As someone who left Australia and now resides in Auckland, New Zealand, I felt that - If I have to kill a player off because they're leaving it's probably because they're going to Aussie!
A few things I've learned about combat having narrative weight after running for nearly ten years: -As Dael said, know what the stakes are, but remember that the stakes don't have to be about the party. Rescuing someone while your on the clock is a great way to now have the party be in danger of death, but if they act too slowly, an NPC dies. -If you are going to have a combat that is only supposed to be a resource tax, don't have it in a vacuum. You need the "boss fight" you were softening them up for for the smaller fight to mean anything. I've seen this happen a lot with random encounters that the party just takes a long rest after. -Lastly, a rule I try to always follow is that any combat should be attached to a narrative beat. If the story would have played out the same regardless of if the combat happened then you didn't need the combat. A combat in D&D should do the same work that an action scene in an action movie does or a musical number in a musical; they need to be establishing, progressing, or resolving conflict, otherwise they are just superfluous.
Counterpoint to your last - There are plenty of musical numbers in movies that played no purpose. And D&D is a game meant to be fun. Sure, the DM does a lot of work to plan things and try to have things that are engaging... but at the end of the day, it's a game. Meant to be fun. Meant to be a reason that you and these people came together in the first place. And even if you ARE getting paid to DM (because people do that which is weird), then it can still be fun and not have to have purpose. Not everything has to have a purpose. If it did, then we'd have much less "shit" in the world. Like Funko Pops serve literally 0 purpose. They don't do anything at all. They don't clean, they don't sanitize, they don't dehumidify the room... nothing. They just sit there as statues and do nothing. But they are things that evoke memories and they are things that people buy and have. What I'm really saying is - if you're DM'ing a game and making everything "have to have a purpose", you're doing it wrong. My players, for example, just want to play. It's the reason we get together every Saturday. We have shopping days. We have days they visit the arena. We have days where they just go and fight some random encounters out in the forest. Is there an overarching reason that they're in that world? Yes. Are there real threats that the players need to see to? Yes. Is there a fun narrative? My players say they're enjoying it, so yes. Is every combat and every shopping day and every talk they have with a NPC meaningful? No. Do they ask me for every NPC's name? You're god damn right they do. Does it matter 100% of the time? No. Will I try to work it into the story? Probably. Do I feel a need to? No. Are the players having fun? They sure as fuck are. If they weren't, we wouldn't still be doing this thing. Then again, there's always the "agree to disagree" or "you do you" sentiments. However, I feel strongly that if you're building your game around just having meaning, let me give you a reality check - it's a game and none of those decisions mattered in the end. Have fun. Period. Lastly - sometimes the players just want to fight some monsters. Let them.
3:19 On the power of wave combat: One of the my players' favorite and most often regaled encounters was when they were trapped in a mummy tomb, with 3 sets of sarcophagi. It's crucial to know I always encourage and facilitate players to stock up on adventuring gear, since it adds so much to the game. Never was that more true than this fight. There were 3 crystals in the door, and to escape, all three had to be activated. As they activated the first, I described how one set of sarcophagi slid open, giving rise to a wave of guardian mummies. Roll for initiative! The party won, but then they looked back and forth between the remaining crystals and the remaining two sets, then locked eyes with each other and realized what they were in for. Two more waves... however, they could activate the crystal when THEY wanted. They set up the lids as barricades around the door, sprinkled lamp oil around, set up a bear trap in a choke point, and added an improvised tripwire. Second wave had them deplete their spell slots, one player went down but was healed in time. Facing having to prep for the third wave was when the mood got grim and quiet. The players were highly invested to make it, sitting around the table like wartime generals facing dire odds. Between all members combined, the party was below half their HP. They scraped the bottom of their inventories - actually roleplaying how they emptied their backpacks in the middle of the room, and extensively discussed tactics. They fortified the barricade, set up more traps, counted the measurements of the room, caltrops, ball bearings, oil-soaked bandages, improvised molotovs mixed with holy water... the whole room was turned into the damn Maginot line. And then, having triple-checked everything, trading around ranged and thrown weapons, and all readying their attacks, they activated the final crystal. Once more, the terrible guardians arose. It was a very tense battle, but a clutch druidic shapeshift, some kiting around the room and some very clever synergies finally saw them victorious. They were overjoyed, high-fiving each other, and you BET they got a ton of XP and loot. So as a disclaimer, yes I thought it was risky to design this way, as I strongly prefer to never railroad my encounters, but perhaps two reasons this challenge worked were the genre expectations of being trapped in a mummy tomb, as well as giving the players agency and all the time they wanted to prepare.
Speaking of the drama of yoyo deaths... well, I'm playing a tank barbarian with mageslayer and I was CRUSHING the villain, and they were desperately trying to knock me out so they could run. When they finally do, the bard sends a healing word to pick me up. Her healing word: Bitch. My barbarian comes back to conciousness, gasping for life, and the villain knocks him down again and finishes him off, making the last words he heard in life being the Bard calling him a bitch. XD
@@MonarchsFactory as someone interested in making content, and who has tried but gets flustered talking to a camera, it's interesting and puts me somewhat at ease to see the stuff that normally gets chopped out
Reminded me of John Green pulling back the curtain a bit on purpose recently, showing the struggles for the right words. It's definitely a nice bit of humanizing.
On the topic of “context is everything” I will always end a session right before the deadly combat. A couple examples: The players are sneaking through the Ancient Red Dragons lair when suddenly a loud noise causes the dragon to wake, eyes pointed straight at the party. That’s a good place to end, folks, let’s see how this goes next week! The players had been fighting through the lair of a demigod vampiress who is bent in ruling the world with her undead army. 3 hours spent crossing pits of spikes and battalions of skeletons and ghouls, only to come the doors to her chambers, which are awaiting open. Well I think we can call it there, see you guys next week! Both the priormentioned battles ended up being fantastic . I had a whole week to set up an unforgettable battlemap, and when people got back they were so ready for their character to die a glorious death. That’s my advice, anyway
@@janinemaimanakos8878 Usually, yes! Deadly encounters should always have multiple stages in my opinion, like in a videogame or movie. That way, it breaks up the monotony of Dnd combat and lets the players think outside of the box
I really like the idea of making natural disasters work as combat. In my first campaign, the players were on a boat "fighting" against a storm. The storm, the boat and the players had to use their values in a combat turn order to fight each other. Until finally the party went overboard ;)
I'm starting a campaign soon that begins with a shipwreck, would you mind elaborating a little on what you did? It might come in handy. I have something in mind, but it didn't involve rolling initiative.
@Taurusus i basically made up attacks & parades for the sea and the boat. The Sea had an attack to throw you around if you didn't hold on, water could create slippery surfaces and there was a chance for someone to go overboard if they were on deck. And that way you're basically fighting an invincible monster that just dies after a certain amount of turns. i added some bonus per round for the sea to throw you overboard, because it finally had to happen for my story to go on..
'Moving to New Zealand' is a meme that goes back to 80's English soap opera. It was away of saying 'they are fine but never coming back...'. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Not only is this really good advice, but I legitimately don't know if I've ever heard someone on UA-cam give it before. I feel like whenever I see videos like "tips to make 5e combat better" it tends to be like the same 5 or 6 things just reiterated from one video to another. I'm prepping a combat encounter later today, and I'm definitely going to keep this in mind while doing it. 😁
After more than 40 years of being a DM, I am still over and under qualified. If you are not still learning and adapting, you are writing a book, not running a game.
2nd edition barbarian had a rage mechanic where they could fight on with -9 HP. We didn't have rulebook death save's or other death avoidance at or below 0. All except that barbarian effect, 0 meant dead. We applied a lot of homebrew allowances to let it be easier to get a PC up AFTER combat ended.
Regarding the dramatic weight, or lack thereof, of death yoyos: it really depends on your players and how they roleplay that out. A description of the character surging to their feet mid strike with a defiant yell, a la Boromir during his final fight in Fellowship of the Ring, is going to have much more dramatic weight than a simple "uh, I guess I get up and try to hit him again"
In my current campaign we had fight 1: A couple of slimes, fight 2: A couple of rat swarms, fight 3: A rakshasa; And that tempo has basically been the same ever since. Easy breezy, smooth sailing right into the anxiety of approaching death. They don't mind, because it's supposed to be a deadly campaign, but I've been wanting to change it up, and I think this is the actual advice I needed to do that.
One of the things that I think has been glossed over here, is that stakes don't always have to be, "We might die" or "we might die and..." but something else entirely. If you wipe out the evil cultists in an efficient eight rounds of combat, taking no casualties, and they are still able to complete their ritual and black out the sun, you've won the battle and lost the war.
Dael's adept strategic planning and skilled manipulation would be a bit scary if it weren't for her obvious good-naturedness. Unless that's just what she wants us to think.
"Any combat can get out of hand if the rats roll enough 20s or the heroes roll enough 1s." Dael, you don't realise just how close that hits to home. I remember a situation where those rats only rolled 18-20 and players missed every attack. Also thanks for the great video!
Thank you for the video! Recently I found a new group to run for and for the past 4 years, I ran for one group and it was a very "roll dice, kill monsters" style game and I'm trying to adjust my DMing style for my new players who prefer more a lean into the roleplaying sphere. Helps me figure out how to keep combat entertaining for them!
Everything needs to be part of the story. Every action of the PCs has a butterfly effect on the campaign world. Make them see that their choices matter.
I'm technically working on some stuff for my in-progress homebrew setting, and this would be useful for that Specifically, there's a town that's gonna be getting menaced by vampires when the players get there I wanna introduce the players to a specific NPC, get them to like this NPC, and then get that NPC attacked by a vampire and be infected with vampirism, so the players have to either destroy the vampires *before* the NPC turns into a vamp, OR they spot the NPC among the waves of vampires during the final combat Also, I think a good way to highlight further how dangerous an enemy is, is to have a tough and experienced NPC helping the party, and have that NPC be visibly scared when they see the enemy. E.g. that's what I'm planning to do with the vampire-haunted town's cleric in the combat encounter which introduces the boss, an exceptionally powerful type of vampire called an upyr. The upyr would show up near the end and the cleric who was previously fighting her way through waves of vampires with ease would be visibly frightened by this thing. Given the current stat block I've made for the upyr, there's no way the party would kill it during this encounter, but the cleric NPC *would* be able to get them to safety, which is another useful thing: have an NPC around to save the party, so they can escape, regroup, and then do the whole 'second act defeat, third act victory' thing The way the cleric NPC saves the party would also exploit the upyr's two weaknesses - sunlight and holiness - to hint at the players how they can beat it (this being either, a. a lot of radiant damage and holy weapons, or b. find its grave, hide and wait for the upyr to come out, once the upyr leaves - hopefully without seeing any of the players - draw a circle of blessed chalk around the grave and get in, then just wait it out. And then start making wisdom saves once the upyr finds them and tries using every trick up its sleeve, including charming them or using a terror-inducing scream, to get them to leave the grave so it can kill them)
I've watched a lot of dnd combat videos on how to make it interesting and important and while all the creators had a lot of good stuff to say I must say this one had the least overlap and most originality and new ideas. I appreciate the work you did on this it'll help me a bunch bc I have a new player that doesn't like combat and I'm hoping these techniques help. Also this is the video that let me find your channel I can't wait to see what other content you produce thanks a lot🙂
*Me:* Gives players a lead on an abandoned castle with "Murder" in the name, outside the narrative of the campaign *Players:* Choose to do that *Me, not wanting them to die here:* =O
Love your videos so much! Can you make a vague and evocative video about a genie encounter like you did with the witches?//the elemental planes in the same manner as your fey wild video?? I've been dying to hear your thoughts on these things for so long!
Yes but knowing the number and gender of baby piglets that a pregnant sow will give birth to may not be as helpful in a dnd scenario as you might originally think
Amazing video! Good charisma! I should watch more of your videos. Tho I'm subbed and notified I've only seen two lol! Once I did the kind of thing you described in my world if darkness mage the Ascension game. Cabal of mages was traveling from London to USA and near their destination their plane was nearly crashed by some unknown enemy. Ofc they used magic to track the attackers and when they found the enemy Nephandi cabal ,sooner then I had planned them to, I gave them a chance to coordinate a decent plan if attack... But they were not ready for that a confirmation. So... After scaring sh*tless The cabal of "experienced" tradition mages the leader of the Nephandi mage cabal sacrificed his own cabal members to cast a high level illusion/ teleportation spell faking her own death. Them half a year later that Nephandi leader came to London and apparently killed the whole cabal. Tho few escaped and few faked their own deaths. That was the ending if first story chapter and explained why half the players went on hiatus. Lol! Now game continues in part 2 set 8 years in future. Hopefully the Nephandi leader has forgotten about the London mages or preferably dead. Latter witch never stopped a single Nephandi ever. *Sight* Death is noth the end.
I 100% agree with Dael talking about raising the tension without lowering the treat by attacking the barbarian! It’s something I always think about. Which character will survive this next attack cause that where’s it’s going. Alternatively so this with a character you think won’t survive is also great tension whether they survive or not!
Tagretting the Barbarian is also better than targetting the fighter because the fighter has higher AC, nothing kills the tension more then the main bad guy missing a bunch of attacks.
When i was a dm i couldn't get enough of your dnd videos but now I'm just a player and watching your videos seems like I'm setting my current dm some pretty high standards. Now i can't wait for the story videos
Interesting. When I think narrative combat, I think of games like Ironsworn and Dungeon World. I thought she was about to bring some of that magic in or something haha. But yeah, this stuff works, although I don't think I care to really plan out as much.
I’ve been thinking about DMing for a while and it all seemed too overwhelming tbh. Your way of talking about battles made it much easier to break down to the level of stakes and the memorable moments. Thanks for all of your videos, they’re really helping 😄
Players don't know how much their characters are in trouble. They don't know how much HP the enemies have, they don't know if there are more enemies around the corner, and so on. They already have this mechanical blindfold that prevents them from knowing how easy or hard the combat really is. So it's out job as GMs to make them feel what the stacks are. Now, this can correlate to the actually danger they are in, or not. A good GM can make an easy combat feel dangerous and vice versa.
While I'm sure, as a Content Creator, the editing bit bugs you, it's also super important to remember that what we see is not real time. John Green recently made a video on "The Frame" and spoke about how his presentation online is not how he actually talks, and Alec from Technology Connections has his outtakes in the Patreon reel. I find it really reassuring that the people I look up to are just as human as the rest of us. Now, about the actual content of the video: I love this, because I was struggling with how to get my ideas for my world and monsters and stuff into a compelling story in a tabletop format, and one of the big things was how do I dell these stories through combat encounters. And I often have ideas for these memorable moments, but don't know how to implement them, so this, especially the advice on timing was super useful. I'll let you know how it goes once I finally get my game going :P
If the combat is going to be deadly and it’s at the start of the session, try making the combat slowly get harder so that it starts at difficult, and ends as deadly
idk what to comment to help the algorithm this time, so I'll just say that the mermaid in the background gives me anxiety because I think it's gonna roll and fall at any time.
As one of the few female influencers in the D&D world, I swear I learn more from each one of Dael’s videos than watching a dozen dudes all say the same 5 tips to get better at what ever. It’s great to see such talents that would otherwise be over looked, find their outlet.
Question: Have you ever released your injury table before? I enjoy using injuries but I'm just using the one from the DM's Guide and some of them are a little lackluster
In my games death is always a possibility. My players know that and act accordingly. They are in a extremely hostile world and a wrong move can hurt a lot. The encounters try thier best to score a kill. Within logic of course
I never realized combat was about steaks... But steaks are expensive, whos paying for all these steaks? Also whos cooking all these steaks?! and how are they doing so while in combat?! We need someone who is not going to ruin the steaks because as we established before steaks are expensive...
I like to keep these sorts of things in mind but I actually think a lot of the messiness that makes for "bad narrative" is precisely what makes combat worthwhile - the fact is, death is random and messy and sometimes something that wasn't "supposed" to be a big deal leads to someone dying and it's all the more impactful for it. I just think the "story" of D&D is best when you play it as if all our favorite other stories were campaigns that just happened to go well, and if things work out it'll feel like that, but here's your chance to experience that kind of heroic story with none of the guardrails of carefully crafted pacing and character arcs. D&D functions best, to me, as a set of multiple overlapping character studies of people willing to get into dangerous circumstances and what that really would feel like. Sometimes that's not narratively convenient, people in real life have their narratives cut off or wildly blown off course by random happenstance all the time, but the stories feel all the more real and powerful because of it. Really depends on what you want out of the game I suspect. Is it a collaborative "write an epic fantasy story together" experience? Or is it "explore what it would be like to be in another world?" They obviously aren't mutually exclusive, but I think they are two opposite modal points - verisimilitude vs narration perhaps? No one way to play is more right than any other, of course, but I do think being too careful with making sure combat only ever has the stakes you intend for it to can rob the game of a lot of its magic both for you and your players... and letting combat be overly too reckless and arbitrary it can also rob the game of a lot of its magic
Admittedly, I missed some videos. But before looking for them, I wanted to interject that as much as I enjoy Dungeons & Dragons... it is not at all an ideal system for _stories._ A series of group combats, though, with some narrative stuff to connect one combat to the next... sure, in fact that's precisely how it's designed to function. But I know that there are two things that get so many people to force the square peg of D&D into the round hole of not-D&D. It's almost ubiquitous with the hobby simply by merit of having a massive market share, so finding content is not only easy but almost impossible to not trip over D&D-centric content and resources. The other thing: "I already know D&D". This second one is far more ephemeral whereas the first point is actually quantifiable. I say that because learning D&D is actually harder than learning many other systems (not Pathfinder -- that's just a D&D clone with lots of extra fiddly bits). But how about Dungeon World, Savage Worlds, or some of the OSR stuff that strays significantly from their origin points? Or you can go further afield and look at stuff like Blades in the Dark, Monster of the Week, Fate, Stars Without Number, Dresden Files Accelerated, Scum and Villainy, and so on and so on (there are some "micro" RPGs that have led to some of my all time favorite gaming experiences). But if you're up to learning more complicated systems that are also far more geared toward story-first play, you can try out World of Darkness, Delta Green, Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, etc. I used to limit myself to D&D, but after getting introduced to some other systems I soon came to realize... D&D actually sucks for story and character stuff. You can do it, but you're fighting against the rigid mechanics the whole time, and you are generally funneled into certain kinds of stories. But in some ways, the reason there is so much content for D&D is because people so often have to tear it apart and remake it into a new system (without realizing they've done so) in order to get it to do what they want... but do so kind of poorly because people don't consciously want to make a whole new system suited to what they're looking to play. D&D is still great, though, when you want a tactical combat game that doesn't bog down with too much mechanics overheard where the story is fairly light (because the narrative will always be secondary to combat, maybe even tertiary behind rules and combat). One more thing, though... I think learning and running other systems makes a person a stronger DM in most cases. You come to realize where it excels and where it is simply subpar.
I regret that I only have a +1 to give to this. And I agree, you "can" Rp in D&D, but at the same time, there are so many other very well-crafted games out there that tend to seem so much more conducive to it. That whole section of not-so-complicated games is like whose-who-list of what I think are easily some of the very best games on the market. My group has been playing Monster of the Week for several months now and I have never gotten to enjoy the RP aspect of RPG-ing as much as I have been with this game! IF I ever run 'a D&D game' it'll almost certainly have to be done via Dungeon World now! ~ Cheers
I think the "signature moment" should happen as early as you can get away with it. Simply because many times the players will stomp the enemies and there will be no other opportunity to use it. Many times I held back some cool attack options waiting for a better timing and never got to use them at all.
One thing that I do sometimes is I make it so that the enemy is (secretly) immune to all damage until they use their signature ability. (Obviously, you also have to lower their hit points.) But if the players do something cool and memorable enough, that immunity can be bypassed.
If Matt Colville's action oriented monster video is the 'How', this video is the 'Why'.
Perfect
New Zealand is where all players go when they leave the group.
"He's gone to a better place. Auckland."
That should juet be a euphemism for players leaving a group. "Ah, they've moved to New Zealand."
It's the player equivalent of "your dog being sent off to live on a farm"?
@@MonarchsFactory *Laughs in kiwi*
If Auckland is the better place, I shudder to think of where they were, never mind the bad place.
As someone who left Australia and now resides in Auckland, New Zealand, I felt that - If I have to kill a player off because they're leaving it's probably because they're going to Aussie!
A few things I've learned about combat having narrative weight after running for nearly ten years:
-As Dael said, know what the stakes are, but remember that the stakes don't have to be about the party. Rescuing someone while your on the clock is a great way to now have the party be in danger of death, but if they act too slowly, an NPC dies.
-If you are going to have a combat that is only supposed to be a resource tax, don't have it in a vacuum. You need the "boss fight" you were softening them up for for the smaller fight to mean anything. I've seen this happen a lot with random encounters that the party just takes a long rest after.
-Lastly, a rule I try to always follow is that any combat should be attached to a narrative beat. If the story would have played out the same regardless of if the combat happened then you didn't need the combat. A combat in D&D should do the same work that an action scene in an action movie does or a musical number in a musical; they need to be establishing, progressing, or resolving conflict, otherwise they are just superfluous.
REALLY great advice
Counterpoint to your last - There are plenty of musical numbers in movies that played no purpose. And D&D is a game meant to be fun. Sure, the DM does a lot of work to plan things and try to have things that are engaging... but at the end of the day, it's a game. Meant to be fun. Meant to be a reason that you and these people came together in the first place. And even if you ARE getting paid to DM (because people do that which is weird), then it can still be fun and not have to have purpose.
Not everything has to have a purpose. If it did, then we'd have much less "shit" in the world. Like Funko Pops serve literally 0 purpose. They don't do anything at all. They don't clean, they don't sanitize, they don't dehumidify the room... nothing. They just sit there as statues and do nothing. But they are things that evoke memories and they are things that people buy and have.
What I'm really saying is - if you're DM'ing a game and making everything "have to have a purpose", you're doing it wrong. My players, for example, just want to play. It's the reason we get together every Saturday. We have shopping days. We have days they visit the arena. We have days where they just go and fight some random encounters out in the forest. Is there an overarching reason that they're in that world? Yes. Are there real threats that the players need to see to? Yes. Is there a fun narrative? My players say they're enjoying it, so yes. Is every combat and every shopping day and every talk they have with a NPC meaningful? No. Do they ask me for every NPC's name? You're god damn right they do. Does it matter 100% of the time? No. Will I try to work it into the story? Probably. Do I feel a need to? No. Are the players having fun? They sure as fuck are. If they weren't, we wouldn't still be doing this thing.
Then again, there's always the "agree to disagree" or "you do you" sentiments. However, I feel strongly that if you're building your game around just having meaning, let me give you a reality check - it's a game and none of those decisions mattered in the end. Have fun. Period. Lastly - sometimes the players just want to fight some monsters. Let them.
3:19 On the power of wave combat:
One of the my players' favorite and most often regaled encounters was when they were trapped in a mummy tomb, with 3 sets of sarcophagi.
It's crucial to know I always encourage and facilitate players to stock up on adventuring gear, since it adds so much to the game. Never was that more true than this fight.
There were 3 crystals in the door, and to escape, all three had to be activated.
As they activated the first, I described how one set of sarcophagi slid open, giving rise to a wave of guardian mummies. Roll for initiative!
The party won, but then they looked back and forth between the remaining crystals and the remaining two sets, then locked eyes with each other and realized what they were in for.
Two more waves... however, they could activate the crystal when THEY wanted.
They set up the lids as barricades around the door, sprinkled lamp oil around, set up a bear trap in a choke point, and added an improvised tripwire.
Second wave had them deplete their spell slots, one player went down but was healed in time.
Facing having to prep for the third wave was when the mood got grim and quiet. The players were highly invested to make it, sitting around the table like wartime generals facing dire odds.
Between all members combined, the party was below half their HP.
They scraped the bottom of their inventories - actually roleplaying how they emptied their backpacks in the middle of the room, and extensively discussed tactics.
They fortified the barricade, set up more traps, counted the measurements of the room, caltrops, ball bearings, oil-soaked bandages, improvised molotovs mixed with holy water... the whole room was turned into the damn Maginot line.
And then, having triple-checked everything, trading around ranged and thrown weapons, and all readying their attacks, they activated the final crystal.
Once more, the terrible guardians arose.
It was a very tense battle, but a clutch druidic shapeshift, some kiting around the room and some very clever synergies finally saw them victorious.
They were overjoyed, high-fiving each other, and you BET they got a ton of XP and loot.
So as a disclaimer, yes I thought it was risky to design this way, as I strongly prefer to never railroad my encounters, but perhaps two reasons this challenge worked were the genre expectations of being trapped in a mummy tomb, as well as giving the players agency and all the time they wanted to prepare.
This is fantastic.
+
Speaking of the drama of yoyo deaths... well, I'm playing a tank barbarian with mageslayer and I was CRUSHING the villain, and they were desperately trying to knock me out so they could run. When they finally do, the bard sends a healing word to pick me up. Her healing word: Bitch.
My barbarian comes back to conciousness, gasping for life, and the villain knocks him down again and finishes him off, making the last words he heard in life being the Bard calling him a bitch. XD
Love the editing, and LOVED the lack of it near 2/3 of the way in. Keep it up homie
Damn it. This is why I shouldn't edit late at night.
Nahh, Dael, it's brilliantly funny
It's nice to k ow I'm not the only one who does a number of takes
@@MonarchsFactory as someone interested in making content, and who has tried but gets flustered talking to a camera, it's interesting and puts me somewhat at ease to see the stuff that normally gets chopped out
It made me laugh.
Reminded me of John Green pulling back the curtain a bit on purpose recently, showing the struggles for the right words. It's definitely a nice bit of humanizing.
On the topic of “context is everything” I will always end a session right before the deadly combat. A couple examples:
The players are sneaking through the Ancient Red Dragons lair when suddenly a loud noise causes the dragon to wake, eyes pointed straight at the party. That’s a good place to end, folks, let’s see how this goes next week!
The players had been fighting through the lair of a demigod vampiress who is bent in ruling the world with her undead army. 3 hours spent crossing pits of spikes and battalions of skeletons and ghouls, only to come the doors to her chambers, which are awaiting open. Well I think we can call it there, see you guys next week!
Both the priormentioned battles ended up being fantastic . I had a whole week to set up an unforgettable battlemap, and when people got back they were so ready for their character to die a glorious death. That’s my advice, anyway
Your concept sounds nice. The question is, last the next session with the boss monster long enough to fill the evening?
@@janinemaimanakos8878 Usually, yes! Deadly encounters should always have multiple stages in my opinion, like in a videogame or movie. That way, it breaks up the monotony of Dnd combat and lets the players think outside of the box
I really like the idea of making natural disasters work as combat.
In my first campaign, the players were on a boat "fighting" against a storm.
The storm, the boat and the players had to use their values in a combat turn order to fight each other.
Until finally the party went overboard ;)
I'm starting a campaign soon that begins with a shipwreck, would you mind elaborating a little on what you did? It might come in handy. I have something in mind, but it didn't involve rolling initiative.
Leaving an strategic dot
@Taurusus i basically made up attacks & parades for the sea and the boat.
The Sea had an attack to throw you around if you didn't hold on, water could create slippery surfaces and there was a chance for someone to go overboard if they were on deck.
And that way you're basically fighting an invincible monster that just dies after a certain amount of turns. i added some bonus per round for the sea to throw you overboard, because it finally had to happen for my story to go on..
'Moving to New Zealand' is a meme that goes back to 80's English soap opera. It was away of saying 'they are fine but never coming back...'. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Not only is this really good advice, but I legitimately don't know if I've ever heard someone on UA-cam give it before.
I feel like whenever I see videos like "tips to make 5e combat better" it tends to be like the same 5 or 6 things just reiterated from one video to another.
I'm prepping a combat encounter later today, and I'm definitely going to keep this in mind while doing it. 😁
This video made me hungry
10/10 would watch again.
One of these days I'll actually get to DM D&D, and I'll be simultaneously over- and under- qualified.
We are ALL under- and over- qualified!
After more than 40 years of being a DM, I am still over and under qualified.
If you are not still learning and adapting, you are writing a book, not running a game.
I was expecting a New Vegas joke with the "Jingle Jangle" bit
Nah that would only be if they were spurs :P ;) :D
You helped me realize that I've grown a love for scaling rounds in combat with stakes, but I wouldn't want a combat to go more than 5 rounds.
There is a pervasive chaotic energy underlying this video, and I'm here for it.
2nd edition barbarian had a rage mechanic where they could fight on with -9 HP. We didn't have rulebook death save's or other death avoidance at or below 0. All except that barbarian effect, 0 meant dead.
We applied a lot of homebrew allowances to let it be easier to get a PC up AFTER combat ended.
Regarding the dramatic weight, or lack thereof, of death yoyos: it really depends on your players and how they roleplay that out. A description of the character surging to their feet mid strike with a defiant yell, a la Boromir during his final fight in Fellowship of the Ring, is going to have much more dramatic weight than a simple "uh, I guess I get up and try to hit him again"
In my current campaign we had fight 1: A couple of slimes, fight 2: A couple of rat swarms, fight 3: A rakshasa; And that tempo has basically been the same ever since. Easy breezy, smooth sailing right into the anxiety of approaching death. They don't mind, because it's supposed to be a deadly campaign, but I've been wanting to change it up, and I think this is the actual advice I needed to do that.
One of the things that I think has been glossed over here, is that stakes don't always have to be, "We might die" or "we might die and..." but something else entirely. If you wipe out the evil cultists in an efficient eight rounds of combat, taking no casualties, and they are still able to complete their ritual and black out the sun, you've won the battle and lost the war.
Dael's adept strategic planning and skilled manipulation would be a bit scary if it weren't for her obvious good-naturedness.
Unless that's just what she wants us to think.
She'll eventually take over the world.
"Any combat can get out of hand if the rats roll enough 20s or the heroes roll enough 1s."
Dael, you don't realise just how close that hits to home. I remember a situation where those rats only rolled 18-20 and players missed every attack.
Also thanks for the great video!
So when does Dael write an article for Colville's new magazine?
I’m hoping for a “Hey Dael!” advice Q&A column myself.
Just saying I wouldn't mind a write-up of that crocodile monster...
@@ampersand.8888 "You've Got Dael!", surely.
@@allisonhomiak2336 "Let's Make a Dael!"?
@@JacksonOwex Not bad, not bad at all!
Every time I get your notification, my day gets exponentially better
Been DMing since 1982. Your videos are incredibly informative and engaging. Great stuff. Thanks for your advice.
Thank you for the video! Recently I found a new group to run for and for the past 4 years, I ran for one group and it was a very "roll dice, kill monsters" style game and I'm trying to adjust my DMing style for my new players who prefer more a lean into the roleplaying sphere. Helps me figure out how to keep combat entertaining for them!
Adventures have to be tasty for the brains of your players, so I'm thankful for the dispensing of the recipes.
Brad over there is wearing 28 pieces of flair.
Dael: hold my beer
Everything needs to be part of the story.
Every action of the PCs has a butterfly effect on the campaign world. Make them see that their choices matter.
I was distracted by the AT-AT pin on Dael's jacket!
This video was too good, like Omar!
I'm technically working on some stuff for my in-progress homebrew setting, and this would be useful for that
Specifically, there's a town that's gonna be getting menaced by vampires when the players get there
I wanna introduce the players to a specific NPC, get them to like this NPC, and then get that NPC attacked by a vampire and be infected with vampirism, so the players have to either destroy the vampires *before* the NPC turns into a vamp, OR they spot the NPC among the waves of vampires during the final combat
Also, I think a good way to highlight further how dangerous an enemy is, is to have a tough and experienced NPC helping the party, and have that NPC be visibly scared when they see the enemy. E.g. that's what I'm planning to do with the vampire-haunted town's cleric in the combat encounter which introduces the boss, an exceptionally powerful type of vampire called an upyr. The upyr would show up near the end and the cleric who was previously fighting her way through waves of vampires with ease would be visibly frightened by this thing. Given the current stat block I've made for the upyr, there's no way the party would kill it during this encounter, but the cleric NPC *would* be able to get them to safety, which is another useful thing: have an NPC around to save the party, so they can escape, regroup, and then do the whole 'second act defeat, third act victory' thing
The way the cleric NPC saves the party would also exploit the upyr's two weaknesses - sunlight and holiness - to hint at the players how they can beat it (this being either, a. a lot of radiant damage and holy weapons, or b. find its grave, hide and wait for the upyr to come out, once the upyr leaves - hopefully without seeing any of the players - draw a circle of blessed chalk around the grave and get in, then just wait it out. And then start making wisdom saves once the upyr finds them and tries using every trick up its sleeve, including charming them or using a terror-inducing scream, to get them to leave the grave so it can kill them)
I've watched a lot of dnd combat videos on how to make it interesting and important and while all the creators had a lot of good stuff to say I must say this one had the least overlap and most originality and new ideas. I appreciate the work you did on this it'll help me a bunch bc I have a new player that doesn't like combat and I'm hoping these techniques help. Also this is the video that let me find your channel I can't wait to see what other content you produce thanks a lot🙂
*Me:* Gives players a lead on an abandoned castle with "Murder" in the name, outside the narrative of the campaign
*Players:* Choose to do that
*Me, not wanting them to die here:* =O
This is so helpful.
My best fights had consepts close to what you describe but having it said out loud makes it a lot more orgenized
Love your videos so much! Can you make a vague and evocative video about a genie encounter like you did with the witches?//the elemental planes in the same manner as your fey wild video?? I've been dying to hear your thoughts on these things for so long!
"none of us can tell the future" except, of course, for Mopsus the Magnificent!
Yes but knowing the number and gender of baby piglets that a pregnant sow will give birth to may not be as helpful in a dnd scenario as you might originally think
Amazing video! Good charisma! I should watch more of your videos. Tho I'm subbed and notified I've only seen two lol!
Once I did the kind of thing you described in my world if darkness mage the Ascension game.
Cabal of mages was traveling from London to USA and near their destination their plane was nearly crashed by some unknown enemy. Ofc they used magic to track the attackers and when they found the enemy Nephandi cabal ,sooner then I had planned them to, I gave them a chance to coordinate a decent plan if attack... But they were not ready for that a confirmation. So... After scaring sh*tless The cabal of "experienced" tradition mages the leader of the Nephandi mage cabal sacrificed his own cabal members to cast a high level illusion/ teleportation spell faking her own death. Them half a year later that Nephandi leader came to London and apparently killed the whole cabal. Tho few escaped and few faked their own deaths. That was the ending if first story chapter and explained why half the players went on hiatus. Lol! Now game continues in part 2 set 8 years in future. Hopefully the Nephandi leader has forgotten about the London mages or preferably dead. Latter witch never stopped a single Nephandi ever. *Sight* Death is noth the end.
This so so packed full of great info for great D&D. Thank you very much. :)
I just discovered your videos, thanks to Matt Colville. I must say I enjoy your over thinking!
This is why the finale of Critical Role season 1 is so epic: the narrative climax comes out *through the combat
I am constantly impressed by Mercer’s ability to keep the stakes feeling high without TPKing the party.
It does my heart good to see UA-cam DMs commenting on eachother. 🥰
Also hi Zipperon! 👋
@@moogamooga2100 🙌
Great advice in this video. You clearly have a grasp for story telling
dude this video is TRANSCENDENT for me as a DM. thank you so much Dael :D
I 100% agree with Dael talking about raising the tension without lowering the treat by attacking the barbarian! It’s something I always think about. Which character will survive this next attack cause that where’s it’s going. Alternatively so this with a character you think won’t survive is also great tension whether they survive or not!
Tagretting the Barbarian is also better than targetting the fighter because the fighter has higher AC, nothing kills the tension more then the main bad guy missing a bunch of attacks.
I think this is probably some of the best DM advice I’ve heard so far
The real D&D is the memories we made along the way.
Checking out your videos... I love them so much I subscribed. Was sent here by "The Dungeon Coach"! Cheers.
I like the idea of the serious wound acting as a countdown for the injured player.
When i was a dm i couldn't get enough of your dnd videos but now I'm just a player and watching your videos seems like I'm setting my current dm some pretty high standards. Now i can't wait for the story videos
"I moved to New Zealand, once. Did me no end of good...."
This is awesome and so key
Interesting. When I think narrative combat, I think of games like Ironsworn and Dungeon World. I thought she was about to bring some of that magic in or something haha. But yeah, this stuff works, although I don't think I care to really plan out as much.
I’ve been thinking about DMing for a while and it all seemed too overwhelming tbh. Your way of talking about battles made it much easier to break down to the level of stakes and the memorable moments. Thanks for all of your videos, they’re really helping 😄
Every beginning is hard. Just go for it! 😁
I agree. I run a pbp group/solo adventures in a living world. Everything happens for a reason.
This video feels like it is tying together so much other advice I've heard before. Good work!
This is brilliant and I'm so glad the UA-cam gods put this in my suggested feed. Brb I'm going to watch all the videos available now.
This was a very useful video for the next few encounters I've been planning for my group. Great work as always!
Thank you so much ❤️👍🏻
I arrived here, through the Dungeon Coach, and I have already become a fan of your work, continue! :D
Well, I just ran my first combat yesterday so this couldn't be more impeccable timing!
Great video on those moments, I'll definitely make use of this!
Players don't know how much their characters are in trouble. They don't know how much HP the enemies have, they don't know if there are more enemies around the corner, and so on. They already have this mechanical blindfold that prevents them from knowing how easy or hard the combat really is. So it's out job as GMs to make them feel what the stacks are. Now, this can correlate to the actually danger they are in, or not. A good GM can make an easy combat feel dangerous and vice versa.
Thanks for the video Dael. You always brighten my day!
Great ideas thanks 🤘
I feel like 4:58 is what would happen if I ever actually met Dael. Great video, as usual.
I need that d20 pin........
great video! thanks for the awesome tips!
While I'm sure, as a Content Creator, the editing bit bugs you, it's also super important to remember that what we see is not real time. John Green recently made a video on "The Frame" and spoke about how his presentation online is not how he actually talks, and Alec from Technology Connections has his outtakes in the Patreon reel. I find it really reassuring that the people I look up to are just as human as the rest of us.
Now, about the actual content of the video: I love this, because I was struggling with how to get my ideas for my world and monsters and stuff into a compelling story in a tabletop format, and one of the big things was how do I dell these stories through combat encounters. And I often have ideas for these memorable moments, but don't know how to implement them, so this, especially the advice on timing was super useful. I'll let you know how it goes once I finally get my game going :P
what kind of bot are YOU?
"Shout outs" for Dale from Dungeon Craft and The Dungeon Coach episodes this last week. Fun stuff.
My DMing style is already very story-driven, but I still really appreciated this video.
Great video. Would love more on the narratively changing stakes without mechanically doing so.
Which RPG system do you use Dael? Have you ever used Dungeon World?
Great video
If the combat is going to be deadly and it’s at the start of the session, try making the combat slowly get harder so that it starts at difficult, and ends as deadly
idk what to comment to help the algorithm this time, so I'll just say that the mermaid in the background gives me anxiety because I think it's gonna roll and fall at any time.
Wait til you find out it's a merBLADE
That'd actually be bad, there's a steak knife hidden in it...
(Also thank you for the algorithm boosting, I really appreciate it)
As one of the few female influencers in the D&D world, I swear I learn more from each one of Dael’s videos than watching a dozen dudes all say the same 5 tips to get better at what ever. It’s great to see such talents that would otherwise be over looked, find their outlet.
We Needs This
Smashed that notification so hard that my phone made a Con save
Did it pass the save?
@@TheRepublic4 I need a new screen protector
Question: Have you ever released your injury table before? I enjoy using injuries but I'm just using the one from the DM's Guide and some of them are a little lackluster
Sweet battle jacket, Dael.
Dael? Where can we find this injury table of yours? Sounds neato. :)
Two RPG videos so close together. Nice, nice!
Great video, has given me so many ideas!
In my games death is always a possibility.
My players know that and act accordingly. They are in a extremely hostile world and a wrong move can hurt a lot. The encounters try thier best to score a kill. Within logic of course
Fantastic as always.
I never realized combat was about steaks... But steaks are expensive, whos paying for all these steaks? Also whos cooking all these steaks?! and how are they doing so while in combat?! We need someone who is not going to ruin the steaks because as we established before steaks are expensive...
And how do you motivate the vegan players??
@@frigginsepone446 impossible meat patties
I am not familiar with the cut "Narrative steaks." I prefer a good ribeye
How does your injury system work for level 1-2 characters, as almost any it will be about half of their HPs?
We need to talk about your flair. Fifteen is the minimum pieces of flair.
All this talk of stakes is making me hungry...
Beautiful reference to John Green's video.
I like to keep these sorts of things in mind but I actually think a lot of the messiness that makes for "bad narrative" is precisely what makes combat worthwhile - the fact is, death is random and messy and sometimes something that wasn't "supposed" to be a big deal leads to someone dying and it's all the more impactful for it. I just think the "story" of D&D is best when you play it as if all our favorite other stories were campaigns that just happened to go well, and if things work out it'll feel like that, but here's your chance to experience that kind of heroic story with none of the guardrails of carefully crafted pacing and character arcs. D&D functions best, to me, as a set of multiple overlapping character studies of people willing to get into dangerous circumstances and what that really would feel like. Sometimes that's not narratively convenient, people in real life have their narratives cut off or wildly blown off course by random happenstance all the time, but the stories feel all the more real and powerful because of it.
Really depends on what you want out of the game I suspect. Is it a collaborative "write an epic fantasy story together" experience? Or is it "explore what it would be like to be in another world?" They obviously aren't mutually exclusive, but I think they are two opposite modal points - verisimilitude vs narration perhaps?
No one way to play is more right than any other, of course, but I do think being too careful with making sure combat only ever has the stakes you intend for it to can rob the game of a lot of its magic both for you and your players... and letting combat be overly too reckless and arbitrary it can also rob the game of a lot of its magic
I'm here for the narrative validation and I got what I came for
Admittedly, I missed some videos.
But before looking for them, I wanted to interject that as much as I enjoy Dungeons & Dragons... it is not at all an ideal system for _stories._ A series of group combats, though, with some narrative stuff to connect one combat to the next... sure, in fact that's precisely how it's designed to function.
But I know that there are two things that get so many people to force the square peg of D&D into the round hole of not-D&D. It's almost ubiquitous with the hobby simply by merit of having a massive market share, so finding content is not only easy but almost impossible to not trip over D&D-centric content and resources.
The other thing: "I already know D&D". This second one is far more ephemeral whereas the first point is actually quantifiable. I say that because learning D&D is actually harder than learning many other systems (not Pathfinder -- that's just a D&D clone with lots of extra fiddly bits). But how about Dungeon World, Savage Worlds, or some of the OSR stuff that strays significantly from their origin points? Or you can go further afield and look at stuff like Blades in the Dark, Monster of the Week, Fate, Stars Without Number, Dresden Files Accelerated, Scum and Villainy, and so on and so on (there are some "micro" RPGs that have led to some of my all time favorite gaming experiences).
But if you're up to learning more complicated systems that are also far more geared toward story-first play, you can try out World of Darkness, Delta Green, Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, etc.
I used to limit myself to D&D, but after getting introduced to some other systems I soon came to realize... D&D actually sucks for story and character stuff. You can do it, but you're fighting against the rigid mechanics the whole time, and you are generally funneled into certain kinds of stories.
But in some ways, the reason there is so much content for D&D is because people so often have to tear it apart and remake it into a new system (without realizing they've done so) in order to get it to do what they want... but do so kind of poorly because people don't consciously want to make a whole new system suited to what they're looking to play.
D&D is still great, though, when you want a tactical combat game that doesn't bog down with too much mechanics overheard where the story is fairly light (because the narrative will always be secondary to combat, maybe even tertiary behind rules and combat).
One more thing, though... I think learning and running other systems makes a person a stronger DM in most cases. You come to realize where it excels and where it is simply subpar.
I regret that I only have a +1 to give to this.
And I agree, you "can" Rp in D&D, but at the same time, there are so many other very well-crafted games out there that tend to seem so much more conducive to it.
That whole section of not-so-complicated games is like whose-who-list of what I think are easily some of the very best games on the market.
My group has been playing Monster of the Week for several months now and I have never gotten to enjoy the RP aspect of RPG-ing as much as I have been with this game!
IF I ever run 'a D&D game' it'll almost certainly have to be done via Dungeon World now!
~ Cheers
1/2 hitpoints major injury in stormbringer rpg
New subscriber here, do you play in any live streams?
thats more than 17 pieces of flair
I think the "signature moment" should happen as early as you can get away with it. Simply because many times the players will stomp the enemies and there will be no other opportunity to use it. Many times I held back some cool attack options waiting for a better timing and never got to use them at all.
One thing that I do sometimes is I make it so that the enemy is (secretly) immune to all damage until they use their signature ability. (Obviously, you also have to lower their hit points.) But if the players do something cool and memorable enough, that immunity can be bypassed.
Dael as the next Superman
Emailed the video to grandmother, but she was not impressed.
"YEAH -- Gimmie that drammaaa!" :)
Wandering squad of monsters killable but if noise made others show up
" problem "
Dungeon coach sent me!
Silence 15 on stone to stop hue and cry