Its one of those things where the dragon has to attack with claws and bites but the dm for some reason then thinks that the dragon wont leave melee range and take an opportunity attack. It genuinely shouldn't care about opportunity attacks. Its a dragon. It has scales and an ass ton of hp. A little sword doesn't bother it
And if you're thinking "Well how are the melee classes going to hurt it?" You should obviously tune the encounter for the party. Give them a flying broomstick or something.
DMing just a few times gave me SO much more empathy for when DMs forget things. I will never ever again be the player who gets annoyed the DM forgot something, and now I’m the player who offers to help track stuff.
Rather than trying to squeeze in a forgotten turn or give someone/something advantage on their following turn, I think you just have to treat the accidental omission of a turn as a lesson. If one of your players forgot that their druid had three summoned badgers to roll attacks for and only did two, just say sorry but if neither of us noticed then we just have to live with it and we'll try to keep better track from now on. If, as DM, you're running half a dozen trolls but forget to bring one of them up to engage with the party then, well, it adds colour if you think that even a ravening troll could be having a bad day and might pause before attacking, thinking that perhaps it should have stayed at home in bed that morning.
I do that a lot too, regularly reminding the DM when they forgot something in the combat, even when (most of the time) it is to the detrminent of my character.
Here Monty advises being cautious about trying to spice up an encounter with a lot of status effects and conditions because it can be a lot to keep track of. In addition to that, I would add that an encounter built around one debilitating effect can be a lot more interesting and memorable than one with a random smorgasbord of effects.
I sometimes forget some of my creatures have magic resistance but then my players will celebrate their polymorph or hypnotic pattern working and even if I remember, feels too mean to go back and fix it. Last week I forgot one of my monsters had spider climb and before the session I thought I'd do all these cool things with it but ended up forgetting it exists until the monster was literally at 3 hp lmao.
The best instance of me forgetting an enemy has resistance to charm happened outside of combat. I remembered he had it just after rolling the saving throw, so I had him act charmed just long enough to get the party grouped up in a nice formation for a breath weapon. Turned my mistake into a great twist for the players.
For monster recharge abilities, I have a solution that might help. Roll the recharge die at the end of the monster’s turn and make it a public roll. I find that I’m more likely to remember to roll at the end of a monster’s turn, maybe because I skim their available actions every time their turn occurs so it’s fresh in my mind. Plus, your players will anticipate the roll and can remind you. As an added bonus, making this an open roll and giving players a round to act before the recharged ability gets used again enables more tactical gameplay.
I don't think the PCs should know that an ability has recharged unless the monster is definitely going to use it the next round (eg, describe the red dragon taking in a deep breath at the end of its turn). Just write the letter R on the stat block once the recharge roll has been made, then cross it out the next time the attack is used.
@@RichWoods23I disagree, I think it is a great idea to let the players know that the big hit is coming. You'll get them to rethink their strategy, to move more on the battlefield, to concentrate fire, to reach for consumable items they forgot they had. And they are not encouraged to always play it safe, considering the monster can get the recharge power back at any time. When they know it's NOT coming? They'll go for a risky play, or decide it's safe to use a turn on a utility spell instead of continuing to focus on damage. I've been doing it for a while and at my table it almost always makes the encounter better when I let the players know about recharge!
@@dziooooo What do you actually do to indicate that a power has recharged? Do you just tell them the result of the die roll or is there something always detectable that you can describe to them? If there isn't something visible, then how on earth could they realistically know that the monster has got an ability back?
@@RichWoods23 Of course not, I don't just tell them "great, I rolled a 6!" If I'm rolling recharge, it means the monster already used the ability at least once. The players know what to expect and I can just refer to how I described the previous attack. The red dragon takes a deep breath and the air suddenly feels dry and scorching hot. The mind flayer's eyes glow and faint telepathic pressure fills your mind. Yellow caustic vapor rises from between the plates in iron golem's armor, making your eyes sting.
The cashier asked me if I was sure I wanted this particular can of tomato soup. He relayed that it was recently used in a murder, and it has been recorded appearing on different shelves on its own, moving close to certain people who looked similar to the victim of the murder. He remarked on my green eyes being the same as hers. I made the purchase anyway, not thinking much of it, and took it home with me. But that night as I sat down with my grilled cheese, that nagging feeling crept over me as I stared into the now open can... I poured it in, laughing to myself that I was being crazy, and poured the soup into its bowl, then to the microwave. I sat down, and began to eat. I sipped the soup and immediately regretted my decision as I tasted death itself... OR So I bought this nasty soup brand the other day. Absolutely disappointing, I'll never buy that brand again.
Honestly, I give anyone doing a TTRPG show a lot of credit. I feel like I'm usually pretty good at remembering these things (of course we all have our moments), but if I were busy trying to entertain not just my players, but a whole audience, I'd lose track of everything mechanically in an attempt to nail the RP
It’s not forgetting but seriously: move your monsters. Movement is exciting. Opportunity attacks aren’t as bad as you would think - or just give your monsters abilities that allow them to ignore them. e.g. Slippery. The creature moves cautiously. Opportunity attacks against it are made with disadvantage.
Just literally use more goblins (MM) or Swashbucklers (MMOM). Bonus action disengage. Works as long as nobody takes the Sentinel feat! Oh wait… Edit: In all seriousness Sentinel makes moving around a massive problem. Instead of an ability like “always had disadvantage on attacks” where theres still a chance sentinel wrecks your plans; just use Shocking Grasp. Most PCs wear metal armor which gives advantage for Shocking Grasp. It kills all reactions from that PC so no opportunity attacks or counterspells or held actions.
It’s always helpful when the whole table works together to remind each other of things. As a player, I’ll gently remind another spellcaster they need a concentration check or I’ll remind my DM what effect is in play on the monster. As a DM, my players will work together to do the same thing (especially with homebrew at play). It heightens the fun and actually helps the players work together both in and out of character.
Agreed, and I often remind players/DM of something they missed even if it's detrimental to the party. It feels like cheating if I realize something was missed and I don't say anything.
I don't know if this would drastically overload Kelly's editing duty, but it would have been really nice to see some 10second clips of in game examples from your Drakkenheim campaign. Not of how you forget things but how you remember things and incorporate it to the live game without causing a fuss
I forget how many attacks enemies get pretty often, especially low level monsters who somehow get multiple attacks. One thing I am better about now but which used to get me all the time is remembering to make my enemies speak in the middle portion of combat as well instead of just the beginning and end
I really needed this. I just ran a very complicated encounter designed to really challenge my lvl 4 players and their two lvl 3 NPC sidekicks. I had homebrewed a 5e monster version of the 3.5e Ocular Adept prestige class (humanoid paladins for beholders). They fought two of them and their five gazers, but they also had a fairly strong NPC shadow monk character with them for story reasons. This was one of the most difficult encounters to plan and balance in my GMing career and it went mostly well but I was still beating myself up for forgetting things and for messing up certain traits. For example, I was rolling attacks rolls for the gazers eye rays for the first half of the encounter and still having them roll the DC checks, so I massively nerfed the gazers for half the fight. I also forgot the main goal of the ocular adepts halfway through as the conditions kept piling onto them. It was a lot, but this video made me feel a lot better
Regarding setting player expectations, if you use description to set something up as properly terrifying and the PCs are able to defeat it fairly easily, there's a decent chance that the players' reaction will be relief rather than anticlimactic disappointment. Especially if the monster continues to be creepy after its defeat - melting away into salt, or its severed limbs continuing to twitch.
I'm really happy this was brought up. I've been kicking myself for a couple of weeks for accidently letting my players absolutely cheese the boss of one of their backstories with Bane and Bestow Curse and by forgetting legendary resistances/actions. Thanks for making me remember everyone makes these mistakes ❤
The best campaign I ever ran was back in college when I ran the campaign with a co-DM. I was the lead DM as it was my overall world and storyline but my college roommate was the Co-DM. He ran all NPCs that the party encountered both out of combat and in combat and if we had no NPCs with the party, he would generally control the larger or more intelligent monsters/enemies during combat while I made ruling on the combat and introduced effects like changing weather or the arrival of additional monsters to the combat. We could even split the part and run sessions in separate rooms as he always knew where I wanted to go with the session but respected player options and responded accordingly. Co-DMing is something I've rarely heard about, but it works well and should be utilized more often.
Almost every single one of my encounters has some form of lair action that represents the environment. It can either impact both sides or impact only the players. It makes the environment the players are in as an essential character in the fight, and forces them to choose to fight or flee within that environment. I had them fighting the mook mobs in an underwater dungeon once where there were strong tidal forces. It caused impacts every tound as the current rushed in and rushed out. One time the tank failed their save and got pulled out from the entire group and into a swarm of monsters that just pummeled on him, which forced the team to adapt their tactics to the situation, to save their ally. A routine combat they had settled into fighting one mob at a time suddenly required them to pivot and try to handle 10 mobs at the same time. It was good fun and put that threat of defeat to mooks which they out classed into mind, making the encounter more rewarding.
For status effects some one in our group bought one of those boxes of colored plastic condition rings that have various status effects written on them and each is a different color. If you are stunned, poisoned, restrained, concentrating, etc. you put a ring on the miniature and take it off when the condition ends.
If you don't have access to actual status rings, improvised ones taken from milk jugs and coke bottles also work great! Ask the whole group to keep any they have, in various colors, and in a few weeks you'll have a rainbow collection. And then it's just deciding that red means "on fire", yellow means "frightened" and black means "blinded".
@@dziooooo Yes. I love low cost solutions like this. Being able to keep cost down is a good way to make the game more inclusive. Also, it's just a clever solution.
thank you for reminding all of us what we "always" forget. This is so true about all the points you mentioned. When there is a combat, there are so many things we tend to forget and yes we do need to keep track not to forget anything...but to forget the least :). I particularly enjoyed what you mentioned about the minis. Yes these are great to represent the monsters and enemies, but remember that we usually do not have one mini for each encounter and so we need to use again and again what we have in hand to represent what the characters are fighting. And so DMs need to emphasize on what the players do not see. A full description of what is coming to us is so important. Just as important as if we were doing theater of the mind. The one thing that you forgot to mention, and that I think is super important: make the enemies speak!!! Yes, it seems so weird to say that, but remember that when you are talking about intelligent enemies, they are going to speak during combat. Whether this is to cast spells, call out minions for help, or just challenge the characters and interact with them. It is so important to make the battle feel real.
How these things are dealt with is a good test of how comfortable the group is with negotiating and adapting, and I like watching you Dudes demonstrate this
This is a great podcast episode on DMing in general! The essence is there are so many conditions and the such that are possible in the book, rules at written, but ultimately it is a human that is DMing and that can get real complicated, real quick.
The rules are there to help you have fun, not prevent you from having fun. 44:25 This may be the greatest thing yall have said in a video. And I watch A LOT!
Great, humble and fun video. Sometimes I do great, sometimes I really mess up. Recently I let the dice tell me to use the same wandering encounter twice in a row, and regretted it. I had to remind myself "I'm the DM! Not the dice!" Keeping everything interesting and fun, leaning into the RP and drama is when the table comes alive for me. Rules are pretty critical in combat, but after decades of play I have most of those down pretty well. Totally agree with the abbreviated denouement on some fights. Not everything has to be rolled.
My first campaign was LMoP. I forgot that goblins have darkvision, so cragmaw hideout was cheesed pretty quickly when they started turning off the lights
For missing monster turns I get around it by grouping initiative. If I have 7 minions I will have 2 goes. The first will have 4 of them and the second initiative has 3. This not only makes "less turns" needed to be remembered but also stops the monsters turn taking forever. I recommend grouping Upton a max of 5.
My players were rowing across Waterdeep Bay and I played some seagull sounds for them to set the mood. One player decided he wanted to bait a seagull in to catch it. I allowed it then they decided to have another character roast it (after he cleaned it properly via a good survival check) with the sacred flame cantrip. I told them that the smell of cooked meat caused a mob of seagulls (who are definitely cannibals) to flock to their boat to try to steal their food. The mob of seagulls attracted attention and a hand shot up from the water and snatched a gull. One of my characters decided to grab and grapple the arm; roll initiative. They found themselves in combat with four sea spawns, which they easily beat. They get to the other side of the bay, partially loot the dungeon I prepared then decide to retreat, then return to their boat to rest. Before they get the opportunity to rest they get attacked by a sea hag and 10 more sea spawns demanding to know why they slaughtered her minions. Just saying, actions have consequences... My players are learning and they are loving the results. Lol, this actually got them leveled up from 3 to 5, but the hag got away and she WILL be back 😇
Great points, I have forgot all of these as well from time to time. Also; looking good in the black and red, you are matching really nicely. Kelly, nice chain!
Just started watching - or more: listening - to your videos about two weeks ago. Even listened to your stuff from years ago! Got interested in D&D after playing Baldur's Gate 3. You got my attention via DND Beyond the Drakkenheim book which got just released. Anyroads, just want to say here and now: you two are awesome together! Please stay great friends together forever - the combination of both of you together make your videos so great! Keep up your good work!
Thanks for this video! As someone who’s been DMing for about 15 years and still regularly makes some of these mistakes, I often beat myself up over it. But if it’s happening even to you guys who DM *professionally*, it makes me feel a bit better. :)
I have to say one of my favorite encounters is introducing an NPC that had odd mannerisms that was questioned by other allies and when combat started post a doublecross scenario, the players were terrified and surprised when an intellect devourer burst out from that NPC's head. It nearly killed a player that failed a save against Psychic Lance(unconscious condition) a turn before the reveal too. What a memorable encounter tho. It was against the Intellect Devoured NPC a souped up Hyrdroloth with some extra spells (like Psychic Lance) and a Froghemoth. It was fun how the Hydroloth used Control Water to flood the cavern the PCs were attempting to rest in, while the Froghemoth and other swimming minions were hunting them. It was a mechanically complex encounter to put together, but it was worth running for sure.
I want to clarify something here. I'll comment on a video all the time "oh, you took 2 reaction." Or "oh, you should've made a concentration check" or "you forgot Strength of the Grave" But I in no way mean this to say "yallre bad" or "you suck." I understand that dnd is hard. I forget stuff all the time too. Hell, in typing this, I almost said "to" instead of "too" last sentence. Mistakes happen. I like to point out when they happen because I recommend your videos for people to watch to learn and it's important to know what the rules are so those accidents aren't "on purposes" I LOVE y'all's content. I will keep watching it regardless of mistakes. But I also hold yall to a higher standard because y'all're professional dnd players. Please PLEASE keep up the amazing work.
33:31 I had the opposite experience where I didn't plan for a combat encounter but one of my players ended up destroying something that pissed everyone in the building off. I ended that session early to get my battlemap, npc stats, etc. together for next time and it ended up being the best encounter of the campaign, culminating with them just barely saving the life of some rando astronomy intern who ended up becoming the party's adopted NPC.
Really like this video!! I appreciate your guys' work a lot, specially because you take the time to provide actual possible and practical solutions to these problems! Great video, as always!
It feels like you were watching my last 10 sessions and you are calling me out!! LOL! You guys rock! Thank you! I am waiting patiently for my Sebastian Crowe's to ship! I am so excited for it!
Again - the natural interaction makes this better - love seeing Monty’s reactions! (The laugh at the beginning.) Makes it less stiff. Go. With the flow! :)
I used to always forget about concentration checks. I find that having concentration rings around minis made remembering that much easier. For that reason, as a player, I always tell my DM I need to make a concentration check when applicable because it’s just one less thing for them to worry about Edit: I just remembered something I forgot when doing a combat as a DM lol. The party was fighting a smothering carpet, animated armor, and flying swords in a forbidden section of a library, and one of the PCs used some effect that blinded the swords and armors and carpet, I forget what effect it was lol. But I didn’t even realize until after the combat was over that each of them had blind sight. It was the funniest thing when I realized too because I told the party immediately as I realized and went, “I mean obviously they have blind sight, they don’t even have eyes.”
My players recently came across a group of shipwrecked pirates on a beach. Rather than fight them, which I assumed they would do, the Bard led the way in lying that they were a gang of criminals just passing through, and then offered to share some food. The pirates were so grateful that they let them pass and even gave them some directions and info about the nearby town. It was a wonderful reminder that sometimes the most unexpected role-play outcome of an encounter can be way more fun than a fight.
First boss encounter that my players came across was an Annis Hag in her Swamp/mountain lair. I forgot about the difficult terrain, the legendary resistance that I gave her (which got her hit with Bane) and I had a artificer in the party and I accidentally made one of his robots stupid overpowered. Lots of learning opportunities there
This is why i agree in the use of as many decks as possible to keep track of the stats, conditions, and NPCs. I'll use small, transparent or the pointed sticky notes to highlight certain things. I also make cards like that for every player so i have their info available but i don't keep track of their HPs or conditions, part of my Session 0 is to reiterate that players NEED to know their character. I'll give them private time to explain things and how things work and can be combined or why a basic spell like Bless is so important to have even at T3. I'll give them help in the early levels to remember stuff (yeah, like Hunter's Mark). It makes things a lot easier to keep track of. Of course, I'll also tag the book for less important things out things that need to be remembered. And to add to that area description, I'm using VTTs as more of a way to show players a bit of what I'm describing and to be able to visualize the board and movement who might have difficulty with my verbal description . I just found out a few weeks ago that not everyone can get that movie in their minds or visualize combat, and it's no one's fault. It is what it is. It doesn't mean that you are DMing is wrong or lacking, it only means that your brain works differently than their brain. So, we do what we always do, and try to let everyone have a great time.
Oh gosh, where to begin? Magic Resistance has been a big one (party has Wizard *and* Bard, Polymorphs for Days), Mirror Image and Blink for my less beefy Humanoids (especially when the 5th+ Level Monk gets 4 successive hits and Stunning Strike queued up), Burrow Speed! Oh God, Burrow Speed! Had a Xorrn Ambush planned but *fully* left each Xorrn out in the open after each turn (planned on having them burrow after each attack and Ambush-and-Hide throughout the Combat). Gosh, of course there's Hydra Heads (classic, had the PCs going through a desert, occasional Ambush from within the sand, when they got wise and started slicing, I fully forgot to add heads), "yeah the attacks stop" 💀 God sometimes I feel like the master of planning beautiful combats that go the way of the Homer Simpson Grill 😅
In terms of creating new ways to end encounters, in my game, cloud elementals were grabbing people and taking them skyward to the bbegs lair at the top of the mountain. So one of my players suggested that instead of fighting, they let themselves be captured. This meant they effectively bypassed the second half of the mountain encounters I had planned and reached the bbeg with full resources. I was blown away.
I was running a massive siege combat- the heroes had to choose how to spend time preparing (each hero chose an action from a table I generated, and their choices had an impact on the survivability during the fight). All waves had been repelled and now it was time for the final boss, a massive Orc riding an armored Allosaurus. I painted a scene of it tearing through the battered gate, even eating one of the Orc Lieutenants (to show how awesome he was). Just then, my bard reminded me that he placed Oil on the spot my model was literally standing. I made all the rolls, rewound time- now the Dino blasted through, slipped on the oil, crushing the lieutenant. Then the Dino and boss took damage (since they both rolled sub 5). And the party essentially nuked them both as they lay on the ground, covered in oil. It was hilariously disastrous.
For important calls that can sway the combat, I have the player who's asking about it look up a ruling and put their turn on hold, then move on to the next player. Gives them something to do and allows them to find a resource while the combat keeps rolling, that way I can stay engaged. For lesser things, definitely agree with just making a call and saying we'll come back to it again in the future.
For me at least half of those are immediately solved by printing out a proper initiative tracker, designed specifically for what I need. My version is basically a single sheet, landscape orientation. Each creature gets a row, on the left there's name, initiative count and space for tracking HP. Then in the middle I have a bunch of space for writing down status effects, recharges, etc. And the 1/3 of the page on the right is just narrow columns for combat rounds. Lair actions get their own row. If something is going to happen on round 3, it gets a row, and boxes for rounds 1 and 2 are blacked out. And then I just go down the list each round and tick the boxes down. If a creature uses a reaction, I put a little R in their box and I can easily check if they have it available. Same with legendary actions - I put a little L when a creature uses it, I can easily check how many Ls I have since its last turn at a quick glance. It took a second to get used to, but after 2-3 session it was automatic, and it made my life SO MUCH EASIER.
15:28 had this exact thing happen in my curse of Strahd game. I made sure that Strahd had cast mirror image on himself before dealing with the players face to face. The artificer cast faerie fire on him, which I didn’t resist because I was sure that the mirror images would make it a mute point. When the echo knight fighter came up and unleashed all 6 attacks using all his incarnations and action surges, I was so blown away by the roles he had I totally forgot about mirror image 😅. Strahd died in the first round of combat. As upset as I was, my players loved the moment and the siege of Castle Ravenloft they had to endure beforehand I think was fight enough for them.
I have FTD (Frontotemporal dementia) and use a whole load of things to organise the game when I DM otherwise I'd be overwhelmed. I use mini-dice to number the NPCs in combat so I know who has had what done to them, Lynx condition markers for spell effects so we can see who's concentrating, raging, incapacitated etc and I use an Initiative tracker to er...track initiative. Mistakes still get made as in the heat of combat, especially with multiple complex turns the higher level you are, it's too much for most people, but we always sort it out in the end. Spell decals can also help loads, or failing that a dry-wipe marker to denote the spell-zone.
This is a situation that just stuck with me ever since it happened. I was dming a high level campaign through discord and the party was fighting a hammerhead sharkfolk paladin. In my games the players can have 2 npcs to accompany them,and for that battle one of the supporting npcs was a wood woad the party saved. During the first 2 rounds i just completely forgot the wood woad then in the third turn i realized “oh i forgot his turn,he’ll act now”. The npc wood woad which was forgotten proceeded to crit twice and kill the boss instantly. It did leave a memorable situation though
I have forgotten all of these at times and a few of them (resistances) all the time. Sometimes it’s because I have a lot going on, and sometimes it’s because I am just as engaged in the battle and kind of forget that I am not a spectator, but the DM. The absolute worst that I can remember though was that I had an NPC prisoner in an orc lair that the party was meant to discover and rescue, an NPC with critical information to keep the party on the right track… it was going to be a really cool moment of discovery, change the dynamic of the battle from kill bad guys to protect hostage and kill bad guys….the wizard pulls some super cool opening gambit and I completely spaced on the NPC.
Forgetting to lock focus during recording of a video about forgetting to do common things is priceless; the books on the back shelves look so crisp and amazing though especially that 100k plaque.
Tracking conditions simple hack: I pre-write numbers down the page for initiative, fill in names when it's rolled. When a condition pops that's multi round, I write it beside the name on init and call it out when I get to that turn. If it's a one round condition like dodge, they get a ring (pop bottle rings from cracking the seal make great markers and are different colours)
Grognard here… I have always played with a smaller subset of rules from each edition of DnD. Because while we’d love to play a game where all these sophisticated rules are executed, but what is humanly possible always falls short. What I often do is say, for this session encumbrance will be important, and that will be the only time we worry about it. I’m currently playing Monster of The Week. It’s so much more fluid, rapid, and adaptable.
The most common thing that I forget are passive monster effects that trigger at the start of a player's turn. Like the monster has a stench that will trigger at the start of a player's turn if they are within 10 feet of a monster, or they'll take fire damage if they hit a particular monster in melee. If it makes sense to do so, I try to move these to the monster's turn, or add it as a separate slot in the initiative (like a mini-lair action). Otherwise unless it's something where it is the signature ability of the encounter (medusa, bodak, etc.) I will probably just forget every time. [edit]One thing I find really helpful in encounter building is coming up with a plan for the enemies before the battle. Where they can be positioned, which each enemy's role in the encounter is going to be, and especially if they're spellcasters, what they're (probably) going to do for the first few turns. Even for a fairly unintelligent creature, that doesn't mean it's going to just stand there and tank attacks. You can say "this thing is an ambush predator, it's going to try to grab someone and run, and won't usually stand and fight". Makes it easier to keep track of abilities and things when you've decided how they are going to be used.
I don't play D&D anymore but, if you want to have multiple monsters with legendary actions, consider giving a group of legendary enemies a pool of legendary actions. For example, when it comes to that group of adventurers, instead of giving them individual reactions, it'd be great if they have group legendary actions of 5, with caveat that if they used one, that one cannot be used consecutively (ie if there's a legendary action to blink step, the said adventurer can't blink step again and again). It would be a memorable fight, especially if they had legendary actions that reflect their group's deeds, legends, and teamwork. ... This sounds like a fun idea. I should make a thing for this.
Clothes pins on the screen for initiative. Current turn clipped a little higher. Names on the pins for pcs and numbers for enemies. Go a step further, hot glue little black boards to the back of the pcs clips that state their passive perception and insight. Dont forget to make pins for initiative count 20 and 10 as well as lair. You'll need em. Forget conditions? Effects? Concentration? Get some effect rings for your minis or place them around their clothes pin to remind you. Easy fix. Forget battlefield conditions like rough terrain? Print out 20, 30 and 40 ft radius effects and place em on the map. Takes a min to move all the minis but in the end it makes a world of difference. Another option is putting extra dice or markers around the radius. Forgot legendary actions? Use them all at the end of the round! Forget reactions? Here is how I Dealt with that. I bought tiny clothes pins to put next to the initiative clothes pins to represent their reaction. On the monster abilities, I agree with kelly. I print out my statblocks and highlight what I need to remember most. I write notes in the margin and even write out spell descriptions if it's a niche spell that's rarely used. Just a few things I do that have helped me immensely. I hope they help you out as well.
As a player and a dungeon master. I have this advice for any DM. Practice, practice practice. You wont get it right the first time, or the 100th. Before your game, prep is over, spend 30 minutes before your game looking at your DM screen/sheet. If you don't have one, make one. Throw actions in combat, conditions, spell casting rules, and anything else you might use every single game. Quick example, your players constantly craft stuff, have the coats and times associated with crafting on your sheet. And advice for players, if your dm forgot, pass them a note or a message, dont interrupt whoever is speaking. Everyone wants to have fun, help each other out. If i as a DM can help a player with their actions mid combat, yall can remind me that i messed up. I had a player remind me that a monster forgot to make a saving throw on a following turn. Man, I gave him inspiration. Ez pz
With effects and conditions, one thing I do that helps me remember with a caster class that has a turn-ticking damage is to roll the damage in the caster turn, then apply it if the conditions are still met. It runs into the problem of "does this actually tick at the beginning or end of the victim's turn?"--but I at least have the damage queued up to remind me to check.
That said, I had one combat where I forgot my striker character could fly and shoot the enemy from the sky... and he very nearly died in close combat against things that kept knocking him down and getting attacks of opportunity when he stood back up--when I made the fact that he could fly a key part of why he left his childhood home and became an adventurer. I made up for it towards the end of the encounter by grappling goblins and flying up to drop them into dangerous terrain, since none of us were successfully hitting them in the first place.
How I track initiative that helps with a lot of these issues is index cards. Every PC gets a card with their ac and saves on it as a reminder. Every enemy gets a card with ac, hp, saves and each action they have available. The cards are easy to prep, just make them for each enemy they might encounter each session. They keep you from having to go to the book or some other reference in combat. And it gives you constant reminders of important info
Something I did in a recent session when I realized "I need to do something to set up that this guy is tough" I had him laugh when combat was iminent, exclaim how much he's been itching for a battle then had him punch a tree with the back of his fist, causing it to fall over. A bit cartoony/excessive lol, but it got the players to go "yo, that guy knocked over a tree in one punch! I'm not messing with him!" Which lead to some very creative combat decisions
Watching this before work only had time for half the video I’ll watch rest later tonight but I dm more than I play - my two things , embarrassingly to admit, sometimes I forget a held action a player announced earlier in the turn like “if the zombie moves near our healer I’ll attack it” and number two I forget an ability the monster has. As far as in general though I “eat the mistake “ so to speak as the dm. And this is usually to my players benefit more than it’s not.
When I forget minions turns, I pretend they took the hide action and nobodies passive perception triggered. Brings a nice bit of chaos to the table and a lot of good "Oh sh*t" moments. I love when players remind themselves of conditions. Makes me very happy
Once I run an encounter where a bunch of aberrations, including a Beholder burst out of the ground and attack a refugee camp. I only remembered the civilians because they were goblins and orcs forcing me to remind the players that no, the goblin over there is a victim, not a practice target. What I forgot about was that the Beholder has legendary actions. Which is good because my players chose to run into that encounter with barely any HP or resources and survived by the skin of their teeth.
I almost always realize in my review of a session I forgot this and that, but then what about the stuff I don't even know or remember? Love the Strongholds & Followers and the Kingdoms & Warfare books on the shelf!
One of the more memorable encounters for me as a player was on a cliff's edge. Not super tall, but enough for me to know that my monk wouldn't get hurt for more than 10 points. I was subclassed into rune knight, so I tackled the ogre off the cliff, taking him out of the combat completely.
I had an entire cave with goblins who were led by a bugbear that my party was potentially going to have to fight through to rescue an NPC. The Bard, who was a changeling, decided to utilise his changeling abilities, turned into a bugbear and intimidated the goblins at the cave entrance to take the party to their leader, and were able to negotiate the release of the NPC
Last year I promptly killed the party bard with a howler before the paladin reminded me we had skipped their turn. In that scenario we did rewind time, and the paladin of course flattened the remaining enemies. It became a pretty fun Schrödinger's tabaxi bard moment, as we basically played it as the bard seeing an alternate future 😅
Something that I see forgotten all the time: When a PC or NPC has some ongoing debuff effect that allows them to make saving throws every round. Turns often will pass by with no saving throw rolled. Also, a common interaction between the things mentioned: When legendary actions, lair actions, or reactions allow somebody to do something outside of their regular initiative order, it often happens that this interruption gets adjudicated, and then the DM forgets that it this doesn't count as a turn, advances initiative and skips somebody's turn in the process. This is particularly easy to do when using a VTT turn tracker, and clicking the Next Turn button feels so automatic.
My favorite time using monster morale has to be when the player where fighting a giant insect monster and a troll a bunch of goblins had turned into a walking fortress using the trolls regeneration ability. The insects and the troll were not on the same team and they were fighting atop a massive tree that the insects had made a nest in. The party’s astral monk had just climbed up the troll and finished of the last of the goblins. The troll now being all alone and not having taken acid or fire damage this turn decided to take his chances with gravity and jump off the tree with the monk still on his back. The monk took surprising little damage because of slow fall and used step of the wind and dash to make back up to the fight in a single round.
Ha I had a mimic ship for a pirate adventure I ran. It was crewed by various sea based creatures and the sails were a type of cloaker. One of the players got trapped below decks(in the stomach) digestive juices started flowing so one of them polymorphed into a t rex and chewed his way out.
A few people I play with get annoyed at me reminding the dm how a rule or a spell works, but I always follow it (or start the point with) a reminder that they can choose whether or not they want to use that ruling or not. I also don't just do it when it benefits whatever side I'm on. If I'm dming, I'll remind a player that they have a bonus from a source that they've clearly been forgetting, or that one enemy is prone which would give them disadvantage to shoot that target before they devote themselves to it. If I'm playing, I'll let the dm know that I fucked up and couldn't have done x, so y would have probably failed as well. Or I'll remind them that they get advantage on me or another player for reasons. DnD is a cooperative game, and when the rules are clearly out on the table, we can all work to use them to make incredible things happen.
Awesome vid as always. I have a question for the DDudes (and the amazing community) I have a pretty good memory and I've noticed that I'm often the one pointing out when things get forgotten in combat. I'm a little worried about that getting perceived as being the rules police. If you have someone who's just really good at keeping track of the game and remembering everything, would you rather they mention things or perhaps just keep it to themselves?
When it comes to forgotten things, I like to use the metaphor of reparable and irreparable gamestates. A reparable gamestate is anything that can be corrected by adjusting numbers, reorganization of effects, or minor manipulation. An irreparable gamestate it’s one where meaningful change has happened as a result of an event. These are the key moments: a player dying, a trap being set off, a mechanic being discovered, or more than a rounds worth of time. In these cases, you can’t rewind things and you have to either bend to fix them or accept the gamestate as is. This is why it’s important for everyone to pay attention and not be on their phones since maintaining the gamestate is a shared responsibility.
I once forgot that a player had just taken their turn and tried giving them another. Somehow convinced myself that all the stuff they just did happened in the previous round.
I do something called a DM's Turn which has help soooo much. on DM turns I normal have it for terrain effects etc and also missed NPC or monster stuff.
For monsters with recharge abilities, I roll the recharge right away (behind the screen, obviously) to see how long it takes to get it back. I make a note on the sheet I'm using to keep track of everything going on in that encounter. I don't think I've ever forgotten one yet, but there isn't video evidence one way or another. :)
In a prewritten module, I forgot to review a map ahead of time and realized that the squares were 50 feet, not 5. It threw the entire encounter off, so I essentially brought in something to make the characters retreat and made a "to be continued" element. While the first part of the fight slogged, the second part was one of the best in the campaign.
My personal solution to a creature being nearly dead and remembering it has resistance is to just add another half it's max HP or even double it. Hit Dice in the statblock take the average, so having twice the HP is within the bounds of the statblock, albeit the highest end. Usually I'll just give the token a second health bar just as a visual reminder to myself that it should be tankier than the HP bar suggests. The last trick is to have the "transition" be punctuated by a change in the monster's behavior, not quite a full second phase, but just a mental shift where it goes, "These guys aren't mere goons to toy around with, effort time" and suddenly the monster seems to be taking less damage as its movements become more calculated.
I am absolutely terrible at remembering monster features! I almost never end up using them because I forget they're there. I used them in their last combat with 4 Zombie Clots, though, and boy did that combat go different😅. 😊
Been there. Done all of those. I once let my group kill off a very dangerous legendary crocodile because it horribly failed a saving throw and they were so excited that I forgot that it got to make 2 saves a day that it failed the roll on. They still bring this one up.
One time I was playing a sorcerer and I had just gotten my first instant kill spell. My party and I were sent to visit a mercenary group. I was sitting at the table and decided that my frog companion, whome I loved and was named Froggy, jumped on to the table. The mercenary boss chopped off Froggy's left legs. I cast my first ever instant kill spell and the Boss failed both saves and instantly died. I had just killed the boss of the main encounter of the week to avenge my frog companion's limbs. My DM was flabbergasted and didn't know what to do. So i ended up becoming the leader of a Mercenary band, but just ignored them and let them do what they want. Truly, one of my favorite moments in all of my games I have been a player in.
Recently my DM was so focused on keeping track of the number of heads the hydra had, that he forgot the hydra's turn. We had a big laugh. :)
Why bite a flye when you can just crush it with pure weight. ;)
LMAO
Never, ever, forget that Dragons can fly! Keeping a Dragon grounded trivializes the encounter!
Its one of those things where the dragon has to attack with claws and bites but the dm for some reason then thinks that the dragon wont leave melee range and take an opportunity attack. It genuinely shouldn't care about opportunity attacks. Its a dragon. It has scales and an ass ton of hp. A little sword doesn't bother it
And some dragons have a swim speed! It can drop into murky water and be unseen as well as out of melee.
That's the worst britishizing of a word I've ever seen
But u right
Have a dragon pick up a player, then make it drag them through a Spike Growth spell, Super-Smash-Bros Riddley-Syle, just a suggestion! : )
And if you're thinking "Well how are the melee classes going to hurt it?" You should obviously tune the encounter for the party. Give them a flying broomstick or something.
DMing just a few times gave me SO much more empathy for when DMs forget things. I will never ever again be the player who gets annoyed the DM forgot something, and now I’m the player who offers to help track stuff.
Rather than trying to squeeze in a forgotten turn or give someone/something advantage on their following turn, I think you just have to treat the accidental omission of a turn as a lesson. If one of your players forgot that their druid had three summoned badgers to roll attacks for and only did two, just say sorry but if neither of us noticed then we just have to live with it and we'll try to keep better track from now on. If, as DM, you're running half a dozen trolls but forget to bring one of them up to engage with the party then, well, it adds colour if you think that even a ravening troll could be having a bad day and might pause before attacking, thinking that perhaps it should have stayed at home in bed that morning.
I do that a lot too, regularly reminding the DM when they forgot something in the combat, even when (most of the time) it is to the detrminent of my character.
I think all players should try DM’ing at least once for this exact reason.
Here Monty advises being cautious about trying to spice up an encounter with a lot of status effects and conditions because it can be a lot to keep track of. In addition to that, I would add that an encounter built around one debilitating effect can be a lot more interesting and memorable than one with a random smorgasbord of effects.
I sometimes forget some of my creatures have magic resistance but then my players will celebrate their polymorph or hypnotic pattern working and even if I remember, feels too mean to go back and fix it. Last week I forgot one of my monsters had spider climb and before the session I thought I'd do all these cool things with it but ended up forgetting it exists until the monster was literally at 3 hp lmao.
The best instance of me forgetting an enemy has resistance to charm happened outside of combat. I remembered he had it just after rolling the saving throw, so I had him act charmed just long enough to get the party grouped up in a nice formation for a breath weapon. Turned my mistake into a great twist for the players.
For monster recharge abilities, I have a solution that might help. Roll the recharge die at the end of the monster’s turn and make it a public roll. I find that I’m more likely to remember to roll at the end of a monster’s turn, maybe because I skim their available actions every time their turn occurs so it’s fresh in my mind. Plus, your players will anticipate the roll and can remind you. As an added bonus, making this an open roll and giving players a round to act before the recharged ability gets used again enables more tactical gameplay.
I don't think the PCs should know that an ability has recharged unless the monster is definitely going to use it the next round (eg, describe the red dragon taking in a deep breath at the end of its turn). Just write the letter R on the stat block once the recharge roll has been made, then cross it out the next time the attack is used.
@@RichWoods23I disagree, I think it is a great idea to let the players know that the big hit is coming. You'll get them to rethink their strategy, to move more on the battlefield, to concentrate fire, to reach for consumable items they forgot they had. And they are not encouraged to always play it safe, considering the monster can get the recharge power back at any time. When they know it's NOT coming? They'll go for a risky play, or decide it's safe to use a turn on a utility spell instead of continuing to focus on damage.
I've been doing it for a while and at my table it almost always makes the encounter better when I let the players know about recharge!
@@dziooooo What do you actually do to indicate that a power has recharged? Do you just tell them the result of the die roll or is there something always detectable that you can describe to them? If there isn't something visible, then how on earth could they realistically know that the monster has got an ability back?
@@RichWoods23 Of course not, I don't just tell them "great, I rolled a 6!"
If I'm rolling recharge, it means the monster already used the ability at least once. The players know what to expect and I can just refer to how I described the previous attack.
The red dragon takes a deep breath and the air suddenly feels dry and scorching hot. The mind flayer's eyes glow and faint telepathic pressure fills your mind. Yellow caustic vapor rises from between the plates in iron golem's armor, making your eyes sting.
@@dziooooo That's exactly what I said, yet you said you disagreed! Bloody hell...
I'm imagining Kelly instilling fear in retail customers because it's better than disappointment.
The cashier asked me if I was sure I wanted this particular can of tomato soup. He relayed that it was recently used in a murder, and it has been recorded appearing on different shelves on its own, moving close to certain people who looked similar to the victim of the murder. He remarked on my green eyes being the same as hers. I made the purchase anyway, not thinking much of it, and took it home with me. But that night as I sat down with my grilled cheese, that nagging feeling crept over me as I stared into the now open can... I poured it in, laughing to myself that I was being crazy, and poured the soup into its bowl, then to the microwave. I sat down, and began to eat. I sipped the soup and immediately regretted my decision as I tasted death itself...
OR
So I bought this nasty soup brand the other day. Absolutely disappointing, I'll never buy that brand again.
Honestly, I give anyone doing a TTRPG show a lot of credit. I feel like I'm usually pretty good at remembering these things (of course we all have our moments), but if I were busy trying to entertain not just my players, but a whole audience, I'd lose track of everything mechanically in an attempt to nail the RP
It’s not forgetting but seriously: move your monsters.
Movement is exciting. Opportunity attacks aren’t as bad as you would think - or just give your monsters abilities that allow them to ignore them.
e.g. Slippery. The creature moves cautiously. Opportunity attacks against it are made with disadvantage.
I've added a rule where making an opportunity attack opens you up to an opportunity attack from adjacent creatures.encourages tactics and movement
I have found that the more I have been provoking opportunity attacks from my players, the more they are willing to risk every now and then.
Yes DMs that play their monsters bad strategically makes everything into unexciting meat bags.
Just literally use more goblins (MM) or Swashbucklers (MMOM). Bonus action disengage. Works as long as nobody takes the Sentinel feat! Oh wait…
Edit: In all seriousness Sentinel makes moving around a massive problem. Instead of an ability like “always had disadvantage on attacks” where theres still a chance sentinel wrecks your plans; just use Shocking Grasp.
Most PCs wear metal armor which gives advantage for Shocking Grasp. It kills all reactions from that PC so no opportunity attacks or counterspells or held actions.
I hate that attacks of opportunities are only when you are leaving a players threat range. It should be Everytime you move in, through or out
It’s always helpful when the whole table works together to remind each other of things. As a player, I’ll gently remind another spellcaster they need a concentration check or I’ll remind my DM what effect is in play on the monster. As a DM, my players will work together to do the same thing (especially with homebrew at play). It heightens the fun and actually helps the players work together both in and out of character.
Agreed, and I often remind players/DM of something they missed even if it's detrimental to the party. It feels like cheating if I realize something was missed and I don't say anything.
I think its also easy to cross this line into being the rules lawyer guy if taken to the extreme
I don't know if this would drastically overload Kelly's editing duty, but it would have been really nice to see some 10second clips of in game examples from your Drakkenheim campaign. Not of how you forget things but how you remember things and incorporate it to the live game without causing a fuss
I forget how many attacks enemies get pretty often, especially low level monsters who somehow get multiple attacks. One thing I am better about now but which used to get me all the time is remembering to make my enemies speak in the middle portion of combat as well instead of just the beginning and end
Low level monsters get multiattack usually because they're meant to compete with the fact that they will be against 3 - 5 enemies at once lol.
I really needed this. I just ran a very complicated encounter designed to really challenge my lvl 4 players and their two lvl 3 NPC sidekicks. I had homebrewed a 5e monster version of the 3.5e Ocular Adept prestige class (humanoid paladins for beholders). They fought two of them and their five gazers, but they also had a fairly strong NPC shadow monk character with them for story reasons. This was one of the most difficult encounters to plan and balance in my GMing career and it went mostly well but I was still beating myself up for forgetting things and for messing up certain traits. For example, I was rolling attacks rolls for the gazers eye rays for the first half of the encounter and still having them roll the DC checks, so I massively nerfed the gazers for half the fight. I also forgot the main goal of the ocular adepts halfway through as the conditions kept piling onto them. It was a lot, but this video made me feel a lot better
Best quest in the elder scrolls, respect
Regarding setting player expectations, if you use description to set something up as properly terrifying and the PCs are able to defeat it fairly easily, there's a decent chance that the players' reaction will be relief rather than anticlimactic disappointment. Especially if the monster continues to be creepy after its defeat - melting away into salt, or its severed limbs continuing to twitch.
I'm really happy this was brought up. I've been kicking myself for a couple of weeks for accidently letting my players absolutely cheese the boss of one of their backstories with Bane and Bestow Curse and by forgetting legendary resistances/actions. Thanks for making me remember everyone makes these mistakes ❤
The best campaign I ever ran was back in college when I ran the campaign with a co-DM. I was the lead DM as it was my overall world and storyline but my college roommate was the Co-DM. He ran all NPCs that the party encountered both out of combat and in combat and if we had no NPCs with the party, he would generally control the larger or more intelligent monsters/enemies during combat while I made ruling on the combat and introduced effects like changing weather or the arrival of additional monsters to the combat. We could even split the part and run sessions in separate rooms as he always knew where I wanted to go with the session but respected player options and responded accordingly. Co-DMing is something I've rarely heard about, but it works well and should be utilized more often.
Almost every single one of my encounters has some form of lair action that represents the environment. It can either impact both sides or impact only the players.
It makes the environment the players are in as an essential character in the fight, and forces them to choose to fight or flee within that environment.
I had them fighting the mook mobs in an underwater dungeon once where there were strong tidal forces. It caused impacts every tound as the current rushed in and rushed out. One time the tank failed their save and got pulled out from the entire group and into a swarm of monsters that just pummeled on him, which forced the team to adapt their tactics to the situation, to save their ally. A routine combat they had settled into fighting one mob at a time suddenly required them to pivot and try to handle 10 mobs at the same time.
It was good fun and put that threat of defeat to mooks which they out classed into mind, making the encounter more rewarding.
For status effects some one in our group bought one of those boxes of colored plastic condition rings that have various status effects written on them and each is a different color. If you are stunned, poisoned, restrained, concentrating, etc. you put a ring on the miniature and take it off when the condition ends.
If you don't have access to actual status rings, improvised ones taken from milk jugs and coke bottles also work great! Ask the whole group to keep any they have, in various colors, and in a few weeks you'll have a rainbow collection. And then it's just deciding that red means "on fire", yellow means "frightened" and black means "blinded".
@@dziooooo Yes. I love low cost solutions like this. Being able to keep cost down is a good way to make the game more inclusive. Also, it's just a clever solution.
thank you for reminding all of us what we "always" forget. This is so true about all the points you mentioned. When there is a combat, there are so many things we tend to forget and yes we do need to keep track not to forget anything...but to forget the least :). I particularly enjoyed what you mentioned about the minis. Yes these are great to represent the monsters and enemies, but remember that we usually do not have one mini for each encounter and so we need to use again and again what we have in hand to represent what the characters are fighting. And so DMs need to emphasize on what the players do not see. A full description of what is coming to us is so important. Just as important as if we were doing theater of the mind.
The one thing that you forgot to mention, and that I think is super important: make the enemies speak!!! Yes, it seems so weird to say that, but remember that when you are talking about intelligent enemies, they are going to speak during combat. Whether this is to cast spells, call out minions for help, or just challenge the characters and interact with them. It is so important to make the battle feel real.
How these things are dealt with is a good test of how comfortable the group is with negotiating and adapting, and I like watching you Dudes demonstrate this
This is a great podcast episode on DMing in general! The essence is there are so many conditions and the such that are possible in the book, rules at written, but ultimately it is a human that is DMing and that can get real complicated, real quick.
The worst thing to forget = forgetting to watch Dungeon Dudes videos in your UA-cam watch list. This mistake must be avoided
That is something I don't forget. Especially when it is Drakkenheim day
I always enjoy how these videos are conversations! Never just a list of “What you doing wrong! No.1, 2…”
Thanks, Dudes!
The rules are there to help you have fun, not prevent you from having fun. 44:25
This may be the greatest thing yall have said in a video. And I watch A LOT!
Great, humble and fun video. Sometimes I do great, sometimes I really mess up. Recently I let the dice tell me to use the same wandering encounter twice in a row, and regretted it. I had to remind myself "I'm the DM! Not the dice!" Keeping everything interesting and fun, leaning into the RP and drama is when the table comes alive for me. Rules are pretty critical in combat, but after decades of play I have most of those down pretty well. Totally agree with the abbreviated denouement on some fights. Not everything has to be rolled.
My first campaign was LMoP. I forgot that goblins have darkvision, so cragmaw hideout was cheesed pretty quickly when they started turning off the lights
For missing monster turns I get around it by grouping initiative. If I have 7 minions I will have 2 goes. The first will have 4 of them and the second initiative has 3. This not only makes "less turns" needed to be remembered but also stops the monsters turn taking forever. I recommend grouping Upton a max of 5.
I this too. But only minions. Having 3 CR 8 acting one after another is sometimes dangerous
In before you forget which minions are the three and which are the four as your players move them around like faireground cups.
@@TheOmegaXicor no method is perfect
My players were rowing across Waterdeep Bay and I played some seagull sounds for them to set the mood. One player decided he wanted to bait a seagull in to catch it. I allowed it then they decided to have another character roast it (after he cleaned it properly via a good survival check) with the sacred flame cantrip. I told them that the smell of cooked meat caused a mob of seagulls (who are definitely cannibals) to flock to their boat to try to steal their food. The mob of seagulls attracted attention and a hand shot up from the water and snatched a gull. One of my characters decided to grab and grapple the arm; roll initiative. They found themselves in combat with four sea spawns, which they easily beat. They get to the other side of the bay, partially loot the dungeon I prepared then decide to retreat, then return to their boat to rest. Before they get the opportunity to rest they get attacked by a sea hag and 10 more sea spawns demanding to know why they slaughtered her minions. Just saying, actions have consequences... My players are learning and they are loving the results. Lol, this actually got them leveled up from 3 to 5, but the hag got away and she WILL be back 😇
Great points, I have forgot all of these as well from time to time.
Also; looking good in the black and red, you are matching really nicely. Kelly, nice chain!
Just started watching - or more: listening - to your videos about two weeks ago. Even listened to your stuff from years ago! Got interested in D&D after playing Baldur's Gate 3. You got my attention via DND Beyond the Drakkenheim book which got just released. Anyroads, just want to say here and now: you two are awesome together! Please stay great friends together forever - the combination of both of you together make your videos so great! Keep up your good work!
Thanks for this video! As someone who’s been DMing for about 15 years and still regularly makes some of these mistakes, I often beat myself up over it. But if it’s happening even to you guys who DM *professionally*, it makes me feel a bit better. :)
The biggest benefit of this video is to know that I am not alone.
I have to say one of my favorite encounters is introducing an NPC that had odd mannerisms that was questioned by other allies and when combat started post a doublecross scenario, the players were terrified and surprised when an intellect devourer burst out from that NPC's head. It nearly killed a player that failed a save against Psychic Lance(unconscious condition) a turn before the reveal too.
What a memorable encounter tho. It was against the Intellect Devoured NPC a souped up Hyrdroloth with some extra spells (like Psychic Lance) and a Froghemoth. It was fun how the Hydroloth used Control Water to flood the cavern the PCs were attempting to rest in, while the Froghemoth and other swimming minions were hunting them.
It was a mechanically complex encounter to put together, but it was worth running for sure.
I want to clarify something here. I'll comment on a video all the time "oh, you took 2 reaction." Or "oh, you should've made a concentration check" or "you forgot Strength of the Grave"
But I in no way mean this to say "yallre bad" or "you suck." I understand that dnd is hard. I forget stuff all the time too. Hell, in typing this, I almost said "to" instead of "too" last sentence.
Mistakes happen. I like to point out when they happen because I recommend your videos for people to watch to learn and it's important to know what the rules are so those accidents aren't "on purposes"
I LOVE y'all's content. I will keep watching it regardless of mistakes. But I also hold yall to a higher standard because y'all're professional dnd players.
Please PLEASE keep up the amazing work.
33:31 I had the opposite experience where I didn't plan for a combat encounter but one of my players ended up destroying something that pissed everyone in the building off. I ended that session early to get my battlemap, npc stats, etc. together for next time and it ended up being the best encounter of the campaign, culminating with them just barely saving the life of some rando astronomy intern who ended up becoming the party's adopted NPC.
Really like this video!! I appreciate your guys' work a lot, specially because you take the time to provide actual possible and practical solutions to these problems! Great video, as always!
It feels like you were watching my last 10 sessions and you are calling me out!! LOL! You guys rock! Thank you! I am waiting patiently for my Sebastian Crowe's to ship! I am so excited for it!
This is your best and most relevant video yet!
Thanks dudes!
Try running Tiamat with 5 separate breath attacks and remembering which ones have been used and which ones have been recharged
Grab 5 coloured die, set them on the table near the "mini" when they are used.
Use all 5 at once always >:)
In all seriousness though that is probably a bit tedious
This is a wonderful video for me as I'm gearing up for a couple epic combats in our campaign's final act.
Again - the natural interaction makes this better - love seeing Monty’s reactions! (The laugh at the beginning.) Makes it less stiff. Go. With the flow! :)
so glad to hear it even happens to you guys
I used to always forget about concentration checks. I find that having concentration rings around minis made remembering that much easier. For that reason, as a player, I always tell my DM I need to make a concentration check when applicable because it’s just one less thing for them to worry about
Edit: I just remembered something I forgot when doing a combat as a DM lol. The party was fighting a smothering carpet, animated armor, and flying swords in a forbidden section of a library, and one of the PCs used some effect that blinded the swords and armors and carpet, I forget what effect it was lol. But I didn’t even realize until after the combat was over that each of them had blind sight. It was the funniest thing when I realized too because I told the party immediately as I realized and went, “I mean obviously they have blind sight, they don’t even have eyes.”
My players recently came across a group of shipwrecked pirates on a beach. Rather than fight them, which I assumed they would do, the Bard led the way in lying that they were a gang of criminals just passing through, and then offered to share some food. The pirates were so grateful that they let them pass and even gave them some directions and info about the nearby town. It was a wonderful reminder that sometimes the most unexpected role-play outcome of an encounter can be way more fun than a fight.
First boss encounter that my players came across was an Annis Hag in her Swamp/mountain lair. I forgot about the difficult terrain, the legendary resistance that I gave her (which got her hit with Bane) and I had a artificer in the party and I accidentally made one of his robots stupid overpowered. Lots of learning opportunities there
Love you Kelly ❤️❤️ you rock!! Stay well king
This is why i agree in the use of as many decks as possible to keep track of the stats, conditions, and NPCs. I'll use small, transparent or the pointed sticky notes to highlight certain things. I also make cards like that for every player so i have their info available but i don't keep track of their HPs or conditions, part of my Session 0 is to reiterate that players NEED to know their character. I'll give them private time to explain things and how things work and can be combined or why a basic spell like Bless is so important to have even at T3. I'll give them help in the early levels to remember stuff (yeah, like Hunter's Mark). It makes things a lot easier to keep track of.
Of course, I'll also tag the book for less important things out things that need to be remembered.
And to add to that area description, I'm using VTTs as more of a way to show players a bit of what I'm describing and to be able to visualize the board and movement who might have difficulty with my verbal description .
I just found out a few weeks ago that not everyone can get that movie in their minds or visualize combat, and it's no one's fault. It is what it is. It doesn't mean that you are DMing is wrong or lacking, it only means that your brain works differently than their brain. So, we do what we always do, and try to let everyone have a great time.
Oh gosh, where to begin? Magic Resistance has been a big one (party has Wizard *and* Bard, Polymorphs for Days), Mirror Image and Blink for my less beefy Humanoids (especially when the 5th+ Level Monk gets 4 successive hits and Stunning Strike queued up), Burrow Speed! Oh God, Burrow Speed! Had a Xorrn Ambush planned but *fully* left each Xorrn out in the open after each turn (planned on having them burrow after each attack and Ambush-and-Hide throughout the Combat). Gosh, of course there's Hydra Heads (classic, had the PCs going through a desert, occasional Ambush from within the sand, when they got wise and started slicing, I fully forgot to add heads), "yeah the attacks stop" 💀 God sometimes I feel like the master of planning beautiful combats that go the way of the Homer Simpson Grill 😅
In terms of creating new ways to end encounters, in my game, cloud elementals were grabbing people and taking them skyward to the bbegs lair at the top of the mountain.
So one of my players suggested that instead of fighting, they let themselves be captured. This meant they effectively bypassed the second half of the mountain encounters I had planned and reached the bbeg with full resources.
I was blown away.
I was running a massive siege combat- the heroes had to choose how to spend time preparing (each hero chose an action from a table I generated, and their choices had an impact on the survivability during the fight).
All waves had been repelled and now it was time for the final boss, a massive Orc riding an armored Allosaurus. I painted a scene of it tearing through the battered gate, even eating one of the Orc Lieutenants (to show how awesome he was). Just then, my bard reminded me that he placed Oil on the spot my model was literally standing. I made all the rolls, rewound time- now the Dino blasted through, slipped on the oil, crushing the lieutenant. Then the Dino and boss took damage (since they both rolled sub 5). And the party essentially nuked them both as they lay on the ground, covered in oil.
It was hilariously disastrous.
You are right! Forgetting someone's trun happens a lot despite the use of extensive trackers... it's so weird!
For important calls that can sway the combat, I have the player who's asking about it look up a ruling and put their turn on hold, then move on to the next player. Gives them something to do and allows them to find a resource while the combat keeps rolling, that way I can stay engaged.
For lesser things, definitely agree with just making a call and saying we'll come back to it again in the future.
For me at least half of those are immediately solved by printing out a proper initiative tracker, designed specifically for what I need.
My version is basically a single sheet, landscape orientation. Each creature gets a row, on the left there's name, initiative count and space for tracking HP. Then in the middle I have a bunch of space for writing down status effects, recharges, etc. And the 1/3 of the page on the right is just narrow columns for combat rounds.
Lair actions get their own row. If something is going to happen on round 3, it gets a row, and boxes for rounds 1 and 2 are blacked out.
And then I just go down the list each round and tick the boxes down. If a creature uses a reaction, I put a little R in their box and I can easily check if they have it available. Same with legendary actions - I put a little L when a creature uses it, I can easily check how many Ls I have since its last turn at a quick glance.
It took a second to get used to, but after 2-3 session it was automatic, and it made my life SO MUCH EASIER.
15:28 had this exact thing happen in my curse of Strahd game. I made sure that Strahd had cast mirror image on himself before dealing with the players face to face. The artificer cast faerie fire on him, which I didn’t resist because I was sure that the mirror images would make it a mute point. When the echo knight fighter came up and unleashed all 6 attacks using all his incarnations and action surges, I was so blown away by the roles he had I totally forgot about mirror image 😅. Strahd died in the first round of combat. As upset as I was, my players loved the moment and the siege of Castle Ravenloft they had to endure beforehand I think was fight enough for them.
I have FTD (Frontotemporal dementia) and use a whole load of things to organise the game when I DM otherwise I'd be overwhelmed. I use mini-dice to number the NPCs in combat so I know who has had what done to them, Lynx condition markers for spell effects so we can see who's concentrating, raging, incapacitated etc and I use an Initiative tracker to er...track initiative. Mistakes still get made as in the heat of combat, especially with multiple complex turns the higher level you are, it's too much for most people, but we always sort it out in the end. Spell decals can also help loads, or failing that a dry-wipe marker to denote the spell-zone.
This is a situation that just stuck with me ever since it happened. I was dming a high level campaign through discord and the party was fighting a hammerhead sharkfolk paladin. In my games the players can have 2 npcs to accompany them,and for that battle one of the supporting npcs was a wood woad the party saved. During the first 2 rounds i just completely forgot the wood woad then in the third turn i realized “oh i forgot his turn,he’ll act now”. The npc wood woad which was forgotten proceeded to crit twice and kill the boss instantly. It did leave a memorable situation though
Monty, Kelly-you guys NAILED the intro! Just wanted to call that out 😂
I have forgotten all of these at times and a few of them (resistances) all the time. Sometimes it’s because I have a lot going on, and sometimes it’s because I am just as engaged in the battle and kind of forget that I am not a spectator, but the DM.
The absolute worst that I can remember though was that I had an NPC prisoner in an orc lair that the party was meant to discover and rescue, an NPC with critical information to keep the party on the right track… it was going to be a really cool moment of discovery, change the dynamic of the battle from kill bad guys to protect hostage and kill bad guys….the wizard pulls some super cool opening gambit and I completely spaced on the NPC.
Forgetting to lock focus during recording of a video about forgetting to do common things is priceless; the books on the back shelves look so crisp and amazing though especially that 100k plaque.
Tracking conditions simple hack:
I pre-write numbers down the page for initiative, fill in names when it's rolled. When a condition pops that's multi round, I write it beside the name on init and call it out when I get to that turn. If it's a one round condition like dodge, they get a ring (pop bottle rings from cracking the seal make great markers and are different colours)
Grognard here… I have always played with a smaller subset of rules from each edition of DnD. Because while we’d love to play a game where all these sophisticated rules are executed, but what is humanly possible always falls short. What I often do is say, for this session encumbrance will be important, and that will be the only time we worry about it. I’m currently playing Monster of The Week. It’s so much more fluid, rapid, and adaptable.
The most common thing that I forget are passive monster effects that trigger at the start of a player's turn. Like the monster has a stench that will trigger at the start of a player's turn if they are within 10 feet of a monster, or they'll take fire damage if they hit a particular monster in melee. If it makes sense to do so, I try to move these to the monster's turn, or add it as a separate slot in the initiative (like a mini-lair action). Otherwise unless it's something where it is the signature ability of the encounter (medusa, bodak, etc.) I will probably just forget every time.
[edit]One thing I find really helpful in encounter building is coming up with a plan for the enemies before the battle. Where they can be positioned, which each enemy's role in the encounter is going to be, and especially if they're spellcasters, what they're (probably) going to do for the first few turns. Even for a fairly unintelligent creature, that doesn't mean it's going to just stand there and tank attacks. You can say "this thing is an ambush predator, it's going to try to grab someone and run, and won't usually stand and fight". Makes it easier to keep track of abilities and things when you've decided how they are going to be used.
I don't play D&D anymore but, if you want to have multiple monsters with legendary actions, consider giving a group of legendary enemies a pool of legendary actions.
For example, when it comes to that group of adventurers, instead of giving them individual reactions, it'd be great if they have group legendary actions of 5, with caveat that if they used one, that one cannot be used consecutively (ie if there's a legendary action to blink step, the said adventurer can't blink step again and again). It would be a memorable fight, especially if they had legendary actions that reflect their group's deeds, legends, and teamwork.
... This sounds like a fun idea. I should make a thing for this.
Oh, that actually sounds really cool for something like a hag coven.
Clothes pins on the screen for initiative. Current turn clipped a little higher. Names on the pins for pcs and numbers for enemies. Go a step further, hot glue little black boards to the back of the pcs clips that state their passive perception and insight. Dont forget to make pins for initiative count 20 and 10 as well as lair. You'll need em.
Forget conditions? Effects? Concentration? Get some effect rings for your minis or place them around their clothes pin to remind you. Easy fix.
Forget battlefield conditions like rough terrain? Print out 20, 30 and 40 ft radius effects and place em on the map. Takes a min to move all the minis but in the end it makes a world of difference. Another option is putting extra dice or markers around the radius.
Forgot legendary actions? Use them all at the end of the round!
Forget reactions? Here is how I Dealt with that. I bought tiny clothes pins to put next to the initiative clothes pins to represent their reaction.
On the monster abilities, I agree with kelly. I print out my statblocks and highlight what I need to remember most. I write notes in the margin and even write out spell descriptions if it's a niche spell that's rarely used.
Just a few things I do that have helped me immensely. I hope they help you out as well.
As a player and a dungeon master. I have this advice for any DM. Practice, practice practice. You wont get it right the first time, or the 100th. Before your game, prep is over, spend 30 minutes before your game looking at your DM screen/sheet. If you don't have one, make one. Throw actions in combat, conditions, spell casting rules, and anything else you might use every single game.
Quick example, your players constantly craft stuff, have the coats and times associated with crafting on your sheet.
And advice for players, if your dm forgot, pass them a note or a message, dont interrupt whoever is speaking. Everyone wants to have fun, help each other out. If i as a DM can help a player with their actions mid combat, yall can remind me that i messed up. I had a player remind me that a monster forgot to make a saving throw on a following turn. Man, I gave him inspiration. Ez pz
"The story doesn't stop just because the swords are drawn," is a great motto!
With effects and conditions, one thing I do that helps me remember with a caster class that has a turn-ticking damage is to roll the damage in the caster turn, then apply it if the conditions are still met. It runs into the problem of "does this actually tick at the beginning or end of the victim's turn?"--but I at least have the damage queued up to remind me to check.
That said, I had one combat where I forgot my striker character could fly and shoot the enemy from the sky... and he very nearly died in close combat against things that kept knocking him down and getting attacks of opportunity when he stood back up--when I made the fact that he could fly a key part of why he left his childhood home and became an adventurer. I made up for it towards the end of the encounter by grappling goblins and flying up to drop them into dangerous terrain, since none of us were successfully hitting them in the first place.
How I track initiative that helps with a lot of these issues is index cards. Every PC gets a card with their ac and saves on it as a reminder. Every enemy gets a card with ac, hp, saves and each action they have available. The cards are easy to prep, just make them for each enemy they might encounter each session. They keep you from having to go to the book or some other reference in combat. And it gives you constant reminders of important info
Something I did in a recent session when I realized "I need to do something to set up that this guy is tough"
I had him laugh when combat was iminent, exclaim how much he's been itching for a battle then had him punch a tree with the back of his fist, causing it to fall over.
A bit cartoony/excessive lol, but it got the players to go "yo, that guy knocked over a tree in one punch! I'm not messing with him!" Which lead to some very creative combat decisions
Watching this before work only had time for half the video I’ll watch rest later tonight but I dm more than I play - my two things , embarrassingly to admit, sometimes I forget a held action a player announced earlier in the turn like “if the zombie moves near our healer I’ll attack it” and number two I forget an ability the monster has. As far as in general though I “eat the mistake “ so to speak as the dm. And this is usually to my players benefit more than it’s not.
When I forget minions turns, I pretend they took the hide action and nobodies passive perception triggered. Brings a nice bit of chaos to the table and a lot of good "Oh sh*t" moments.
I love when players remind themselves of conditions. Makes me very happy
Once I run an encounter where a bunch of aberrations, including a Beholder burst out of the ground and attack a refugee camp. I only remembered the civilians because they were goblins and orcs forcing me to remind the players that no, the goblin over there is a victim, not a practice target.
What I forgot about was that the Beholder has legendary actions. Which is good because my players chose to run into that encounter with barely any HP or resources and survived by the skin of their teeth.
I laughed SO hard at the intro title card lasting for like 4 seconds too long 😂 love you guys
I'm a fairly new DM and while I haven't forgotten a player's turn (we play online) I still forget monster turns almost all the time lol
I almost always realize in my review of a session I forgot this and that, but then what about the stuff I don't even know or remember?
Love the Strongholds & Followers and the Kingdoms & Warfare books on the shelf!
"We surrender" can legitimately be one of the most interesting responses to an encounter.
One of the more memorable encounters for me as a player was on a cliff's edge. Not super tall, but enough for me to know that my monk wouldn't get hurt for more than 10 points. I was subclassed into rune knight, so I tackled the ogre off the cliff, taking him out of the combat completely.
I had an entire cave with goblins who were led by a bugbear that my party was potentially going to have to fight through to rescue an NPC. The Bard, who was a changeling, decided to utilise his changeling abilities, turned into a bugbear and intimidated the goblins at the cave entrance to take the party to their leader, and were able to negotiate the release of the NPC
Last year I promptly killed the party bard with a howler before the paladin reminded me we had skipped their turn. In that scenario we did rewind time, and the paladin of course flattened the remaining enemies. It became a pretty fun Schrödinger's tabaxi bard moment, as we basically played it as the bard seeing an alternate future 😅
Something that I see forgotten all the time: When a PC or NPC has some ongoing debuff effect that allows them to make saving throws every round. Turns often will pass by with no saving throw rolled.
Also, a common interaction between the things mentioned: When legendary actions, lair actions, or reactions allow somebody to do something outside of their regular initiative order, it often happens that this interruption gets adjudicated, and then the DM forgets that it this doesn't count as a turn, advances initiative and skips somebody's turn in the process. This is particularly easy to do when using a VTT turn tracker, and clicking the Next Turn button feels so automatic.
My favorite time using monster morale has to be when the player where fighting a giant insect monster and a troll a bunch of goblins had turned into a walking fortress using the trolls regeneration ability. The insects and the troll were not on the same team and they were fighting atop a massive tree that the insects had made a nest in. The party’s astral monk had just climbed up the troll and finished of the last of the goblins. The troll now being all alone and not having taken acid or fire damage this turn decided to take his chances with gravity and jump off the tree with the monk still on his back. The monk took surprising little damage because of slow fall and used step of the wind and dash to make back up to the fight in a single round.
Ha I had a mimic ship for a pirate adventure I ran. It was crewed by various sea based creatures and the sails were a type of cloaker. One of the players got trapped below decks(in the stomach) digestive juices started flowing so one of them polymorphed into a t rex and chewed his way out.
A few people I play with get annoyed at me reminding the dm how a rule or a spell works, but I always follow it (or start the point with) a reminder that they can choose whether or not they want to use that ruling or not. I also don't just do it when it benefits whatever side I'm on. If I'm dming, I'll remind a player that they have a bonus from a source that they've clearly been forgetting, or that one enemy is prone which would give them disadvantage to shoot that target before they devote themselves to it. If I'm playing, I'll let the dm know that I fucked up and couldn't have done x, so y would have probably failed as well. Or I'll remind them that they get advantage on me or another player for reasons. DnD is a cooperative game, and when the rules are clearly out on the table, we can all work to use them to make incredible things happen.
This video further confirms my theory that Monty once bet someone he could mention "hypnotic pattern" in every video they make, lol
Awesome vid as always. I have a question for the DDudes (and the amazing community) I have a pretty good memory and I've noticed that I'm often the one pointing out when things get forgotten in combat. I'm a little worried about that getting perceived as being the rules police. If you have someone who's just really good at keeping track of the game and remembering everything, would you rather they mention things or perhaps just keep it to themselves?
When it comes to forgotten things, I like to use the metaphor of reparable and irreparable gamestates. A reparable gamestate is anything that can be corrected by adjusting numbers, reorganization of effects, or minor manipulation. An irreparable gamestate it’s one where meaningful change has happened as a result of an event. These are the key moments: a player dying, a trap being set off, a mechanic being discovered, or more than a rounds worth of time. In these cases, you can’t rewind things and you have to either bend to fix them or accept the gamestate as is. This is why it’s important for everyone to pay attention and not be on their phones since maintaining the gamestate is a shared responsibility.
Nice hoodie Monty. I just got that same one for Christmas.
I once forgot that a player had just taken their turn and tried giving them another. Somehow convinced myself that all the stuff they just did happened in the previous round.
One thing you guys will never forget, is being awesome
I do something called a DM's Turn which has help soooo much. on DM turns I normal have it for terrain effects etc and also missed NPC or monster stuff.
For monsters with recharge abilities, I roll the recharge right away (behind the screen, obviously) to see how long it takes to get it back. I make a note on the sheet I'm using to keep track of everything going on in that encounter. I don't think I've ever forgotten one yet, but there isn't video evidence one way or another. :)
In a prewritten module, I forgot to review a map ahead of time and realized that the squares were 50 feet, not 5. It threw the entire encounter off, so I essentially brought in something to make the characters retreat and made a "to be continued" element. While the first part of the fight slogged, the second part was one of the best in the campaign.
This video is helping me get some good ideas!
I’m digging the longer videos!
My personal solution to a creature being nearly dead and remembering it has resistance is to just add another half it's max HP or even double it. Hit Dice in the statblock take the average, so having twice the HP is within the bounds of the statblock, albeit the highest end. Usually I'll just give the token a second health bar just as a visual reminder to myself that it should be tankier than the HP bar suggests. The last trick is to have the "transition" be punctuated by a change in the monster's behavior, not quite a full second phase, but just a mental shift where it goes, "These guys aren't mere goons to toy around with, effort time" and suddenly the monster seems to be taking less damage as its movements become more calculated.
I am absolutely terrible at remembering monster features! I almost never end up using them because I forget they're there. I used them in their last combat with 4 Zombie Clots, though, and boy did that combat go different😅. 😊
Been there. Done all of those. I once let my group kill off a very dangerous legendary crocodile because it horribly failed a saving throw and they were so excited that I forgot that it got to make 2 saves a day that it failed the roll on. They still bring this one up.
One time I was playing a sorcerer and I had just gotten my first instant kill spell.
My party and I were sent to visit a mercenary group. I was sitting at the table and decided that my frog companion, whome I loved and was named Froggy, jumped on to the table.
The mercenary boss chopped off Froggy's left legs. I cast my first ever instant kill spell and the Boss failed both saves and instantly died.
I had just killed the boss of the main encounter of the week to avenge my frog companion's limbs.
My DM was flabbergasted and didn't know what to do.
So i ended up becoming the leader of a Mercenary band, but just ignored them and let them do what they want.
Truly, one of my favorite moments in all of my games I have been a player in.