My biggest complaint about the Adventure Path type (long adventure, level 1 to 10+) is that because we only get to play for 6 hours every few weeks, it takes a year or more to finish it (as you said, Matthew). But what that leads to is what I call the "Changing of the Guard" factor. CotG is when you are playing the game for months, or years, and someone has to leave. Let's face it, real life intrudes more when you're an adult... someone moves, or changes jobs, or changes schedules, or gets in a new relationship, or gets a new hobby, or just gets burned out. Someone leaves the group, and then you have to fill their chair with someone else. This alone is not a problem... but when it's an Adventure Path, all the characters probably had a similar goal! And now with new characters, it's not always easy to insert someone with the same goals or motivations. For instance, about a year ago, I launched a campaign of seven players where all the PCs were friends of a famous scholar who murdererd. The PCs were bound together as common friends or students of his to solve the mystery and avenge his death. The problem is that it's a year later, we still have quite a way to go, and four of the original seven PCs are gone... one PC died, two players had schedule changes, and another had health issues that forced him to drop out. So now we only have 3 PCs with the original motivation and the other three are here because... well, because they want to help their new friends get revenge on someone they never met, I guess? See, it's a weaker motivation than the originals, and as a DM you have to scramble to find a plausible reason to add new blood to the mix; new blood that will still go in the same direction as the others. Anyway, that's my complaint.

Matt Colville looks so different without the beard 🙀

I instantly got an idea about the war room, the PCs are exterminators, they've been hired to take care of some low level pest-monsters that are causing a problem in the local government building, and then maybe they discover the thread of some government conspiracy or something

Just the intro is so strong. Premium writing

Let's be honest, lot of very different things went into creating Nazis. It's not just the nature of evil, it's the circumstances of Germany itself, with europe purposefully keeping the nation divided into sub-states for centuries out of fear of a reestablished Holy Roman Empire. This provided a backdrop of perceived oppression that enabled atrocity. People who rightfully feel wronged will take vile acts further than most others simply because they think they are entitled to act that way. It also created the circumstances under which a shared racial identity reigned supreme in the zeitgeist of a people, due to the fact that they were a nation of many countries, and as such, national identity became racial identity.

A party full of 'wangrods' has as much fun together as a party full of heroes. Sometimes more. A lot of friction is just people thinking that their preferences are moral values and standards, and as such, are the 'right' way to do things.

I had a DM and the entire group all agree that everyone can hear what 'Message' says, whereas when I just checked the spell again, it says "only the target" can hear it. If I had known everyone would hear what my character was saying, I wouldn't've taken the damn cantrip. DM didn't let me retcon it there, had to wait until my character leveled up.

Why do I have to have a subscription to watch it..... Why can't it just be free. My life is a fart. MY LIFE IS A FAAAAAARRTT. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

Gandalf says that he's tired and can't cast spells well once tho

They were metagaming because they didn't think in character. But their characters would have lusted for the items as well, given the nature of the players.

I am late to the party - but THANK YOU for keeping these around! I've been playing for just about a year now... I don't consider myself too deep in the D&D world, however I decided I wanted to start my own campaign. Keep up the hard work!

One on one sessions are good for supplemental story advancement, not as the norm for the game

A duet game should NOT be the 'norm'. That's not to say that there's not a place for them .. BUT, as you said, the class dynamics are built around a party. Back in the beginning, we used to do things very differently than what you are used to in 5e. Parties had hirelings, regularly, and these hirelings could do anything from watching the party's horses and wagons while they're in the dungeon to taking care of their manor house if they had one... and they were often also backup characters in case their primary character died. Death happened a lot more often in 1e. Today, I use duet sessions for character specific encounters.

Wel i am going to do a skill challange chase that spontane came up in my campaign, its trying to get the dieing partymember out the claws of a frost giant.. who is kinda hunry, while shes running back up a mountain.

I'm in the end stretch of a game with a friend where she has a DMPC. I can't wait for this game to end because its been super frustrating. In addition to being the most badass character of the group, they're also heckling the players for not being bright enough or fast enough with their battle tactics, making snide comments about situations or problems we need to solve, and is generally a "I don't care a whit, I'm just here as a hired gun because youre all too powerless" sort of character. Its made that character seem like the voice of the DM steering the campaign where THEY want it to go and to play out scenarios THEY designed to go one way. The constant, "well, you guys need to get better at this because you clearly don't know what youre doing" feels like a smack in the face every season. I'm just along for the ride to watch the game unfold. Last session I gave up playing my character as designed and just threw caution to the wind with my actions. I at least had some fun. Anyway, it's bad enough that I will never play a game where this person is DMing again. For the love of pete, DMs, please don't do this to your players.

Thank you for this. I spent 30+ years playing AD&D, and have only in the last year converted to 5e. In AD&D, I could put together an encounter easily by feel and experience. Trying to learn the CR system was tough, and my encounters always came out much easier than I intended. I'm gonna try your looser version, which is closer to my AD&D approach. And your idea of having enemies in reserve will help me control the difficulty a little better. Thanks!

I have been trying to get to running short episodic adventures, but I always start a campaign the wrong way. Like I model it as a big adventure book, because that’s what 5E sells us. And it absolutely fizzles every time, no matter how fresh I thought my ideas were

"just stick a swamp somewhere." 😂😂😂

Assassin Vine, page 213 from Tomb of Annihilation.

We can see that you're white and male. You can't really 'see' someone being middle-class . You're just a jeans and T-shirt guy. You find them all up and down the economic spectrum. Great Channel, though.

All power derives from the support of the military-aged males in your society. That is a fundamental truth that this society has largely forgotten, probably at its peril. No other group can overthrow a country, and they can overthrow any country. You need their labor, you need their protection, you need their aggression. Without those things, you lead nothing.

My favorite modules were always the ones for low characters, generally the ones that said levels 1-3 or 1-4. *"Against the Cult of the Reptile God"* and *"Slave Pits of the Undercity"* were my absolute favorites with *"Night of the Walking Dead"* (Ravenloft, 2E) close behind. I preferred them because they were short and precise. You didn't have buildings with 30 - 100 rooms on 5+ floors/levels.

Matt disappearing at 0:39 for half a second is so funny

You could make the chronicles a portal to a demiplane that relives events like scenarios... to learn the lore themselves

I didn’t like 4th edition but I think it had a lot of good ideas. My group of new players and I are playing 3.5 because for us it’s the best version for what we like to do. I believe each edition is strong in its own way, what makes it good or not is if what that editions strengths are appeals to you or notn

I once killed a PC with too strong an encounter, but he held a hallway long enough for the rest of the party to fall back and make a plan essentially sacrificing himself so they could live. The party was only level 2 so I felt bad his character died. Since they were fighting necromancers at the time. I had the last one surrender and offer to revive their friend. However, I didn't want it to be an "oops let's reset" kind of thing. Instead I told them an incantation in Abyssal which only the wizard spoke. I then sent the wizard a text letting them know it was a contract to asmodeus. Knowing this the wizard still went through with the contract giving his soul and life to Asmodeus for the other member's. That way there was still weight to what happened, but it was more about player agency. The wizard was wanting to switch to a blood hunter idea they were excited for anyway. I also gave The Paladin a Lazarous pit condition. He essentially would go into a rage when he'd hit below half HP.

I was running this in the background while I worked, because I need my mind occupied while the hands do the job, and I heard "I almost titled this video, 'Story vs. Adventure'" and had to look back over because I thought I had clicked on a video titled Story vs. Adventure 😂

I homebrewed this skeletal monster that was kind of part centipede and scorpion in form. It could grapple with its ribcage legs and had a "Tail" that was a skeleton torso on an elongated spine holding a poisoned spear. It could spider climb and had a silence aura in a 5ft radius, so it was perpetually quiet and if it grabbed a spellcaster it became a big problem

My son and his six friends run one shots with each of them rotating to DM and picking up where the last one left off. The roars of laughter and fun are awesome.

This is why everyone should go listen to Dan Carlin’s Blueprint for Armageddon.

A meatpacking plant and warehouse that's suffered an accident and been flooded with an experimental magical cooling fluid. So many sliding ice puzzles!

In my home game, this has now become: Goal Oriented Backstories. You get X to start, and you get Y when you achieve a goal, designed WITH the player. It's been a major success!

Dragons of Stormwreck Isle is a “starter set” adventure from pretty recently. I really like it. SPOILERS BELOW FOR IT IF YOU ARE PLAYING IT! It’s structured with the players showing up to a “central HQ” kind of area, where they’re told about two problems facing the island (tied to some motivations given to the pregen characters but they’re pretty easy to slap onto new characters). Then if they complete that there’s one final quest the head NPC asks of them. They level up pretty each thing they complete, tho they can do it in whichever order and the book says how to scale if they do them either way. In like 4 sessions they’ve saved a myconid colony, cleansed a curse of Orcus raising zombies of dead sailors from a shipwreck, and slain a dragon (wyrmling), while befriending/saving another wyrmling. There’s also Kobolds and friendly NPCs and enemies as well.

You missed Floyd's comment in the conference room about having everyone sign loyalty oaths.

sheesh your light setup for this video is spot on! :D

The Mel Kiper Jr of D&D

Last Monday I had an appointment with my doctor. She was making appointments for me to attend. She asked me if I was fine or did she need to write them down. I said as long as the appointment is in the "doobly doo".

666th comment

Glad to see your products on DnD Beyond. Bought Flee, Mortals and Where Evil Lives. Looking forward to it,

Ah, this reminds me that I don't think he ever did the local bad guy's video. So many topics to cover.

A few months ago this Banshee advice was ignored by me. My Level 11 party was on an airship and flew over to a ghost airship, where they were met with a Nat 20 initiative Banshee who wailed, killing everyone except the Undying Warlock, who had 1 HP (I don’t know if that’s Rules as Written, but it would have been tragic otherwise, so I didn’t check). It ended up quite badass, with the Warlock using Mental Prison to one-shot the Banshee, but I was so caught off guard by the failures around the table: Barbarian, Bard, Druid, and Warlock all beefed it, but I let it ride and just didn’t introduce the second Banshee.

My current campaign is set during a weeklong festival Called "The Lover's festival" as all the gods are dead except for "Life" and "Death" portrayed as a married couple. After the week a meeting between the nations called "The Pentacle Summit" will take place which is the catalyst for starting the actual plot. Currently I have a rogue trying to assassinate a noble for a contract, an artificer trying to get into "Ironcraft's College of Invention", my tiefling is trying to recruit help for his hometown, etc. I purposely gave them this in game weeklong downtime so their characters can develop and find some footing in the world before just getting thrown into plot. Everyone seems to be enjoying it and I'm enjoying watching them tell their own stories before I start mine as a DM.

2nd time watching this...

As far as the AC goes.. all you did was give him a shield. Their base AC at 1/4 CR, is 15.

I love adjusting items to my custom fantasy world and I have a deck of my own creation based on the Deck of Many Things. Just found your channel, it's awesome. Thanks Matt

Wayyyy too late but warlocks are good when they take "cantrip" invocations and take short rests. That's it

Cliffhanger: what happened to the fourth and fifth edition? I need them.

My absolute favorite thing about watching a Matt Colville video is hearing him say "this may be a short video", pausing, checking the video length, and it NEVER is

Hey Matt, not sure if this is the place to bring this up, but today I got notice from D+D Beyond that Flee Mortals and Where Evil Lives are now on D+D Beyond, which is great! However, I already paid for these sweet products, and now I have to pay another 60 bucks to get them on D+D Beyond?!?!? How about some kind of discount code at least?!?!? I truly want to support third party materials being available on D+D Beyond as I do not like the Wizards monopoly, but paying twice is just too much. Will it get to the point where I no longer pay upfront and just wait until the product is on D+D Beyond? I don't think anyone wants that...

Need some data on how it feels for certain % hit chances from the community haha.