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I once had a hill giant come screaming out of the woods for help, running towards the party. The party readied themselves for a fight but didn't attack first. The giant grabbed the closest person and ran back into the forest. The party gave chase to find the giant shoving the party member toward a female Ogre that was giving birth. Made for an interesting set of skill checks.
You should ABSOLUTELY put a Shambling Mound in the desert - it's now a cluster of cactuses with a heavy mass buried underneath the dirt. Its slams deal piercing damage, and it leaves irritating thorns in anyone it hits.
There are as many types of wars as there are reasons for those wars. What you speak of is an _Extinction war,_ last time somebody tried that we demonized the entire faction and their country to an extent.
Yeah, the "balance" calculators always seem very weak vs my 5E group. I have to set everything to Deadly as a starting point if I want it to be taken seriously.
@@mikeb.1705 Here's a suggestion, enforce the PC Ability Score Array. If that's still too much power (racial bonuses _are_ getting crazy), use the NPC Ability Score Array (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8)
Like one of my favorite songs says, "If you're bored, then you're boring." I often feel like most of the problems players (and that includes DM's) have with the game's combat system stem from uncreative play. When it feels like "roll the dice, do damage, next..." all the time, it's not the rules, but their execution. Much of the game is intentionally bare bones, no matter the edition, and it's this way because it is a game of the *imagination* -- so the more the group puts into it, the more enjoyment they get out of it.
This only works in the short term. Once you start creating more imaginative solutions, you'll inevitably set a precedent for what and how things work. And 5e's rules framework is so bare bones that it doesn't support creative solutions much at all. Say one of your players wants to intimidate the enemy in combat, something 5e's rules have no basis for. Here's a list of questions off the top of my head you now have to answer: - What's the mechanical function? Is it a set DC, a contested check or something else? Does it use an action or a bonus action? - What's the effect, and how does it work? Presumably that the enemy becomes frightened. But for how long? One round? Until they break sight? Is there a save to be made? - A boatload of other miscellaneous questions: how does it balance out in the long term? What things factor into it? Can you intimidate only certain enemies, or is it dictated by condition immunities? What should the range be? Does the enemy need to understand you? What other factors might play into it, like light conditions or spells? That's just one example. Another classic one is players wishing to cut off limbs of creatures in combat, or target specific parts of their bodies like eyes or legs. How would that work? Stuff like that isn't covered by the base rules at all, and trying to create systems for them is you doing the job WOTC should have done.
@@bartholen Actually, creativity is required to fill in all the gaps where either the rules as written don't cover a situation or the DM/group doesn't know/like the applicable rule. That is the foundation of the ttrpg. For example, there are rules in 5e for morale in combat, and they can easily be activated by a creative application of an intimidation check. On the other hand, in D&D there's no official "called shot" to hit a specific body location , but a common rule of DM's is to either increase the effective AC for that attack, or impose disadvantage, or some combination of the two. And this solution combines the extant rules with a creative approach. In fact, imo it's impossible to be a good DM or player without a combination of rules knowledge and creativity, whether or not the RAW cover every possible situation, which inevitably they never do, regardless of system. As I said, that's fundamental to every rpg I've ever seen. The rules are the starting point, not the entire Universe. Not that I'm defending WOTC or any other producer. But the rulebooks are not the ultimate answer. The brains of those playing the game are. That's why (and how) we play interactive rpg's with other people and not just crpg's or cyoa's with limited choices and outcomes.
@@MemphiStig But that framing only works for rules light systems, which 5e is not by any stretch of the imagination. Players will expect concrete, tangible effects for their more creative approaches, and will inevitably start trying to game the system. Bonuses are so easy to stack in 5e that raising AC is basically just tempting them to reach higher. That won't happen in every case, but in a system with as much detail as 5e players will expect a certain verisimilitude to translate to game mechanics. Like say if you allowed players to target the eyes of creatures. Well, naturally it would follow that if you damage the eyes of a creature enough, they'd become permanently blinded. Which is a gigantic boost to the party's combat effectiveness for potentially no resources expended due to how blindness works in 5e. That is what you have to start balancing everything around, which is a never-ending rabbit hole.
@@bartholen Actually, that "framing" as you call it comes from the *entire* history of D&D, which is by no means rules light in any popular edition. But it's the DM who provides the consistency the players depend on, whether that's RAW or homebrew, a simple procedure or a complex table, etc. It sounds like what you want is a set of answers for every situation so there is no conflict or misunderstanding, and all I can say is good luck. That's what we've all been dealing with for the past 50 years, and what I said earlier is exactly how it's been resolved at the table by countless satisfied gamers for the majority of that time. If you have other needs or ideas, that's fine. I'm just telling you what I know works from long experience. You might however look into truly rules heavy games, like Rolemaster or D&D 3e or Pathfinder or GURPS, or try to find Gygax's first post TSR game system, Dangerous Journeys. One of those might be deep enough for you, but you may spend years learning the rules. True, 5e has a lot of rules, true, but it's not nearly as heavy as you might think, and most people haven't read the whole DMG anyway. But as I said, no version of D&D is light, tho you can certainly strip it down as much as you like (it says so in the books). Still, if you want more comprehensive rules, they're out there and you're welcome to add them to whatever game you like or play however and whatever works for you. All I know, after 40 something years of playing, is that *to* *me* less is truly more, and it helps my game go smoother to depend more on basic principles and good judgment than tons of situation-specific rules, but ymmv. Game on!
Just found this on my video recommendations, and as a bonus action I clicked out of curiosity, but then I failed the Saving Throw against your charm and stayed because you captivated my attention! Very well done sir! As a reaction, I subscribed immediately,
I remember my very first D&D adventure (AD&D), an hour to create the character and 15 minutes game player - dead. My cousin was DMing and he held the philosophy of it is up to the players to figure out if their characters can take on a monster. If there's a Hill Giant in the area as a random encounter, the party of level 1 characters need to decide if they can take that on or run away. I learned later that some groups of players think any creature encounter on the board means attack it and never run away. I've been learning over the years, with confirmation from videos like this, articles, books, ect. How to vary the challenge and encounter. To have some easy encounters, some med-level challenges, harder ones and the Boss fights. and sometimes, the dice tell the story. I recently ran a session where the party, due to some side quests they wanted to do, are two levels above the main campaign. All I did was add 1 creature more to the encounter of the same type and that nearly wiped a character. Other times, that seemingly "balanced" encounter is still too difficult.
I just throw a bunch of things together that I think will be fun to fight. Sometimes they steamroll it, sometimes they struggle to defeat four skeletons because they don't have a bludgeoning weapon. The only fight I have ever made so unfair was the one where the dmpc healer/buff went down first, and the party chose to stand under a moon beam and let him bleed out, instead of moving out and helping him up. That and all the magical items that definitely would have helped them, but they refuse to use any.
One of the best encounter building systems I've ever found was the Giffyglyph Monster Maker. It has the fun of just picking the monster you want to use, while also having enough internal balance that you honestly don't even have to think about it. It's definitely not a system for DMs who just want to plug and play stat blocks as it is very much a homebrew only system where you're gonna be making up the monsters every week, but I think it is a tool everyone should consider. It won't burn you out trying to get your XP budgets perfect and makes it very simple with a sort of Threat Budget system that is very straight forward and won't get in the way of putting in whatever monster you want. So much better than the official CR system, though there are rough CR conversions it gives. All around a great tool. I use it every combat and they have vastly improved due to it! So great to just find some art, plop it into the VTT to use as a token, and not have to worry about "oh is this balanced?" because the GGMM does all the heavy lifting for me so I can focus on the story, narration, and tension aspects of the fight.
Campaign 1, Adventure 1, Chapter 1: Encounter with an Ancient Red Dragon is a real thing. The level 1 characters aren't alone, they're traveling In a caravan with dozens of NPCs including future antagonists. They're not supposed to defeat the dragon (yet), just establish the world survive and collect plot hooks, but a tpk is possible if they're dumb. One goal is to establish I'll give them anything at any time so they can't ever assume encounters are survivable if they rush in headless.
@@shortreststudios Doing Rule of 3s surviving a dragon encounter is the first step with those NPC antagonists that are well-known and idolized in the game world. The tension builds steadily as it's step by step revealed how evil and involved with the bigger arc they are, as well as total jerks to regular people and the players for no reason they're just the kind of celebrities that don't care about anyone but themselves. Step 2 arrives at mid-level and players now improved in power get excited to save a place they like by finally having a showdown with the antagonists... who don't remember the players. At all. Not from the dragon, not the other run-ins, only.. who ARE you? All this is to say where's the video about subverting expectations i.e. being chaotic evil to players for personal amusement? 😁 Or maybe it's making the talkie bits turned into session stories as much as the combat. Step 1 players are weaker and need the antagonists to save them from a dragon, Step 2 is a draw neither can claim victory (and you've never seen players so invested as when the big bad they've been working to foil all this time doesn't even know it's them doing it). Those setting up Step 3 near the end of the campaign which is the real showdown where the antagonists get their come-uppance; impoverished and disgraced in the public eye as a fate worse than death is a possibility.
This is so perfect, I’m running a dungeon now with an artistic interpretation of Tucker’s Kobolds! I’m uh, not sure how far my players are gonna make it lol.
Glad the Algorithm placed your video in my path! To add on to your commentary on balance and CR, extending that outlook to the idea of symmetry is also good! Too many fights are designed around symmetry: the battlefield is mostly a featureless plain with even terrain features throughout; the enemies' motivation is the same as the players (kill everyone); and the power availability of "toys" in the scene (like siege weapons, traps, etc.) It can really help to start messing with that symmetry! Like you cited from Tucker's Kobolds, otherwise weak enemies with access to traps and other terrain features starts to shift that symmetry. Conversely, having the players face powerful foes but giving them access to a big siege ballista they can use to weak it helps mix things up!
Yeah, I’ve discussed some of these ideas in some other videos, and there are tons of others by other creators as well. Changing the landscape, adding features, etc. brings a lot of variety and depth to what the players and monsters can do.
Thanks for an awesome video! This can't be said enough. The most fun I have as a DM is when I get to make/tweak monsters to fit the setting or vibes. I am about the start a new campaign on Sunday, and this was a nice reminder to ignore CR balancing. The new PHB 2024 includes the XP level up table (which I have feelings about), so homebrewing monster is going to be my best friend going forward.
I think it's a misnomer to "ignore CR balancing." You should always have a good sense of how difficult a given encounter is. That isn't to say that every encounter should be a winnable combat encounter, but as the DM you need to know it's not a winnable combat encounter and set it up in such a way that your PCs have a chance. For instance if you run a purple worm like a standard encounter against a group of low level characters, it'll just obliterate them. An encounter like that requires special setup totally understanding that it needs to be "balanced" as an unwinnable fight. That may seem like an oxymoron at first, but it's not. You balance it by things like forewarning, an easy opportunity to escape and so forth. So while a combat would be certain death, the encounter itself isn't. An unwinnable battle is fine, an unbeatable encounter is just an unfun no-win situation.
It definitely helps to really know the system you're running, I'm primarily a PF1 guy, and I know that system pretty much inside and out (with a few exceptions here and there); and it really helps me to accurately figure out how far things can be pushed before it breaks too much. I've definitely had a few encounters that were "unfair", but I also mostly ran a pretty high-level campaign where it was kind of needed at times (I threw a couple particularly fun ones at the party early on, which taught them to actually be one of those rare parties that was willing to run away if the enemy seemed too tough or scary). A few of my favorites were in the first dungeon they went through, the lair of a max-level Witch (the big bad of the campaign) while she was away; there were four separate hag covens guarding the 'keys' to her fortress (one of the coven battles, which I did kind of screw up in execution through a couple silly mistakes, involved the hags covering the room in an obscuring mist, transforming into copies of the players, and using telepathy to perfectly mirror them and try to confuse everyone about who was who); the dungeon also was in a large swamp, and was guarded by a Vampire Kraken that patrolled the waters and kept chasing the party from location to location. Also early on, they had an encounter with something called a "Necromancy storm" when their walking wizard tower broke down in the Plane of Chaos; while working to repair the tower so they could escape, each couple rounds a bunch of undead would rise from the ground where the rain and necrotic lightning landed and attack the players. The first waves were not that bad (tons of monsters, but incredibly weak, and not really a threat at all), but as it went on they realized that each wave had fewer monsters but of a higher CR; they just managed to get moving on the same round that the CR19 guy showed up. The other two that stand out the most are a battle with an Ancient Red Dragon who started the combat by casting anti-magic field on himself and landing on top of the sorcerer; and a battle with a 17th level Barbarian assassin (The Pathfinder Barbarian is my favorite character class in all of gaming ever, and can do some awesome stuff) who nearly TPKed a party of seven 13th level players by himself (he had items and abilities that did retributive damage anytime someone hit him, he had 13 attacks of opportunity every round that he could use against any attackers within range, he had 3 different auto-revive spells and items set up on himself, and anytime his HP went to 0, the attacker would have to make 7 DC28 saves with disadvantage to avoid taking 7 curses).
@@Cynidecia - I was not talking about every single fight, I was talking about a boss fight. Every single boss fight should be a well designed challenge.
This is why I've grown to prefer Fabula Ultima. You can have a brutal fight, all rolls in the open, and you win or you lose. But the campaign goes on, either way. The risk of the party wipe cutting the narrative short in an unsatisfying way makes most dnd DMs pull their punches, tactically or just flat out fudging.
I sort of have two minds regarding this philosophy. On one hand, absolutely the most fun players have is with crazy and unconventional fights and moments, and no one should feel beholden to the numbers in the monster manual - I often reskin or alter what I throw at players as fit the context, or even make things up on the fly. On the other, I do think it is important - ESPECIALLY for new(er) DMs - that there is a clear understanding of just how weak or powerful the monsters are baseline (i.e. accurate CR). It's totally cool if you've got your party of level 5 adventurers and you want to throw a smaller but still too dangerous dragon at them to make a tense escape situation and introduce the next portion of your story; it's another thing if someone sees "oh dragons are cool, and level 5 characters seem pretty strong, so I bet I can throw this smaller dragon at them and it will be a fun battle!" and then everything goes wrong because the preparation and context the DM laid out indicated to the players that the fight would be fine and there's no ready escape plan (heck, every edition has been terrible in terms of actual rules for escape since it's always "what are the PCs' speeds?" and monsters almost always move faster - since 4e introduced Skill Challenges I've changed to using those to represent Daring Escapes rather than tracking feet per round). I think having a robust encounter design system in the CRs and Encounter Difficulty tables in the DMG are necessary tools - they let you as a DM understand what the relative dangers (or lack thereof) of encounters are and then you can adjust at your own skill level and flexibility from there. Like those Kobolds: Tucker wants to use Kobolds because they fit the theme (or would simply be amusing lol), but can see from the rules that they are weak vs the PC levels. So you put in Kobolds but make sure to give them environmental advantages, or boost tools/weapons/armor to challenge the PCs. I've seen some comments about how simple monsters with fun context/etc are the most fun way to go, and I totally agree. I've actually been working on a project where I use the well described Monster Math formulas from 4e to make "Generic Monster Cards" for all roles and levels. This way for anything I want to throw at the PCs, I can pick a level(s) and then throw on some bonus context rules (like "Oh, they would likely be ambushed by Fire Elementals in this Primordial Temple. Since Fire feels like a quick rather than brawly combatant, I'll go pick a Skirmisher around their level - since I intend for them to beat the elementals - and then add Resistance to Fire Damage but Weakness to Cold damage because it fits. Maybe if I want them to think about range/melee I could toss in an aura of small Fire damage for anything adjacent to the elementals). By having access to quick stat blocks for any role and level, that frees me up to be creative with add-ons and the environment, and I will always know if what made sense to throw in would be an easy fight (good for filling in the world), a standard one, a major fight, or something that I know they can't normally beat (would absolutely leave clues for them to figure out) that sets something else up. I also really like situations where something is too dangerous to tackle normally, but if they do research and and quest for some mcguffin that weakens the monster, then they can use that to fight the monster at a "Difficult" rating.
I just started this video. I might say the same things I am about to watch. But here is my take on balancing encounters(you people definitely wanted my opinion ;)).... Throw whatever at your party, easy little fights to break up pacing add a little excitement: those let your players feel badass, unbalanced in the players favor, let the fight only be hard enough to let everyone get to do something cool...like whole fight 10 minutes. Or be unbalanced make the enemy way harder than the party, they could still win but it'd be down to the wire...like your bad guys are going to win unless crazy rolls, crazy unanticipated actions, or the party flees... but in the ones that you think the party has no chance, don't make death the fail state...you can go as hard as you want if death isn't the fail state, players can incapacitate just by saying they do, so why not the enemy. in this failure isn't character death, its characters captured, its characters losing an important item. In the real world, fights happen, its mostly not all life or death (clearly sometimes it is, and also comparing to reality isn't a great stance to take) but sometimes you just pissed someone off, but not enough for them to murder you. So mix it up, keep your players guessing, let your players lose fights (but don't tpk them), also let your players murder the crap out of enemys, but maybe that makes them get consequences like murder charges. You can create tension in a lot of ways. Now I'm off to watch the video and see if any of these points are also mine. Good show.
I've been DMing for 40 years, and running 5E for ten years and I still don't understand CR--nor do I care to. I base my encounters on what's the most engaging and entertaining thing I can come up with given the situation. Right now my party is in the Vault of the Drow, outside Erelhei-Cinlu on a mission to steal a forearm's weight of spider-silk from the spider Ciritholiant in the cave of seven drips in order to pay for a portable hole the trickster cleric stole for the druid. Before going down, they hired a drow named Eclavdra to serve as their guide--and were then promptly teleported into the vault by one the Warlock's patrons. Eclavdra made a deal that she would help them leave if they helped her deal with the clone who had replaced her as head of House Eilservs. They had already fought off some Drow Spider cavalry, and were attacked by an assassin after Eclavdra. After interrogating the assassin, they discovered that her opponent is now queen of the city, and she is being hunted as the clone...
I made a pretty intricate black dragon fight for a one off. Black Dragons in DND have acid breath and they use it to make their own caves. So my Dragon had a ton of holes that went straight down in its lair. Neat right? It gets worse. Those holes were filled with Gelatinous Cudes that the Black Dragon would keep as "pets" (reality is that the Black Dragon like their response to pain and found it amusing). Still not to bad yeah? I gave the Black Dragon a lair action that allowed it to shove the party into those holes. It would also use it's legendary action to either shove, or use its breath attack to cave the lair to make it even harder to approach. Basically the whole fight was the Black Dragon playing keep away and getting in attacks when it could. The tactic was actually pretty devastating. The party didn't know how to deal with taking falling damage, being grappled, being separated and being occasionally pelted by a Dragon. Possibly the most evil fight I engineered. Also in terms of story. 1 party member actually made it out! Then they met a fell for a beautiful women in town a couple months later and got married with the intent to settle down! Only it was the Black Dragon in disguise and took him back to the lair. He was later died of stavation in one of the empty pits. The Black Dragon had a child and she was teaching him not to break his "toys" too quickly. Mind you I told the players ahead of time that they would all likely die and they did have fun. It was nice being able to go all out like that.
A fight being fair, a fight being balanced for challenge, and a fight being balanced in general is 3 very different things. This only really addresses the middle one, and that one is usually not what you want to do anyway, because there is so much to gain by having fights of various levels of difficulty. A fight being fair, is more about being fair to your players. One can make a fight that is very well balanced for challenging the PCs while also being extremely unfair, such as by making a fight that they are pretty sure to win, while needing to struggle, but really what that fight is about is hurting the players in other ways, such as destroying their items and so on. Fairness is often about not surprising your players too much in terms of expectations and giving them the opportunities they need to get sufficient control over a situation. Ambushes that the players had no warning, or no reasonable way to guess might be coming can be quite unfair if it is also sufficiently challenging and especially if it somehow catches the PCs with their figurative pants down. A fight being balanced in general is more about setting up a fight where the mechanics are balanced in such a way that engaging in it makes sense. An example of such a problem would be if a monster has such a high damage reduction that the PCs cannot really do damage to it, at which point they cannot meaningfully engage with such a fight. In general you should only break one of these at a time. If a fight is not fair, you can balance a lot of that problem out with it not being too challenging. If a fight is too challenging, you can balance it out with being very fair, such as giving the players amble prior knowledge of it and making the fight optional, such that the risk falls back on being a clear player choice (which is also the kind of point where it is okay to kill PCs, because they will know it was their own fault from risk taking). Things being generally unbalanced should be even more fair, and often involve situations where objectives can bypass the unbalanced part in some way, such as not needing to take down the monster they cannot hurt, just get to the door out on the other side that it cannot follow them through.
The core of this video wasn't new for me but the "tell your players you want to have fun". I'm old and have run games forever. I've never done that. Fun for me was making sure THEY had fun. That's dumb, frankly. This is better. Thanks!
My DM has an entire BBEG team of 20th level characters with OP homebrew stuff. So a a spin off story I am DMing for him and making them fight absurd odds and it is a blast lol. Multiple dragons at once, seas of canon fodder, the works. It’s a blast.
This feels like my playstyle as a player honestly. We had an encounter with a goblin horde stampeding after us into a forest (we had about two minutes head start). I solved the whole thing with one artillerist turret and our druid's Pass Without Trace. We hid in a dry riverbed, I sent my turret up a tree and spent a few rounds remotely lighting goblins up and causing general chaos. They attacked the tree, turret fell out, and then I blew it up...and we just left. With them being cautious, the stampede broken, we just outpaced them and they couldn't track us because of PWT. The whole key was that I could attack without giving myself away. I think it was supposed to be a big battle.
What`s also really fun, if done right, is to monster hunt overpowered monsters. Spending the non-combat part of the session on researching weaknesses, gathering informations on the personality and background of the monster, preparations like building/enchanting special weapons, setting traps, ... in order to even the scales or tip them in favour of the player characters. It feels extremely lame if you just overpower the boss monster with rules lawyering, powergaming and dice rolls. But if you invested a huge chunk of the session in preparation for the fight, it feels all right if your plan works, the preparations pay of in a meaningful fashion and the monster finally goes down.
Every encounter I've done for my current campaign has been just throwing in whatever I feel like until I think "yeah that's probably about right". I've gotten close calls with TPKs twice, but it's been exciting at the very least
I am a huge fan of throwing really powerful monsters at really underpowered characters. Make it a puzzle. Throw a dragon at your lv 3 party and let them all work together to figure out how to get away.
Curious, would you say the same thinking also goes for player chars too? Even without homebrew, purely by RAW, there are really builds and combos that really aren't balanced, but are fun. Meanwhile some classes are quite the opposite, balanced/underpowered and boring. Would you encourage people wanting to play them to homebrew some cooler features with the DM?
If the DM is down with that, sure. That’s how it was done back in the day. When there was no barbarian class, for example, you’d choose fighter and work with your DM to turn him into Conan. It depends on the DM’s style and the kind of game you’re playing. A player can have fun with any character, regardless of class or “build,” if they are willing and able to be creative in game - rather than be bound by what’s on their character sheet - and if the story they’re playing out and the enemies they’re facing are done well. Honestly, I think your question about character creation and certain classes or builds not being fun has more to do with how you play them than with the actual character.
@@shortreststudios It's more about being able to fulfill a certain fantasy/theme. For as diverse as classes are, you can't make everything even with visual re-flavors of RAW features. Some classes dedicated to delivering upon some fantasies also kinda just suck... Classy example being Way of Four Elements Monk in 2014. "Fun" is relative, but some classes/class combos have potential for a lot more fun than others. Example, after experiencing Sorlock at lvl 20 one-shot, other casters kinda pale in comparison of funny shits you can pull off, at least for me.
I don't design my combats with 'balance' in mind. I throw a bunch of death laser and missile silos on my bosses, look it over and go: "Yeah. They can probably take this." If I think some things are a bit much, I'll scale it back, but my enemies are GOING to be pulling out every stop to kill the PCs if that's their goal, so I'm going to play them that way. Now if they have another objective, like capture or theft, then I'll play them different. Having more diverse win-loss conditions is also a good way to run a game.
How does the advice of “monsters that make sense” apply to a DM who homebrews almost all my monster stat blocks? I think the coolest monsters are all relatively low CR such as Manticores, Lamias, Trolls, and Fire elementals so against my level 10 party, I’m usually upscaling all of them. What CR should I be upscaling them to if not balanced against the party level?
I’m not saying CR can’t be a useful tool. I did say - basically - don’t let choosing an appropriate CR monster take priority over using the monsters you want to use. Use what you want to - what makes sense in your world and what you think is cool - and adjust them appropriately. That can be by upscaling, using them creatively - like Tucker’s kobolds, or expanding their abilities. You’re actually doing just want I’m talking about!
So I just thought about this - what if, instead of upscaling your manticores, you made them pack hunters with pack tactics?! Tucker’s kobolds on steroids!
OSR old style D&D is the methodology to go. You don't have to play OSR, but the essence is that fair fights are not a right of the party and sometimes you need to go around the fight. makes for afar more interesting game.
No such thing as a fair fight! I typically give character levels to monster leader-types. That keeps them around for more than a few rounds and usually surprises the players when their target whips out PC abilities!
@@knightmare1267 haha got em lol. Honestly my prefered character creation method is to roll for standard array stats. So roll 1d6, if its a 5 you put your 15 in wisdom, keep rolling intil you have a random array of, well, standard array.
Level 9 Adventurers clearly know a Adult Red Dragon lives in the area, shit ton of lore dropped prior, shit ton of clues. They decide to fight it? gobsmacked
I am constantly fighting with people who claim that this sort of thing isn't a factor in TTRPGs. That if the game system or the module doesn't directly support what you're trying to do then it's just a bad system or module and the real solution is to look for better designs. That proposing that a DM changes something in order to make their game more fun sets unreasonable expectations.
When throwing together a session i tend to make 2 encounters i look at and go "easy" and follow up with something crazy. Last time the party dealt with 2 small patrols of bullywugs before having to deal with their boss (on a giant frog) and a swarm of minions and for a couple of party members things were looking ropey at the end and they will probably remember the encounter (and a npc helper became a fan favourite... which will help me later with my evil plans...)
Not only is balance boring, it basically nullifies the players level growth. If the encounter is the same difficulty no matter how high your level is then why are we bothering with the levels?
Array PCs = 72/120 Array NPCs = 63/120 "4D6, drop the lowest" has really screwed over the design consideration surrounding the intended ability scores.
Just throw a creature 15CR over the players level at them every combat, they'll never get bored because they get to make a new chracter 2 or 3 times a session. In all seriousness, this video is extremely scitzophrenic: "Only put monsters in areas that make sense" "Don't waste time balancing encounters" "Don't limit monsters to where they make sense, you can reflavor them" "You should make all of your own monster statblocks" (this takes a lot of time) I'm not saying any piece of these are bad advice but this is a bit scitzophrenic, and avoiding balance is terrible advice. I hope none of your viewers just go "Ah yeah, well it would be cook to throw an adult dragon against my level 5 players" and they die in the first round without getting to act and quit the game. If you're going to throw unwinnable bullshit at your players, just Rocks Fall them and save everyone some time, better yet, stop DMing.
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I once had a hill giant come screaming out of the woods for help, running towards the party. The party readied themselves for a fight but didn't attack first. The giant grabbed the closest person and ran back into the forest. The party gave chase to find the giant shoving the party member toward a female Ogre that was giving birth. Made for an interesting set of skill checks.
That is hilarious!
That's... brilliant. I love it
Genius.
This is awesome 😮🎉
ctrl c + ctrl v'd straight into my encounters file
You should ABSOLUTELY put a Shambling Mound in the desert - it's now a cluster of cactuses with a heavy mass buried underneath the dirt. Its slams deal piercing damage, and it leaves irritating thorns in anyone it hits.
@@jaysuede2627 Holy cow, I'm stealing this. Shambling cactus sounds awesome!
This is one of the best DM help vids I’ve seen in a while.
Make the rust monsters like koala bears. Change their aesthetics to fit the scenario/world.
Well, really mean koala bears. 🤣
@@shortreststudios Australia calls that variant drop bears. Nasty buggers.
Dropbears?
This evokes the concept of Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War. And I take no prisoners.
That concept definitely inspired this.
There are as many types of wars as there are reasons for those wars.
What you speak of is an _Extinction war,_ last time somebody tried that we demonized the entire faction and their country to an extent.
My players crush my "Deadly" encounters anyway.
Yeah, the "balance" calculators always seem very weak vs my 5E group. I have to set everything to Deadly as a starting point if I want it to be taken seriously.
I threw a bone devil at 4 level 4 players after they had used up all their spell slots and they still stomped it.
@@mikeb.1705 Here's a suggestion, enforce the PC Ability Score Array.
If that's still too much power (racial bonuses _are_ getting crazy), use the NPC Ability Score Array (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8)
@@nullpoint3346 Do you use standard array stats, and if so, do you find that using standard array makes "moderate" combat encounters challenging?
Like one of my favorite songs says, "If you're bored, then you're boring." I often feel like most of the problems players (and that includes DM's) have with the game's combat system stem from uncreative play. When it feels like "roll the dice, do damage, next..." all the time, it's not the rules, but their execution. Much of the game is intentionally bare bones, no matter the edition, and it's this way because it is a game of the *imagination* -- so the more the group puts into it, the more enjoyment they get out of it.
@@MemphiStig i agree!
This only works in the short term. Once you start creating more imaginative solutions, you'll inevitably set a precedent for what and how things work. And 5e's rules framework is so bare bones that it doesn't support creative solutions much at all.
Say one of your players wants to intimidate the enemy in combat, something 5e's rules have no basis for. Here's a list of questions off the top of my head you now have to answer:
- What's the mechanical function? Is it a set DC, a contested check or something else? Does it use an action or a bonus action?
- What's the effect, and how does it work? Presumably that the enemy becomes frightened. But for how long? One round? Until they break sight? Is there a save to be made?
- A boatload of other miscellaneous questions: how does it balance out in the long term? What things factor into it? Can you intimidate only certain enemies, or is it dictated by condition immunities? What should the range be? Does the enemy need to understand you? What other factors might play into it, like light conditions or spells?
That's just one example. Another classic one is players wishing to cut off limbs of creatures in combat, or target specific parts of their bodies like eyes or legs. How would that work? Stuff like that isn't covered by the base rules at all, and trying to create systems for them is you doing the job WOTC should have done.
@@bartholen Actually, creativity is required to fill in all the gaps where either the rules as written don't cover a situation or the DM/group doesn't know/like the applicable rule. That is the foundation of the ttrpg. For example, there are rules in 5e for morale in combat, and they can easily be activated by a creative application of an intimidation check. On the other hand, in D&D there's no official "called shot" to hit a specific body location , but a common rule of DM's is to either increase the effective AC for that attack, or impose disadvantage, or some combination of the two. And this solution combines the extant rules with a creative approach. In fact, imo it's impossible to be a good DM or player without a combination of rules knowledge and creativity, whether or not the RAW cover every possible situation, which inevitably they never do, regardless of system. As I said, that's fundamental to every rpg I've ever seen. The rules are the starting point, not the entire Universe. Not that I'm defending WOTC or any other producer. But the rulebooks are not the ultimate answer. The brains of those playing the game are. That's why (and how) we play interactive rpg's with other people and not just crpg's or cyoa's with limited choices and outcomes.
@@MemphiStig But that framing only works for rules light systems, which 5e is not by any stretch of the imagination. Players will expect concrete, tangible effects for their more creative approaches, and will inevitably start trying to game the system. Bonuses are so easy to stack in 5e that raising AC is basically just tempting them to reach higher. That won't happen in every case, but in a system with as much detail as 5e players will expect a certain verisimilitude to translate to game mechanics. Like say if you allowed players to target the eyes of creatures. Well, naturally it would follow that if you damage the eyes of a creature enough, they'd become permanently blinded. Which is a gigantic boost to the party's combat effectiveness for potentially no resources expended due to how blindness works in 5e. That is what you have to start balancing everything around, which is a never-ending rabbit hole.
@@bartholen Actually, that "framing" as you call it comes from the *entire* history of D&D, which is by no means rules light in any popular edition. But it's the DM who provides the consistency the players depend on, whether that's RAW or homebrew, a simple procedure or a complex table, etc. It sounds like what you want is a set of answers for every situation so there is no conflict or misunderstanding, and all I can say is good luck. That's what we've all been dealing with for the past 50 years, and what I said earlier is exactly how it's been resolved at the table by countless satisfied gamers for the majority of that time. If you have other needs or ideas, that's fine. I'm just telling you what I know works from long experience. You might however look into truly rules heavy games, like Rolemaster or D&D 3e or Pathfinder or GURPS, or try to find Gygax's first post TSR game system, Dangerous Journeys. One of those might be deep enough for you, but you may spend years learning the rules. True, 5e has a lot of rules, true, but it's not nearly as heavy as you might think, and most people haven't read the whole DMG anyway. But as I said, no version of D&D is light, tho you can certainly strip it down as much as you like (it says so in the books). Still, if you want more comprehensive rules, they're out there and you're welcome to add them to whatever game you like or play however and whatever works for you. All I know, after 40 something years of playing, is that *to* *me* less is truly more, and it helps my game go smoother to depend more on basic principles and good judgment than tons of situation-specific rules, but ymmv. Game on!
Just found this on my video recommendations, and as a bonus action I clicked out of curiosity, but then I failed the Saving Throw against your charm and stayed because you captivated my attention! Very well done sir! As a reaction, I subscribed immediately,
🤣 Thanks for joining the adventure!
I remember my very first D&D adventure (AD&D), an hour to create the character and 15 minutes game player - dead. My cousin was DMing and he held the philosophy of it is up to the players to figure out if their characters can take on a monster. If there's a Hill Giant in the area as a random encounter, the party of level 1 characters need to decide if they can take that on or run away.
I learned later that some groups of players think any creature encounter on the board means attack it and never run away.
I've been learning over the years, with confirmation from videos like this, articles, books, ect. How to vary the challenge and encounter. To have some easy encounters, some med-level challenges, harder ones and the Boss fights. and sometimes, the dice tell the story.
I recently ran a session where the party, due to some side quests they wanted to do, are two levels above the main campaign. All I did was add 1 creature more to the encounter of the same type and that nearly wiped a character. Other times, that seemingly "balanced" encounter is still too difficult.
I just throw a bunch of things together that I think will be fun to fight. Sometimes they steamroll it, sometimes they struggle to defeat four skeletons because they don't have a bludgeoning weapon. The only fight I have ever made so unfair was the one where the dmpc healer/buff went down first, and the party chose to stand under a moon beam and let him bleed out, instead of moving out and helping him up. That and all the magical items that definitely would have helped them, but they refuse to use any.
lol BALANCE!! we dont need no stinkin' BALANCE!!.... lol our combat rules have enough chaos to put the fear of death in any combat encounter.
@@swordsnstones >we r too stupid to learn the rules
One of the best encounter building systems I've ever found was the Giffyglyph Monster Maker. It has the fun of just picking the monster you want to use, while also having enough internal balance that you honestly don't even have to think about it. It's definitely not a system for DMs who just want to plug and play stat blocks as it is very much a homebrew only system where you're gonna be making up the monsters every week, but I think it is a tool everyone should consider.
It won't burn you out trying to get your XP budgets perfect and makes it very simple with a sort of Threat Budget system that is very straight forward and won't get in the way of putting in whatever monster you want. So much better than the official CR system, though there are rough CR conversions it gives. All around a great tool. I use it every combat and they have vastly improved due to it! So great to just find some art, plop it into the VTT to use as a token, and not have to worry about "oh is this balanced?" because the GGMM does all the heavy lifting for me so I can focus on the story, narration, and tension aspects of the fight.
Campaign 1, Adventure 1, Chapter 1: Encounter with an Ancient Red Dragon is a real thing. The level 1 characters aren't alone, they're traveling In a caravan with dozens of NPCs including future antagonists. They're not supposed to defeat the dragon (yet), just establish the world survive and collect plot hooks, but a tpk is possible if they're dumb. One goal is to establish I'll give them anything at any time so they can't ever assume encounters are survivable if they rush in headless.
Yes! That’s how you create surprise, adrenaline fueled moments, and stories that your players will always remember!
@@shortreststudios Doing Rule of 3s surviving a dragon encounter is the first step with those NPC antagonists that are well-known and idolized in the game world. The tension builds steadily as it's step by step revealed how evil and involved with the bigger arc they are, as well as total jerks to regular people and the players for no reason they're just the kind of celebrities that don't care about anyone but themselves.
Step 2 arrives at mid-level and players now improved in power get excited to save a place they like by finally having a showdown with the antagonists... who don't remember the players. At all. Not from the dragon, not the other run-ins, only.. who ARE you? All this is to say where's the video about subverting expectations i.e. being chaotic evil to players for personal amusement? 😁
Or maybe it's making the talkie bits turned into session stories as much as the combat. Step 1 players are weaker and need the antagonists to save them from a dragon, Step 2 is a draw neither can claim victory (and you've never seen players so invested as when the big bad they've been working to foil all this time doesn't even know it's them doing it). Those setting up Step 3 near the end of the campaign which is the real showdown where the antagonists get their come-uppance; impoverished and disgraced in the public eye as a fate worse than death is a possibility.
I start with the Skeleton of one, Animated by a Lv5 Cleric supported by some other dudes.
This is so perfect, I’m running a dungeon now with an artistic interpretation of Tucker’s Kobolds! I’m uh, not sure how far my players are gonna make it lol.
RUN AWAY!
Glad the Algorithm placed your video in my path!
To add on to your commentary on balance and CR, extending that outlook to the idea of symmetry is also good!
Too many fights are designed around symmetry: the battlefield is mostly a featureless plain with even terrain features throughout; the enemies' motivation is the same as the players (kill everyone); and the power availability of "toys" in the scene (like siege weapons, traps, etc.)
It can really help to start messing with that symmetry! Like you cited from Tucker's Kobolds, otherwise weak enemies with access to traps and other terrain features starts to shift that symmetry. Conversely, having the players face powerful foes but giving them access to a big siege ballista they can use to weak it helps mix things up!
Yeah, I’ve discussed some of these ideas in some other videos, and there are tons of others by other creators as well. Changing the landscape, adding features, etc. brings a lot of variety and depth to what the players and monsters can do.
Thanks for an awesome video! This can't be said enough. The most fun I have as a DM is when I get to make/tweak monsters to fit the setting or vibes. I am about the start a new campaign on Sunday, and this was a nice reminder to ignore CR balancing. The new PHB 2024 includes the XP level up table (which I have feelings about), so homebrewing monster is going to be my best friend going forward.
I think it's a misnomer to "ignore CR balancing."
You should always have a good sense of how difficult a given encounter is. That isn't to say that every encounter should be a winnable combat encounter, but as the DM you need to know it's not a winnable combat encounter and set it up in such a way that your PCs have a chance. For instance if you run a purple worm like a standard encounter against a group of low level characters, it'll just obliterate them. An encounter like that requires special setup totally understanding that it needs to be "balanced" as an unwinnable fight. That may seem like an oxymoron at first, but it's not. You balance it by things like forewarning, an easy opportunity to escape and so forth. So while a combat would be certain death, the encounter itself isn't. An unwinnable battle is fine, an unbeatable encounter is just an unfun no-win situation.
It definitely helps to really know the system you're running, I'm primarily a PF1 guy, and I know that system pretty much inside and out (with a few exceptions here and there); and it really helps me to accurately figure out how far things can be pushed before it breaks too much. I've definitely had a few encounters that were "unfair", but I also mostly ran a pretty high-level campaign where it was kind of needed at times (I threw a couple particularly fun ones at the party early on, which taught them to actually be one of those rare parties that was willing to run away if the enemy seemed too tough or scary).
A few of my favorites were in the first dungeon they went through, the lair of a max-level Witch (the big bad of the campaign) while she was away; there were four separate hag covens guarding the 'keys' to her fortress (one of the coven battles, which I did kind of screw up in execution through a couple silly mistakes, involved the hags covering the room in an obscuring mist, transforming into copies of the players, and using telepathy to perfectly mirror them and try to confuse everyone about who was who); the dungeon also was in a large swamp, and was guarded by a Vampire Kraken that patrolled the waters and kept chasing the party from location to location.
Also early on, they had an encounter with something called a "Necromancy storm" when their walking wizard tower broke down in the Plane of Chaos; while working to repair the tower so they could escape, each couple rounds a bunch of undead would rise from the ground where the rain and necrotic lightning landed and attack the players. The first waves were not that bad (tons of monsters, but incredibly weak, and not really a threat at all), but as it went on they realized that each wave had fewer monsters but of a higher CR; they just managed to get moving on the same round that the CR19 guy showed up.
The other two that stand out the most are a battle with an Ancient Red Dragon who started the combat by casting anti-magic field on himself and landing on top of the sorcerer; and a battle with a 17th level Barbarian assassin (The Pathfinder Barbarian is my favorite character class in all of gaming ever, and can do some awesome stuff) who nearly TPKed a party of seven 13th level players by himself (he had items and abilities that did retributive damage anytime someone hit him, he had 13 attacks of opportunity every round that he could use against any attackers within range, he had 3 different auto-revive spells and items set up on himself, and anytime his HP went to 0, the attacker would have to make 7 DC28 saves with disadvantage to avoid taking 7 curses).
Now I've watched the video, it's not my concept at all. But still love the content. Good show. Also I've liked and subscribed.
That well balanced boss fight that you barely win is the epitome of D&D. No fudging, no deus ex machina, high risk and high reward.
You might be able to do this once, but good luck doing it *Every. Single. fight* as thats what is expected of Combat as Sport.
Nah. It’s the ability to know when fudging is necessary and how to make it seem like it’s not happening at all.
@@Cynidecia - I was not talking about every single fight, I was talking about a boss fight. Every single boss fight should be a well designed challenge.
This is why I've grown to prefer Fabula Ultima. You can have a brutal fight, all rolls in the open, and you win or you lose. But the campaign goes on, either way.
The risk of the party wipe cutting the narrative short in an unsatisfying way makes most dnd DMs pull their punches, tactically or just flat out fudging.
@@j8000 I'm curious, what does Fabula Ultima do to solve that issue?
I sort of have two minds regarding this philosophy. On one hand, absolutely the most fun players have is with crazy and unconventional fights and moments, and no one should feel beholden to the numbers in the monster manual - I often reskin or alter what I throw at players as fit the context, or even make things up on the fly.
On the other, I do think it is important - ESPECIALLY for new(er) DMs - that there is a clear understanding of just how weak or powerful the monsters are baseline (i.e. accurate CR). It's totally cool if you've got your party of level 5 adventurers and you want to throw a smaller but still too dangerous dragon at them to make a tense escape situation and introduce the next portion of your story; it's another thing if someone sees "oh dragons are cool, and level 5 characters seem pretty strong, so I bet I can throw this smaller dragon at them and it will be a fun battle!" and then everything goes wrong because the preparation and context the DM laid out indicated to the players that the fight would be fine and there's no ready escape plan (heck, every edition has been terrible in terms of actual rules for escape since it's always "what are the PCs' speeds?" and monsters almost always move faster - since 4e introduced Skill Challenges I've changed to using those to represent Daring Escapes rather than tracking feet per round).
I think having a robust encounter design system in the CRs and Encounter Difficulty tables in the DMG are necessary tools - they let you as a DM understand what the relative dangers (or lack thereof) of encounters are and then you can adjust at your own skill level and flexibility from there. Like those Kobolds: Tucker wants to use Kobolds because they fit the theme (or would simply be amusing lol), but can see from the rules that they are weak vs the PC levels. So you put in Kobolds but make sure to give them environmental advantages, or boost tools/weapons/armor to challenge the PCs.
I've seen some comments about how simple monsters with fun context/etc are the most fun way to go, and I totally agree. I've actually been working on a project where I use the well described Monster Math formulas from 4e to make "Generic Monster Cards" for all roles and levels. This way for anything I want to throw at the PCs, I can pick a level(s) and then throw on some bonus context rules (like "Oh, they would likely be ambushed by Fire Elementals in this Primordial Temple. Since Fire feels like a quick rather than brawly combatant, I'll go pick a Skirmisher around their level - since I intend for them to beat the elementals - and then add Resistance to Fire Damage but Weakness to Cold damage because it fits. Maybe if I want them to think about range/melee I could toss in an aura of small Fire damage for anything adjacent to the elementals).
By having access to quick stat blocks for any role and level, that frees me up to be creative with add-ons and the environment, and I will always know if what made sense to throw in would be an easy fight (good for filling in the world), a standard one, a major fight, or something that I know they can't normally beat (would absolutely leave clues for them to figure out) that sets something else up.
I also really like situations where something is too dangerous to tackle normally, but if they do research and and quest for some mcguffin that weakens the monster, then they can use that to fight the monster at a "Difficult" rating.
I just started this video. I might say the same things I am about to watch. But here is my take on balancing encounters(you people definitely wanted my opinion ;)).... Throw whatever at your party, easy little fights to break up pacing add a little excitement: those let your players feel badass, unbalanced in the players favor, let the fight only be hard enough to let everyone get to do something cool...like whole fight 10 minutes. Or be unbalanced make the enemy way harder than the party, they could still win but it'd be down to the wire...like your bad guys are going to win unless crazy rolls, crazy unanticipated actions, or the party flees... but in the ones that you think the party has no chance, don't make death the fail state...you can go as hard as you want if death isn't the fail state, players can incapacitate just by saying they do, so why not the enemy. in this failure isn't character death, its characters captured, its characters losing an important item. In the real world, fights happen, its mostly not all life or death (clearly sometimes it is, and also comparing to reality isn't a great stance to take) but sometimes you just pissed someone off, but not enough for them to murder you. So mix it up, keep your players guessing, let your players lose fights (but don't tpk them), also let your players murder the crap out of enemys, but maybe that makes them get consequences like murder charges. You can create tension in a lot of ways. Now I'm off to watch the video and see if any of these points are also mine. Good show.
I've been DMing for 40 years, and running 5E for ten years and I still don't understand CR--nor do I care to. I base my encounters on what's the most engaging and entertaining thing I can come up with given the situation. Right now my party is in the Vault of the Drow, outside Erelhei-Cinlu on a mission to steal a forearm's weight of spider-silk from the spider Ciritholiant in the cave of seven drips in order to pay for a portable hole the trickster cleric stole for the druid. Before going down, they hired a drow named Eclavdra to serve as their guide--and were then promptly teleported into the vault by one the Warlock's patrons. Eclavdra made a deal that she would help them leave if they helped her deal with the clone who had replaced her as head of House Eilservs. They had already fought off some Drow Spider cavalry, and were attacked by an assassin after Eclavdra. After interrogating the assassin, they discovered that her opponent is now queen of the city, and she is being hunted as the clone...
I made a pretty intricate black dragon fight for a one off.
Black Dragons in DND have acid breath and they use it to make their own caves. So my Dragon had a ton of holes that went straight down in its lair. Neat right?
It gets worse.
Those holes were filled with Gelatinous Cudes that the Black Dragon would keep as "pets" (reality is that the Black Dragon like their response to pain and found it amusing). Still not to bad yeah?
I gave the Black Dragon a lair action that allowed it to shove the party into those holes.
It would also use it's legendary action to either shove, or use its breath attack to cave the lair to make it even harder to approach.
Basically the whole fight was the Black Dragon playing keep away and getting in attacks when it could.
The tactic was actually pretty devastating. The party didn't know how to deal with taking falling damage, being grappled, being separated and being occasionally pelted by a Dragon.
Possibly the most evil fight I engineered.
Also in terms of story. 1 party member actually made it out!
Then they met a fell for a beautiful women in town a couple months later and got married with the intent to settle down!
Only it was the Black Dragon in disguise and took him back to the lair. He was later died of stavation in one of the empty pits.
The Black Dragon had a child and she was teaching him not to break his "toys" too quickly.
Mind you I told the players ahead of time that they would all likely die and they did have fun. It was nice being able to go all out like that.
A fight being fair, a fight being balanced for challenge, and a fight being balanced in general is 3 very different things. This only really addresses the middle one, and that one is usually not what you want to do anyway, because there is so much to gain by having fights of various levels of difficulty.
A fight being fair, is more about being fair to your players. One can make a fight that is very well balanced for challenging the PCs while also being extremely unfair, such as by making a fight that they are pretty sure to win, while needing to struggle, but really what that fight is about is hurting the players in other ways, such as destroying their items and so on. Fairness is often about not surprising your players too much in terms of expectations and giving them the opportunities they need to get sufficient control over a situation. Ambushes that the players had no warning, or no reasonable way to guess might be coming can be quite unfair if it is also sufficiently challenging and especially if it somehow catches the PCs with their figurative pants down.
A fight being balanced in general is more about setting up a fight where the mechanics are balanced in such a way that engaging in it makes sense. An example of such a problem would be if a monster has such a high damage reduction that the PCs cannot really do damage to it, at which point they cannot meaningfully engage with such a fight.
In general you should only break one of these at a time. If a fight is not fair, you can balance a lot of that problem out with it not being too challenging. If a fight is too challenging, you can balance it out with being very fair, such as giving the players amble prior knowledge of it and making the fight optional, such that the risk falls back on being a clear player choice (which is also the kind of point where it is okay to kill PCs, because they will know it was their own fault from risk taking). Things being generally unbalanced should be even more fair, and often involve situations where objectives can bypass the unbalanced part in some way, such as not needing to take down the monster they cannot hurt, just get to the door out on the other side that it cannot follow them through.
The core of this video wasn't new for me but the "tell your players you want to have fun". I'm old and have run games forever. I've never done that. Fun for me was making sure THEY had fun. That's dumb, frankly. This is better. Thanks!
It’s not dumb! Hopefully they wanted you to have fun! Really glad I could help.
My DM has an entire BBEG team of 20th level characters with OP homebrew stuff. So a a spin off story I am DMing for him and making them fight absurd odds and it is a blast lol. Multiple dragons at once, seas of canon fodder, the works. It’s a blast.
This feels like my playstyle as a player honestly. We had an encounter with a goblin horde stampeding after us into a forest (we had about two minutes head start). I solved the whole thing with one artillerist turret and our druid's Pass Without Trace. We hid in a dry riverbed, I sent my turret up a tree and spent a few rounds remotely lighting goblins up and causing general chaos. They attacked the tree, turret fell out, and then I blew it up...and we just left. With them being cautious, the stampede broken, we just outpaced them and they couldn't track us because of PWT. The whole key was that I could attack without giving myself away.
I think it was supposed to be a big battle.
What`s also really fun, if done right, is to monster hunt overpowered monsters. Spending the non-combat part of the session on researching weaknesses, gathering informations on the personality and background of the monster, preparations like building/enchanting special weapons, setting traps, ... in order to even the scales or tip them in favour of the player characters.
It feels extremely lame if you just overpower the boss monster with rules lawyering, powergaming and dice rolls. But if you invested a huge chunk of the session in preparation for the fight, it feels all right if your plan works, the preparations pay of in a meaningful fashion and the monster finally goes down.
Every encounter I've done for my current campaign has been just throwing in whatever I feel like until I think "yeah that's probably about right". I've gotten close calls with TPKs twice, but it's been exciting at the very least
As a new dm, i often try to make hard challanges. Especially cause I know how my players know to find unique solutions and I am pretty open minded tbh
Hell I even throw encounters at my players that I don't think they'll survive and they still come through, sometimes without much of a challenge...
It’s true! Sometimes the dice go in their favor. And that makes for great stories too!
Yessss!
Yes I’ve found that in 5e there’s no such thing as balance
I am a huge fan of throwing really powerful monsters at really underpowered characters. Make it a puzzle. Throw a dragon at your lv 3 party and let them all work together to figure out how to get away.
Curious, would you say the same thinking also goes for player chars too? Even without homebrew, purely by RAW, there are really builds and combos that really aren't balanced, but are fun.
Meanwhile some classes are quite the opposite, balanced/underpowered and boring. Would you encourage people wanting to play them to homebrew some cooler features with the DM?
If the DM is down with that, sure. That’s how it was done back in the day. When there was no barbarian class, for example, you’d choose fighter and work with your DM to turn him into Conan.
It depends on the DM’s style and the kind of game you’re playing. A player can have fun with any character, regardless of class or “build,” if they are willing and able to be creative in game - rather than be bound by what’s on their character sheet - and if the story they’re playing out and the enemies they’re facing are done well.
Honestly, I think your question about character creation and certain classes or builds not being fun has more to do with how you play them than with the actual character.
@@shortreststudios It's more about being able to fulfill a certain fantasy/theme. For as diverse as classes are, you can't make everything even with visual re-flavors of RAW features. Some classes dedicated to delivering upon some fantasies also kinda just suck... Classy example being Way of Four Elements Monk in 2014.
"Fun" is relative, but some classes/class combos have potential for a lot more fun than others. Example, after experiencing Sorlock at lvl 20 one-shot, other casters kinda pale in comparison of funny shits you can pull off, at least for me.
I usualy have diferent comissions difficulty levels. And player characters decide what sort of adventure dificulty they wanna pick
Its my personal belief that monsters dont need anything beyond basic stats if you want fun.
Well the flavor is fun! But the DM is always free to change it to suit their needs - or really to change anything.
@@shortreststudios agreed, I personally run combat like a story... one where people can die. Violently.
I don't design my combats with 'balance' in mind. I throw a bunch of death laser and missile silos on my bosses, look it over and go: "Yeah. They can probably take this." If I think some things are a bit much, I'll scale it back, but my enemies are GOING to be pulling out every stop to kill the PCs if that's their goal, so I'm going to play them that way. Now if they have another objective, like capture or theft, then I'll play them different. Having more diverse win-loss conditions is also a good way to run a game.
Yes, that’s one of the most effective ways to bring some more excitement and fun into the game!
How does the advice of “monsters that make sense” apply to a DM who homebrews almost all my monster stat blocks?
I think the coolest monsters are all relatively low CR such as Manticores, Lamias, Trolls, and Fire elementals so against my level 10 party, I’m usually upscaling all of them.
What CR should I be upscaling them to if not balanced against the party level?
I’m not saying CR can’t be a useful tool. I did say - basically - don’t let choosing an appropriate CR monster take priority over using the monsters you want to use. Use what you want to - what makes sense in your world and what you think is cool - and adjust them appropriately. That can be by upscaling, using them creatively - like Tucker’s kobolds, or expanding their abilities. You’re actually doing just want I’m talking about!
So I just thought about this - what if, instead of upscaling your manticores, you made them pack hunters with pack tactics?! Tucker’s kobolds on steroids!
OSR old style D&D is the methodology to go. You don't have to play OSR, but the essence is that fair fights are not a right of the party and sometimes you need to go around the fight. makes for afar more interesting game.
No such thing as a fair fight!
I typically give character levels to monster leader-types. That keeps them around for more than a few rounds and usually surprises the players when their target whips out PC abilities!
You see [5 ancient red dragons per PC]. Roll init.
YESSSSSS!!!!
At my table, we firmly agree that point buy is stupid.
@matthewlenard8346 I agree, standard array is *much* better
@@knightmare1267 haha got em lol. Honestly my prefered character creation method is to roll for standard array stats. So roll 1d6, if its a 5 you put your 15 in wisdom, keep rolling intil you have a random array of, well, standard array.
Level 9 Adventurers clearly know a Adult Red Dragon lives in the area, shit ton of lore dropped prior, shit ton of clues. They decide to fight it? gobsmacked
I am constantly fighting with people who claim that this sort of thing isn't a factor in TTRPGs. That if the game system or the module doesn't directly support what you're trying to do then it's just a bad system or module and the real solution is to look for better designs. That proposing that a DM changes something in order to make their game more fun sets unreasonable expectations.
I sort of thought that was the point of being a DM!
A good group comp can defeat a cr 5 higher then themselves
SWADE is jsut better
Besides, everyone, and i mean EVERYONE is already fudging in 5e from the start, down to even "rolling" for their stats
SWADE is the best. But people coming from DnD often have a hard time adapting, because it is so different.
@@Chiungalla79 I barely had issues but that's also because I was sick of DND being limitations and tedious combat
@@elgatochurro
Me neither. I never liked DnD. But it can be hard to convince others.
@@Chiungalla79 focus on the strengths of the new system and the failings of the current system.
5e is suffocating abd rather pointless
When throwing together a session i tend to make 2 encounters i look at and go "easy" and follow up with something crazy. Last time the party dealt with 2 small patrols of bullywugs before having to deal with their boss (on a giant frog) and a swarm of minions and for a couple of party members things were looking ropey at the end and they will probably remember the encounter (and a npc helper became a fan favourite... which will help me later with my evil plans...)
Not only is balance boring, it basically nullifies the players level growth. If the encounter is the same difficulty no matter how high your level is then why are we bothering with the levels?
Great video but the music was way too loud relative to your voice IMO.
Array PCs = 72/120
Array NPCs = 63/120
"4D6, drop the lowest" has really screwed over the design consideration surrounding the intended ability scores.
Just throw a creature 15CR over the players level at them every combat, they'll never get bored because they get to make a new chracter 2 or 3 times a session. In all seriousness, this video is extremely scitzophrenic: "Only put monsters in areas that make sense" "Don't waste time balancing encounters" "Don't limit monsters to where they make sense, you can reflavor them" "You should make all of your own monster statblocks" (this takes a lot of time)
I'm not saying any piece of these are bad advice but this is a bit scitzophrenic, and avoiding balance is terrible advice. I hope none of your viewers just go "Ah yeah, well it would be cook to throw an adult dragon against my level 5 players" and they die in the first round without getting to act and quit the game. If you're going to throw unwinnable bullshit at your players, just Rocks Fall them and save everyone some time, better yet, stop DMing.
🤣
You doing balance wrong.
Ok