Her insight into mythology is spot on. She right about herself a deep thinker. Reason these myths are not forgotten, is universal truth they contain. Incorporate them into her campaign is wonderful.
1st Fire - "Wow, we were really unlucky that this fire started while we all slept." 2nd Fire - "Huh, that really stinks. What are the odds that would happen again?" 3rd Fire - "Somebody get me the Ghostbusters."
When I saw your videos for the first time I thought, "cool! another dnd YTer that I can learn and/or steal ideas from." Then I saw some of your other stuff and thought, "YAY! ANOTHER MYTHOLOGY NERD!"
The fey dying if you know their name reminded me that in norwegian folklore, there are underworld creatures called "jotner" which dies if humans utters their name. Also, there is another concept called "bytting", where a child from the underworld were switched with a human baby (bytting literally means "trading" in norwegian), and so the human family must raise a child of the underworld. A "bytting" will die if you get them to tell you their age.
Wow, that is FASCINATING!! The correlations with other stories from around the world alone - Yeates recounts a tale of an Irish Changeling defeated when tricked into revealing it isn't human, but now that I'm thinking about it, the Changeling specifically does this by revealing its age. I'm gonna have to go look this stuff up now and find out more!
Love the outfit Dael! Very excited to see your big sub bump. Remember, Colville might have sent people your way, but all he did was get eyeballs on your content. Those eyeballs wouldn't be subbing if it wasn't for the hard work that YOU do, and for the great content that YOU create. So, yes, thank Colville, but mostly thank yourself. You're the one the put in the hard work for so long and have been producing great content. Anyway, keep up the great work! I'm happy to see things taking off! 😃👊
Another idea to make your melee types fear getting into close range is an Aura. Let’s say that a ten foot aura causes creatures to become drowsy. If they end their turn in the aura, they must make a DC13 Constitution Saving Throw or make all rolls at disadvantage on the following turn. Alternatively, you could give them fire damage, as befits his fiery nature. Ending one’s turn within a ten foot aura deals 1d6 fire damage. This way he always has a chance to hurt someone when it’s not their turn. Since he is a fey creature, perhaps he is asynchronous with space and time. This allows him to disengage as a bonus action once during the fight. Or it could be a legendary action that he can disengage, since he is likely to want to keep himself alive.
1. noice pirates of penzance reference 2. right, leaving at 5.02. no spoilers here. 3. you done great, very effective lasertag look. you did shoot me on my birthday though, so i hate you forever
My brother said "oh, did you see Adara commented on your video?" and the kill Bill sirens went off in my brain. Thank you for leaving when you needed to, you're good.
Commenting on a two year old video to mention that this gave me summer great ideas for my setting and campaign! I won't rattle on about it but I love anything that gets the gears turning.
The idea of attaching an enemy's abilities to an item and giving it to the players is exactly what I've been doing recently. I created a massive shield that splits in two and is dual wielded like a weapon. It gives your STR mod in AC, lets you leap to allies as a reaction and take a hit for them, and let's you slap the ground knocking everything adjacent to you prone. Can't wait until they have to fight a military squad with two of these bad boys in the mix :D
"I'm a believer in breaking the rules." Yes, good. I firmly believe that DnD is just a guideline. I've probably broke every rule at least once either in some change made to a spell or ability or villain. I like to call this Chaotic Neutral DMing (or Chaotic Good if the changes are more beneficial for the players).
I'm very interested in what you've mentioned so far regarding "deep" or "old" magic. Have you done a video on the elements you use to give magic that feel in your game world? If not, I would love to see one when it fits with whatever else you're planning.
I know this video came out awhile ago, but I just came here to say that this video inspired me to start my own campaign with the Burner Prince as the bbeg, and tonight we had our final session after over two years. They finally killed him, truly, with his true name and all that.
One idea I’ve been thinking about is a villain who, when directly attacked, dodges and hits back really hard for free. He doesn’t have to roll to dodge, he just gets to dodge and counterattack. The catch is they have to “directly” attack, so an indirect attack (say destabilizing the ground beneath him to send him falling to his death) doesn’t trigger the ability. Also, he has to counter, so if if the players can trick him into accidentally attacking himself somehow (idk how that would work) his counter ALSO nails him. I have no tabletop RPG experience whatsoever but I’d like to play in the near future, so I don’t know if this is a good idea, but I love the idea of “puzzle battles” and I thought this might be cool or interesting.
I really like the idea of having the bad guy roll initiative each round. Anything to keep combat dynamic, unpredictable, and therefore fun and exciting. I am totally going to try that.
Grave Cleric made Death Yo-Yo an issue for my group, so I started using a system of lingering injury whenever a player drops to 0. A lot of them can be cured by Lesser Restoration, but when my Paladin lost his sword hand from a white dragon’s breath weapon, it really changed the party’s attitude regarding hitting 0 HP.
Honestly, having the perspective from someone who's new enough to still probably have at least some memory of their first time DMing is more helpful to the current crop of newbies than having the Old Gods talk about their methods. You remember what it's like sitting awkwardly in front of a group of friends for the first time psyching yourself up to painting a world in their minds with your words.
I love the idea of the burner prince. That whole description leading up to seeing the burner prince in a serene yet displaced scenery was really great! I'm definitely stealing that lol thank you so much!
I think a big take away from this video is that most DMs probably wonder, "where do you even start to come up with these creative legendary actions and reactions?" where as this video is a great example of starting with what your players can do. For example, my players consist of a tanky paladin, 2 rangers, a wizard that loves to take advantage of his utility and a sorcerer that outputs a lot of fire damage. So I could probably give my bad guy a resistance to fire, reactions to being blocked by the paladin, a chance to catch arrows, and some form of safety net from the usual tricks of the wizard. I don't want to make it to where nothing affects the bad guy but somethings to make the players take a different approach and make for a good challenge.
I miss being able to have a lone Big Bad caster turn to face the party when they barge in unprepared and clumped together, then cast create pit, and top initiative off with quickened black tentacles and cloudkill.
I’m no Colville but I name drop you wherever dnd videos are found. My wife and I both love you, you’re clever, fun, and as cute as a button. We love that your channel has dnd, folklore, and so much more. Keep up the great work and at any point you start streaming your games, I’m there!
The Big Bad in the campaign I recently finished was a level 20 Warlock Vampire who's split-personality alter-ego was the girlfriend of one of the party characters. Their motivation was revenge for the 200 years they'd been captive of the family of another member of the party (who had no idea this had gone down until late in the campaign). So they "kidnapped" the girlfriend and there was a showdown on a frozen rock in the far north. It got more complicated, though, because the girlfriend alter-ego was a branch out of the original personality of the Vampire before they were captured and infected with Vampirism; the "girlfriend" they thought they'd come to rescue never *truly* existed, so when they managed to purge the evil personality, they decided to cure her of Vampirism (with her blessing) by killing then resurrecting her. It was an emotional 2-session climax for the year-long campaign, that's for sure. It also doesn't matter so much that you may not have been running the game for as long as others because perspectives are useful and other points of view are really good to see.
No wonder Colville gives you constant shout out, your content is so goddamn good! The advice, the hacking of the rules, the concepts and inspiration all is freaking awesome! I'm glad I took the time to come here and check it out! And I wouldn't call "giving the bad guys stuff players can't have" cheating, I'd say is leveling the play field. Which is all about making everything more interesting for EVERYONE. After all, we're here to play TOGETHER not against each other, right? So, keep being opinionated, Dael, it's awesome =D
"I've only been running the game for a handful of years, so you should go in this knowing that I have no idea what I'm doing" me too. even with ~15 years of DM experience under my belt ... I still have that feeling. I "wing it" a lot, and things happen to fall into place ... but knowing what I'm doing? Nope. The only thing I know (or think I know), is that it's a game, and games are supposed to be fun, and you try to figure out what the people on your table want, and like a hollywood writer/direcotr you try to direct a story for them.
I have an Elven wizard baddie in my campaign that I gave a special ability of being able to maintain 2 concentration spells at once. his spells are all themed to mind control, illusion, and telekinesis, he also has a magic amulet that gives him contingency teleport when his hitpoints are reduced below 10.
Glad to see Matthew's shout out is having a positive effect! I had watched you for a while, as well as Colville, and him giving you a shout out warmed my heart.
I love the idea of slipping between planes. I did a similar thing in one of my campaigns. Any time they strayed into a deeply wooded area, they had a chance of accidentally wandering into the fey realm. Because of this, it was very difficult to harvest lumber in densely forested areas. Most of the buildings in the world were stone or brick and things crafted from wood were very valuable. Made for an interesting setting. And it took my players awhile to figure out what was happening 😅
Great advice and ideas, thanks again and congratulations on the surge of subscribers. I love the first level spells being like cantrips to the BBEG caster. A similar thing I've had good results from, for my villainous casters, has been scaling up their spells. Basically, I cast any spell of fifth level or lower as fifth level - it's a bit like Pact Magic and helps me handle bookkeeping, but it could quickly turn the fight into a slaughter. BTW, what is it with the male players and the death yo-yo tactic? All of my female players will withdraw and take a healing potion when they're getting low on health, but the males just expect someone else to use their turn to revive them. I don't have a lot of DMing experience, but there's definitely been an absolute correlation between respective player gender and tactic used. Definitely going to try out reroling the baddies initiative and see if that affects them.
I put an end to the death yo-yo by having characters knocked unconscious gain a level of exhaustion. Now keeping someone on their feet is more important, as a few levels of exhaustion will wreck your day.
About a year ago I ran my players against a Faerie Prince, they had lots of time and tools available to them but they basically only skimmed this and found a location for him and went to confront him. Oddly they would not do this vs a dragon or a demon but thought this was fine vs a Fey :) So this fight was nearly impossible to win and they actually got wiped however the Prince is easily bored and wandered away allowing another fey who was his enemy to rescue them. This Fay berated them (and the players finally realised that this was a super bad guy not just a boss fight :) ). They did two quests to find his true name and then used this to make a dael ( :) ) with him to keep him from the prime material plane for 1000 years (nothing to him but seemed good to the players). Your videos have gotten me to include a lot more plot lines and points influenced by other mythologies than Norse.
Initiative every round was a common practice. You had to declare your actions ahead of time. I can't quite remember the action mechanic but it was basically a move action & an attack action. Everybody would roll initiative and carry out the first half of their declared action, in order, some players would delay. After the first half of the turn was completed then you'd carry out the second half of the previously declared actions. This would result in the players being committed to their declared actions but, not knowing how the belligerents/monsters were going to react, which lead to wasted turns via misjudgments. Players would anticipate something a declare their actions off of their anticipations, however by the time they went the situation on the board had changed. The basic tactics was melee players wanted to move last in initiative order in the first half of the round and then attack first in initiative order in the second half of the round. I know we rolled were supposed to roll initiative every round but I believe we rolled initiative every half of round. This was in the AD&D days.
My group had a big bad that was a sort of embodiment of chaos who would have a new initiative every round- it works as well as you're hoping! Definitely kept us players on our toes! I think it gives a nice contrast to normal battles, so it's great for bosses!
Thanks for the quick channel intro, I am here because of the Colville shout out so it's greatly appreciated. Also, so nice to see a fellow Aussie making great content, and D&D content to boot.
Love the fey name gimmick and the legendary reaction mechanic. Makes legendary actions feel less cheap, yet more awesome. Even a bit cerebral, which is always appreciated.
I am enjoying your videos, glad MC took the time to point you out. Keep making the videos that excite you or that you are passionate about making. It is obvious that you are enjoying yourself in the creative process of your videos, and that makes them enjoyable to watch.
As a Scot who's super into his countries native mythology, it is AWESOME to know that people are interested in faeries and get that they're scary mofos. I got directed here by the wonderful UA-cam algorithms and I'm very grateful of them for once. I've been super enjoying your videos, and this one made me subscribe. Thanks for being awesome, dude.
Have only recently come to your site - and not via Colville, although I do recall that Vecna segment of his - and I am finding your D&D DM items absolutely priceless. Can't wait to sort out your mythology items and they appear to be dead in my interest areas as well, having been attempting to get on about mythology, especially of the Isles, for almost five decades. This is going to restart and buff that up big time, I believe.
Discovered you by recommendation from my D&D group. Will say, as an Irishman, it really made me grin seeing how eager you got into designing a boss around an old legend of ours and it certainly was a cool idea. Ive only been a DM for 4 months, and due to a one shot I ran on my birthday as a treat to myself, my group (surprisingly) asked me to continue the story into a campaign as they found the villain too interesting to let it end there. So, big proud moment for me there. However, Ive always felt over the last few months that I never make encounters that feel as threatening as they should be against the group. Either homebrewing monsters that dont hit hard enough or, just in general, even hit the players. Nothing feels threatening to them since my big bad and her big henchman hurt them at lvl5. Hopefully my one shot this week will change things, but we'll see. I'll just have to try and make encounters actually scarier. Though the Bard who has relied on Bane for the last 3 sessions to stop the enemies, hopefully she's gonna feel scared fighting my Magic Eaters :3
Not sure if anybody has mentioned this at all, but you may like the "Earthsea" series. The magic system in it is tied to the "true name" of every thing, items, animals, beings, etc
Yay D&D video! EDIT: ok, now that I've actually watched the video, I love all of this! I'm also a big fan of the Deep Magic vibe, and if you're looking for some interesting mechanics to make that more volatile and unpredictable you might want to check out the DCC (Dungeon Crawl Classics) spell system. It has some fun things involving random rolls and the unpredictable nature of magic, as well as a system called Mercurial Magic that flavors spells differently for different casters. Going more into the main topic of the video, having your BBEG break the rules is usually a good plan, and another way to help the solo caster villain really work is to strait up have them prepare for the party. Some DMs don't like this approach, but WebDM has a great video talking about how it can totally be justified with the abundance of scrying magic in 5e, of course this will just train your players to use non-detection spells like Vox Machina uses insight checks, but that's half the fun! On the topic of worldbuiding/world-explaining livestreams, I know I'd be a fan of that sort of content. You seem to have a very well thought out world and I'd honestly like to hear more about it if only to shamelessly steal parts for my own game. Anyways this comment is officially way too long, so I'm just going to say great video and leave now.
Giving NPCs feats and Spells that the players don't normally have is great. you're not Alone in doing this. I baked into one of my badguys a feature of being able to burn attacks off his multiattack to make parry reactions. So it's harder to hit him, but he can't make as many attacks if you really press him.
Dael, excellent job as always. Don't be nervous many D&D nerds, like me, were here before & though we appreciate Matt getting your name out there, I do not want you to change things. Keep your standard schedule. I am sure you have plenty to say about D&D, but I enjoy your other content too.
The drunkard next to you spills tales of mystical fairies, a forest of trees that forever burns but never fall, and amongst it all, a bard singing songs weighting heavily on the eyelids of animal and man. The drunkard's words become incoherent, his eyes glass over, a soft thud can be heard as his head lands on the bar. The bartender makes his way over to you, a soft melody escapes his lips. He leans in close, looking you right in the eyes. "It's said the Fey can only die when they are known, but a man... A man will die only when he has been forgotten. It would be best to remember that Ranger." He pulls back smiling warmly, uprights himself, and replaces your empty pint of mead.
This villain should definitively fight with the Blink spell! More specifically, he would use this spell at an stressed/threatened state when facing off with the party.
Another simple way to disincentive death yo-yo'ing in 5e (that seems to have some traction on the interwebs): each time a character reaches and recovers from 0HP, they gain 1 level of exhaustion.
You may not have the years of experience, but you do have good ideas, a charming personality and a great screen presence. Looking forward to burning through your videos!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aillen The Burner Prince and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fionn_mac_Cumhaill Fionn mac Cumhaill, for all folks here that like to know more. Really interesting source material for a D&D Villain, thanks Dael!
I started watching your D&D videos a few weeks before the Colville shout-out because I actively search for youtube D&D enthusiasts and you’re one of them now.
I didn't make it here because of Matt but I subbed because of your last dnd video. On another note I make costume enemies based on story books and folk lore most recently new witch's/hags and the first big bad my party will face in a campaign I'm building which is a twisted version of Pinocchio and Geppetto where a devil answers the lonely old man's prayers and not an angle. They make a pact. The "Toy Maker" as I call him slowly losses his mind over his obsession to bring his new talking doll to life and delves deeply into necromancy and crafting magic constructs. Long story short I'll probably end up watch your lore videos as well and build something out of them to throw at my party. Lol
The world I'm building for my first session as DM features Fae very heavily. I'm definitely using the knowing a fae's true name gives you power over them thing. That's such a good idea. I don't know if you've ever read Jim Butcher's Dresden files, but faeries feature heavily in that book series and I've based a lot of my faerie and even magic system on the stuff from that book. I've ever made a bunch of vanilla D&D monsters that have nothing to do with faerie into fae creatures, or have them be descended from faeries
Pulling a little Ursula K. LeGuine there, the power of truenames. Maybe your players could have that as a quest, full of false grimiors which when used make things worse, but still have clues to the true end.
"You can be walking along and then slip into fairy. Not the person or creature of course, the area" I like how this had to be corrected, as in people must have originally thought "slip and fall into fairy" made sense in other contexts. And while yeah, it might...in some specific cases, noooot here
Great advice for sure! Just brainstorming here. I would say instead of dealing with rerolling initiative you can just apply legendary actions and rip thematic abilities from other monsters and add them to the villain. Doing actions out of order shouldn't be a surprise when the villain is that of legend and myth. There is also the idea of lair actions or just general environmental actions that happen at certain initiative. In the case of your villain as an example of being a fey, having entangling roots try and grapple the players in a certain radius around them is a thematic environmental effect. Something that doesnt necessarily damage them but can make them panic when they are easy targets and cant move while your villain is prepping some kind of a spell ability *cough* fireball *cough*
Awesome video, I love both of your guys's content(even though I did only find you a little while ago), so I was happy to see him give you a shout out. I am very interested to think more about that deep magic idea, and I hope I am creative enough to play with it a bit. It's definitely an interesting idea to only have the BBEG reroll initiative, as opposed to everyone, just to screw with the party and make them think more in terms of "I know i'm faster than you, but might not be faster than him, so I need multiple plans." Remember, don't number your plans, you may need more than 26 :D
"Fey can only die when they are known, man can only die when he is forgotten"... Holy crap that's beautiful!
Yeah, I'm DEFINITELY stealing that for my home campaign.
If not general headcanon
That's like standard mythology for feys guys
Her insight into mythology is spot on. She right about herself a deep thinker. Reason these myths are not forgotten, is universal truth they contain. Incorporate them into her campaign is wonderful.
I guess that's what qualifies as bars now? Just seems like a fact of the world.
"Up yours, authority. That's what villains say."
- Asmodeus, lawful evil lord and tyrant of all devils, begins typing furiously.
He can have quite the poison pen, he'll have you know!
@@DaDunge Or really just most of them anyway.
"I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm just very opinionated, and think too much." I need a poster of this... and a shirt, and a mug and...
Would be very cool!!!
That would be such good merch.
Old time gamer here, with 30 year experience, she knows what she doing.
"Thats alot of times to be on fire while your asleep" For sure thats waaaay to many times, i would be mad by the second year lol
1st Fire - "Wow, we were really unlucky that this fire started while we all slept."
2nd Fire - "Huh, that really stinks. What are the odds that would happen again?"
3rd Fire - "Somebody get me the Ghostbusters."
That outfit is a LOOK
Like a serious LOOK
She does look pretty damn badass.
Well, yes. That's what happens when you have visible skin and clothing.
All good in the hood.
When I saw your videos for the first time I thought, "cool! another dnd YTer that I can learn and/or steal ideas from." Then I saw some of your other stuff and thought, "YAY! ANOTHER MYTHOLOGY NERD!"
That's the same thing that happened to me today when I started watching
I was like "Yey, a mythology nerd that rocks those stories. Then she started D&D too
Me too
The fey dying if you know their name reminded me that in norwegian folklore, there are underworld creatures called "jotner" which dies if humans utters their name. Also, there is another concept called "bytting", where a child from the underworld were switched with a human baby (bytting literally means "trading" in norwegian), and so the human family must raise a child of the underworld. A "bytting" will die if you get them to tell you their age.
Wow, that is FASCINATING!! The correlations with other stories from around the world alone - Yeates recounts a tale of an Irish Changeling defeated when tricked into revealing it isn't human, but now that I'm thinking about it, the Changeling specifically does this by revealing its age. I'm gonna have to go look this stuff up now and find out more!
@@MonarchsFactory Or even as per the name, the whole original tale pertaining to rumplestilskin.
Love the outfit Dael! Very excited to see your big sub bump. Remember, Colville might have sent people your way, but all he did was get eyeballs on your content. Those eyeballs wouldn't be subbing if it wasn't for the hard work that YOU do, and for the great content that YOU create. So, yes, thank Colville, but mostly thank yourself. You're the one the put in the hard work for so long and have been producing great content.
Anyway, keep up the great work! I'm happy to see things taking off! 😃👊
Couldn't have said it any better myself. Congratulations, Dael!
Don't you reduce people to eyeballs, that's giving a really creepy image in my head.
He' right you know ^
So freakin gracious of you, Luke. What a terrific community! 😄
Exactly right!
Another idea to make your melee types fear getting into close range is an Aura. Let’s say that a ten foot aura causes creatures to become drowsy. If they end their turn in the aura, they must make a DC13 Constitution Saving Throw or make all rolls at disadvantage on the following turn.
Alternatively, you could give them fire damage, as befits his fiery nature. Ending one’s turn within a ten foot aura deals 1d6 fire damage. This way he always has a chance to hurt someone when it’s not their turn.
Since he is a fey creature, perhaps he is asynchronous with space and time. This allows him to disengage as a bonus action once during the fight. Or it could be a legendary action that he can disengage, since he is likely to want to keep himself alive.
Nice! Love these ideas!
1. noice pirates of penzance reference
2. right, leaving at 5.02. no spoilers here.
3. you done great, very effective lasertag look. you did shoot me on my birthday though, so i hate you forever
My brother said "oh, did you see Adara commented on your video?" and the kill Bill sirens went off in my brain. Thank you for leaving when you needed to, you're good.
#neverforget
i am a penzance born that lives and dresses as a pirate
This is by far the raddest transaction on this silly website I have seen in a long time
Holy fucking shit, this sounds like the coolest boss fight in the world.
15:28 This is SUCH a great idea. Dangerous, but brilliant.
Man I've been wanting a bard villain. This has been a big help.
Just army of 1/2 breed creatures
Commenting on a two year old video to mention that this gave me summer great ideas for my setting and campaign! I won't rattle on about it but I love anything that gets the gears turning.
The idea of attaching an enemy's abilities to an item and giving it to the players is exactly what I've been doing recently. I created a massive shield that splits in two and is dual wielded like a weapon. It gives your STR mod in AC, lets you leap to allies as a reaction and take a hit for them, and let's you slap the ground knocking everything adjacent to you prone. Can't wait until they have to fight a military squad with two of these bad boys in the mix :D
"I'm a believer in breaking the rules."
Yes, good. I firmly believe that DnD is just a guideline. I've probably broke every rule at least once either in some change made to a spell or ability or villain. I like to call this Chaotic Neutral DMing (or Chaotic Good if the changes are more beneficial for the players).
"A firm reinforcer of the idea that names have power"
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
That's all I have to say
I'm very interested in what you've mentioned so far regarding "deep" or "old" magic. Have you done a video on the elements you use to give magic that feel in your game world? If not, I would love to see one when it fits with whatever else you're planning.
"I have no idea what I'm doing; I'm just very opinionated, and think too much."
Wow, you're more like Colville than you think. xD
"Just pick thematic spells" Love having easy going players that this works.
I know this video came out awhile ago, but I just came here to say that this video inspired me to start my own campaign with the Burner Prince as the bbeg, and tonight we had our final session after over two years. They finally killed him, truly, with his true name and all that.
One idea I’ve been thinking about is a villain who, when directly attacked, dodges and hits back really hard for free. He doesn’t have to roll to dodge, he just gets to dodge and counterattack. The catch is they have to “directly” attack, so an indirect attack (say destabilizing the ground beneath him to send him falling to his death) doesn’t trigger the ability. Also, he has to counter, so if if the players can trick him into accidentally attacking himself somehow (idk how that would work) his counter ALSO nails him. I have no tabletop RPG experience whatsoever but I’d like to play in the near future, so I don’t know if this is a good idea, but I love the idea of “puzzle battles” and I thought this might be cool or interesting.
"effective but alarming costume"!? I understood that reference!
I really like the idea of having the bad guy roll initiative each round. Anything to keep combat dynamic, unpredictable, and therefore fun and exciting. I am totally going to try that.
"Ah! It's so hard to punch you because you're burning me!"
I feel like Minsc would say this, right Boo?
Grave Cleric made Death Yo-Yo an issue for my group, so I started using a system of lingering injury whenever a player drops to 0. A lot of them can be cured by Lesser Restoration, but when my Paladin lost his sword hand from a white dragon’s breath weapon, it really changed the party’s attitude regarding hitting 0 HP.
Gaining alertness at bloodied is BRILLIANT.
Honestly, having the perspective from someone who's new enough to still probably have at least some memory of their first time DMing is more helpful to the current crop of newbies than having the Old Gods talk about their methods. You remember what it's like sitting awkwardly in front of a group of friends for the first time psyching yourself up to painting a world in their minds with your words.
We agree so much on how the fey and deep magic should be treated. (Also, “legendary REaction” has just become part of my DM toolbox)
"Down with the man, up yours to authority" is what a fair amount of my heroes say too
One thing to consider- if you've got a solo BBEG give them a feat that allows them to roll two initiative die and go twice per round
I love the idea of the burner prince. That whole description leading up to seeing the burner prince in a serene yet displaced scenery was really great! I'm definitely stealing that lol thank you so much!
I think a big take away from this video is that most DMs probably wonder, "where do you even start to come up with these creative legendary actions and reactions?" where as this video is a great example of starting with what your players can do.
For example, my players consist of a tanky paladin, 2 rangers, a wizard that loves to take advantage of his utility and a sorcerer that outputs a lot of fire damage. So I could probably give my bad guy a resistance to fire, reactions to being blocked by the paladin, a chance to catch arrows, and some form of safety net from the usual tricks of the wizard. I don't want to make it to where nothing affects the bad guy but somethings to make the players take a different approach and make for a good challenge.
My presence here is entirely Matt's fault and I'm glad to have found this place. You make good gaming stuff.
I miss being able to have a lone Big Bad caster turn to face the party when they barge in unprepared and clumped together, then cast create pit, and top initiative off with quickened black tentacles and cloudkill.
Just trying to visualize your rogue throwing sneaky cats at the villain
* rrrMREOWWR *
I’m no Colville but I name drop you wherever dnd videos are found. My wife and I both love you, you’re clever, fun, and as cute as a button. We love that your channel has dnd, folklore, and so much more. Keep up the great work and at any point you start streaming your games, I’m there!
The Big Bad in the campaign I recently finished was a level 20 Warlock Vampire who's split-personality alter-ego was the girlfriend of one of the party characters. Their motivation was revenge for the 200 years they'd been captive of the family of another member of the party (who had no idea this had gone down until late in the campaign). So they "kidnapped" the girlfriend and there was a showdown on a frozen rock in the far north. It got more complicated, though, because the girlfriend alter-ego was a branch out of the original personality of the Vampire before they were captured and infected with Vampirism; the "girlfriend" they thought they'd come to rescue never *truly* existed, so when they managed to purge the evil personality, they decided to cure her of Vampirism (with her blessing) by killing then resurrecting her.
It was an emotional 2-session climax for the year-long campaign, that's for sure.
It also doesn't matter so much that you may not have been running the game for as long as others because perspectives are useful and other points of view are really good to see.
No wonder Colville gives you constant shout out, your content is so goddamn good! The advice, the hacking of the rules, the concepts and inspiration all is freaking awesome! I'm glad I took the time to come here and check it out!
And I wouldn't call "giving the bad guys stuff players can't have" cheating, I'd say is leveling the play field. Which is all about making everything more interesting for EVERYONE. After all, we're here to play TOGETHER not against each other, right?
So, keep being opinionated, Dael, it's awesome =D
"I've only been running the game for a handful of years, so you should go in this knowing that I have no idea what I'm doing"
me too. even with ~15 years of DM experience under my belt ... I still have that feeling. I "wing it" a lot, and things happen to fall into place ... but knowing what I'm doing? Nope. The only thing I know (or think I know), is that it's a game, and games are supposed to be fun, and you try to figure out what the people on your table want, and like a hollywood writer/direcotr you try to direct a story for them.
I hate it when I'm walking around and wake up in a faery.
Don't lie. We know you love it.
I have an Elven wizard baddie in my campaign that I gave a special ability of being able to maintain 2 concentration spells at once. his spells are all themed to mind control, illusion, and telekinesis, he also has a magic amulet that gives him contingency teleport when his hitpoints are reduced below 10.
A proud member of the hoard arriving via Matt Colville. Which sounds like a good spell name. "Arrive via Matt Colville"
Glad to see Matthew's shout out is having a positive effect!
I had watched you for a while, as well as Colville, and him giving you a shout out warmed my heart.
Funny. I had been watching Dael's DnD and Mythology vids for a while but had to look up Mat Colville just there.
The internet is never really one sided. Cool to see two communities collide, but in a positive manner.
I love the idea of slipping between planes. I did a similar thing in one of my campaigns. Any time they strayed into a deeply wooded area, they had a chance of accidentally wandering into the fey realm. Because of this, it was very difficult to harvest lumber in densely forested areas. Most of the buildings in the world were stone or brick and things crafted from wood were very valuable. Made for an interesting setting. And it took my players awhile to figure out what was happening 😅
Great advice and ideas, thanks again and congratulations on the surge of subscribers. I love the first level spells being like cantrips to the BBEG caster. A similar thing I've had good results from, for my villainous casters, has been scaling up their spells. Basically, I cast any spell of fifth level or lower as fifth level - it's a bit like Pact Magic and helps me handle bookkeeping, but it could quickly turn the fight into a slaughter.
BTW, what is it with the male players and the death yo-yo tactic? All of my female players will withdraw and take a healing potion when they're getting low on health, but the males just expect someone else to use their turn to revive them. I don't have a lot of DMing experience, but there's definitely been an absolute correlation between respective player gender and tactic used. Definitely going to try out reroling the baddies initiative and see if that affects them.
I put an end to the death yo-yo by having characters knocked unconscious gain a level of exhaustion. Now keeping someone on their feet is more important, as a few levels of exhaustion will wreck your day.
I LOVE the idea about changing initiative every round for the bad guy. I am using that Idea POSSIBLY this weekend.
Came for the topic, stayed cause I appreciated the pirates of Penzance reference
About a year ago I ran my players against a Faerie Prince, they had lots of time and tools available to them but they basically only skimmed this and found a location for him and went to confront him. Oddly they would not do this vs a dragon or a demon but thought this was fine vs a Fey :) So this fight was nearly impossible to win and they actually got wiped however the Prince is easily bored and wandered away allowing another fey who was his enemy to rescue them. This Fay berated them (and the players finally realised that this was a super bad guy not just a boss fight :) ). They did two quests to find his true name and then used this to make a dael ( :) ) with him to keep him from the prime material plane for 1000 years (nothing to him but seemed good to the players).
Your videos have gotten me to include a lot more plot lines and points influenced by other mythologies than Norse.
Initiative every round was a common practice. You had to declare your actions ahead of time. I can't quite remember the action mechanic but it was basically a move action & an attack action. Everybody would roll initiative and carry out the first half of their declared action, in order, some players would delay. After the first half of the turn was completed then you'd carry out the second half of the previously declared actions. This would result in the players being committed to their declared actions but, not knowing how the belligerents/monsters were going to react, which lead to wasted turns via misjudgments. Players would anticipate something a declare their actions off of their anticipations, however by the time they went the situation on the board had changed. The basic tactics was melee players wanted to move last in initiative order in the first half of the round and then attack first in initiative order in the second half of the round. I know we rolled were supposed to roll initiative every round but I believe we rolled initiative every half of round. This was in the AD&D days.
My group had a big bad that was a sort of embodiment of chaos who would have a new initiative every round- it works as well as you're hoping! Definitely kept us players on our toes! I think it gives a nice contrast to normal battles, so it's great for bosses!
Congrats on your shout-out!
Your villain you describe here is probably the most creative D&D villain I've heard of! Thanks so much for sharing.
Thanks for the quick channel intro, I am here because of the Colville shout out so it's greatly appreciated.
Also, so nice to see a fellow Aussie making great content, and D&D content to boot.
Love the fey name gimmick and the legendary reaction mechanic. Makes legendary actions feel less cheap, yet more awesome. Even a bit cerebral, which is always appreciated.
The changing initative is an interesting mechanic for sure..
I am enjoying your videos, glad MC took the time to point you out. Keep making the videos that excite you or that you are passionate about making. It is obvious that you are enjoying yourself in the creative process of your videos, and that makes them enjoyable to watch.
As a Scot who's super into his countries native mythology, it is AWESOME to know that people are interested in faeries and get that they're scary mofos. I got directed here by the wonderful UA-cam algorithms and I'm very grateful of them for once. I've been super enjoying your videos, and this one made me subscribe. Thanks for being awesome, dude.
I think it was great to make this video right after stating what you are about. :)
I've been playing/Mostly DMing since '78, and you look to be a great DM to run a character under. Good stuff.
Sensei Coleville did indeed send me… lovely to be here.
I strongly like the way you treat the plains. Makes good story telling sense
Have only recently come to your site - and not via Colville, although I do recall that Vecna segment of his - and I am finding your D&D DM items absolutely priceless. Can't wait to sort out your mythology items and they appear to be dead in my interest areas as well, having been attempting to get on about mythology, especially of the Isles, for almost five decades. This is going to restart and buff that up big time, I believe.
Two Colville shout outs, Nice!
For the record though, it was your mad skills with the ukulele that earned my sub ;-)
Came here for DnD-content, discovered your mythology-vids, loved them equally. This channel really is a hidden gem.
Discovered you by recommendation from my D&D group. Will say, as an Irishman, it really made me grin seeing how eager you got into designing a boss around an old legend of ours and it certainly was a cool idea. Ive only been a DM for 4 months, and due to a one shot I ran on my birthday as a treat to myself, my group (surprisingly) asked me to continue the story into a campaign as they found the villain too interesting to let it end there. So, big proud moment for me there.
However, Ive always felt over the last few months that I never make encounters that feel as threatening as they should be against the group. Either homebrewing monsters that dont hit hard enough or, just in general, even hit the players. Nothing feels threatening to them since my big bad and her big henchman hurt them at lvl5. Hopefully my one shot this week will change things, but we'll see. I'll just have to try and make encounters actually scarier. Though the Bard who has relied on Bane for the last 3 sessions to stop the enemies, hopefully she's gonna feel scared fighting my Magic Eaters :3
Not sure if anybody has mentioned this at all, but you may like the "Earthsea" series. The magic system in it is tied to the "true name" of every thing, items, animals, beings, etc
Yay D&D video!
EDIT: ok, now that I've actually watched the video, I love all of this! I'm also a big fan of the Deep Magic vibe, and if you're looking for some interesting mechanics to make that more volatile and unpredictable you might want to check out the DCC (Dungeon Crawl Classics) spell system. It has some fun things involving random rolls and the unpredictable nature of magic, as well as a system called Mercurial Magic that flavors spells differently for different casters.
Going more into the main topic of the video, having your BBEG break the rules is usually a good plan, and another way to help the solo caster villain really work is to strait up have them prepare for the party. Some DMs don't like this approach, but WebDM has a great video talking about how it can totally be justified with the abundance of scrying magic in 5e, of course this will just train your players to use non-detection spells like Vox Machina uses insight checks, but that's half the fun!
On the topic of worldbuiding/world-explaining livestreams, I know I'd be a fan of that sort of content. You seem to have a very well thought out world and I'd honestly like to hear more about it if only to shamelessly steal parts for my own game.
Anyways this comment is officially way too long, so I'm just going to say great video and leave now.
Two D&D videos in a row!! Yay! I’ve been watching your stuff for a couple months now, and your D&D videos are my favorite.
Giving NPCs feats and Spells that the players don't normally have is great. you're not Alone in doing this.
I baked into one of my badguys a feature of being able to burn attacks off his multiattack to make parry reactions. So it's harder to hit him, but he can't make as many attacks if you really press him.
Honestly, to me, your figuring-out-for-yourself take on D&D is what brought me here. Keep it up!
You are my new hero. This is what I've always wanted D&D to be, I'm glad I'm not alone.
Dael, excellent job as always. Don't be nervous many D&D nerds, like me, were here before & though we appreciate Matt getting your name out there, I do not want you to change things. Keep your standard schedule. I am sure you have plenty to say about D&D, but I enjoy your other content too.
The drunkard next to you spills tales of mystical fairies, a forest of trees that forever burns but never fall, and amongst it all, a bard singing songs weighting heavily on the eyelids of animal and man.
The drunkard's words become incoherent, his eyes glass over, a soft thud can be heard as his head lands on the bar.
The bartender makes his way over to you, a soft melody escapes his lips. He leans in close, looking you right in the eyes.
"It's said the Fey can only die when they are known, but a man... A man will die only when he has been forgotten. It would be best to remember that Ranger."
He pulls back smiling warmly, uprights himself, and replaces your empty pint of mead.
Enjoyed a couple videos already, but that Gilbert and Sullivan reference at the start is definitely worth a subscribe!
This villain should definitively fight with the Blink spell! More specifically, he would use this spell at an stressed/threatened state when facing off with the party.
The legendary reaction system is definitely something I'm taking for my big bad. Awesome video.
Another simple way to disincentive death yo-yo'ing in 5e (that seems to have some traction on the interwebs): each time a character reaches and recovers from 0HP, they gain 1 level of exhaustion.
The Burner Prince is an awesome villain! This has given me so many ideas...
Love your fresh perspective Dael. So many play the game but you are among the few who approach it as an art form.
Dael, you are every bit as important a D&D channel to me as Colville is. Keep it up! I am also enjoying your mythology stuff!
You may not have the years of experience, but you do have good ideas, a charming personality and a great screen presence. Looking forward to burning through your videos!
Love the idea of legendary reactions! It's a cool design space to make epic villain encounters feel more unique, definitely going to steal that one
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aillen The Burner Prince and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fionn_mac_Cumhaill Fionn mac Cumhaill, for all folks here that like to know more. Really interesting source material for a D&D Villain, thanks Dael!
I started watching your D&D videos a few weeks before the Colville shout-out because I actively search for youtube D&D enthusiasts and you’re one of them now.
I love the idea of big baddie gets to roll initiative every round.
AAAHHH so many new viewers and subscribers! You've come so far since the old days of Geek & Sundry vlogs!
Fuckin love it.
I don't know who matt is.
Lucky legendary drop from the UA-cam algorithm :)
I've been watching your videos since the G&S vloggers days. Seeing Colville shout you out made me squee so much for you
If you like myth building in DnD you should check out Demonac's channel. His work is very underappreciated.
The live map idea sounds like a lot of fun!
Happened across your channel by complete accedent and I am so happy I did.
I didn't make it here because of Matt but I subbed because of your last dnd video. On another note I make costume enemies based on story books and folk lore most recently new witch's/hags and the first big bad my party will face in a campaign I'm building which is a twisted version of Pinocchio and Geppetto where a devil answers the lonely old man's prayers and not an angle. They make a pact. The "Toy Maker" as I call him slowly losses his mind over his obsession to bring his new talking doll to life and delves deeply into necromancy and crafting magic constructs. Long story short I'll probably end up watch your lore videos as well and build something out of them to throw at my party. Lol
I’ve watched several of your videos and enjoyed the content but I subbed when you sang Tom Bombadill. More of this please.
"I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm just very opinionated". I so have to get that on a shirt.
The world I'm building for my first session as DM features Fae very heavily. I'm definitely using the knowing a fae's true name gives you power over them thing. That's such a good idea.
I don't know if you've ever read Jim Butcher's Dresden files, but faeries feature heavily in that book series and I've based a lot of my faerie and even magic system on the stuff from that book. I've ever made a bunch of vanilla D&D monsters that have nothing to do with faerie into fae creatures, or have them be descended from faeries
Doing a livestream brainstorming session would be amazing, keep us posted :)
Pulling a little Ursula K. LeGuine there, the power of truenames. Maybe your players could have that as a quest, full of false grimiors which when used make things worse, but still have clues to the true end.
"You can be walking along and then slip into fairy. Not the person or creature of course, the area" I like how this had to be corrected, as in people must have originally thought "slip and fall into fairy" made sense in other contexts. And while yeah, it might...in some specific cases, noooot here
Great advice for sure! Just brainstorming here.
I would say instead of dealing with rerolling initiative you can just apply legendary actions and rip thematic abilities from other monsters and add them to the villain. Doing actions out of order shouldn't be a surprise when the villain is that of legend and myth. There is also the idea of lair actions or just general environmental actions that happen at certain initiative. In the case of your villain as an example of being a fey, having entangling roots try and grapple the players in a certain radius around them is a thematic environmental effect. Something that doesnt necessarily damage them but can make them panic when they are easy targets and cant move while your villain is prepping some kind of a spell ability *cough* fireball *cough*
Awesome video, I love both of your guys's content(even though I did only find you a little while ago), so I was happy to see him give you a shout out. I am very interested to think more about that deep magic idea, and I hope I am creative enough to play with it a bit. It's definitely an interesting idea to only have the BBEG reroll initiative, as opposed to everyone, just to screw with the party and make them think more in terms of "I know i'm faster than you, but might not be faster than him, so I need multiple plans." Remember, don't number your plans, you may need more than 26 :D