17 years of running D&D and I've only ever considered combat as a way to resolve stories, not to create and expand them. Reminder that there's always more to learn.
Tip for the ambush: allow smart players to learn about the ambush ahead of time. Once my players took the time to climb up a wall to look through the high windows and saw the cultists hiding inside waiting for them. This changed the entire situation, as they knew where the enemies where, but those were also aware of them and in advantageous positions, so they had to figure out a strategy. It became a great combat
Exactly. Don't explicitly decide which of these combats it will be, set the scene for one and let the players interact with the ability to flip the script if they have the appropriate planning and care. If nothing they could have done would have helped them, then their investment takes a nosedive
@@techwizsmith7963 don't even need to explicitly let them see the attackers beforehand, give them some narrative foreshadowing, an innkeeper who warns them about travelling merchants going missing along this part of the trail, that there's unusal goblin activity and they're being bolder than normal. Give your party a reason to be suspicious and to prompt them to make those rolls.
Literally killed a PC named Lazarus last session I ran. Took 2 failed death saves from a melee strike and then got ice stormed before he even rolled 1 death save. Thankfully the druid had revivify and diamonds.
There's another type of fight that gm's should plan for- ones where the players' goal is separate from killing all enemies. Easy examples are retrieving an item during combat, destroying or activating several structures on the playing field, protecting a npc, freeing a trapped npc, or even escaping from the combat location. Any non-combat goals within combat vary play immensely, and are also really great for creating stakes if player characters are more or less narratively invincible. So with extra goals you get to have real fail states that players care about but are not life and death for them.
I completely agree! I want to make a video on adding objectives into combats, because I think that's separate from a combat's type. Any combat type can have any objective. And then you can mix and match depending on your story's needs.
I think i have different ways of viewing combat. Here's how i would define them. Skirmish: 2 opposing forces meet randomly Ambush: enemy gets the drop on the party. Assault: party gets the drop on enemy. The duel: enemy and party knowingly enter combat in a specified place The arena: boss fight on enemies home turf. Good to add lair actions to. The last stand: party fight an enemy where they have home field advantage. The hunt: enemy wishes to leave combat, the party cannot let them. The escape: party for one reason or another needs to leave combat the enemy isnt to keen on letting them. The scramble: both the party and the enemy have a 3rd objective to complete. Winner is the one to complete it.
Oh, yeah. The scramble and escape... Like his description of the 'The Ambush' - having the map suddenly get bigger or smaller is a keen way to change the dynamics of a fight. And big spaces let characters play on their movement.
I think your view should really depend on what you want to get out of it. Your example is nice if you struggle with motivation of enemies and combat goals for pre-determined encounters. I have some nice Scrabmles and Hunts planned and agree that thinking in this way is awesome! But if you are planning for example a goblin hideout you don't know how your players will approach it and there are more important things to prepare. Stuff like do I want for this fight to be challenging and if so then in what ways? You can easily improvise the actual fight type to make it correspond with what players decided to do (add hostages, bugbear ambushers, messengers to ran off and inform other hideouts). However thinking about the general tactics of your monsters and adding some ways to challenge your players is much more important in that case (like a wizard with counterspells if they are all casters, area of darkness to limit range characters or battlements to bombard the melee characters).
I propose a ninth: The all-out battle. Characterized by hordes of weaker enemies alongside bigger ones and even possible elite-tier badguys. But it's not just the players fighting them, they also have allies. This could be an army of their own or collection of elite NPCs, likely allies they've built up over the course of the campaign or just relevant to a particular story arc. There might also be a set of actual objectives here. Kill the commander, defend a point, hold a point, take a point, route the enemy, buy time, capture a target. You name it. For inspiration for these, I like to look to wargames and movies. 40K and Lancer (yes I know its an RPG) both have a number of tactical objectives you can borrow whole cloth. I've even ran a naval battle directly inspired by the maelstrom battle at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, where the players and their allies were tasked with taking down a treasure fleet carrying tons upon tons of gold. Anyway, subscribed.
You would never run the larger battle as a combat though. You would narratively describe the wider battle and then only use the D&D mechanics for anything where the players get involved. Otherwise you just spend an hour with the players watching you roll dice with yourself.
these battles can be a lot of fun, but you definitely have to use them sparingly because huge amounts of enemies and allies really slows down the game, so it could easily leave players not engaged
@@ZarchAlDain You can absolutely run larger battles as a combat, or at least segments of them that are still fairly large. Troop-type NPCs as seen in Pathfinder (swarms made up of Small or larger sized creatures) can take a dozen+ entities and make them a single enemy, allowing you to keep the battle densely populated while requiring far less micromanagement and dice rolling, and can be used for both allies and enemies. There are also minion types, which are normal statblocks but will go down in 1-2 hits regardless of where they came from, if you wanna get more in on the micro. I've also heard of people pre-determining the actions that troops can take and full-on eliminating the dice rolls between allied and enemy NPCs. Another strategy is to simply let the players command or even directly control allied NPCs (usually these troops) so that they're always playing and not watching you fight yourself. Effectively, they're playing a Warhammer game against you. Pathfinder 1e (idk if 2e has these rules yet) also had a large-scale combat rule system. I don't particularly enjoy it personally, but I'm sure someone can and has gotten mileage out of it. I know it's a large part of Wrath of the Righteous at least.
@@ScaredJade Absolutely. I wouldn't recommend running these particularly often, maybe just a few times per campaign at most. Any more than that and it becomes a bit of a chore for your players, and a bit of a headache to prep for.
This is where you'd use the mass combat rules from older editions of D&D e.g. BECMI that are just straight up missing from modern editions 😢 Wouldnt be too hard to convert, but a simpler approach is just to treat each unit of troops as a single statblock with an attack and damage roll and a number of HP equivalent to the number of soldiers in the unit, and every time they get "hit" they lose a number of troops equivalent to the damage roll, and their attack bonus is reduced. Use morale rules, so roll for morale when half the troops in a unit are dead, etc
@Mystic-Arts-DM Brilliant and very clearly articulated. Subbed! And I'll propose a 10th: The Escape - Waves of mobs appear in the room, every x number of turns, while players have to figure a way out. Combat is the distraction. The goal is extraction.
I recently did a 'Bait and Switch', which I would characterize as a blend of the 'Targeted Strike' and 'Puzzle, Actually'. Party were taking out a nest of ankhegs; hatchlings, adults, and a brood mother as a boss. The nest was underground, and the vibration of the battle attracted the attention of a bulette. The party are tired, and have almost killed the brood mother. Victory is assured. It is then that a portion of the ceiling collapses, the bulette crashes through, and handily kills the last of the ankhegs. The bulette then detected the party and came after THEM. They're low on resources. They have injured followers. They have to run, back through all of the tunnels and traps that brought them down here. Their goal was not to defeat the bulette, but delay it long enough to keep their most vulnerable away from it. They used narrow passages to their advantage, turned the traps they had avoided against the bulette, and managed to escape with every NPC they had rescued intact. Very proud of my players.
I always love doing something like this as a last hurrah for every dungeon or "mega-dungeon" i throw at my party. something that forces them to leave quickly, either through natural disaster, boss, or both
This is the first time seeing a video from this channel. Within 90 seconds, I have a strong suspicion this guy has watched a lot of Matt Colville, and I mean that as a high compliment!
The types of combat you identify, and the terms you used for them, are great. It's a very useful architecture for looking at it. Helps remind us as DMs that the enemies have different goals.
This is great! Sometimes just have a name for encounters you already intuitively know exist makes it just that much easier to be mindful of it when planning your next session. Never would have known how to word the stomping grounds encounter, but hearing you say that name it definitely clicked.
I really appreciate the thought process here. I think it's important for combat to serve some sort of purpose, and this video illustrates that very well. It's really easy to throw around combat just for the sake of combat, or to kill time. Combat is a narrative tool as well, and it certainly takes some finesse to utilize it effectively.
This channel is a brilliant gem, and I am so excited to learn more from you! I struggle with setting up battles that don't bore my party and this has completely changed the way I think about building them! Thank you 🙏😭
This is BRILLIANT and I agree with your points! I especially like and appreciate your examples. Too many D&D channels talk about the principles without giving good examples; your examples were INSTANTLY understandable and recognizable. Made me say “ohhh, yeah, I know how I can do that in MY game.”
Something I'd also recommend as a way to help build encounters is "Objectives and Scenarios," which plays very nicely with the ideas presented here. Objectives are what you think if you've played any shooter. "Do this task to win." Think of this as win conditions for both your players and their opponents. The simplest objective is Rout, where you just kill every enemy. However, there's also Escort, where you protect something/someone from the other team. There's Capture, the obvious counter to the Escort objective. There's also the Survive and the Beat the Clock objectives, where you either try to survive a certain amount of time until you're saved, or accomplish something in a certain amount of time, halting a much worse situation. There's also the Scenarios, which are more like specific enemies or battlefield hazards that make situations more perilous or tactically interesting. Maybe you have the Specialist scenario, where the opponents are much better equipped right off the bat, like Mounted enemies who's objective against the player is Capture. There's the Dynamic Terrain, where the battlefield shifts as the fight goes on, such as trying to escape down a mountainside being blocked by Fire Elementals as a stream of lava slowly encroaches behind you. There's also Mixed Units, where you combine multiple different combat units together with a tactical plan, such as skirmisher enemies blocking the exit to a canyon, archers on the cliffs, and cavalry heading up the exit, all lead by a powerful wizard that casts save-or-suck spells. Combining these Objectives and Scenarios is different ways makes every single fight different. Do you find yourself throwing your players against only Rout objectives? Give them a big "Beat the Clock" map where they have to ring a sacred bell that seals demon gates, and if they don't by turn 10, they have to deal with significantly stronger enemies. Keep throwing the same generic goblins at them? Put those goblins on the backs of Giant Vultures and have them circling their airship, peppering them with arrows, fire magic, and bombs, and the only way to beat them besides killing them all is for you to survive long enough to cross into a Bronze Dragon's domain to chase them off. I love the ideas presented in the video and hope my ideas can further bolster what you can do at the table. Stay safe, have fun!
And where the actual combat isn't necessary, or is only strategic . Call of Cthulhu uses a pseudo board game to detail out a whole path, with the potential for branches and obstacles along the way.
While out shopping in town one or two of the party notice townsfolk getting robbed. They're too late to stop the robbery but must chase down the thief through the streets of the city. How this ends could be different. Perhaps the thief turns to fight. Maybe they hole up in a house on the edge of town and make a stand there. Either way, the party members aren't going to be launching fireballs or shooting arrows around because literally the residents are in the way. Best they can do is give chase and hope they can out-maneuver through the obstacle course and capture the dexterous speedy thief.
@@emrek99205 My sweet summer child, this is how you realize that your friends *will* literally shoot fireballs in the street around civilians. (only partially joking lol)
On lower levels sure, but on higher levels this breaks easily - with teleport spells flying and such it very quickly outgrows anything you can bound within the limit of a board or even theater of mind combat arena. I have special rules for chase scenes - essentially recording the distance difference and introducing complications along the way.
@@MarvelOfRain Anything the players can do, the NPC can do before them. If the players teleport in, have the NPC teleport out. If the players tag them with a Wizard Mark, the NPC Erases it. If they divine where the NPC will be, have the NPC divine how to not be there. Just cause the players have options, don't take options away from the NPCs unless you really want them to win the chase with near zero effort or stress. It is supposed to be a challenging chase scene, not an out-smart-the-idiot scene.
Amazing video! I love your style of storytelling/teaching. You explained things in a digestible and engaging way. Not too much fluff, just enough embleshiment and context to sell each bullet point.
This is absolute fire. Great video! Especially helpful for new GMs like me. The way you organize the information, articulate the words your speaking and the points you're presenting, fantastic.
been running games for my best friends around 4 years now. i've watched so many different content creators, read tons of books, and i think your method of explaining and just overall feel to your videos are fantastic for how i take in information! already binged the videos you've got so far, and definitely gonna be watching whatever stuff you put out next! :DDDD
Great tips! I once unintentionally put together an 'Elite Team' of NPCs-a group of seven Harper allies to support the players. But since neither side really knew each other, the players got suspicious. Our barbarian decided to attack without a second thought, and... well, it turned into a total bloodbath! Two player characters and the entire Harper team were wiped out in the chaos! 😂
May I suggest "the Duel?" Where the party besides their chosen duelist do not engage in combat, but actually in espionage and social "combat"; wherein they might parry any attempts to sabotage the duel. Its less combat-oriented for the entire party as a whole, sure. But it gives the others, who might not actually excel in combat (think a bard or illusionist wizard) a way to test their skills outside of actual combat while giving them the tension and engagement that can really show how decisive and/or creative they can be. Great video. I like that you touched upon how combat encounters can gradually tell a story over time, without even missing a beat.
Great video! I was checking to see if anyone said "duel" :) The Duel is excellent fun. Here, for some reason, you can't rely on your teammates and they can't help you. All they can do is watch helplessly as their wizard faces off against a similarly leveled wizard. It can be a friendly contest, or an epic battle with the weight of the world riding on it. I love the idea that everyone's all geared up for a big battle and turns out, it's all down to the Bard. "Wait, what?!"
@reedberkowitz583 @reedberkowitz583 It brings that gladiator-swashbuckling energy that I feel can play along any plot line, especially if a bunch of the party are more utility in power and ability than actual combat. Its also far more open ended than just your typical battle. So yeah! I would agree, it's great fun and all-round versatile.
That was pretty eye-opening, actually. I've never really thought too deep on all the different combat niches. But that's honestly really cool. That said, I do feel like you probably could have pointed out chase sequences as well, not all of them count as combat, but if you know how to use them effectively, I feel like they could be even more engaging than a normal battle! Honestly, I'm glad I happened upon this. Thanks for a cool new look at things.
With my party at level 20, i regularly use hordes of monsters. I created stat blocks based on low cr monsters and modified their stats to reflect that it is a Gargantuan sized mass. As their hp reduces, they become less effective, even flee. It also great narrative. Having the barbarian swing their hammer and smash half a dozen rat men to the floor in a single bloody swing is appealing, or the ranged fighter unleashed a blizzard of arrows. Yes, it's one attack, but it's more fun to describe. If you need help with descriptions, read gotrex and Felix books 😂
I also like: hopeless Players encounter a monster that CANNOT be defeated at their level or current point in time, but what they can do is run and slow it down so they can escape and hide. It works as great introduction to a big fat boss that they will want to beat later.
I tried that but it didn't work. I debuffed the enemy too much. 2 of the 4 lvl 6 party members were playing, intro'd an adult gold dragon in human form. He almost killed 1, and had about 20 hp when we ended the session.
@@HLGJammer That's why I called it hopeless, my party of 5 lvl 7 killed an adult green dragon in it's lair along with his dragonborn guard, giant hydra guardian and goblin ambush, all in one session with no rests [fights were separate though]. For this to work you have to pick something that could WIPE them turn 1 and make it spend that turn playing with them / killing other stuff / mocking them. Critical role and chroma conclave is a good example of that like someone mentioned.
@@Chodor101it likely would have worked if I didn't dumb down the stats, but they also have some goodies they likely wouldn't have if we started at lvl 1 (first time players, we started at level 5 for the halibut).
As good of info as this is, there are SO many more types of combat / encounters than just these 8. Things like the Tough Choice (two mutually exclusive potential world-atering choice fights), the Total War fight (PCs involved in a war-like battle), the Timed Fight (bad things happen in X turns), the Ramping Encounter (gets harder and hard the longer you stay / survive), the While You Were Gone encounter, and SO much more.
Wow. I'm gonna need to go through this video a few times to make sure I don't miss all the great content, instantly subbed. Thank you so much for the fantastic content!
I'm happy when I find videos like this. Running TTRPG fights in an interesting manner is something I always want to do, but usually accidentally end up making a slog. I'd started to convince myself that perhaps I'd fallen out of love of running the game. Thank you for helping revitalise my imagination just a little bit.
This is a really, really excellent breakdown of combat types and the functions they serve in the game. I used to design games for TSR and other publishers, and it would have been so helpful back in the day to have this kind of very specific framework through which to critically assess a work in progress. You've done a great job of teasing out important distinctions and nuances in combat encounters--and all in such a brief and concise vid. Kudos to you. Subscribing now!
I had a chase scene combat through a canyon. Using modular terrain blocks (RP Archive inspired), I always moved the board further, disassembled the parts too far behind and assembled what was ahead of the players. In front of them were dozens of wounded enemies who used the canyon to retreat from a battle, while from behind, they were chased by fresh enemies. Wounded meant that enemies died by taking any hit larger 11 damage or two hits of any damage. The goal of the players was to reach the camp of their allies.
All of my One-Shot sessions have Puzzle, Actually fights, they are some of the most fun, enjoyable, and rewarding fights in my opinion, especially when served alongside a boss fight. Great stuff!
Love this. I’ve never thought of this before. I do propose two other types of combat. 1. The capture: where for story purposes the PC’s need to be captured by the enemy for story/plot progression. Over powered enemy that don’t kill the characters but subdue them or force surrender. 2. The introduction: characters battle the big boss early in the campaign/ story to introduce them only for the boss to retreat / leave or the PC’s to retreat and to meet later in the campaign. I feel these two types of combat fulfill new mechanics to propel the story forward.
Subscribed! This was concise, entertaining and informative. Really loved it! And excited to start implementing more of these sorts of varied combats in my games. I ran a combat just recently that was a combo of boss fight, puzzle fight, and horde. The players had to figure out how to dismantle an antimagic field (they couldn’t use spells until it was disabled) in order to destroy a massive creature that had been plaguing a village, all while her hordes of mind controlled zombies were after the players as well. The boss couldn’t be killed until the antimagic field went down, but she also became more powerful once they figured out how to dismantle it! Two PC’s died and were brought back during the fight, one player made a pact with a great spirit and became a warlock mid combat, it was a wild ride.
Another kind of puzzle fight is a stealth mission. Like the rogue and Druid infiltrating an enemy stronghold for an item or piece of information. This puzzle is completed best if initiative is never rolled, but second best if no widespread alarm is ever raised. Although technically it might only cost more resources and time to make it a fight, if the players want to do it this way it gives them easily one of their campaign highlights.
One of my favorite combat encounters is the minecart madness cliche, where a group of 2+ enemies are getting away on a minecart that can be accelerated by pushing a lever on it back and forth. The cart moves at a speed reliant on the character(s) whose pushing the lever, at a factor of 10x their strength modifier. The lever takes an action to pump/accelerate and the cart can fall off the rails at some sections if moving too fast (but give your players ample warning with a visibly broken guardrail in front of a sharp turn.) This new dynamic of action economy / movement through atypical means is always guaranteed to stick in your party's collective thoughts.
having a monster which is basically immune to almost everything but also isn't actively trying to kill the party, but do something else, is a pretty good type of puzzle too, especially if you sprinkle in clues in your dungeon on how to fight the creature
I would add social combat to the list, where PCs have to make their point in order to advance. I like to make it so PCs can use diverse skills in order to win said combat, so that the Charisma-based characters are not the only important contributors.
Cleric beast is an amazing song to play for boss battles. I also like the theme for chairman rose from pokemon swsh. Honestly the theme has no business being used on the character it is, and kinda doesn't even belong in a pokemon game, but if you wanna make a boss fight dramatic, it slaps hard and has a similar opening vibe to cleric beast. More on the topic of the video itself though, I think that most of the fight types you've listed are actually just sub-types of the skirmish. I think you didn't really approach the other types of fight until the very last portion of the video where you talked about combat as a puzzle. I'd argue that what really separates one combat from another lies in motivations and objectives. The race is a combat in which players must fight their way through a series of obstacles or enemies to complete a specific objective before a bad thing happens. The hoard is a combat type that is great for a slaughter, but its also a style of encounter where the objective is just to survive until some goal is achieved (enough monsters die, or the rogue finishes stealing the thing you were distracting for, or the portcullis closes, etc). The chase/the hunt are combat encounters where the objective is to catch/detain/kill a target on the run. There are plenty more, but personally I think that the thing which makes a lot of combat feel tired is that if the objective is always "kill all these guys" players have little incentive to choose to do anything but figure out how to do optimum damage to the enemies. When the objectives of the combat change, players have reasons to pull on different resources, come up with new ideas about how to engage with the encounter or environment, and generally engage more than just looking at their character sheet to figure out which series of actions are going to get them the biggest numbers.
protecting NPC's or innocents through multiple combats adds a layer of the Puzzle to every fight. We've lost a few we were very engaged with, to a great table reaction of disappointment. One other important combat to mention, which our brilliant DM often employs is the ability to talk to many of the intelligent creatures. We fall into this trap often because we want to roll our sleeves up and roll some dice, but when the 'world' is 'real' some of our most brutal encounters could have been entirely avoided if we had just chatted to to the enemy. Which would have added more lore, plot points, side quests and faction intrigue. In a world of never ending bad guys and character choices affecting the world this adds plenty to the experience.
I highly recommend taking a look at the SitRep system from Lancer (a tactical mecha ttrpg with heavy influence from 4e d&d.) Sitreps are a series of, essentially, templates for combat that pilots may encounter in a mission. Each sitrep represents a different objective for combat, very few of which include “defeat everyone”. Instead they’re things like: control this point for x number of rounds; escort this npc safely to the extraction zone; survive against overwhelming odds for long enough to let someone else escape; enter this fortified area, grab the objective, and flee with it; etc. There’s a bit of legwork to make this kind of template work in a non-sci-fi, non-military setting, but the thing that I find so compelling about sitreps is the way that those objectives just ooze story possibilities. If the pc’s job isn’t just “hit all the baddies till they stop moving” it immediately lends itself to more immersive storytelling. What are they protecting? Who are they escorting? What do they need to retrieve? In short: one should always look towards varying the objectives of a combat, not just the particulars of it.
"The puzzle, actually" is less of a "combat" and more of an "encounter", just with a time-sensitive element, which is a GREAT thing to do. Make your players go with the pacing of the game; don't let them dictate it unless they're very savvy leaders.
Very informative! As to the categories, well, we humans sure love putting things in boxes, I think these aren't mutually exclusive types, but rather labels that we can put on certain fights, some of which can co-oexist with other labels. Especially the Elite Team can /also/ be and Ambush, a Targeted Strike, a Stomping Ground (post enough character levelling, of course), a Boss Battle, or a Puzzle, Actually. A Horde of Bad Guys can be an Ambush or a Targeted Strike. Etc.
There's also a difference between a Boss Battle as you propose it, and the Mid-Boss Battle, which doesn't end the campaign but might end an arc of a campaign or setup the climax for that arc. I also like to mix and match aspects of different types of combat in the same initiative.
One more: "The Siege" Players are either defending or attacking a central fortified position. If defending, they will need to deal with threats from all directions. They will be in a confined space, and will probably have better access to cover. If attacking, the players will need to coordinate attacks against an enemy with stronger fortifications. There may also be a puzzle element, time limit, or a macguffin involved in either case.
been thinking about making it so most of the normal Monsters (stuff like Dragons, Owlbears, or a few of the monsters I'd added in my games) are a bit of a mix between a targeted strike & Puzzle, same with some of the bosses, albeit with the bosses its more just trying to find information about them. The idea is to try and make it so the party learns things about the monster, whether by hearing about it or even just observing it, and then they do whatever they can to kill it while the monster then tries to counter in any way it can, and goes back & forth (ex. someone jumps into a red dragons horde, and uses the threat of the dragon damaging its own horde to prevent it from using it breath weapon, only for it to attempt to throw the players out and away from the horde so it can use its breath weapon safely).
I have a few tricks, one is to use D&D essentials (4.5 edition) where monsters have a role: skirmish, brute, controller, soldier, artillery with a few minions sprinkled in. Have smart enemies fight smart and dumb monsters easily kited, which usually has room hazards to use against them.
We had a min max player, playing a bladesimger in the old 2nd edition. Nothing his character did was particularly memorable as far as role playing until the day when he died. He challenged the ogre khan to single combat to end the war, and very nearly did it, despite him being 4th level in comparison to the 12 level npc he fought to a standstill. The players in the group were sitting on the edge of their seats despite having no involvement in the fight, and when the character died, the group were actually almost in tears. The role playing of the aftermath was amazing, an actual in game funeral, characters who had been irritated by the bladesinger's attitude were given to reflecting on his better traits, and overall, that made the rest of the campaign so good.
One thing to consider is that in an ambush the attackers are choosing the time and place. They will not kick the fight off unless they are certain they will likely win.
@@Mystic-Arts-DM Your video has inspired me to further prep the next sessions combat. My players will likely attempt to help a clan cross a swamp and I am planning to have a puzzle enemy, something that swoops in, grabs a few folks and vanishes in the darkness. They can leave the caravan to pursue it (leaving the caravan unguarded), decide to speed up as much as possible, etc. Taking inspiration from the videogame banner saga they will have a specific count of survivors, each decision making it go down by a certain amount.
There can also be social or political “combats” where the players need to fight a larger system that they can’t just kill, sway loyalties, convince DMPCs, etc. And within these conflicts, the other combat types can also exist or overlap in interesting ways
May I add? - Impaired combat, imagine a dungeon, going from one space into the next is a crawlspace, maybe 40cm high. They can only enter one after the other round for round. Who will be so brave and face all advesaries alone? Impaired combat can be fighting in the rigging of an ship in heavy winds. While climbing a steep mountain wall. Nature/terrain is as much part of the story as the enemy itself. - Innocents arround innocent people arround restrict combat a lot. No fireballs, screaming people, enemies using innocents as hostages. Also nice, enemy innocents arround, like goblin children.
Your ambush example would tpk most parties unless the enemies are very weak, or at least get half their team killed while the other half flees. I don't know if I fully agree with all your points but it was a well-structured video. Also, I don't know if that is a fake or stage voice but that's a nice voice you use in the video. It has a distinct character to it.
Holy crap you are super new to youtube? I thought i found an established channel with tons of videos. Your quality is amazing. Im instantly subscribing. P.s. I love that this video is great even if you are not playing DnD.
17 years of running D&D and I've only ever considered combat as a way to resolve stories, not to create and expand them. Reminder that there's always more to learn.
good luck on ending more campaigns, hope your players find the time too =]
Tip for the ambush: allow smart players to learn about the ambush ahead of time.
Once my players took the time to climb up a wall to look through the high windows and saw the cultists hiding inside waiting for them. This changed the entire situation, as they knew where the enemies where, but those were also aware of them and in advantageous positions, so they had to figure out a strategy. It became a great combat
Exactly. Don't explicitly decide which of these combats it will be, set the scene for one and let the players interact with the ability to flip the script if they have the appropriate planning and care. If nothing they could have done would have helped them, then their investment takes a nosedive
@@techwizsmith7963 don't even need to explicitly let them see the attackers beforehand, give them some narrative foreshadowing, an innkeeper who warns them about travelling merchants going missing along this part of the trail, that there's unusal goblin activity and they're being bolder than normal. Give your party a reason to be suspicious and to prompt them to make those rolls.
12:37 imagine being named Lazarus and being the one PC who doesn’t come back lol
I feel like there must be a story there.
"His name is Lazarus, of course he has a self revive."
"Actually, I don't..."
"... Well, we're out of diamonds."
Literally killed a PC named Lazarus last session I ran. Took 2 failed death saves from a melee strike and then got ice stormed before he even rolled 1 death save. Thankfully the druid had revivify and diamonds.
@@Kirk9019 In my experience the majority of deaths do not involve rolling death saves, but maybe that's just me.
There's another type of fight that gm's should plan for- ones where the players' goal is separate from killing all enemies. Easy examples are retrieving an item during combat, destroying or activating several structures on the playing field, protecting a npc, freeing a trapped npc, or even escaping from the combat location. Any non-combat goals within combat vary play immensely, and are also really great for creating stakes if player characters are more or less narratively invincible. So with extra goals you get to have real fail states that players care about but are not life and death for them.
I completely agree! I want to make a video on adding objectives into combats, because I think that's separate from a combat's type. Any combat type can have any objective. And then you can mix and match depending on your story's needs.
I think your describing the puzzle genre
I think i have different ways of viewing combat. Here's how i would define them.
Skirmish: 2 opposing forces meet randomly
Ambush: enemy gets the drop on the party.
Assault: party gets the drop on enemy.
The duel: enemy and party knowingly enter combat in a specified place
The arena: boss fight on enemies home turf. Good to add lair actions to.
The last stand: party fight an enemy where they have home field advantage.
The hunt: enemy wishes to leave combat, the party cannot let them.
The escape: party for one reason or another needs to leave combat the enemy isnt to keen on letting them.
The scramble: both the party and the enemy have a 3rd objective to complete. Winner is the one to complete it.
Oh, yeah. The scramble and escape... Like his description of the 'The Ambush' - having the map suddenly get bigger or smaller is a keen way to change the dynamics of a fight. And big spaces let characters play on their movement.
I think your view should really depend on what you want to get out of it. Your example is nice if you struggle with motivation of enemies and combat goals for pre-determined encounters. I have some nice Scrabmles and Hunts planned and agree that thinking in this way is awesome!
But if you are planning for example a goblin hideout you don't know how your players will approach it and there are more important things to prepare. Stuff like do I want for this fight to be challenging and if so then in what ways? You can easily improvise the actual fight type to make it correspond with what players decided to do (add hostages, bugbear ambushers, messengers to ran off and inform other hideouts). However thinking about the general tactics of your monsters and adding some ways to challenge your players is much more important in that case (like a wizard with counterspells if they are all casters, area of darkness to limit range characters or battlements to bombard the melee characters).
I propose a ninth: The all-out battle. Characterized by hordes of weaker enemies alongside bigger ones and even possible elite-tier badguys. But it's not just the players fighting them, they also have allies. This could be an army of their own or collection of elite NPCs, likely allies they've built up over the course of the campaign or just relevant to a particular story arc. There might also be a set of actual objectives here. Kill the commander, defend a point, hold a point, take a point, route the enemy, buy time, capture a target. You name it.
For inspiration for these, I like to look to wargames and movies. 40K and Lancer (yes I know its an RPG) both have a number of tactical objectives you can borrow whole cloth. I've even ran a naval battle directly inspired by the maelstrom battle at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, where the players and their allies were tasked with taking down a treasure fleet carrying tons upon tons of gold.
Anyway, subscribed.
You would never run the larger battle as a combat though.
You would narratively describe the wider battle and then only use the D&D mechanics for anything where the players get involved.
Otherwise you just spend an hour with the players watching you roll dice with yourself.
these battles can be a lot of fun, but you definitely have to use them sparingly because huge amounts of enemies and allies really slows down the game, so it could easily leave players not engaged
@@ZarchAlDain You can absolutely run larger battles as a combat, or at least segments of them that are still fairly large. Troop-type NPCs as seen in Pathfinder (swarms made up of Small or larger sized creatures) can take a dozen+ entities and make them a single enemy, allowing you to keep the battle densely populated while requiring far less micromanagement and dice rolling, and can be used for both allies and enemies. There are also minion types, which are normal statblocks but will go down in 1-2 hits regardless of where they came from, if you wanna get more in on the micro.
I've also heard of people pre-determining the actions that troops can take and full-on eliminating the dice rolls between allied and enemy NPCs. Another strategy is to simply let the players command or even directly control allied NPCs (usually these troops) so that they're always playing and not watching you fight yourself. Effectively, they're playing a Warhammer game against you. Pathfinder 1e (idk if 2e has these rules yet) also had a large-scale combat rule system. I don't particularly enjoy it personally, but I'm sure someone can and has gotten mileage out of it. I know it's a large part of Wrath of the Righteous at least.
@@ScaredJade Absolutely. I wouldn't recommend running these particularly often, maybe just a few times per campaign at most. Any more than that and it becomes a bit of a chore for your players, and a bit of a headache to prep for.
This is where you'd use the mass combat rules from older editions of D&D e.g. BECMI that are just straight up missing from modern editions 😢
Wouldnt be too hard to convert, but a simpler approach is just to treat each unit of troops as a single statblock with an attack and damage roll and a number of HP equivalent to the number of soldiers in the unit, and every time they get "hit" they lose a number of troops equivalent to the damage roll, and their attack bonus is reduced. Use morale rules, so roll for morale when half the troops in a unit are dead, etc
@Mystic-Arts-DM Brilliant and very clearly articulated. Subbed! And I'll propose a 10th: The Escape - Waves of mobs appear in the room, every x number of turns, while players have to figure a way out. Combat is the distraction. The goal is extraction.
I recently did a 'Bait and Switch', which I would characterize as a blend of the 'Targeted Strike' and 'Puzzle, Actually'.
Party were taking out a nest of ankhegs; hatchlings, adults, and a brood mother as a boss. The nest was underground, and the vibration of the battle attracted the attention of a bulette. The party are tired, and have almost killed the brood mother. Victory is assured. It is then that a portion of the ceiling collapses, the bulette crashes through, and handily kills the last of the ankhegs. The bulette then detected the party and came after THEM.
They're low on resources. They have injured followers. They have to run, back through all of the tunnels and traps that brought them down here. Their goal was not to defeat the bulette, but delay it long enough to keep their most vulnerable away from it. They used narrow passages to their advantage, turned the traps they had avoided against the bulette, and managed to escape with every NPC they had rescued intact. Very proud of my players.
@@warprail My players would be fighting to the death immediately.
I always love doing something like this as a last hurrah for every dungeon or "mega-dungeon" i throw at my party. something that forces them to leave quickly, either through natural disaster, boss, or both
This is the first time seeing a video from this channel. Within 90 seconds, I have a strong suspicion this guy has watched a lot of Matt Colville, and I mean that as a high compliment!
You got me.
@@Mystic-Arts-DM The "boss battle" figurine of the floating golden dude reminded me of Ajax the Invincible actually
lil matt colville
I feel like your delivery, intonation, emphasis is very similar to matts presentation style
Stomping grounds can be fun. I love making terrified goblin noises as the paladin rushes straight for a heavily outmatched little minion.
I like how you link the combat and the story together. That's definitely something I could use more of
" No matter how good the story wont survive /or be to be quality iif the DM is saddled with a Lame'o group of players" - Chris Perkins
This is amazing. One of the best and well-presented videos on combat encounters I've seen.
Wow, thank you!
The types of combat you identify, and the terms you used for them, are great. It's a very useful architecture for looking at it. Helps remind us as DMs that the enemies have different goals.
This is great! Sometimes just have a name for encounters you already intuitively know exist makes it just that much easier to be mindful of it when planning your next session. Never would have known how to word the stomping grounds encounter, but hearing you say that name it definitely clicked.
I really appreciate the thought process here. I think it's important for combat to serve some sort of purpose, and this video illustrates that very well. It's really easy to throw around combat just for the sake of combat, or to kill time. Combat is a narrative tool as well, and it certainly takes some finesse to utilize it effectively.
This channel is a brilliant gem, and I am so excited to learn more from you! I struggle with setting up battles that don't bore my party and this has completely changed the way I think about building them! Thank you 🙏😭
This is BRILLIANT and I agree with your points! I especially like and appreciate your examples. Too many D&D channels talk about the principles without giving good examples; your examples were INSTANTLY understandable and recognizable. Made me say “ohhh, yeah, I know how I can do that in MY game.”
This was concise, FRESH, and so helpful. Subscribed!
I’m shocked how few subs you have, awesome video, you’re going to do amazing on this platform man
Something I'd also recommend as a way to help build encounters is "Objectives and Scenarios," which plays very nicely with the ideas presented here.
Objectives are what you think if you've played any shooter. "Do this task to win." Think of this as win conditions for both your players and their opponents. The simplest objective is Rout, where you just kill every enemy. However, there's also Escort, where you protect something/someone from the other team. There's Capture, the obvious counter to the Escort objective. There's also the Survive and the Beat the Clock objectives, where you either try to survive a certain amount of time until you're saved, or accomplish something in a certain amount of time, halting a much worse situation.
There's also the Scenarios, which are more like specific enemies or battlefield hazards that make situations more perilous or tactically interesting. Maybe you have the Specialist scenario, where the opponents are much better equipped right off the bat, like Mounted enemies who's objective against the player is Capture. There's the Dynamic Terrain, where the battlefield shifts as the fight goes on, such as trying to escape down a mountainside being blocked by Fire Elementals as a stream of lava slowly encroaches behind you. There's also Mixed Units, where you combine multiple different combat units together with a tactical plan, such as skirmisher enemies blocking the exit to a canyon, archers on the cliffs, and cavalry heading up the exit, all lead by a powerful wizard that casts save-or-suck spells.
Combining these Objectives and Scenarios is different ways makes every single fight different. Do you find yourself throwing your players against only Rout objectives? Give them a big "Beat the Clock" map where they have to ring a sacred bell that seals demon gates, and if they don't by turn 10, they have to deal with significantly stronger enemies. Keep throwing the same generic goblins at them? Put those goblins on the backs of Giant Vultures and have them circling their airship, peppering them with arrows, fire magic, and bombs, and the only way to beat them besides killing them all is for you to survive long enough to cross into a Bronze Dragon's domain to chase them off.
I love the ideas presented in the video and hope my ideas can further bolster what you can do at the table. Stay safe, have fun!
This video deserves way more views. Very high quality, great presentation, and fun ideas I hadn't considered yet.
I really enjoyed this thank you
The one I would add to this is the chase scene. fights where mobility is paramount to winning the battle
And where the actual combat isn't necessary, or is only strategic . Call of Cthulhu uses a pseudo board game to detail out a whole path, with the potential for branches and obstacles along the way.
While out shopping in town one or two of the party notice townsfolk getting robbed. They're too late to stop the robbery but must chase down the thief through the streets of the city.
How this ends could be different. Perhaps the thief turns to fight. Maybe they hole up in a house on the edge of town and make a stand there.
Either way, the party members aren't going to be launching fireballs or shooting arrows around because literally the residents are in the way. Best they can do is give chase and hope they can out-maneuver through the obstacle course and capture the dexterous speedy thief.
@@emrek99205 My sweet summer child, this is how you realize that your friends *will* literally shoot fireballs in the street around civilians. (only partially joking lol)
On lower levels sure, but on higher levels this breaks easily - with teleport spells flying and such it very quickly outgrows anything you can bound within the limit of a board or even theater of mind combat arena. I have special rules for chase scenes - essentially recording the distance difference and introducing complications along the way.
@@MarvelOfRain Anything the players can do, the NPC can do before them. If the players teleport in, have the NPC teleport out. If the players tag them with a Wizard Mark, the NPC Erases it. If they divine where the NPC will be, have the NPC divine how to not be there.
Just cause the players have options, don't take options away from the NPCs unless you really want them to win the chase with near zero effort or stress. It is supposed to be a challenging chase scene, not an out-smart-the-idiot scene.
Amazing video! I love your style of storytelling/teaching. You explained things in a digestible and engaging way. Not too much fluff, just enough embleshiment and context to sell each bullet point.
This is absolute fire. Great video! Especially helpful for new GMs like me. The way you organize the information, articulate the words your speaking and the points you're presenting, fantastic.
Glad it was helpful! Thanks so much!
thank you for this, it's a great way to restructure how i think about combat
been running games for my best friends around 4 years now. i've watched so many different content creators, read tons of books, and i think your method of explaining and just overall feel to your videos are fantastic for how i take in information! already binged the videos you've got so far, and definitely gonna be watching whatever stuff you put out next! :DDDD
Great tips! I once unintentionally put together an 'Elite Team' of NPCs-a group of seven Harper allies to support the players. But since neither side really knew each other, the players got suspicious. Our barbarian decided to attack without a second thought, and... well, it turned into a total bloodbath! Two player characters and the entire Harper team were wiped out in the chaos! 😂
This is a great video! I really like the categories you presented!
Gives me new ideas for the horde encounter next session...
There's an irony that the one PC that couldn't be resurrected was named Lazarus
May I suggest "the Duel?"
Where the party besides their chosen duelist do not engage in combat, but actually in espionage and social "combat"; wherein they might parry any attempts to sabotage the duel. Its less combat-oriented for the entire party as a whole, sure.
But it gives the others, who might not actually excel in combat (think a bard or illusionist wizard) a way to test their skills outside of actual combat while giving them the tension and engagement that can really show how decisive and/or creative they can be.
Great video. I like that you touched upon how combat encounters can gradually tell a story over time, without even missing a beat.
Great video! I was checking to see if anyone said "duel" :)
The Duel is excellent fun. Here, for some reason, you can't rely on your teammates and they can't help you. All they can do is watch helplessly as their wizard faces off against a similarly leveled wizard. It can be a friendly contest, or an epic battle with the weight of the world riding on it. I love the idea that everyone's all geared up for a big battle and turns out, it's all down to the Bard. "Wait, what?!"
@reedberkowitz583 @reedberkowitz583 It brings that gladiator-swashbuckling energy that I feel can play along any plot line, especially if a bunch of the party are more utility in power and ability than actual combat. Its also far more open ended than just your typical battle. So yeah! I would agree, it's great fun and all-round versatile.
@@expychristian agree! Also turns the spotlight on some players that might feel lost in the background :)
That was pretty eye-opening, actually. I've never really thought too deep on all the different combat niches. But that's honestly really cool.
That said, I do feel like you probably could have pointed out chase sequences as well, not all of them count as combat, but if you know how to use them effectively, I feel like they could be even more engaging than a normal battle!
Honestly, I'm glad I happened upon this. Thanks for a cool new look at things.
With my party at level 20, i regularly use hordes of monsters. I created stat blocks based on low cr monsters and modified their stats to reflect that it is a Gargantuan sized mass.
As their hp reduces, they become less effective, even flee.
It also great narrative. Having the barbarian swing their hammer and smash half a dozen rat men to the floor in a single bloody swing is appealing, or the ranged fighter unleashed a blizzard of arrows. Yes, it's one attack, but it's more fun to describe.
If you need help with descriptions, read gotrex and Felix books 😂
I'm glad I stumbled on this channel. Gladly subscribed. This is a wonderful video.
Thank you for the video. I learn new things about DMing even 10 years into the trade, like yourself
I also like: hopeless
Players encounter a monster that CANNOT be defeated at their level or current point in time, but what they can do is run and slow it down so they can escape and hide.
It works as great introduction to a big fat boss that they will want to beat later.
Very much CR and the arrival of the Chroma Conclave... "19 misses?!?!"
I tried that but it didn't work. I debuffed the enemy too much.
2 of the 4 lvl 6 party members were playing, intro'd an adult gold dragon in human form. He almost killed 1, and had about 20 hp when we ended the session.
@@HLGJammer That's why I called it hopeless, my party of 5 lvl 7 killed an adult green dragon in it's lair along with his dragonborn guard, giant hydra guardian and goblin ambush, all in one session with no rests [fights were separate though].
For this to work you have to pick something that could WIPE them turn 1 and make it spend that turn playing with them / killing other stuff / mocking them.
Critical role and chroma conclave is a good example of that like someone mentioned.
Players usually don't make heroes that run away from fights. This needs to be bluntly telegraphed.
@@Chodor101it likely would have worked if I didn't dumb down the stats, but they also have some goodies they likely wouldn't have if we started at lvl 1 (first time players, we started at level 5 for the halibut).
As good of info as this is, there are SO many more types of combat / encounters than just these 8. Things like the Tough Choice (two mutually exclusive potential world-atering choice fights), the Total War fight (PCs involved in a war-like battle), the Timed Fight (bad things happen in X turns), the Ramping Encounter (gets harder and hard the longer you stay / survive), the While You Were Gone encounter, and SO much more.
Wow. I'm gonna need to go through this video a few times to make sure I don't miss all the great content, instantly subbed. Thank you so much for the fantastic content!
Welcome aboard! 🫡
I'm happy when I find videos like this. Running TTRPG fights in an interesting manner is something I always want to do, but usually accidentally end up making a slog. I'd started to convince myself that perhaps I'd fallen out of love of running the game. Thank you for helping revitalise my imagination just a little bit.
This is a really, really excellent breakdown of combat types and the functions they serve in the game. I used to design games for TSR and other publishers, and it would have been so helpful back in the day to have this kind of very specific framework through which to critically assess a work in progress. You've done a great job of teasing out important distinctions and nuances in combat encounters--and all in such a brief and concise vid. Kudos to you. Subscribing now!
I had a chase scene combat through a canyon. Using modular terrain blocks (RP Archive inspired), I always moved the board further, disassembled the parts too far behind and assembled what was ahead of the players.
In front of them were dozens of wounded enemies who used the canyon to retreat from a battle, while from behind, they were chased by fresh enemies. Wounded meant that enemies died by taking any hit larger 11 damage or two hits of any damage.
The goal of the players was to reach the camp of their allies.
Great video! Excited to see what else comes from your channel, it's off to an excellent start!
Thanks so much! And welcome along!
All of my One-Shot sessions have Puzzle, Actually fights, they are some of the most fun, enjoyable, and rewarding fights in my opinion, especially when served alongside a boss fight. Great stuff!
This guy is crushing it.
Love this. I’ve never thought of this before. I do propose two other types of combat.
1. The capture: where for story purposes the PC’s need to be captured by the enemy for story/plot progression. Over powered enemy that don’t kill the characters but subdue them or force surrender.
2. The introduction: characters battle the big boss early in the campaign/ story to introduce them only for the boss to retreat / leave or the PC’s to retreat and to meet later in the campaign.
I feel these two types of combat fulfill new mechanics to propel the story forward.
Oooh, the capture is very difficult to run unless you've established subdual damage as standard in your world.
remember us when your channel goes huge!!
Hahaha! That's sweet! Help us make it happen!
Subscribed! This was concise, entertaining and informative. Really loved it! And excited to start implementing more of these sorts of varied combats in my games.
I ran a combat just recently that was a combo of boss fight, puzzle fight, and horde. The players had to figure out how to dismantle an antimagic field (they couldn’t use spells until it was disabled) in order to destroy a massive creature that had been plaguing a village, all while her hordes of mind controlled zombies were after the players as well. The boss couldn’t be killed until the antimagic field went down, but she also became more powerful once they figured out how to dismantle it! Two PC’s died and were brought back during the fight, one player made a pact with a great spirit and became a warlock mid combat, it was a wild ride.
Yes! Mixing is so fun!
Great job. I'll use the last one in my next encounter.
This was very timely and useful. Thank you. Subbed.
Not a novel concept, but you chose your categories well. The video was well presented, and weaving in solid examples really helped.
Another kind of puzzle fight is a stealth mission. Like the rogue and Druid infiltrating an enemy stronghold for an item or piece of information. This puzzle is completed best if initiative is never rolled, but second best if no widespread alarm is ever raised. Although technically it might only cost more resources and time to make it a fight, if the players want to do it this way it gives them easily one of their campaign highlights.
This was interesting, I had to go back and rewatch parts because your stories spawned new ideas and I got lost. Thank you
great video 10/10 nice pacing and well designed script
One of my favorite combat encounters is the minecart madness cliche, where a group of 2+ enemies are getting away on a minecart that can be accelerated by pushing a lever on it back and forth. The cart moves at a speed reliant on the character(s) whose pushing the lever, at a factor of 10x their strength modifier. The lever takes an action to pump/accelerate and the cart can fall off the rails at some sections if moving too fast (but give your players ample warning with a visibly broken guardrail in front of a sharp turn.) This new dynamic of action economy / movement through atypical means is always guaranteed to stick in your party's collective thoughts.
Love this guide, I'm a fairly new DM and always looking to find ways of making combat more varied. You've given me some great ideas
We've got more coming! Thanks for watching!
Damn, way to come out of the gate swinging, man! This is great stuff. Welcome to the dungeontube community. Excited to see this channel grow.
having a monster which is basically immune to almost everything but also isn't actively trying to kill the party, but do something else, is a pretty good type of puzzle too, especially if you sprinkle in clues in your dungeon on how to fight the creature
I would add social combat to the list, where PCs have to make their point in order to advance. I like to make it so PCs can use diverse skills in order to win said combat, so that the Charisma-based characters are not the only important contributors.
“If the party thinks they’re safe, show them they’re not” you think like me. That sentence alone got my like
I can tell your a writer. Good job.
Cleric beast is an amazing song to play for boss battles. I also like the theme for chairman rose from pokemon swsh. Honestly the theme has no business being used on the character it is, and kinda doesn't even belong in a pokemon game, but if you wanna make a boss fight dramatic, it slaps hard and has a similar opening vibe to cleric beast.
More on the topic of the video itself though, I think that most of the fight types you've listed are actually just sub-types of the skirmish. I think you didn't really approach the other types of fight until the very last portion of the video where you talked about combat as a puzzle. I'd argue that what really separates one combat from another lies in motivations and objectives. The race is a combat in which players must fight their way through a series of obstacles or enemies to complete a specific objective before a bad thing happens. The hoard is a combat type that is great for a slaughter, but its also a style of encounter where the objective is just to survive until some goal is achieved (enough monsters die, or the rogue finishes stealing the thing you were distracting for, or the portcullis closes, etc). The chase/the hunt are combat encounters where the objective is to catch/detain/kill a target on the run. There are plenty more, but personally I think that the thing which makes a lot of combat feel tired is that if the objective is always "kill all these guys" players have little incentive to choose to do anything but figure out how to do optimum damage to the enemies. When the objectives of the combat change, players have reasons to pull on different resources, come up with new ideas about how to engage with the encounter or environment, and generally engage more than just looking at their character sheet to figure out which series of actions are going to get them the biggest numbers.
The cut to Django made me cackle out loud! These are some excellent combat scenarios!
It was a little reward!
Great video! We'll have to share this with our DM.
Over the years I've been DMing, I have definitely used combat to start a story. It's a great tactic for getting a group to work together.
Amazing video - fantastic work!
Love the video! Looks super professional and you have a very dramatic presentation style. I’ll be subscribing!
protecting NPC's or innocents through multiple combats adds a layer of the Puzzle to every fight. We've lost a few we were very engaged with, to a great table reaction of disappointment.
One other important combat to mention, which our brilliant DM often employs is the ability to talk to many of the intelligent creatures. We fall into this trap often because we want to roll our sleeves up and roll some dice, but when the 'world' is 'real' some of our most brutal encounters could have been entirely avoided if we had just chatted to to the enemy. Which would have added more lore, plot points, side quests and faction intrigue. In a world of never ending bad guys and character choices affecting the world this adds plenty to the experience.
Great video mate! Gets me excited to DM again!
First video I’ve seen of yours too, happy to sub and binge what you’ve put out 😁
I highly recommend taking a look at the SitRep system from Lancer (a tactical mecha ttrpg with heavy influence from 4e d&d.)
Sitreps are a series of, essentially, templates for combat that pilots may encounter in a mission. Each sitrep represents a different objective for combat, very few of which include “defeat everyone”. Instead they’re things like: control this point for x number of rounds; escort this npc safely to the extraction zone; survive against overwhelming odds for long enough to let someone else escape; enter this fortified area, grab the objective, and flee with it; etc.
There’s a bit of legwork to make this kind of template work in a non-sci-fi, non-military setting, but the thing that I find so compelling about sitreps is the way that those objectives just ooze story possibilities. If the pc’s job isn’t just “hit all the baddies till they stop moving” it immediately lends itself to more immersive storytelling. What are they protecting? Who are they escorting? What do they need to retrieve?
In short: one should always look towards varying the objectives of a combat, not just the particulars of it.
"The puzzle, actually" is less of a "combat" and more of an "encounter", just with a time-sensitive element, which is a GREAT thing to do.
Make your players go with the pacing of the game; don't let them dictate it unless they're very savvy leaders.
Solid video. Helped me a lot.
Very informative!
As to the categories, well, we humans sure love putting things in boxes, I think these aren't mutually exclusive types, but rather labels that we can put on certain fights, some of which can co-oexist with other labels. Especially the Elite Team can /also/ be and Ambush, a Targeted Strike, a Stomping Ground (post enough character levelling, of course), a Boss Battle, or a Puzzle, Actually. A Horde of Bad Guys can be an Ambush or a Targeted Strike. Etc.
Loved this video. Commenting for the algorithm gods
There's also a difference between a Boss Battle as you propose it, and the Mid-Boss Battle, which doesn't end the campaign but might end an arc of a campaign or setup the climax for that arc.
I also like to mix and match aspects of different types of combat in the same initiative.
Subscribed - Liked your explanations and then examples method.
One more: "The Siege"
Players are either defending or attacking a central fortified position.
If defending, they will need to deal with threats from all directions. They will be in a confined space, and will probably have better access to cover.
If attacking, the players will need to coordinate attacks against an enemy with stronger fortifications.
There may also be a puzzle element, time limit, or a macguffin involved in either case.
Great video. Really made me think about my combat design.
been thinking about making it so most of the normal Monsters (stuff like Dragons, Owlbears, or a few of the monsters I'd added in my games) are a bit of a mix between a targeted strike & Puzzle, same with some of the bosses, albeit with the bosses its more just trying to find information about them. The idea is to try and make it so the party learns things about the monster, whether by hearing about it or even just observing it, and then they do whatever they can to kill it while the monster then tries to counter in any way it can, and goes back & forth (ex. someone jumps into a red dragons horde, and uses the threat of the dragon damaging its own horde to prevent it from using it breath weapon, only for it to attempt to throw the players out and away from the horde so it can use its breath weapon safely).
This electrum level DM advice. Just subbed. 🤯
Awesome vid! Loved it! Fantastic way to break it down. Thank you!
Well this was inspiring, definitely gonna apply some of these bits to my table!
Wonderful!
holy shit this video is incredibly well made, was expecting a massive channel. Great job keep it up i want to use these in my games.
I have a few tricks, one is to use D&D essentials (4.5 edition) where monsters have a role: skirmish, brute, controller, soldier, artillery with a few minions sprinkled in. Have smart enemies fight smart and dumb monsters easily kited, which usually has room hazards to use against them.
I've been DMing AD&D for 25+ years and I approve this message.
High praise! Thank you!
I just realized in my second foray into fan games that I used four of these in the first chapter.
And now I have ideas for the other four types.
We had a min max player, playing a bladesimger in the old 2nd edition.
Nothing his character did was particularly memorable as far as role playing until the day when he died.
He challenged the ogre khan to single combat to end the war, and very nearly did it, despite him being 4th level in comparison to the 12 level npc he fought to a standstill.
The players in the group were sitting on the edge of their seats despite having no involvement in the fight, and when the character died, the group were actually almost in tears. The role playing of the aftermath was amazing, an actual in game funeral, characters who had been irritated by the bladesinger's attitude were given to reflecting on his better traits, and overall, that made the rest of the campaign so good.
Celestant Prime is quite a boss battle alright!
One thing to consider is that in an ambush the attackers are choosing the time and place.
They will not kick the fight off unless they are certain they will likely win.
Well done. You earned a subscriber.
Welcome aboard!
Great stuff - combat can be so much more than just numbers hitting each other.
Exactly! Combat isn't separate from story, it's the conflict in the story!
@@Mystic-Arts-DM Your video has inspired me to further prep the next sessions combat.
My players will likely attempt to help a clan cross a swamp and I am planning to have a puzzle enemy, something that swoops in, grabs a few folks and vanishes in the darkness. They can leave the caravan to pursue it (leaving the caravan unguarded), decide to speed up as much as possible, etc.
Taking inspiration from the videogame banner saga they will have a specific count of survivors, each decision making it go down by a certain amount.
Yes! Banner Saga is so cool!
"cause lord knows, you're not gonna" that for me😂
There can also be social or political “combats” where the players need to fight a larger system that they can’t just kill, sway loyalties, convince DMPCs, etc. And within these conflicts, the other combat types can also exist or overlap in interesting ways
May I add?
- Impaired combat,
imagine a dungeon, going from one space into the next is a crawlspace, maybe 40cm high. They can only enter one after the other round for round. Who will be so brave and face all advesaries alone?
Impaired combat can be fighting in the rigging of an ship in heavy winds. While climbing a steep mountain wall. Nature/terrain is as much part of the story as the enemy itself.
- Innocents arround
innocent people arround restrict combat a lot. No fireballs, screaming people, enemies using innocents as hostages.
Also nice, enemy innocents arround, like goblin children.
Yeaaaahhhh, *subscribed!*
Your ambush example would tpk most parties unless the enemies are very weak, or at least get half their team killed while the other half flees. I don't know if I fully agree with all your points but it was a well-structured video. Also, I don't know if that is a fake or stage voice but that's a nice voice you use in the video. It has a distinct character to it.
great video, definitely deserved a subscribe!
Good advice, thank you
Holy crap you are super new to youtube? I thought i found an established channel with tons of videos. Your quality is amazing. Im instantly subscribing.
P.s. I love that this video is great even if you are not playing DnD.
Thanks so much! It's still the first week! Come along and join this crazy new youtube journey with us! :D
Well made and very useful - thank you!
This is awesome, Cheers 😊