Very short list: rat, cat, owl, octopus (maybe), toad, raven, did i miss any??

I'm working on a homebrew campaign taking place in Luskan, and this video was super helpful at pinning down the 'vibe' of the Arcane Brotherhood. Thanks!

Just wanna say I’ve run this the 3 Owlbear types so far. Base 5e Owlbear, your Revised Owlbear, and your Owlbear Matriarch. The experience with the base Owlbear was, fine I guess. It did buckets load of damage but besides that wasn’t all that interesting and a forgotten encounter by my players. The Revised Owlbear is one my most talked about encounters and according to my players, the most fun they’ve ever had fighting a beast. It was like a game of cat and mouse as the Barbarian, who was trying to shield his Sorcerer and Warlock was getting tossed around left and right but kept getting between the spellcasters and monster. In a tense back and forth battle that left everyone except the Bard downed, the Bard narrowly puts the creature down a successful shortbow attack as the Owlbear charged at him. This encounter was one of my favorites I’ve ever run in tier 1 play. Owlbear Matriarch was another tense battle against this same party, however they weren’t as fortunate as this creature was able to put the party down for good. The battle took place in a small cave lair with a blinded Matriarch using her Keen Smell to locate the party throughout the battle. Hunting them throughout the cave system like a cat after a mouse. You’ve absolutely knocked it out of the park with these reworks, and its a shame more people haven’t seen what you’ve made. I’ll never go back to the original statblock thanks to you ❤

The dog sled thing is wild. Sled dogs can run mutiple marathons in a row they do not need rest like that

I am here to just see which dnd mosters you could beat in a fight

En owlbear er større og stærkere end en brunbjørn.. selv i fuld plate rustning får du røvfuld :) og kunne ikke forestille mig at komme op i et træ med rustning på

The enemy finds you when you move out of your cover. The static DC is awkward but simplifies the rule. There will always be rules interpretation by the DM.

Haha, I actually love the concept of this video! As someone who watches a lot of DnD content it’s great to see something fresh!

Bro really said 50/50 with an owlbear. If it is hostile, do you really think you could calm an owlbear charging towards you?

I say he is dead to all but the bottom three.

This was not on my bingo card.

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This is great, thank you. Might wanna ease up on hitting the table for those of us with headphones on :)

If I don't save, does the card gone or it just mean it doesnt save on the server and my browser still keep the data?

I really don't see any issues. I have never had issues with RAW vs RAI because I am a determined GM. I make calls like that all the time, changing up the rules, so to me it is just every-day ruling. I think the new Hide action is really good. Is it perfect? No. But a good GM should be able to deal with stuff like this on the fly just as easily as take a sip of his drink.

Im starting to understand the new philosophy. It is about becoming unseen. U can only do that if u r out of their sight and use heavily obscuring or cover to hide. It just takes a DC15. But if someone searches and beats your stealth vs perception (they must use an action for it) then u are seen.

The line of sight part is what I don’t get

I agree that there should be more balance with the Giant Insect, which is broken. That said with the wolf, I can disagree for the following reason. I have seen someone dealing with excited dogs jumping all over underfoot... I have seen more than on e grown adult guy go down on his butt because dogs started jumping on him playfully grabbing at him and getting underfoot.

Love this video! Just started Baldur’s Gate 1 and was curious about D&D lore as a whole.

I had a bunch of people tell me to get the tower bundle on DM Guild, and i did, but had no idea you did vids!

Thanks for this video. Running this for a large multi-table group and it's so convoluted and I really don't like the module. Trying to make it through the material and this overview helped.

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I wouldn't use these rules. Stealth is very simple. You can't hide from a target(s) that can see you. Then, if you are hiding, it is a simple perception vs sealth check. Making a noise also introduces a perception check. (Dis)advantage is dependant on the circumstance (waterfall etc). Stealth only gives you an advantage on Initiative if you start the combat.

Hey, this is such a helpful series! Just wanted to let you know I appreciate it.

Good visuals. I like the chart.

OK, so did I use an AI to quickly generate an oath for a PC that I asked him to repeat after me... was it a good role play moment for the cross over to 3rd level and the character's choice of a sub-class? Yeah, it was good. But lots of times, I ask AI some questions and get total POOP back. I haven't tried the images yet.

It does seem like it was done to streamline combat, but you can always view it like the save is not being hit in combat. Your positioning and armor class are what saves you from the wolf attack.

My thoughts are oof

"It's just an action, not an attack" this is a game not the rules of reality. If you know it's an attack why am I spelling it out to you? You think of an insectos stung you it was just an action or an attack? This makes no sense.

I thought this was insightful and found this video after slogging through the same bits with the same confusion. If it wasn't for VTT pressure, I think they could have just re-taught the 2014 rules better. It took a long time and rereading for me to understand and usually-remember them and find the extra related rule nuggets that actually made 2014 stealth and such work very well. The new material has genuinely done a great job of re-teaching things without changing them, or just nudging the paradigm a little bit (ie Search / Study actions) so the things you already knew fit together tighter. But fully refactored stuff just kills me, not even in the design decision alone, but it's like they never made a second pass on it to give the same treatment as the kept-stuff. For instance - the effects of a successful Hide action or the Invisible condition do not give any benefit to moving silently, but do require silence to maintain. The rules do lay out that an attempt to move silently (if there is a risk of failure) also requires a Stealth check [separate from the Hide action]. This would have been the ideal book to point that out. Especially as it's a departure from 5E('14). My best guess is that BG3 never features terrain with a risk of breaking branches or kicking a stone off a wall, so it wasn't part of the behavior they were trying to copy with this, and never considered it.

Wroooooong

Years later I'm starting to run this and your advice is still helpful and pertinent. Thanks for your work!

I'm just coming here from Baldur's Gate 3 trying to figure out the setting of the game a little more. But this is definitely having me doing more towards actually giving d&d a shot!

As a dm, the game was so rigged for the players that it was hard to hurt them without shenanigans, now it’s even worse.

I've looked at a lot of different perspectives, and I think the invisible condition works, because in the case of an enemy that has been captured and is unable to alert its allies, it no longer counts as an enemy. I think it also makes sense that if you're hiding and you're not in clear line of sight of your allies, they shouldn't be able to see you either. Three quarters cover doesn't make sense, I think that was a gimme to give more benefit to stealth builds. The big change was that now in 2024 creatures don't have 360⁰ line of sight, so they have to be looking in your direction. I agree, they could've worded it better though, and it took me a while to understand it.

How you get the quest cold weather killer is bonkers. Some guys just like “hey! Random adventurer. I’ve taken it into my hands to track down a murderer. I know exactly who he is. In fact I followed him for 10 days then came back here to seek out a random group of people like yourselves to track him down! If you’re curious I also know all of his motivations. Good luck.”

We've been looking to swap our campaigns into 2024 and I ruled that if you break the two conditions heavily obscured or three quarters cover you are no longer hidden. To the argument that coming out of cover to attack would then negate the advantage I would say first it's a game and we don't have to try and use realism when feels like you're just trying to make an argument to invalidate this and second arrow slits and other cover has been used throughout history with ranged weapons and that seems very plausable

Super helpful!

That statblock seems to be closer to 4E than 5E because they're moving away from the use of natural language in the attacks' descriptions.

This is what happens when WotC didn't bother playtesting monsters from the new MM because they were in a rush to get the books (at least two of three of the core books out by 2024).

Have you ever seen an actual wolf? I don’t think you would debate this if you stood next to one. Every new rule in this book makes the game more complicated and slower to play, that’s a good reason to skip it altogether. It is a fantasy game, let some fantastic elements exist.

The pseudrodragon example is even funnier because theres a warlock invocation printed in the 2024 books that sets your familiar's save DC to your own, covering that low save dc weakness you mentioned. And regardless of whether or not the sting was meant to "count" as an attack or not, your familiar can do it every round in either interpretation: on its own if it doesnt count, or via your invocations if it does count. The enemies could kill the familiar, but it just takes one magic action and no spell slot to bring it back, and thats an attack aimed at nobody elsein the party, and heck maybe you can put temp hp on it so it can eat more attacks. Still a 10 gp incense cost though, i guess you burn it *really* fast as part of that action.

This is giving "lets get rid of all the modifiers and replace them with advantage/disadvantage to break character sizes, sunlight sensitivity, skill checks, and two weapon fighting all at once" vibes.

I approve of the change. The players in my group have far to many ways to make every saving throw thrown at them. The Bard in the group alone can negate most of the saves. I had already been baking in effects without saves as part of a creatures ability perks. I would not do that to lower level characters though.

The attacks still have to hit. Considering the benefit of spending the combat I think this is a good thing.

My design philosophy is large creatures and up should be able to knock smaller creatures prone easily depending on the creature, giants especially should have an easy time overpowering smaller targets but i can understand the frustration with getting knocked prone with no save.

what is strange is that they banned performing Magic with the Figther's Action surge. You were already restricted to only casting 1 Spell per turn, meaning that the Action Surge could only be used for Cantrips. This is WotC admitting that a Figther without Action Surge should do less damage than a Cantrip.

I’ll weigh in on the topic against my better judgment. I’m well aware that players are heroes and they should win at least 75% of the time. But I also think most tables have skewed this intended statistic to well over 98%. Why? Probably because many players build characters with specific builds in mind all the way to cap (or the cap of the adventure) before the first session is even played. They’ve basically written most of their characters stories before they’ve encountered their first enemy. And so the investment can grow exponentially, leaving them very angry if their character dies. And no DM wants angry players (rightly or wrongly). And so over time, running away/retreating has disappeared and “if you put a monster in front of us, we may be able to kill it” has taken over. I think this trend is unhealthy for the overall game. It’s hard to feel heroic when you’ve never been knocked down. But that’s quite subjective I guess (despite it being a major part of the heroes journey). If a player can instantly succeed on putting conditions on enemies (just look at grapple or these “monster stat blocks” which I believe are actually stat blocks for wild shapes/familiars/summons/companions FOR players); then monsters should be able to as well. We need to bring back a bit of struggle to the game, instead of it constantly being developed 100% in a player facing fashion. The DM is a player as well. “It’s not fair that a character can get a condition without any say in the matter!”… I agree. It’s no more fun on the DM side as well. And my voice in the conversation matters as well. Now, if it were me developing the game, I’d remove the poisoned condition and just have the attack do poison damage directly instead. I’d remove the incapacitated condition because it’s fundamentally unconscious without the death saves, and I’d remove paralyzed since it’s basically restrained without the incapacitated condition (or at least very close). Then I’d build the system to be more modular. If you want to play non-typical fantasy characters holding hands while skipping through an adventure to get mayonnaise from the market before the big feast (where failure and death is never an option); then so be it. But add modular design options for more brutal combat where we move the success rate back down to 75% and retreat is always a reasonable reaction. It’s the best of both worlds. And remember, you don’t start out as heroes day 1. You’re simply a more rare “commoner” with special traits. Your experience changes you; at least they should. So building a full character before session 1 is stupid. You aren’t there to build a story, you’re there to hijack one into supporting decisions you made months/years ago. It’s why they should’ve rebalanced the power gains from level 1-10 and spread them out a bit more from 1-20 instead. They should’ve also addressed multiclassing more, making it more of an investment. Instead of a leveled fighter taking a level in bard all of a sudden when never saying a word during a session, no interest in writing poems, dancing, or singing…. Nope! Did it for the mechanical gains yo! That’s all well and good if the game is designed around modularity and making meaningful choices. But as it stands all the arguments I’m hearing/seeing are “it doesn’t make sense I can be knocked prone when I’m such a strength focused character”… well it doesn’t make sense to make half the choices many builds do purely for “mechanical reasons” and does nothing to serve the story being told. But ok.

There is a middle ground. "If the attack succeeded by 5 or more, the opponent becomes prone." or "If the attack also exceeds the opponent's passive athletics score, the opponent becomes prone." In this case, not all attacks do this and the player's abilities have some determination on whether they are affected.

The verisimilitude is on point. Wolves are pack hunters that specialize in taking down prey and mauling it to death. They weigh 50 to 180 lbs (average 115). They are always going to try to put you on your back so they can rip out your throat. This approach to creature design is simple and elegant but may not be appropriate for more complex creatures.