It's worth restating environmental effects and secondary objectives that aren't based on monsters directly here, like Ginny said. Apart from helping the action rhythm they also blur the beginning and ends of combat - and they give more things the players can't defeat through punching.
What Ginny is expressing involves environment, goals, and strategy in any given encounter. D&D has this irritating habit of turning all combat into magnetic brawls in which everyone dukes it out until the victor stands, which is the easiest and laziest way to design a battle; it’s basic videogame logic which denies the true power an RPG can pose. The problem being is that dynamism is difficult to design and execute in a way that represents game balance, when it’s story balance that should be considered, requiring attention and improvisation to keep matters interesting. It’s why I like designing encounters like character sheets, with Goals, Flaws, and Backgrounds (environments) for easy reference.
"The tension is gone" That is always a good time for the DM to consider the bad guys running away or surrendering. They often die anyway trying to get away but its more satisfying for the PCs if they get to ace the last monster in free shots rather than waiting for their turns. Takes less time too.
@@burgernthemomrailer I've used that with good success. My party was fighting its way through some corridors full of groups of monsters. When they dispatched the first group easily, I said "alright, you fight your way through several more groups of these and each the exit". The plot could go on!
Small tip, if you get to a situation where a single enemy is left with no chance leaving the following fight to be a pointless slog, just have them surrender. If they're an intelligent creature they probaly want to live and understand they can't win. It can be a good source of RP and info for the party (also a really good way to help your players understand what's happening).
This is a very good tip and on many occasions I have done this, however I can also highly recommend the complete opposite to take the battle up to a new level. Imagine you whittle the enemies down to a single man. He's battered, beaten and fatigued from the battle when he looks around and sees his mates dead all around him. He is seething with anger and hatred for our heroes and he leans against his sword, picks himself up and rages into one final charge as he scoops up a second sword, dropped by one of his fallen comrades. Give him an extra attack and give him advantage due to how enraged he is and give him the final blaze of glory he deserves with something like 10 additional hit points. Point of order: This works just as well for the players if you are looking to help them avoid a TPK and they are down to the last man. Give them a final, epic surge to try and get them through the fight.
Love the inclusion of environmental effects and the region essentially getting a turn. I’m a huge fan of dynamic fields of combat, since players and GMs can use the effects to advantage their side (a fire can spread and cause damage to structures, smoke can cause blindness or stunned effects, and the whole place can be used to intentionally cause characters or monsters harm).
i'm primarily a Vampire the Masquerade player so take this suggestion with a grain of salt. Within vampire there's a concept of "three and out" that is to say combat (or social combat, or any type of conflict) should generally be resolved within 3 turns. This keeps things going and prevents you from spending an entire session slogging through 10 rounds of combat that are only a minute in real time. You could easily adapt this to D&D, have three rounds of combat, then re-contextualize. Some environmental hazard changes the landscape, enemies that are on the losing side surrender, run away or summon reinforcements. A boss relocates or disengages for a bit requireing some roleplay. Then if necessary you go into the second combat with a new context. Of course i'm very much in the ' rip the system apart, homebrew what you like, hack and steal and improvise ' tribe of D&D. So YMMV.
I as a DM had the opposite side of this point in the last session. One of my PCs got a lucky break on the boss failing a save v. Stun 2 turns in a row.. This allowed the players to spend their free time healing the Barb from unconscious. "A classic 2-player-switcharoo."
Mild take: Players should be responsible for hosting and scheduling, not GMs. This promotes session engagement and delegates responsibility in a reasonable way. As a GM, it is extremely rare for me to host a game at my place. I’d much rather go to someone else’s place instead.
I agree that it’s how it should be, but it’s never how it is, at least for me. I’m the one who has the stuff and, in our group, the best circumstances for meeting up. Tbh scheduling isn’t that insanely tricky for us, just because we have a small group, and we’re all happy to be missing a person
This is actually a really good advise, as DM I just make sure that the availability survey for the next session is created and answered, the rest of organization and logistic is left to my party.
I recently found out just how effective burrow speeds can be, Because it's effectively a flying speed with cover You can infiltrate the backlines quite easily Making the party freak out as they have to deal with this enemy before it disappears again.
There many types of tactics enemy can use that makes them unavailable in other creatures turn. As example: goblin on high ground. Stand up - shoot - lay down to get full cover. I call this tactics "let's check if my player remember they have ready action"
@@Dima666Air my players did realise they had access to spells and abilities that allowed them to lock the creatures into place or bypass the cover, So in their perspective the encounter was easier than expected, However the encounter wasn't a threat at all on paper, So the fact that the creatures managed to make them actively engage with the fight was a win already.
@@burgernthemomrailer There's counters to burrow speeds, However, basically every counter to burrow speeds also counters fly speeds, While most fly speed counters do not counter burrow speeds. Everything is beatable, but some things moreso than others.
I'm fond of spicing up a combat by adding motion. it provides the need for the players to spend actions on things other than just multiple attacks and flanking the bad guy. A chase scene across two speeding carriages has challenges and even "lair actions" of a sort. Likewise ye olde rooftop chase. The trick to both of these is to make sure a player doesn't get left behind or steal the scene (if they can fly, for example).
Completely agreed. Most movie action scenes involve chases and combat concurrently, which is why I discourage miniatures (or at most use them on a “moving” map based on distance for easy tracking).
@@GestaltKirin You give them something specific to do. If a flying character can spoil a rooftop chase, for example, then there's a second bad guy going a different direction. They go be all superhero on that one while everyone else tackles the first guy. That way all the characters are important to the scene and the scene stealer gets to bask in how useful he/she was.
The same is true for players honestly in my opinion. If you want to make a character who turns up to fights and gets stuff done then all you really need to do is think about how you are going to use your Action, Bonus Action and Reaction on every turn if you can. It matters way more than trying to milk the max damage out of any specific thing, is a lot less gimmicky and generally just feels more fun imo. I play the game to interact with the world. If I get 3 ways to interact with the world every turn, best believe I'm gonna try to do all 3.
One of my favorite tricks for dealing with the players focusing fire is sacrificing an underling as a meat shield. This can be a devout kobold cultist throwing itself in front of a hit for its dragon master, or the orc warlord shoving his goblin underling into the path of a coming arrow. Can't use it all the time, but it's a fun one when it works, and can seriously screw with a parties established combat rhythm
Two things that help with action economy for big bads, Legendary Actions and Lair Actions. Think about it, you’re fighting an ancient blue dragon, he does multi attack to your fighter, some hit, some don’t. Your rogue backstabs the dragon. The dragon uses their legendary action to whip their tail at the rogue. Then the cleric goes and heals both the rogue and fighter. Then the lair action goes off, electrifying the floor, causing lightning damage to everyone touching the floor.
Here are some that I did: Multiple monsters that are too overpowered for my players but once one was destroyed the other retreated, another was I had an enemy that would revive the other enemy’s, another was a witch that made the players fight each other
alternate work around: let the party dog pile but if they do it would allow the enemy to cast a spell that nukes the whole party in a pokemon-like counter effect
I do this and it made my players be more careful, strategic movement is making them have more fun and be more loyal to their role instead of dumping attacks
To add to the lair action idea, one of my old dms had legendary actions for important boss fights. These legendary actions usually manifested in a sort of special attack or buff that activated when the boss hit a certain hp threshold. It changed the flow of battle and made winning actually very dangerous sometimes. One of my characters nearly lost her construct pet just because it got caught in an ice explosion. Her pet nearly dying also got her angry enough to use her abilities to shift her rapier into a greatsword that split the boss in half.
Once in a while you do have to have smart enemies focus on the squishy characters. Mainly to keep them honest. Unusually large parties might be able to afford to assign a bodyguard, but I've only had that happen to my Wizard once in decades of playing. Wizards have defensive spells, and they should be scared into using those precious spell slots (and Actions) to cast them. The hardest combats are going to be the ones where the monsters get the party on the back foot. In a Boss+minions fight having the Boss engage the Fighter and the minions harass the other characters works well, as does having the minions mob the Fighter while the boss lobs stuff from the rear.
Something that I love doing if my players are cool with it, is letting the enemies fill in the places between player turns. My players roll there initiative stack and my monsters roll their's then we alternate between stacks. It's not super realistic, but my players loved it. They call it "hard mode"
That's really cool! There is an RPG system called the Cypher System with an alternating initiative mechanic that's a bit similar. The difference is that there's no initiative roll; the acting side (whichever side starts the conflict has initiative) has one person act, then initiative switches to the other side, back and forth until the round is over and it all resets for the next round. It works really well, and I'll bet it works just as well when applied to D&D. I can see why keeping initiative rolls involved would increase the difficulty, forcing the party to adapt to the play order they've rolled. Of course, the DM has to adapt to the monster's initiative order as well, so it's entirely fair.
That's basically how initiative works in Larian's Divinity, RPG system. Enemies and allies have an initiative score based on derived stats. The character with the highest initiative goes first, then the opposing character with the highest initiative on their team takes there turn and so on so forth.
Strahd has a legendary action that lets him do a move without provoking attacks. It sounds simple, but this turns him into a creature that is chump to a monster that can eat teir 4 parties. Just giving a monster 2-3 extra move actions in a round can be insane
Thank you! After this weeks game, I was running through the "What Worked? What Didn't Work" and needing some better ways to do it. Right advice at the right time
I've totally fallen in the hole of just "add more monsters l" and still struggling to be a threat. Love this! Defd going to try these ideas. Helps a ton! Thank you?
I can't give over how awesome the pattern matching is on the button placket of your frog shirt, and the fabric is already amazing at that (also really good tips in the video, I'm just easily distracted by cool clothing/sewing details).
OMG - "In real life it isn't actually strategic to focus fire, because we are not bags of hit points that remain completely functional until the moment that we die." That was gold... no, that was platinum.
I just ended a campaign after retconning the old-semi-finale session because of a terrible action economy encounter. Added 4 groups of minions, legendary actions, legendary resistances, and smartly used Banish on the high level NPC Paladin to take out the harder hitter (and not taking out PC). Best encounter I’ve ever run, everyone thoroughly enjoyed the battle- including several players who’ve been playing over a decade. Action economy is the key.
Great video! Also, legendary actions are a good way to deal with the action economy imbalance of players vs DM. It could be cool to see more legendary actions on lower levels bosses as well.
Something I never see mentioned: if you think that 3 legendary actions per round and 3 legendary resistances are too powerful at lower levels, there's no rule preventing you from changing those numbers. I once ran 2nd level characters against a pseudo-lich (basically a skeleton with boosted hit points and a few 1st level spells) and a few zombies, and I gave that boss monster 2 legendary actions per turn and 1 legendary resistance. It was just enough of an increase in the monsters' actions to make the fight a real threat. That worked better than I'd even hoped.
@@SingularityOrbit Spot on, I've done the same thing and it works wonders. Had a level 3 party fight a legendary version of a Wight with 2 Legendary Actions per turn and 2 Legendary Resistances, the first fight he beat them down hard (he also readied an action to coup de grace a fallen player if they didn't give him what he wanted...) but the second fight they had prepared for him and had a way to strip away those advantages -- made for a great set of encounters.
Great fun for me was running a dreadnaught construct whose only attack was an enormous 6 chambered magic gun. He could only fire on his turn when fully loaded, but could use a legendary action after every turn to chamber a magic shell. This was fine in the intended scenario of the dreadnaught and two other baddies guarding an airship port. It became much worse when a lone PC attempted to steal an airship, got caught immediately, and then ropetricked into a pocket dimension for roughly 2 hours. Giving ample time for more threats to show up. On his own, he is hardly even a boss. He is a bullet sponge with a devastating attack. But one on one, he takes several turns to fully load his cannon. But six versus six? He has got a chance every time his turn shows up. It was great fun having them quickly panic and try to kill weaklings to boost the action economy in their favor, and attempt to avoid his turn by disrupting his attack or hiding at the end of their turn. Especially since of how its designed mechanically, he becomes gradually weaker as the fight goes on. Starting as a very intimidating boss, and turning into a satisfying victory as he becomes too sluggish to output damage.
The #1 trick I found to improve combat was to give each creature a name and basic personality (eg. Gorg the Orc - afraid of fire) or create a swarm with multiple attacks and legandary actions that scale up/down with their hitpoints. Then for boss monsters they should have a aim and create a dilemma for the PCs. I've had monsters who's lair action was trying a divine intervention that got eaiser for them the more damage they took, or mixing and matching abilities like combining the 'invisible in water' ability of a water weird with a Aboleth in a sewer fight making the disease especially scary. Though my fav was my BBEG Ravenloft game where Strahd and Vecna ended up having to flee a horde of Nothics....because while they could easily kill them, every single nothic had the 'weird insight' ability and was using it to steal embarissing secrets and TELL THEM TO EVERYONE... Which was both super fun for the players to make them up on the spot, but terrifying for the PCs.
Current party is in the middle of fighting a giant earth elemental in an ancient caven with floating rock platforms and the entire ceiling engraved with magic runes that causes wild magic surges on any character that casts a spell. Sends a wave of panic through the wizard who thinks he's safe out of melee range.
Possibly your funniest sponsorship yet! One thought on using environmental effects - if you can, try to include a way for any player (mage or mundane) to mitigate or solve those problems. For example, in the last month, three of my games featured combat arenas that caught fire. It certainly upped the stakes, but at low levels and without Create Water spells, we ended up just focusing fire on the enemies as usual while the arena burned. I don’t blame the DM for not thinking creatively *for us*, but without a source of water in the arenas, each one felt a little inevitable to try and fight.
Haha, I would focus fire as a DM for sure; I played it like a miniature game by targeting the most impactful character that would be the most efficient at defeating the party. It caused problems in my party at first for sure, the players had trouble predicting the monsters' actions and often a couple of them would go down.... Eventually they got wise to it and built their tactics around reviving and healing people. I realize now I should have just told them... that would have helped them right off the start. Also, I love some of the ideas that you suggest... multiple monsters that leave when the leader dies, and having different objectives is also quite a great idea. Thanks! I would argue that in real life, focusing fire can be quite effective. When attacked by multiple people, defend against both, but disabling one will make things much easier for you. This is also true at the strategic level as well, for example the Allies in WWII deciding to focus on Europe and not Europe and Japan at the same time.
As a counter-argument - one of degree, not of direction - my friends have spent the last 40 years laughing about our high-school DM’s ‘Rommel orcs’: second-level chaotic thugs who apparently spent their whole lives studying tactics under Field Marshal Rommel. If we tried to sneak past, they had sentries. If we tried to snipe the sentries, they had roving guards checking status. If we tried illusion, they had rotating passwords. At the first hint of trouble, multiple runners would head off for reinforcements (which came in stages). If we tried a fienting attack, they doubled the guard at all other positions. If we tried to provide cover fire, they had high ground already sighted in on any position we took. The only option we ever got was to make a frontal attack, then hew down wave after wave of fresh, well-disciplined troops like a Frazetta painting. The same thing happened in dungeons. There was exactly one encounter, with every creature - sentient or not - coming at us as a single coordinated force. If we didn’t die outright, we could then stroll through the rooms picking up treasure, because there wasn’t a living or undead thing left within a mile.
when i first clicked the video i was thinking "oh, she's obviously going to say improv duh", then you went "action economy xD", and i was "...oh, yeah, that's more intelligent" kkkkkkkk great vid.
This was a really great video! I would also add for BBEGs I've done "Shadow of Colossus" style combat which has worked out really well every time I've tried it. Basically, each area of the monster attacks on a different initiative (head, legs, wings, tail, etc). Each part of the monster also has its own AC and hit point block. So players can call their shots to take out a dragons wing or leg in order to lessen the effect of an attack or a decrease the monsters movement or just decide to generally hit the monster. It makes them feel like each shot matters and they can see the effects of their attacks more quickly and feel like progress is being made than just whenever the monster is defeated.
By tweaking the action economy you can also create larger epic fights at just about any level. This goes in the other direction and has you using more opponents but gives you a narrative for why they aren't all attacking the PCs every single round. How does it work? The opponents are using pack tactics. You have about a third of them attacking on any given round while the rest are either keeping their distance or focused on defense. This works with literal packs of animals but also with knights on horses who charge the PC group and thunder past before wheeling about and attacking again a couple rounds later. If any foes get seriously wounded, they're sidelined and let others attack. Once the pack no longer feels like it can attack effectively they retreat and the PCs win. This works best with theatre of the mind combat. You can probably make some version of this work on a battlemat but in practical terms you're going to be fighting the movement mechanics the whole time.
One mechanic I am planning to implement to an undead island I am creating is the undead can only really be killed if all of them are dead at the same time, or they revive eachother. The first time this shows up will be a few beefy ghouls but then it will lead to a necromancer that is being shielded by some undead mages. By taking out the mages you can hit the necromancer but you have to try and do so with all of his undead army rising again once every so often. (Hitting him with the shield down will stop him for a couple of turns) This should hopefully make for something cool that feels like a necromancer putting out an endless horde until defeated, and making it less of “oh there goes the skeleton cannon fodder now lets kill this guy” I am trying to make sure this also doesn’t come out grindy either by making it so the mages defending him don’t really have any hit points and just die guaranteed, but the difficulty being working around that tactic with the necromancer trying to harass you.
3:28 whaaaaaaat. That is an overly soft-on-the-players viewpoint It is 100% fair and reasonable for intelligent hostiles to try to take out a specific target first. If you didn't organize your formation to protect your squishy friends, that's on you.
honestly this is a good way to think about running a lot of other games, even ones without a similar action economy like games that go back and forth between players and gms (one turn each) or games that are powered by the apocalypse where the gm doesn't even technically have turns, just set ups and reactions to either failing a roll or ignoring a set up. I like it! Fleeing minions/mobs after a boss is defeated, diversified objectives, and dynamic locations are all good ideas generally.
I recently started playing Pokémon games and this is literally just Pokemon fights and status conditions Things like status effects lower your action economy in pokemon- you lose a turn from being asleep for example or lose a turn from having to heal a status effect. I wonder if status effects could be used similarly in dnd action economy
Using a hex map: The Beast has 6 tentacles , legs , eyes, and mouths . It has 3 attack types Hit, Grapple [ with reach ] , and Chew . Each side of the beast has an eye , tentacle , and mouth so it can not be flanked or suffer disadvantage . Older Beasts have tuffer hides . As a boss it can be a night mare .
a lot of my friends i play with have been asking me to DM, but while i feel really confident about world building and making stories fun for them all, balancing combat has always mystified me a little! i always felt like something vital was missing from my understanding, and it turns out it was this. everything is clicking into place! this makes me so much less nervous to DM, thank you so much!!! a great video with really helpful examples :)
Some excellent advice here, as usual. Something I do in my game (home-brew 5e/OSR hybrid) to help with action economy is to divide attacks across the round. If an Elf archer has two attacks, he takes one at the start of his turn and one AFTER everyone else has taken an action. Or put another way, one attack at the top and one attack at the bottom of their turn. This applies to the bad guys as well. If a BB has four attacks, rather than waiting for ALL the PCs to dog pile them, I allow the boss to make attacks in between them. As I use group initiative, this makes the division pretty easy. Yes, this requires me to juggle a lot of stuff, but it makes the combat way more exciting.
Minions are a good thing, but normally if I have one big bad boss fight I will come up with clever themed Legendary actions to give that big bad boss that add flavor and danger to the fight. As DM you aren't limited to what the Monster manual says. Always leave the Players Guessing, but all the other stuff mentioned in this video is super solid. Great Advice
Used this myself, had an ability for my BBEG in a one-shot that doubled his actions but forced him to then use similar actions only (Was a posessed jail captain, so it could use the posessors magic, or the knights strength) and it made things so exciting for players cause they were subverted by the initial low roll for the initiative just to find out that they get double the actions at that point... Honestly it was my first ever D&D DM experience and I am so glad that there wasn't any negative feedback, then again we were all pretty much new to it so that could have been why, cant critique something that you dont know exists...
Glad you brought up lair actions! Another thing that can help action economy, especially for monolithic bosses, is to go a little off script and upgrade their actions to be more effect-dense. Not necessarily more damage, but add additional complications or control effects that reduce player action viability. (Though do be careful with control effects that stun/disable. It's zero fun for the player.) Like, maybe the enemy wizard's lightning shocks the players into Fortitude saves to avoid dropping their weapons, or a huge monster bats the players out of position with heavy shoves that come with its attacks.
I get to DM for a group in one of my classes (we're doing a dnd mini-unit) and this video is really helpful as I have no experience DMing, and my teacher kinda just said "you can do the combat balancing for your group I trust you." So this will take a lot of the weight off my shoulders, and also probably impress my teacher. Thank you so much for this love your content! 💖🧚♀️✨
Thanks. Side note on ganging up on a single party member. Depending on the inteligence of the monsters it can be FUN for them to focus fire on the tanks. It leads to the following effects: 1. The player start feeling the danger of the action economy tipping to the monsters side. 2. The character have a chance to shine in what they are made for. 3. The shock when the glasscanon realizes, that this round would have just obliterated them. p.s.: For me realizing that the DM is deliberately spreading the damage across the party is often more of a downer than monsters fokusing on what is right in front of them.
This is definitely good advice, and solidifies by the end what I was thinking: unless there is an absolutely huge disparity in level between the monster and the party level, solo monsters really need legendary actions. They exist to even out action economy, letting monsters at the very least get more turns before they go down.
One little hint hidden in there is using invisibility as a way of getting the PCs to switch targets. IMHO this is a fantastic use of invisibility (or burrowing, etc...). One that I've seen be completely anti-fun is to have the ONLY enemy or ALL the enemies simultaneously disappear for 1-2 rounds, which just leaves the PCs to stand around waiting for them to show up again.
I actually kinda had two of these suggestions lined up for a Curse of Strahd campaign I'm running soon. It will be my second time running the Death House. The first time I ran it, I had a party of 6 lvl2 adventurers. On the final encounter against the Shambling Mound, the Cleric did go down a couple of times, so I can't say it was "easy" for the players, but it also kinda was. The Paladin, Barbarian, and Monk wailed on it up close, while the Artificer and Ranger took shots at it while staying safely out of its range. This time I'm starting the players at lvl 3, because I think it's more fun. So to prevent the same thing from happening, I am giving the Mound tendrils it can summon to disrupt ranged attackers. They aren't very strong, more of an annoyance than anything. And the chamber will be slowly filling with water during the fight, and when the fight ends the water starts flowing rapidly. I've specifically designed both of these to appear more dangerous than they actually are, so they should just raise the tension of the fight while only increasing the difficulty slightly.
If you are careful with creature selection, focusing fire shouldn't get out of hand. 5th Edition D&D is designed around combats that average 3 rounds in length. This game is also designed expecting player characters to hit their targets about 65% of the time. In the example Ginny gives, with five PCs facing an equal number of enemies, if we do the math, the game expects that about two turns of attacks, if they hit, will vanquish these monsters. Thusly, the party isn't incentivized to surround and all attack the same enemy while ignoring the rest of the enemies, double teaming such enemies will usually be sufficient. There are tactics to discourage crowding around monsters. As Ginny says, having other objectives, interactive elements in the environment, hazards, and cover can encourage characters to split up. Also, with melee focused monsters, engage multiple players characters so that they can't all move to surround one monster. Make occasional use of monsters with damage auras and death bursts. If the party is only fighting a single enemy then it makes sense that all the characters would team up to take that enemy down. Ginny doesn't mention Legendary Actions in this video, but Legendary Actions are huge. Wizards of the Coast has published some lower challenge rating Legendary Monsters, and the Dungeon Master's Guide has guidelines to build more of them. Not every fight needs to be predictable. It's fine if most of your combats are swingy. If the monster rolls like on initiative or fails it's save against the Fear spell and the fight is over, that's fine. Don't try to railroad encounters. Let the dice fall where they may. Let players get the quick, easy victory sometimes.
Something awesome my DM did for this was setting up a boss fight with a powerful enemy, and the terrain contained several "portals" that could be used to move around the area. The boss would use those to travel and attack the players, encouraging us to move around or ambush, and he also called minions that were previous minibosses or important NPCs we'd faced, so we knew how to take them down but they were still a powerful enough threat to stop us from focusing fire. It made a really memorable fight that was difficult without being frustrating.
I didn't know what to do about action economy, so what I did was give the big bad evil guy more turns. I would let the bad guy attack an additional time for every attack made against him. He still went down, but it was a lot tougher for the players, and they really enjoyed it. I don't know how to make that work rules as written.
One thing I discovered by accident is the usefulness of giving minions - but not the BBEG - pack tactics. Suddenly the PCs have a real incentive to kill off the supporting monsters first before focusing fire on the big bad. Even if it takes your party two rounds to kill off all the kobolds or thugs, that's two rounds they're not focusing on the boss.
I always make monsters group up as least a squad size, and having them a tatic every time, feels like you are trying to defeat player with lessen pawn, like a chess game when you have less peices than your opponent, it feels great and it gives player think about the tactic they are using.
Reactions are huge. Making up reaction skills for monsters can be fun. A slightly evil item I like to give town guards: "pouch of silencing dust" As a reaction to a target finishing casting a spell you may throw this pouch at the caster. Constitution save DC 13 or the caster is silenced for 1 minute. Anytime there is a leader of any sort, the ability to command the troops as a reaction is a given. Reactions to have a minion make a melee attack, move to the leader to protect them or run out of the room for a round and come back with 1d4 additional minions. Even standard reactions are good. Parry is always an option.
You know, I've been watching a few of this sort of video lately. But I've been gaming for a long time, so most of them it's just for entertainment really--I end up nodding sagely, or thinking "Well, this is kind of true but there's another layer you're not reaching"--but generally, just enjoying seeing other people who are having fun thinking about the same kinds of things my friends have been thinking about. This one is different. This is actually quite useful! I've thought about things along these lines, but in a more scattered way--this is a powerful approach that brings things together and simplifies how I can look at it. Good stuff. Incidentally, for more sophisticated enemies, I've noticed that the exact same enemy can be vastly different in how challenging it is, depending on how much I've thought about them. If I think about how they would fight, what kinds of tactics they would want to use, how they make use of their allies/minions if any, generally think of them as someone who wants to win a fight rather than just as Obstacle B with ability C, they become far more dangerous. In the language of this video, you get an opponent using whatever opportunities they can to maximize their action economy and disrupt that of the characters.
Wow, it's crazy how this lesson hit home for me just last week during our intense combat session with 7 players! I used to struggle big time trying to balance encounters, especially with online tools like Kobold. CR just goes out the window with a large group like that. This time, I decided to mix things up by throwing smaller encounters at them, but with enemies packing multiattacks - some even had up to three attacks! It was a game-changer. Instead of the usual 5-6 enemies with a single attack each, I introduced foes that were narratively and mechanically stronger. The result? It felt like I took the gloves off, unintentionally giving the party a run for their money. Such a simple adjustment, but it totally flipped the script!
Solasta Crown of the Magister taught me so much about setting up combat and action economy. I’ve begun implementing what I studied about that game in my own DMing and it’s made my combat so much more engaging.
Me & my gaming friends have always said, "The most dangerous monster, isn't necessarily the most POWERFUL one. It's the one that is played the SMARTEST."
This was incredibly helpful! I've been DMing for a couple years and this is the first time I seem to actually grasp the term Action Economy. lol. Thank you!
I recently ran a giant octopus fight for a 6th level party, should have been a walkover for them, but I teamed it up with a bunch of giant crabs who couldn't really inflict much damage, but had the annoying habit of grappling the PCs and dragging them off somewhere where they couldn't attack the main opponent.
another fun way to add a sense of pressure is to make an inherit time limit to something. If the players know they can win and are just waiting for those turns to happen it can be boring. For example, say your players stumble across a goblin cave. Inside this cave, have a loot goblin that clearly has valuable lootables poking out of his bag. He will leave the area within 5 turns, forcing your players to handle all of the combat and capture the loot goblin with a time frame providing a sense of urgency and accomplishment/ reward!
You know I think taking the action economy into account, one of the problems with the villain Strahd as a boss monster is that while he's definitely imposing and dangerous to low level players, he can be very easily overpowered at higher levels. Solutions that often get mentioned (short of homebrewing) is to be more attentive to Strahd's many unique abilities and to play Strahd more as a tactician than a straight up fighter. If the players are doing well against Strahd, he can use his mist form to escape deeper into the castle to heal up while the players have to try and quickly find him. Perhaps he can summon more of his army of vampire minions to add to the players, or use the threats and traps within his own castle to thwart the players. My personal favorite is if Strahd can successfully charm the strongest player (maybe another high level spellcaster) and get them to fight on his side...forcing the party to now contend with two spellcasters.
A little thing I like to do is not actually roll initiative for my monsters. I don’t think my players even realize. I take into consideration the dex of my monsters and then slip them in-between the players so it feels a little more like a round is happening all at once instead of all the players going in a big cluster. When they’re clustered, pulling off grand plans that don’t really seem possible in the time a round is supposed to be becomes easier than when an enemy acts between each step of their plan, potentially messing it up. If the PCs get really good initiative rolls, I do honor that. I’m not gonna insert monsters between multiple lvl 4 characters that get 18+ on their rolls. Likewise, I only have a monster start the fight if they all rolled particularly crappy.
I'll for sure have to borrow that multiplying after 2 rounds idea, I'm a huge fan of mini games that amplify difficulty if ignored. I had a similar encounter awhile back with a band of starving Gnolls, I had about 2 more than there were party members with each a bit weaker than a player, but with a secret that once one or more of them dies, any Gnolls within their movement that smells the blood will immediately attempt to cannibalize and if they gave them 2 turns to feast they'd be fully healed and evolve into wendigo like forms fueled by their gluttonous God. They thought it was funny at first, until 3 transformed at once and the threat level shot up exponentially. They lost a party member that fight cause a small member got dog piled under a corpse he wanted to use as cover and suffocated when no one noticed and the stacking weight overwhelmed him.
This video is great and I am going to link it to new DMs I see complaining about how CR isn't a magic formula for delivering instantly balanced perfectly challenging encounters they can just mindlessly read off of a stat block and roll dice at. Neat and clear explanations, smooth delivery, an explained as simply as possible. If someone is still completely clueless about why their monsters (or players) keep getting steamrolled after watching this they might seriously want to reconsider being a DM.
Best advice for this; If your monsters are outnumbered but still work out from a CR perspective, give them Legendary Actions. The book acts like only certain monsters should get them, but all monsters need them when they're outnumbered. I've put 3 vampiric mindflayers against 6 level 9 PCs and almost killed 2 players just by giving each mindflayer 1 legendary action to even out the action economy.
I love using reinforcements, especially if they let a fast weaker enemy escape or reach an alarm. Also useful is having an evil caster using villagers or captured soldiers as sacrifices to heal minions or cast powerful spells. This leads to players having to try and rescue people during the battle of have less people, if any, by the end. This could even lead to your players being shunned or banished from the village/kingdom because they allowed the wrong person to not only die, but survive and manipulate the population into thinking that you intentionally let the important person die.
Your videos are fun, creative and very informative, helping people to really think outside the box. I have been catching up on your videos and am loving every minute! Thank you for creating insightful and engaging content! I have struggled to read all of the DMs guide so having good and constructive content has been doing wonders. Your videos have been inspiring. Keep up the great work!
Good point! I actuality implemented that, without thinking of the term itself. Usually i try to add 1-2 small minions to a fight with a boss. This way, the rats for example can flank the wizard, giving him disadvantages. Or archers may focus their fire on the fighter, when he doesn't move. Last, when there are no minions, i try to give the monster / boss a environmental advantage. They know their home, right? So they might kick something over while moving (not using an extra action, but limit their movement) or they manipulate the world to their favor. Example: in shadowrun the bad guy shoot a fire extinguisher next to the party, to leave the room and get to a better position, which was a struggle in its own for my party!
I have a thing I use called "setpiece actions" which are kind of like lair actions but not tied to any specific enemy or even a lair. In my last session, there were 2 demigods fighting in the background as a dramatic setpiece for the action going on. Every round of combat their fight had some effect on the battlefield forcing my players to move around, potentially take damage or status effects. So they got to see their hard work in supporting their demigod pay off, without me playing against myself in the middle of their fight.
In our resent boss battle that led to us leveling up from level 6 to 7, our DM introduced neutral lair actions. That is to say that the lair wasn't controlled by or allied with the opponent (as fx a dragon's lair would be), but affected both sides equally. Lair actions became things like reversing gravity for a round (not only damaging the players but also majorly fucking up the majority of the opponents who were all relatively high level wizards) or removing a random magical effect of level 2 or lower. I feel like this is an amazing way of introducing unpredictability and challenge to an encounter, especially if you don't quite think your party is high enough level for a "proper" lair. For context I should probably add that our party's hp ranges from our barbarian who now at level 7 has 100+ hp to me, our cleric, who now at level 7 as 40, so balancing an encounter that is challenging to all but not deadly to some is a constant challenge for our dm
Very good thoughts. This understanding does indeed make combats more interesting, which in turn keeps your players more engaged. You learned this lesson way earlier in your gaming career than I did. :)
This is incredibly helpful. Remembering your legendary actions, lair actions, legendary resistances, minor minions, etc is very important
my variable action economy does exactly that, well said.
It's worth restating environmental effects and secondary objectives that aren't based on monsters directly here, like Ginny said. Apart from helping the action rhythm they also blur the beginning and ends of combat - and they give more things the players can't defeat through punching.
@@cameronlapp9306 Absolutely. Environments, traps, weather and complications are really important
What Ginny is expressing involves environment, goals, and strategy in any given encounter. D&D has this irritating habit of turning all combat into magnetic brawls in which everyone dukes it out until the victor stands, which is the easiest and laziest way to design a battle; it’s basic videogame logic which denies the true power an RPG can pose.
The problem being is that dynamism is difficult to design and execute in a way that represents game balance, when it’s story balance that should be considered, requiring attention and improvisation to keep matters interesting. It’s why I like designing encounters like character sheets, with Goals, Flaws, and Backgrounds (environments) for easy reference.
"The tension is gone"
That is always a good time for the DM to consider the bad guys running away or surrendering. They often die anyway trying to get away but its more satisfying for the PCs if they get to ace the last monster in free shots rather than waiting for their turns. Takes less time too.
Or just say “you kill the rest of the monsters with little difficulty.”
No slog. No muss. No fuss.
@@burgernthemomrailer I've used that with good success. My party was fighting its way through some corridors full of groups of monsters. When they dispatched the first group easily, I said "alright, you fight your way through several more groups of these and each the exit". The plot could go on!
This is probably one of the better pieces of DM advice I’ve seen - built in with excellent examples of problem and good encounters.
Small tip, if you get to a situation where a single enemy is left with no chance leaving the following fight to be a pointless slog, just have them surrender.
If they're an intelligent creature they probaly want to live and understand they can't win.
It can be a good source of RP and info for the party (also a really good way to help your players understand what's happening).
especially if they are not mad, desperate or except to be slaughtered on the spot
This is a very good tip and on many occasions I have done this, however I can also highly recommend the complete opposite to take the battle up to a new level.
Imagine you whittle the enemies down to a single man. He's battered, beaten and fatigued from the battle when he looks around and sees his mates dead all around him. He is seething with anger and hatred for our heroes and he leans against his sword, picks himself up and rages into one final charge as he scoops up a second sword, dropped by one of his fallen comrades. Give him an extra attack and give him advantage due to how enraged he is and give him the final blaze of glory he deserves with something like 10 additional hit points.
Point of order: This works just as well for the players if you are looking to help them avoid a TPK and they are down to the last man. Give them a final, epic surge to try and get them through the fight.
Just be prepared for the players to want to question that last enemy once they're out of combat.
Even if they are low intelligence they can still beg for their life or at least whine and cry which some players might pity them
@@jayoungr good roleplaying moments and could help them progress with secret information I like it
Love the inclusion of environmental effects and the region essentially getting a turn. I’m a huge fan of dynamic fields of combat, since players and GMs can use the effects to advantage their side (a fire can spread and cause damage to structures, smoke can cause blindness or stunned effects, and the whole place can be used to intentionally cause characters or monsters harm).
i'm primarily a Vampire the Masquerade player so take this suggestion with a grain of salt.
Within vampire there's a concept of "three and out" that is to say combat (or social combat, or any type of conflict) should generally be resolved within 3 turns. This keeps things going and prevents you from spending an entire session slogging through 10 rounds of combat that are only a minute in real time.
You could easily adapt this to D&D, have three rounds of combat, then re-contextualize. Some environmental hazard changes the landscape, enemies that are on the losing side surrender, run away or summon reinforcements. A boss relocates or disengages for a bit requireing some roleplay. Then if necessary you go into the second combat with a new context.
Of course i'm very much in the ' rip the system apart, homebrew what you like, hack and steal and improvise ' tribe of D&D. So YMMV.
Our DM utilized these tips last weekend, before this video came out. I can vouch these tips work. We were one attack away from a TPK.
I as a DM had the opposite side of this point in the last session. One of my PCs got a lucky break on the boss failing a save v. Stun 2 turns in a row.. This allowed the players to spend their free time healing the Barb from unconscious.
"A classic 2-player-switcharoo."
4:37 I was really hoping the response to this would've been something along the lines of "What do you mean? I have dark mode on"
Mild take: Players should be responsible for hosting and scheduling, not GMs. This promotes session engagement and delegates responsibility in a reasonable way. As a GM, it is extremely rare for me to host a game at my place. I’d much rather go to someone else’s place instead.
As a DM who has all the stuff, no thank you lol
I agree that it’s how it should be, but it’s never how it is, at least for me.
I’m the one who has the stuff and, in our group, the best circumstances for meeting up.
Tbh scheduling isn’t that insanely tricky for us, just because we have a small group, and we’re all happy to be missing a person
This is actually a really good advise, as DM I just make sure that the availability survey for the next session is created and answered, the rest of organization and logistic is left to my party.
I prefer not to make 3 trips to the car
Yes its very annoying to plan a campaign plus managing the game itself and taking care of a location to play and cleaning up after
I recently found out just how effective burrow speeds can be,
Because it's effectively a flying speed with cover
You can infiltrate the backlines quite easily
Making the party freak out as they have to deal with this enemy before it disappears again.
There many types of tactics enemy can use that makes them unavailable in other creatures turn.
As example: goblin on high ground. Stand up - shoot - lay down to get full cover.
I call this tactics "let's check if my player remember they have ready action"
@@Dima666Air my players did realise they had access to spells and abilities that allowed them to lock the creatures into place or bypass the cover,
So in their perspective the encounter was easier than expected,
However the encounter wasn't a threat at all on paper,
So the fact that the creatures managed to make them actively engage with the fight was a win already.
there's also a special kind of panic when a huge monster is burrowed as you scramble to get onto ground that it can't pop up under
Web
@@burgernthemomrailer There's counters to burrow speeds,
However, basically every counter to burrow speeds also counters fly speeds,
While most fly speed counters do not counter burrow speeds.
Everything is beatable, but some things moreso than others.
Overall, solid advice. Never allow a party to focus their fire. That's always a cakewalk recipe
I'm fond of spicing up a combat by adding motion. it provides the need for the players to spend actions on things other than just multiple attacks and flanking the bad guy. A chase scene across two speeding carriages has challenges and even "lair actions" of a sort. Likewise ye olde rooftop chase. The trick to both of these is to make sure a player doesn't get left behind or steal the scene (if they can fly, for example).
Completely agreed. Most movie action scenes involve chases and combat concurrently, which is why I discourage miniatures (or at most use them on a “moving” map based on distance for easy tracking).
How do you generally work around having a player who could "steal the scene"?
@@GestaltKirin You give them something specific to do. If a flying character can spoil a rooftop chase, for example, then there's a second bad guy going a different direction. They go be all superhero on that one while everyone else tackles the first guy. That way all the characters are important to the scene and the scene stealer gets to bask in how useful he/she was.
@@gbprime2353 That answers all my questions. Thanks so much for your insight
The same is true for players honestly in my opinion. If you want to make a character who turns up to fights and gets stuff done then all you really need to do is think about how you are going to use your Action, Bonus Action and Reaction on every turn if you can. It matters way more than trying to milk the max damage out of any specific thing, is a lot less gimmicky and generally just feels more fun imo. I play the game to interact with the world. If I get 3 ways to interact with the world every turn, best believe I'm gonna try to do all 3.
This is such a good idea! It feels like min-maxing but its not repetetive for anyone.
One of my favorite tricks for dealing with the players focusing fire is sacrificing an underling as a meat shield. This can be a devout kobold cultist throwing itself in front of a hit for its dragon master, or the orc warlord shoving his goblin underling into the path of a coming arrow. Can't use it all the time, but it's a fun one when it works, and can seriously screw with a parties established combat rhythm
A great spell to use for that is Life Transference. Let minion clerics sacrifice themselves to heal their leader
"Say it louder for the folks in the back!" This is such a useful video, great stuff! Also, I need that shirt!
Two things that help with action economy for big bads, Legendary Actions and Lair Actions. Think about it, you’re fighting an ancient blue dragon, he does multi attack to your fighter, some hit, some don’t. Your rogue backstabs the dragon. The dragon uses their legendary action to whip their tail at the rogue. Then the cleric goes and heals both the rogue and fighter. Then the lair action goes off, electrifying the floor, causing lightning damage to everyone touching the floor.
Here are some that I did:
Multiple monsters that are too overpowered for my players but once one was destroyed the other retreated, another was I had an enemy that would revive the other enemy’s, another was a witch that made the players fight each other
alternate work around: let the party dog pile but if they do it would allow the enemy to cast a spell that nukes the whole party in a pokemon-like counter effect
I do this and it made my players be more careful, strategic movement is making them have more fun and be more loyal to their role instead of dumping attacks
To add to the lair action idea, one of my old dms had legendary actions for important boss fights. These legendary actions usually manifested in a sort of special attack or buff that activated when the boss hit a certain hp threshold. It changed the flow of battle and made winning actually very dangerous sometimes. One of my characters nearly lost her construct pet just because it got caught in an ice explosion. Her pet nearly dying also got her angry enough to use her abilities to shift her rapier into a greatsword that split the boss in half.
Once in a while you do have to have smart enemies focus on the squishy characters. Mainly to keep them honest. Unusually large parties might be able to afford to assign a bodyguard, but I've only had that happen to my Wizard once in decades of playing. Wizards have defensive spells, and they should be scared into using those precious spell slots (and Actions) to cast them. The hardest combats are going to be the ones where the monsters get the party on the back foot. In a Boss+minions fight having the Boss engage the Fighter and the minions harass the other characters works well, as does having the minions mob the Fighter while the boss lobs stuff from the rear.
Something that I love doing if my players are cool with it, is letting the enemies fill in the places between player turns. My players roll there initiative stack and my monsters roll their's then we alternate between stacks. It's not super realistic, but my players loved it. They call it "hard mode"
That's really cool! There is an RPG system called the Cypher System with an alternating initiative mechanic that's a bit similar. The difference is that there's no initiative roll; the acting side (whichever side starts the conflict has initiative) has one person act, then initiative switches to the other side, back and forth until the round is over and it all resets for the next round. It works really well, and I'll bet it works just as well when applied to D&D. I can see why keeping initiative rolls involved would increase the difficulty, forcing the party to adapt to the play order they've rolled. Of course, the DM has to adapt to the monster's initiative order as well, so it's entirely fair.
That's basically how initiative works in Larian's Divinity, RPG system. Enemies and allies have an initiative score based on derived stats. The character with the highest initiative goes first, then the opposing character with the highest initiative on their team takes there turn and so on so forth.
I just roll individual initiatives for the NPCs. I've never found it that difficult to keep track of initiative order, spreadsheets are your friend.
Strahd has a legendary action that lets him do a move without provoking attacks. It sounds simple, but this turns him into a creature that is chump to a monster that can eat teir 4 parties.
Just giving a monster 2-3 extra move actions in a round can be insane
Thank you! After this weeks game, I was running through the "What Worked? What Didn't Work" and needing some better ways to do it. Right advice at the right time
I've totally fallen in the hole of just "add more monsters l" and still struggling to be a threat. Love this! Defd going to try these ideas. Helps a ton! Thank you?
What a great video - the clearest explanation of action economy - and what to do about it from a DM perspective - I've ever seen
I can't give over how awesome the pattern matching is on the button placket of your frog shirt, and the fabric is already amazing at that (also really good tips in the video, I'm just easily distracted by cool clothing/sewing details).
OMG - "In real life it isn't actually strategic to focus fire, because we are not bags of hit points that remain completely functional until the moment that we die." That was gold... no, that was platinum.
I just ended a campaign after retconning the old-semi-finale session because of a terrible action economy encounter.
Added 4 groups of minions, legendary actions, legendary resistances, and smartly used Banish on the high level NPC Paladin to take out the harder hitter (and not taking out PC).
Best encounter I’ve ever run, everyone thoroughly enjoyed the battle- including several players who’ve been playing over a decade.
Action economy is the key.
That World Anvil ad felt like a conversation with Ginny's niece/nephew during the holidays 😂
Great video! Also, legendary actions are a good way to deal with the action economy imbalance of players vs DM. It could be cool to see more legendary actions on lower levels bosses as well.
That's exactly what Legendary Actions (and Resistance) are for.
Something I never see mentioned: if you think that 3 legendary actions per round and 3 legendary resistances are too powerful at lower levels, there's no rule preventing you from changing those numbers. I once ran 2nd level characters against a pseudo-lich (basically a skeleton with boosted hit points and a few 1st level spells) and a few zombies, and I gave that boss monster 2 legendary actions per turn and 1 legendary resistance. It was just enough of an increase in the monsters' actions to make the fight a real threat. That worked better than I'd even hoped.
@@SingularityOrbit Spot on, I've done the same thing and it works wonders. Had a level 3 party fight a legendary version of a Wight with 2 Legendary Actions per turn and 2 Legendary Resistances, the first fight he beat them down hard (he also readied an action to coup de grace a fallen player if they didn't give him what he wanted...) but the second fight they had prepared for him and had a way to strip away those advantages -- made for a great set of encounters.
Great fun for me was running a dreadnaught construct whose only attack was an enormous 6 chambered magic gun. He could only fire on his turn when fully loaded, but could use a legendary action after every turn to chamber a magic shell.
This was fine in the intended scenario of the dreadnaught and two other baddies guarding an airship port. It became much worse when a lone PC attempted to steal an airship, got caught immediately, and then ropetricked into a pocket dimension for roughly 2 hours. Giving ample time for more threats to show up.
On his own, he is hardly even a boss. He is a bullet sponge with a devastating attack. But one on one, he takes several turns to fully load his cannon. But six versus six? He has got a chance every time his turn shows up. It was great fun having them quickly panic and try to kill weaklings to boost the action economy in their favor, and attempt to avoid his turn by disrupting his attack or hiding at the end of their turn. Especially since of how its designed mechanically, he becomes gradually weaker as the fight goes on. Starting as a very intimidating boss, and turning into a satisfying victory as he becomes too sluggish to output damage.
The #1 trick I found to improve combat was to give each creature a name and basic personality (eg. Gorg the Orc - afraid of fire) or create a swarm with multiple attacks and legandary actions that scale up/down with their hitpoints. Then for boss monsters they should have a aim and create a dilemma for the PCs. I've had monsters who's lair action was trying a divine intervention that got eaiser for them the more damage they took, or mixing and matching abilities like combining the 'invisible in water' ability of a water weird with a Aboleth in a sewer fight making the disease especially scary. Though my fav was my BBEG Ravenloft game where Strahd and Vecna ended up having to flee a horde of Nothics....because while they could easily kill them, every single nothic had the 'weird insight' ability and was using it to steal embarissing secrets and TELL THEM TO EVERYONE... Which was both super fun for the players to make them up on the spot, but terrifying for the PCs.
Current party is in the middle of fighting a giant earth elemental in an ancient caven with floating rock platforms and the entire ceiling engraved with magic runes that causes wild magic surges on any character that casts a spell. Sends a wave of panic through the wizard who thinks he's safe out of melee range.
Possibly your funniest sponsorship yet!
One thought on using environmental effects - if you can, try to include a way for any player (mage or mundane) to mitigate or solve those problems.
For example, in the last month, three of my games featured combat arenas that caught fire. It certainly upped the stakes, but at low levels and without Create Water spells, we ended up just focusing fire on the enemies as usual while the arena burned. I don’t blame the DM for not thinking creatively *for us*, but without a source of water in the arenas, each one felt a little inevitable to try and fight.
Haha, I would focus fire as a DM for sure; I played it like a miniature game by targeting the most impactful character that would be the most efficient at defeating the party. It caused problems in my party at first for sure, the players had trouble predicting the monsters' actions and often a couple of them would go down.... Eventually they got wise to it and built their tactics around reviving and healing people. I realize now I should have just told them... that would have helped them right off the start. Also, I love some of the ideas that you suggest... multiple monsters that leave when the leader dies, and having different objectives is also quite a great idea. Thanks!
I would argue that in real life, focusing fire can be quite effective. When attacked by multiple people, defend against both, but disabling one will make things much easier for you. This is also true at the strategic level as well, for example the Allies in WWII deciding to focus on Europe and not Europe and Japan at the same time.
Like for an appropriate shirt for a wednesday, my dudes.
Полигранник детектед (шанс того что эта шутка выстрелит 1 к 200)
I want that shirt.
But…it’s not pink?
@@jackbubblegum lol, I understood that reference. The frog meme is newer.
Today's Wednesday!
Thank you for this. Big validation and helps to know I'm heading in a good direction as a DM 👏🏾
That's a thumbnail straight out of Avatar :D Sokka got the shrooms!
As a counter-argument - one of degree, not of direction - my friends have spent the last 40 years laughing about our high-school DM’s ‘Rommel orcs’: second-level chaotic thugs who apparently spent their whole lives studying tactics under Field Marshal Rommel.
If we tried to sneak past, they had sentries. If we tried to snipe the sentries, they had roving guards checking status. If we tried illusion, they had rotating passwords. At the first hint of trouble, multiple runners would head off for reinforcements (which came in stages). If we tried a fienting attack, they doubled the guard at all other positions. If we tried to provide cover fire, they had high ground already sighted in on any position we took.
The only option we ever got was to make a frontal attack, then hew down wave after wave of fresh, well-disciplined troops like a Frazetta painting.
The same thing happened in dungeons. There was exactly one encounter, with every creature - sentient or not - coming at us as a single coordinated force. If we didn’t die outright, we could then stroll through the rooms picking up treasure, because there wasn’t a living or undead thing left within a mile.
when i first clicked the video i was thinking "oh, she's obviously going to say improv duh", then you went "action economy xD", and i was "...oh, yeah, that's more intelligent" kkkkkkkk
great vid.
This was a really great video! I would also add for BBEGs I've done "Shadow of Colossus" style combat which has worked out really well every time I've tried it. Basically, each area of the monster attacks on a different initiative (head, legs, wings, tail, etc). Each part of the monster also has its own AC and hit point block. So players can call their shots to take out a dragons wing or leg in order to lessen the effect of an attack or a decrease the monsters movement or just decide to generally hit the monster. It makes them feel like each shot matters and they can see the effects of their attacks more quickly and feel like progress is being made than just whenever the monster is defeated.
By tweaking the action economy you can also create larger epic fights at just about any level. This goes in the other direction and has you using more opponents but gives you a narrative for why they aren't all attacking the PCs every single round.
How does it work? The opponents are using pack tactics. You have about a third of them attacking on any given round while the rest are either keeping their distance or focused on defense. This works with literal packs of animals but also with knights on horses who charge the PC group and thunder past before wheeling about and attacking again a couple rounds later. If any foes get seriously wounded, they're sidelined and let others attack. Once the pack no longer feels like it can attack effectively they retreat and the PCs win.
This works best with theatre of the mind combat. You can probably make some version of this work on a battlemat but in practical terms you're going to be fighting the movement mechanics the whole time.
One mechanic I am planning to implement to an undead island I am creating is the undead can only really be killed if all of them are dead at the same time, or they revive eachother.
The first time this shows up will be a few beefy ghouls but then it will lead to a necromancer that is being shielded by some undead mages. By taking out the mages you can hit the necromancer but you have to try and do so with all of his undead army rising again once every so often. (Hitting him with the shield down will stop him for a couple of turns)
This should hopefully make for something cool that feels like a necromancer putting out an endless horde until defeated, and making it less of “oh there goes the skeleton cannon fodder now lets kill this guy”
I am trying to make sure this also doesn’t come out grindy either by making it so the mages defending him don’t really have any hit points and just die guaranteed, but the difficulty being working around that tactic with the necromancer trying to harass you.
Sounds like a fireball or any aoe damage spell will cheese that last encounter
3:28 whaaaaaaat. That is an overly soft-on-the-players viewpoint It is 100% fair and reasonable for intelligent hostiles to try to take out a specific target first. If you didn't organize your formation to protect your squishy friends, that's on you.
honestly this is a good way to think about running a lot of other games, even ones without a similar action economy like games that go back and forth between players and gms (one turn each) or games that are powered by the apocalypse where the gm doesn't even technically have turns, just set ups and reactions to either failing a roll or ignoring a set up. I like it! Fleeing minions/mobs after a boss is defeated, diversified objectives, and dynamic locations are all good ideas generally.
I recently started playing Pokémon games and this is literally just Pokemon fights and status conditions
Things like status effects lower your action economy in pokemon- you lose a turn from being asleep for example or lose a turn from having to heal a status effect.
I wonder if status effects could be used similarly in dnd action economy
Using a hex map: The Beast has 6 tentacles , legs , eyes, and mouths . It has 3 attack types Hit, Grapple [ with reach ] , and Chew . Each side of the beast has an eye , tentacle , and mouth so it can not be flanked or suffer disadvantage . Older Beasts have tuffer hides . As a boss it can be a night mare .
a lot of my friends i play with have been asking me to DM, but while i feel really confident about world building and making stories fun for them all, balancing combat has always mystified me a little! i always felt like something vital was missing from my understanding, and it turns out it was this. everything is clicking into place! this makes me so much less nervous to DM, thank you so much!!! a great video with really helpful examples :)
That actually was a very entertaining ad read! And you are the reason I've been using World Anvil for about a year, thanks!
Some excellent advice here, as usual. Something I do in my game (home-brew 5e/OSR hybrid) to help with action economy is to divide attacks across the round. If an Elf archer has two attacks, he takes one at the start of his turn and one AFTER everyone else has taken an action. Or put another way, one attack at the top and one attack at the bottom of their turn. This applies to the bad guys as well. If a BB has four attacks, rather than waiting for ALL the PCs to dog pile them, I allow the boss to make attacks in between them. As I use group initiative, this makes the division pretty easy. Yes, this requires me to juggle a lot of stuff, but it makes the combat way more exciting.
Minions are a good thing, but normally if I have one big bad boss fight I will come up with clever themed Legendary actions to give that big bad boss that add flavor and danger to the fight.
As DM you aren't limited to what the Monster manual says. Always leave the Players Guessing, but all the other stuff mentioned in this video is super solid. Great Advice
Used this myself, had an ability for my BBEG in a one-shot that doubled his actions but forced him to then use similar actions only (Was a posessed jail captain, so it could use the posessors magic, or the knights strength) and it made things so exciting for players cause they were subverted by the initial low roll for the initiative just to find out that they get double the actions at that point...
Honestly it was my first ever D&D DM experience and I am so glad that there wasn't any negative feedback, then again we were all pretty much new to it so that could have been why, cant critique something that you dont know exists...
Glad you brought up lair actions!
Another thing that can help action economy, especially for monolithic bosses, is to go a little off script and upgrade their actions to be more effect-dense. Not necessarily more damage, but add additional complications or control effects that reduce player action viability. (Though do be careful with control effects that stun/disable. It's zero fun for the player.)
Like, maybe the enemy wizard's lightning shocks the players into Fortitude saves to avoid dropping their weapons, or a huge monster bats the players out of position with heavy shoves that come with its attacks.
I love those advices. Thank you Ginny DM.
Also your eye makeup is just wow.
I get to DM for a group in one of my classes (we're doing a dnd mini-unit) and this video is really helpful as I have no experience DMing, and my teacher kinda just said "you can do the combat balancing for your group I trust you." So this will take a lot of the weight off my shoulders, and also probably impress my teacher. Thank you so much for this love your content! 💖🧚♀️✨
Thanks. Side note on ganging up on a single party member. Depending on the inteligence of the monsters it can be FUN for them to focus fire on the tanks. It leads to the following effects: 1. The player start feeling the danger of the action economy tipping to the monsters side. 2. The character have a chance to shine in what they are made for. 3. The shock when the glasscanon realizes, that this round would have just obliterated them.
p.s.: For me realizing that the DM is deliberately spreading the damage across the party is often more of a downer than monsters fokusing on what is right in front of them.
This is definitely good advice, and solidifies by the end what I was thinking: unless there is an absolutely huge disparity in level between the monster and the party level, solo monsters really need legendary actions. They exist to even out action economy, letting monsters at the very least get more turns before they go down.
One little hint hidden in there is using invisibility as a way of getting the PCs to switch targets. IMHO this is a fantastic use of invisibility (or burrowing, etc...). One that I've seen be completely anti-fun is to have the ONLY enemy or ALL the enemies simultaneously disappear for 1-2 rounds, which just leaves the PCs to stand around waiting for them to show up again.
I had a game where this happened twice in the same battle, which totally nerfed the party's two barbarians who wasted their rage.
I like the joke about working really hard on a clever sponsor skit so that we dont wanna skip them cause, idk about others, but it 100% works on me
Superb video, am definitely taking Ginny’s advice when I prep my next session.
I actually kinda had two of these suggestions lined up for a Curse of Strahd campaign I'm running soon. It will be my second time running the Death House. The first time I ran it, I had a party of 6 lvl2 adventurers. On the final encounter against the Shambling Mound, the Cleric did go down a couple of times, so I can't say it was "easy" for the players, but it also kinda was. The Paladin, Barbarian, and Monk wailed on it up close, while the Artificer and Ranger took shots at it while staying safely out of its range.
This time I'm starting the players at lvl 3, because I think it's more fun. So to prevent the same thing from happening, I am giving the Mound tendrils it can summon to disrupt ranged attackers. They aren't very strong, more of an annoyance than anything. And the chamber will be slowly filling with water during the fight, and when the fight ends the water starts flowing rapidly. I've specifically designed both of these to appear more dangerous than they actually are, so they should just raise the tension of the fight while only increasing the difficulty slightly.
Superb. I’ve seen a number of these tips around UA-cam, Reddit, etc., but never so carefully detailed and explained!
If you are careful with creature selection, focusing fire shouldn't get out of hand.
5th Edition D&D is designed around combats that average 3 rounds in length. This game is also designed expecting player characters to hit their targets about 65% of the time. In the example Ginny gives, with five PCs facing an equal number of enemies, if we do the math, the game expects that about two turns of attacks, if they hit, will vanquish these monsters. Thusly, the party isn't incentivized to surround and all attack the same enemy while ignoring the rest of the enemies, double teaming such enemies will usually be sufficient.
There are tactics to discourage crowding around monsters. As Ginny says, having other objectives, interactive elements in the environment, hazards, and cover can encourage characters to split up. Also, with melee focused monsters, engage multiple players characters so that they can't all move to surround one monster. Make occasional use of monsters with damage auras and death bursts.
If the party is only fighting a single enemy then it makes sense that all the characters would team up to take that enemy down.
Ginny doesn't mention Legendary Actions in this video, but Legendary Actions are huge. Wizards of the Coast has published some lower challenge rating Legendary Monsters, and the Dungeon Master's Guide has guidelines to build more of them.
Not every fight needs to be predictable. It's fine if most of your combats are swingy. If the monster rolls like on initiative or fails it's save against the Fear spell and the fight is over, that's fine. Don't try to railroad encounters. Let the dice fall where they may. Let players get the quick, easy victory sometimes.
Thank you! You didn't make this discussion complicated. I will be listening and taking notes.
Something awesome my DM did for this was setting up a boss fight with a powerful enemy, and the terrain contained several "portals" that could be used to move around the area. The boss would use those to travel and attack the players, encouraging us to move around or ambush, and he also called minions that were previous minibosses or important NPCs we'd faced, so we knew how to take them down but they were still a powerful enough threat to stop us from focusing fire. It made a really memorable fight that was difficult without being frustrating.
I didn't know what to do about action economy, so what I did was give the big bad evil guy more turns. I would let the bad guy attack an additional time for every attack made against him. He still went down, but it was a lot tougher for the players, and they really enjoyed it. I don't know how to make that work rules as written.
One thing I discovered by accident is the usefulness of giving minions - but not the BBEG - pack tactics. Suddenly the PCs have a real incentive to kill off the supporting monsters first before focusing fire on the big bad. Even if it takes your party two rounds to kill off all the kobolds or thugs, that's two rounds they're not focusing on the boss.
Hands down the best dm advice you have ever given!
As a brand new DM about to start my first campaign, this was very helpful! thank you!
I always make monsters group up as least a squad size, and having them a tatic every time, feels like you are trying to defeat player with lessen pawn, like a chess game when you have less peices than your opponent, it feels great and it gives player think about the tactic they are using.
Came for the GM tips, stayed for the commercial. Definitely worth a follow! Loved the GM tip as well
Reactions are huge. Making up reaction skills for monsters can be fun. A slightly evil item I like to give town guards: "pouch of silencing dust" As a reaction to a target finishing casting a spell you may throw this pouch at the caster. Constitution save DC 13 or the caster is silenced for 1 minute.
Anytime there is a leader of any sort, the ability to command the troops as a reaction is a given. Reactions to have a minion make a melee attack, move to the leader to protect them or run out of the room for a round and come back with 1d4 additional minions.
Even standard reactions are good. Parry is always an option.
You know, I've been watching a few of this sort of video lately. But I've been gaming for a long time, so most of them it's just for entertainment really--I end up nodding sagely, or thinking "Well, this is kind of true but there's another layer you're not reaching"--but generally, just enjoying seeing other people who are having fun thinking about the same kinds of things my friends have been thinking about.
This one is different. This is actually quite useful! I've thought about things along these lines, but in a more scattered way--this is a powerful approach that brings things together and simplifies how I can look at it. Good stuff.
Incidentally, for more sophisticated enemies, I've noticed that the exact same enemy can be vastly different in how challenging it is, depending on how much I've thought about them. If I think about how they would fight, what kinds of tactics they would want to use, how they make use of their allies/minions if any, generally think of them as someone who wants to win a fight rather than just as Obstacle B with ability C, they become far more dangerous. In the language of this video, you get an opponent using whatever opportunities they can to maximize their action economy and disrupt that of the characters.
This video is a reminder that Ginny is a national treasure that must be protected at all times.
cute ad =) And, YES TO EVERYTHING IN THE MAIN VIDEO!! ACTION ECONOMY OMG!!!!
Wow, it's crazy how this lesson hit home for me just last week during our intense combat session with 7 players! I used to struggle big time trying to balance encounters, especially with online tools like Kobold. CR just goes out the window with a large group like that. This time, I decided to mix things up by throwing smaller encounters at them, but with enemies packing multiattacks - some even had up to three attacks! It was a game-changer. Instead of the usual 5-6 enemies with a single attack each, I introduced foes that were narratively and mechanically stronger. The result? It felt like I took the gloves off, unintentionally giving the party a run for their money. Such a simple adjustment, but it totally flipped the script!
Solasta Crown of the Magister taught me so much about setting up combat and action economy. I’ve begun implementing what I studied about that game in my own DMing and it’s made my combat so much more engaging.
Me & my gaming friends have always said, "The most dangerous monster, isn't necessarily the most POWERFUL one. It's the one that is played the SMARTEST."
Great ideas. I even love the sponsorship skits. I always skip over them on other UA-camrs but always watch and enjoy yours.
This was incredibly helpful! I've been DMing for a couple years and this is the first time I seem to actually grasp the term Action Economy. lol. Thank you!
I appreciate the creative ad break. Well done.
Of course Hacker-Ginny was ineffective
She did not even wear sunglasses :O
I recently ran a giant octopus fight for a 6th level party, should have been a walkover for them, but I teamed it up with a bunch of giant crabs who couldn't really inflict much damage, but had the annoying habit of grappling the PCs and dragging them off somewhere where they couldn't attack the main opponent.
another fun way to add a sense of pressure is to make an inherit time limit to something. If the players know they can win and are just waiting for those turns to happen it can be boring. For example, say your players stumble across a goblin cave. Inside this cave, have a loot goblin that clearly has valuable lootables poking out of his bag. He will leave the area within 5 turns, forcing your players to handle all of the combat and capture the loot goblin with a time frame providing a sense of urgency and accomplishment/ reward!
All of your ads are entertaining so I watch them which I normally don’t do with UA-camrs
You know I think taking the action economy into account, one of the problems with the villain Strahd as a boss monster is that while he's definitely imposing and dangerous to low level players, he can be very easily overpowered at higher levels. Solutions that often get mentioned (short of homebrewing) is to be more attentive to Strahd's many unique abilities and to play Strahd more as a tactician than a straight up fighter. If the players are doing well against Strahd, he can use his mist form to escape deeper into the castle to heal up while the players have to try and quickly find him. Perhaps he can summon more of his army of vampire minions to add to the players, or use the threats and traps within his own castle to thwart the players. My personal favorite is if Strahd can successfully charm the strongest player (maybe another high level spellcaster) and get them to fight on his side...forcing the party to now contend with two spellcasters.
A little thing I like to do is not actually roll initiative for my monsters. I don’t think my players even realize. I take into consideration the dex of my monsters and then slip them in-between the players so it feels a little more like a round is happening all at once instead of all the players going in a big cluster. When they’re clustered, pulling off grand plans that don’t really seem possible in the time a round is supposed to be becomes easier than when an enemy acts between each step of their plan, potentially messing it up.
If the PCs get really good initiative rolls, I do honor that. I’m not gonna insert monsters between multiple lvl 4 characters that get 18+ on their rolls. Likewise, I only have a monster start the fight if they all rolled particularly crappy.
Wow this is really helpful, I always knew one big bad was bad action economy but this helps me actually understand what I need to do.
I'll for sure have to borrow that multiplying after 2 rounds idea, I'm a huge fan of mini games that amplify difficulty if ignored. I had a similar encounter awhile back with a band of starving Gnolls, I had about 2 more than there were party members with each a bit weaker than a player, but with a secret that once one or more of them dies, any Gnolls within their movement that smells the blood will immediately attempt to cannibalize and if they gave them 2 turns to feast they'd be fully healed and evolve into wendigo like forms fueled by their gluttonous God. They thought it was funny at first, until 3 transformed at once and the threat level shot up exponentially. They lost a party member that fight cause a small member got dog piled under a corpse he wanted to use as cover and suffocated when no one noticed and the stacking weight overwhelmed him.
This video is great and I am going to link it to new DMs I see complaining about how CR isn't a magic formula for delivering instantly balanced perfectly challenging encounters they can just mindlessly read off of a stat block and roll dice at. Neat and clear explanations, smooth delivery, an explained as simply as possible. If someone is still completely clueless about why their monsters (or players) keep getting steamrolled after watching this they might seriously want to reconsider being a DM.
Best advice for this; If your monsters are outnumbered but still work out from a CR perspective, give them Legendary Actions. The book acts like only certain monsters should get them, but all monsters need them when they're outnumbered. I've put 3 vampiric mindflayers against 6 level 9 PCs and almost killed 2 players just by giving each mindflayer 1 legendary action to even out the action economy.
I love using reinforcements, especially if they let a fast weaker enemy escape or reach an alarm. Also useful is having an evil caster using villagers or captured soldiers as sacrifices to heal minions or cast powerful spells. This leads to players having to try and rescue people during the battle of have less people, if any, by the end. This could even lead to your players being shunned or banished from the village/kingdom because they allowed the wrong person to not only die, but survive and manipulate the population into thinking that you intentionally let the important person die.
you always drop videos like this right when i need them?? thank you!! this was very helpful :)
I've heard the topic before, but this is a well-rounded, thoughtful, detailed essay about it.
Only sponsored ad I’ve ever watched, you did a good job with it.
Your videos are fun, creative and very informative, helping people to really think outside the box. I have been catching up on your videos and am loving every minute! Thank you for creating insightful and engaging content! I have struggled to read all of the DMs guide so having good and constructive content has been doing wonders. Your videos have been inspiring. Keep up the great work!
Good point! I actuality implemented that, without thinking of the term itself. Usually i try to add 1-2 small minions to a fight with a boss. This way, the rats for example can flank the wizard, giving him disadvantages. Or archers may focus their fire on the fighter, when he doesn't move.
Last, when there are no minions, i try to give the monster / boss a environmental advantage. They know their home, right? So they might kick something over while moving (not using an extra action, but limit their movement) or they manipulate the world to their favor. Example: in shadowrun the bad guy shoot a fire extinguisher next to the party, to leave the room and get to a better position, which was a struggle in its own for my party!
As the forever DM of 8 years, the craft is never complete. Thanks for the tips!
I have a thing I use called "setpiece actions" which are kind of like lair actions but not tied to any specific enemy or even a lair. In my last session, there were 2 demigods fighting in the background as a dramatic setpiece for the action going on. Every round of combat their fight had some effect on the battlefield forcing my players to move around, potentially take damage or status effects. So they got to see their hard work in supporting their demigod pay off, without me playing against myself in the middle of their fight.
Our DM, wishing to challenge us, brought a Marilith, which has reactive, but it was a boss and he gave it 3 Legendary Actions. It was Brutal.
In our resent boss battle that led to us leveling up from level 6 to 7, our DM introduced neutral lair actions. That is to say that the lair wasn't controlled by or allied with the opponent (as fx a dragon's lair would be), but affected both sides equally. Lair actions became things like reversing gravity for a round (not only damaging the players but also majorly fucking up the majority of the opponents who were all relatively high level wizards) or removing a random magical effect of level 2 or lower.
I feel like this is an amazing way of introducing unpredictability and challenge to an encounter, especially if you don't quite think your party is high enough level for a "proper" lair.
For context I should probably add that our party's hp ranges from our barbarian who now at level 7 has 100+ hp to me, our cleric, who now at level 7 as 40, so balancing an encounter that is challenging to all but not deadly to some is a constant challenge for our dm
your ads are always a joy to watch, probably the only ads I never skip
Very good thoughts. This understanding does indeed make combats more interesting, which in turn keeps your players more engaged. You learned this lesson way earlier in your gaming career than I did. :)