'm going to make my players watch this during Session Zero, so they don't make these mistakes during my game!! :)
And always remember the old wisdom from Shadowrun: No plan, ever, survived the first dice roll.