Five Combat Encounter Building Mistakes in Dungeons and Dragons 5e [DM Tips]

[@damienpeters6004]

In terms of memorable encounters I'm reminded of our party's Levitating Sand Worm fiasco. I'm DMing for my group: Bard / Hexblade, Rogue, and Druid They're encountering a Sand Worm in the desert on the way to deliver medicine. The Worm is being clever, using its it's burrowing speed, fighting advantageously, when the Bard gets the idea to cast Levitate on it. At the time, I had forgotten that Levitate has a 500lb limit, and looking back, I'm glad I did. The Worm failed it's save and rose up from the sand in the air. With some help from the Druid, the Bard, also being part Hexblade decided to leap up and bury their knives in the side of the Worm. The attack hit. Good for them. Now the Sand Worm has a sand breath attack (Homebrew monster) and is, for all intents and purposes, in a 0G environment. So I ruled that the breath attack caused the Worm to whip around wildly, granting everyone advantage on their save against it, but the Bard would have to make a Strength save to hold on. They failed. I rolled randomly for the direction they would be flung. Straight up. The Bard got another idea, and being a generous idea allowing DM who loves cinematic moments to take place I allowed this. The Bard was flung up into the air, and at the apex readied their daggers to come back down on the creature with even greater force, God of War style. With daggers poised above their head and battle cry raging they plunged... straight past it. They rolled a 2. Smack. Down into the sand. The fall damage made them lose concentration. Of the Levitate spell. Which was holding the Sand Worm aloft. Right above them. The Sand Worm plummeted and downed the Bard, nearly killing them outright. The rest of the encounter was spent fighting this very angry worm with the added stakes of having to excavate the dying Bard. Great encounter. We still laugh about it.

[@Danny191]

This sounds like something my brother's party would do, complete with natural 2

[@damienpeters6004]

@@Tabletop_Nonsenseverse Well, it was a little different. That campaign is over now, so without fear of spoilers, I can explain. The continent in question is called Osparia and is a place where the veil between the planes is thin. Eons ago a Demon God named Angrom pierced the veil and his legions swarmed the continent with intent to expand and take the world from there and eventually use Osparia as a nexus to channel into the other planes. Heroes of old rose up and defeated him, but being a God, they could not truly kill him. Instead, with the help of the Fey, they imprisoned him with a seal in the form of a massive tree in the center of the continent, miles high. Only one of the hero's still lives, over a thousand years later, a Draconic Sorcerer who accended to true dragonhood, Fortaliis. After the battle, all but the orcs chose to leave Osparia. To go to different continents. Osparia was largely forgotten until a group of imperialistic humans came called The Kingdom of Enteim and began conquering the land from the orcs. By this time, Fortaliis should have died from his age. But certain that the threat of Angrom would return, he instead chose to siphon power from the land to maintain himself. Doing this for centuries had turned the South East of Osparia into nothing more than salt fields and sand dunes. The orcs knew and feared that land. Stories of the dragon had been passed down through generations and the land was a visual testament to his power. and when their invaders questioned them of the desert, they couldn't understand the language, but they did hear one word repeated; "Fortaliis". Through more political crap you don't want to read, Osparia eventually became divided into 5 nations. Enteim and Fortaliis have a special relationship. Enteim is a theocratic monarchy of human supremists. Their country wound up being just above Fortaliis. Like Australia, Enteim would exile "criminals" there, presumably to die. Criminals to them we largely non-humans amd anyone who spoke out against them. One of Enteim's core social and religious philosophies is that all magic, arcane or otherwise, is in fact a conduit to the divine. To survive in the desert, the people of Fortaliis began to study magic extensively. Being able to terraform small amounts of land meant they had to be smart with it. As such, they began dealing in spices and trading by sea bypassing Enteim entirely. They used this, in turn to build a strong naval force as well. Fortaliis became a wealthy empire in its own right and is renowned as the most magically inclined of the five nations of Osparia. A right which the people of Enteim fervently believe should belong to them and is even more infuriating since they are the very cause of the nation's existence. This was a huge lore dump for a game that is over that you're not even playing in and I left out a ton of details but sorry for rambling like that. I'm a worldbuilder DM. I make a plot, sure. But I know my world more than I know my plot. That way when my party wants to do something outside of my main plot I know exactly what to throw at them.

[@aaroncullen1803]

@@damienpeters6004 that sounds like a brilliant world you crafted. Really enjoyed the read mate, thanks for posting.

[@kainaanstuart5947]

@@damienpeters6004 I could sit and read your world builds all day if they're this good. I enjoyed this very much, good work. I'm a new DM, any tips to world building

[@damienpeters6004]

@@kainaanstuart5947 Well, maybe this is just my DMing style, but I believe that first and foremost our job is to tell a story, and the barebones of what makes a story is conflict. Conflict with one another, within ourselves, without it a story is just a statement of fact. So for all of your characters, especially your antagonists, insert conflict. What do they want? What's stopping them? If it's the party, that's a strong angle to take. The party should be trying to do something the antagonist is interfering with, and visa versa. As for worldbuilding itself, nothing that I wrote up there is even the slightest bit original. Where it becomes original is not from it's pieces, but how those pieces are blended. So don't be afraid to appropriate ideas from every medium you can find. Some of my best ideas came from the boring practical ones. For example, dwarves live in and on the mountains. How do they eat? By asking this question I looked at high altitude farm life and decided that they use rice paddys and goats, along with fish farming in pools inside the caves, integrating a sort of Celtic / Japanese fusion into their food which I then let carry over into their cultural systems. It was no different with the spice trade in Fortaliis. Food is a great analogy here. Just like how spices, despite their small size, completly change the flavor of a dish, so to does the flavor of your world come down to placing a lense on the smallest of details. That being said, my worldbuilding is thorough, but not all encompassing. You will lose your mind doing too much. I had areas in my regional notes like "Between City A and City B is a small fishing hamlet with a haunted underwater cave." That is more than enough. You know the place exists, you've added a point of interest. Your players may never go there, but if they do you have the bones you need to make it into something memorable. As a last tip, railroading. Such a dirty word in our community right? What I'm about to suggest is *almost* railroading and may infuriate some players, but here is the bottom line; the plot must go on. At least the grand overarching narrative anyway. If they don't like an area and bail, let them, but find ways to tie whatever they do into the major conflict of the plot as a whole. You can do this a lot of ways. If they take a divergence from the story, show them the consequences of their inaction. You can structure the plot in such a way where multiple things must happen in multiple places for the plot to proceed and the order in which they do them doesn't matter, so you can adjust areas accordingly, but so long as they keep moving and keep doing things the plot will progress. Or, perhaps the most dubious, the illusion of choice. Don't tell anyone I told you this, but DMs do it all the time. There's a fork in the road between Sunshine Land and Nightmare Hill. They can go wherever they'd like. But it doesn't matter where they go, because the same plot will happen at whichever location they go to, just with different flavor. Be careful about abusing that one. They will ask questions like "what would've happened if we..." and you have to be prepared to improv some thought provoking bullshit to make you seem like a mastermind.

[@the1one4v2]

Story about adding meaning to combat encounters and names and such. I was running a game where the party was tasked to deal with a white dragon that has been harassing a dwarven city in the north. The players had encounters this dragon named Diamond Jaw in a previous campaign and had stole treasure from him. When they entered his lair they found hundreds of ice sculptures of their past characters, the ones that stole from Diamond Jaw. The dragon had become obsessive sbout those thieves creating those sculptures so he could smash and destroy them. In the fight some of the statues came to life and they had to fight icy nerfed clones of their previous characters while fighting diamond Jaw aswell.

[@Draeckon]

That's so cool and I'm stealing this idea.

[@achimsinn7782]

20:24 - Be carefull with Bridges - I once tried to have a combat on a hanging bridge and were prepared to have the players and NPCs roll dexterity checks for keeping their balance while the players needed to make sure to capitalize on that chokepoint to keep the enemies from running away or crossing the bridge. What actually happened was that one or our players polymorphed one of the enemies into a wooly mammoth which was too heavy for the bridge and the other party dropped to their death into what basically was a D&D equivalent of grand canyon. Still pretty funny, but now I was sitting there DMing a party with almost 1 hour left of gametime and no final battle for that part of the campaign which meant A LOT OF IMPROV for me.

[@mal2ksc]

Bridges can be interesting even at low level. One of the more memorable moments I've had as a player (as opposed to DM) was when enemy forces had blocked a bridge, so I teleported behind them and cast Thunderwave. Two of them saved, but all the rest of the guard fell into the river below. Many of them survived, but they weren't going to be rejoining that particular encounter.

[@thetowndrunk988]

Reminds me of the first time I DM’ed an artificer, and allowed explosives at my table. What was supposed to be an epic battle at the bottom of a cliff, instead turned into the artificer sneaking to the top, where I’d happened to mention some giant boulders…… Well, at least the vision of my poor monsters dying in an avalanche was humorous

[@eadorin1554]

Bonus tip: Give the enemies a goal other than just "Kill the PCs" When the enemies are on a timeline to kidnap someone or destroy a bridge or assassinate a character, it adds heightened risk and suspense to player choices. What makes D&D fun and memorable is player creativity and choice. Give them bonus options. As for surprises, I created a roadblock once on a forest path and the party got into it with some wolves and an evil druid.....that's when the large tree that they walked past revealed itself to be a Treant. (I was using Syrinscape and some awesome built-in treant battle sounds too). My players still freak out if they start hearing tree noises lol.

[@gronkthegore-may3083]

This is a lot of good advice. Gronk thank the wisdom of Dungeon Dudes.

[@Hazel-xl8in]

Gronk The Gourmet i’ve seen like 3 of your comments on separate videos and it always makes me smile

[@gronkthegore-may3083]

@@Hazel-xl8in Gronk is Honored. If you like Gronk and want to see Gronk cook you should go to Gronk's channel.

[@Irishcream216]

YOU NO SEE GRONK

[@brifox]

"I can't remember the number of times the surviving ______ from the last combat encounter ended up being one of the most memorable npc's of the entire session." Or a whole campaign, yes yes yes?

[@spencermagleby9336]

Rat Prince!!!!!

[@Hshot-nt2gs]

Droop from lost mine of phandelver was my party’s

[@sipjedekat8525]

Whoa, giving the mooks a name is a really good idea. I've done this inadvertently a few times before, (never on purpose) and I remember all those encounters more vividly than those with nameless redshirts.

[@CatsTeaSweaters]

Same here. We were exploring an ancient pyramid that was formerly the centre of a cult. We had recruited a sentient skeleton wizard to our side, and he was giving us the background on what the place was like when he was alive. This included telling us about some skeleton archers who used to be his coworkers a thousand years ago - Steve, who kept stealing his lunch from the breakroom; Eric, who took credit for everything and kept calling for meetings that could have been a scroll; and his office crush who never reciprocated, Wanda. Heinar Smett, wizard servant of the great dragon Varmega, got a bit choked up when our ranger got a critical on Wanda and she fell to pieces on the floor.

[@madscurr]

Once I had to introduce a new player to an in-progress campaign. The rest of the party was bloody and knew how dangerous the setting was, so I wanted the new player’s first combat to knock his PC down to around the same amount of resources as the party and to give him a sense of the environment. I had the rest of the party play a pack of wolves that attacked him, and even though they were all using the same stat block, I made them name their wolves. Naming their wolves totally added depth to the encounter - it immediately gave them a character to RP. One player made himself the Alpha and immediately started calling the pack tactics, one player chose to be the comedic relief, and everyone got a small peak into the BBEG’s minions’ heads, and the new guy got to establish himself as a badass who could single-handedly take on a pack. It was awesome when it didn’t have to be. After that fight the new PC met the rest of the party and fit right in.

[@jeepersmcgee3466]

In our first real session of the campaign (the first I've ever run), the party of brand new players took a skiff through shipwreck waters. A pair of sharks attacked by ramming the boat, and any players who didn't use their action to hunker down had to make a dex or strength save to not be thrown overboard. I could tell from mock encounters we had run at session zero that they were expecting some sort of Final Fantasy style combat, so I wanted to show them right away how dynamic and open it can be. They were scrambling to stay in the boat and protect it and each other. They used magic creatively to speed up the boat or make the water taste like blood in other spots to distract the sharks. When they got to land in their hole-ridden dingy, they were gasping from exhaustion and hugging each other. I was so damn proud

[@dakotabrowning5286]

You started off in water!?! You madman(:

[@tylerowens]

The biggest thing I've seen in both myself and dm's I've played with is not fully understanding what CR really means. I kept having encounters the dm guide said should have been deadly be a pushover. And the reason was that cr is balanced to having 6 to 8 encounters between long rests. My groups tend to have one maybe two on a heavy combat day. So the players can just burn all of their big spell slots and abilities and suddenly a monster with cr several levels higher than what is "appropriate" pose no threat. So if you're using CR make sure to adjust to the number of encounters you're anticipating between rests.

[@byzantinex]

I've been running this game for years and playing it for decades and I JUST learned this 🤦‍♂️

[@alexanderrogers4557]

When I encounter build, I try to think about who should be there. E.g. zombies wandering around a lair will probably be fairly standard, but a they are here for defence. Maybe one of them has a rune of thunderwave carved into their chest (nasty), but killing it not only results in maybe some damage, but also a very loud bang. Good luck trying to stealth your way into that dungeon. OR A hobgoblin scounting party should know what they are doing so there will be some front liners, some archers (or equivilant), maybe a caster because that is a more well put togeher party. But this is a scouting party. Let's have a few wolves (or other tracking animal) on leashes as well. Maybe a druid or even a kidnapped local that knows the area if the hobgoblins don't. Thinking about why they are there and working around that can have some fantastic results.

[@ThisNameIsBanned]

Zombies with magic runes on them is actually a great idea. Lots of them with several runes that have potentially powerful spells on them makes sure the group hopefully doesnt kill them too quickly or obliterate themselves.

[@Hopeitsagood1]

@@ThisNameIsBanned yep. Even better have the party go through a corridor of traps with hidden zombies at the entrance ordered to attack once prey passes 30 m.. The party passes through, the zombies trip all the traps. Done. Whole dungeon is alerted to the 5hp total party.

[@Dabeef64]

Agreed. I really like the booby-trapped zombie idea

[@beebarkhouse9632]

I am now going to use "tank and spank" for everything

[@luketfer]

It's a classic MMO term and is about how most of the early raid bosses were a case of one or two tank characters holding aggro and the DPS just hammering the boss. Though it's very rare to encounter in MMOs these days since they...well..for the same reasons it's not good in D&D. Not to be confused with a DPS check boss, which, whilst similar to a tank and spank also involved more mechanics and it's a race to beat their enrage timer or they kill the raid.

[@stone4574]

"what are your plans for tomorrow?" "Oh you know, just tanking and spanking!"

[@ronin7997]

Great points on the environmental combat situations. Had a session where a PC got stranded atop a mid-sized tower with the rest of the party on the ground floor. The stranded player found a chokepoint and had to play defensively while the others frantically had to ascend and try a rescue, all the while dealing with hostiles also racing up and height hazards. The encounter ran well over 2 hours, but it was easily the most dynamic and intense combat I've ran in recent months. The players were extremely creative and ended up saving their friend, and it became a huge highlight in that campaign.

[@michaelramon2411]

I'm a Pathfinder 1e guy, so a lot of my bosses have their builds taken from my big folder of unused player character builds. I'm able to give them a lot of interesting mechanics (like the crazy cannibal lady who went invisible at the start of the fight while her minions attacked, used Enlarge Person on herself and then reappeared behind the party to snatch someone up with a bite-and-grab attack; or the guy with low AC but insane health regeneration (who took mental damage the longer the fight went on, meaning that he could be outlasted if they couldn't overcome the regeneration); or the ice ghost who covered the battlefield in fog that only she could see through and began darting around the map, blasting the party with debilitating area-of-effect spells). Once in a tongue-in-cheek campaign I threw five of my unused PCs together to make a quirky mercenary gang (the Notginyu Force, because it was that type of game), and the players' knowledge of this fact so intimidated them that they negotiated with mercs rather than fight them. On good encounter building (especially for "bosses" or other significant threats), I find that often foreshadowing is key. The players should know something about the foe before the battle starts. Having heard earlier enemies mention them, or a witness say that they saw this strange-looking person surrounded by armored bears enter the cave, or using documents to give the players a hint of the character and their name (I ran a campaign that used this to great effect, as the abandoned mad science facility was full of documents mentioning the now-monsterfied staff, and the players reacted much more strongly to them than if they were all namely monstrosities) or if they've encountered the foe in a non-violent setting (like at a dinner party) or seen them from a distance as they activate the trap in the PCs' hallway before running off. Even if the fight is the first time the PCs have seen that foe, that doesn't mean they have to come out of nowhere (unless that's what you are going for, of course!). I also find it nice for enemy factions to have some consistency in their combat styles. They don't have to be identical in their methods (even ogres can have a magic user or two in the group) but giving the players a basic idea of what their tactics are (and therefore how to counter them) encourages the players to fight in different ways than they might otherwise. (For example, in my upcoming campaign there is a faction that uses aberrations and cold weapons, a faction that uses constructs and electric weapons and a faction that uses humanoid spellcasters and fire weapons, giving each a specific theme.) It also makes the world feel consistent, rather than being randomly generated.

[@billionai4871]

I couldn't not think of the rat prince as soon as you mentioned an NPC that was meant to be a combat encounter but ended up being important. He was just fantastic!

[@betci90]

same

[@a.spirit8408]

That point about Stunlock Shutdown 👏For the past year now, I've been focusing on conditions like Blinded and Frightened as creature abilities. Makes the players think about new ways of showing off their cleverness.

[@markissleepy]

As a DM with nearly 40 years experience, I feel like you are giving away a lot of my best tricks in this one. ;) Definitely one of your best videos yet - I like these "tips and tricks" ones over the "mechanics analysis" style videos.

[@DungeonDudes]

Thanks! We try to strike a balance between advice and analysis.

[@sipjedekat8525]

Before even seeing the video, I just know I've been guilty of all of them over the years...

[@goatmeal5241]

"Feeblemind" is in my opinion one of the absolute worst spells to use as a DM, though it's slightly less egregious in 5e than in Pathfinder (where I've played most). Failing a save doesn't kill you, it erases anything dignified or composed about your character, leaving you to RP a super-mentally-disabled version of them instead? You better be REAL sure your players are up for that dubious and potentially humiliating task, or that the party has quick access to magic that can remove it, because I can tell you from experience it doesn't feel good to have agency permanently taken away by failing one save. A DM (in Pathfinder 1e) recently targeted me with a save gauntlet of three feebleminds in a single turn, and I failed one due to the -4 penalty that arcane casters take on their save in that edition. I had to spend the combat simply melee-attacking the nearest enemy, missing every time, and he had to scramble to think of excuses for the enemies not to wipe the party (it was just me and two others), eventually letting the other caster use a hero point to cast heal even though he wasn't high enough level for it yet. Permanently crippling players, in a way that removes their sense of agency and ability to contribute, is just a feels-bad mechanic.

[@hqueso]

I try to avoid any spell that has the meta-effect of "Player A, you might as well go make a sandwich and check your e-mail. You won't be playing the game you came here to play for a long while."

[@moogamooga2100]

I REALLY appreciate the timestamps in the description. Invaluable when coming back to review advice before a session.

[@RevilloPhoenix]

Not fighting to the last breath: In one of our games there was a random bandit leader Necromancer guy that straight up surrendered when we killed his underlings (he was a low level necro, couldn't make an undead hoard) and later he became a permanent member of the party as we got to know him better while having custody over him and figured out why he turned evil and that he was redeemable. The whole player party loved the guy.

[@JessBlanchard]

This is the first year i've played or DMed d&d, all for a group of new players except one who introduced the game to me. The greatest thing to come out of my campaign is the Gnome Faktore who was defeated and abused by my players but left alive. I did a rewrite of the quest in the adventure guide (Dragon of ice spire peak, Axeholm quest) that made Faktore the main focus of the quest, and introduced the villains of the next arc after/if my players defeat the dragon. My players realized that it was their fault for what happened and it really had a impact on them and the story. I was super proud of it. 😄

[@andrewsims1396]

A memorable encounter I made for my players involved a group of cultists summoning a devil. The cultists were spread out around a summoning circle inside a huge cave. The cultists were in a trance and were easy to cut down, either by normal atack rules or by taking a full action to kill outright. There was 100 of them however and only 20 rounds in which to kill them all. After 4 rounds a shadowy form appeared in the circle and began attacking the players with a magical whip (60 foot range). The players could now choose to either attack the creature. At this point the partially summoned creature has Resistance to all damage, heavy cover and attacks against him have disadvantage. After 8 rounds the devils presence on the material plane increases. Now it has only light cover and now does 2 attacks per turn. After 12 rounds the devils presence increases again. It has no cover and players no longer have disadvantage attacking. After 16 rounds the devil is almost fully summoned. It no longer has damage resistance. After 20 rounds the devil is fully summoned and can now move and attack the players. My players decided quickly to ignore the creature and hunt down the cultists, moving and attacking from outside the 60 foot range of the devil when possible. They managed to kill enough cultists (75) on round 19, ceasing the cummoning and sending the devil back to the nine hells. Their celibration ended the next round when the 25 remaining cultists drew knives and attacked. They still won but having focused on movement, perception and rapid damage, and still nursing wounds caused by the devil the sudden numbers caught them by surprise. Later on in the campain they found out they had stopped only 1 summoning out of 5, having to face the devils four brothers, having been successfully summoned, who sought out the players for revenge.

[@MagicMadman24]

Adding detail to the environment is one of the best tips ever. Example: My best friend was dueling in an arena and the DM described the ground as desert sand. My friend's Dragonborn Rogue was struggling with rolls due to the DM's rule on his footwork, so he used his fire breath on the ground to turn sand to glass so he had a solid surface to stand on. This fight happened over 10 years ago and we still talk about it to this day.

[@ActiveAdept-x7e]

Some good stuff. One of my favourite combat encounters I did was with a homebrewed monster. I created a fear demon that was able to target the minds of the players. Dealing psychic damage, inducing fear and feeding from their fear to heal and grow stronger. In addition it was able to summon a massive field of magic darkness that damaged the players if they stayed inside and was able to summon shadows. So I had an encounter where they had to rely on small pools of light fighting monsters that hid in darkness that they could not see into and preyed on their minds. It was very challenging but was fun to see them come up with ways to fight together.

[@sovest555]

One of my favorite combat encounters that I've done thus far was one with a Dune Mimic. I actually had its main body at the end of a winding map while on the way there were sarlacc pit-like areas where the mimic could extend its pseudopods for opportunity attacks (while also allowing the players some time to damage it before it withdrew the pseudopod again) as well as some sand shades for a bit of variety. Ultimately, the party paladin ended up scouting ahead a bit too much and got swallowed by the mimic's main body, but luckily the rest of the party caught up before he could be fully digested.

[@SamWeltzin]

Really cool to see higher-profile folks like you having come to many of the same conclusions I did in my DMing experience. I think the most memorable fight I've done was when the party stormed a multi-tiered fortress on the back of a moving Behemoth Golem to rescue a Coatl from a permanent cage of force. If they'd directly attacked the Behemoth Golem, they'd have been creamed, so between a magic carpet, the Fly spell, and Wild Shape, they found a way to get all of them flying, then infiltrated the place through the front door, casting a burning tar spell to keep the ground-floor enemies stuck and taking damage while they dashed up the stairs to take care of the archers and spellcaster raining down pain from the next level. While they were doing that, they failed to notice the assassins I'd placed to guard the spellcasters, so they took a good chunk of damage before forcing the assassins out the windows, sending them plummeting to their deaths. Once they'd cleared the first two tiers, they made their way up to the final tier and finally took down the Cannon Golem that had handed them their asses and forced them to flee five levels ago, harrying them from time to time up until this point. Once they'd cleared the whole place, they reprogrammed the Behemoth Golem and turned it into a mobile amusement park called "Fuck Jervis Mundalian Land," as a giant middle finger to the BBEG. I adore tabletop gaming.

[@Hopeitsagood1]

For number 1, I like having encounters with synergistic elements like fighting steam mephits in a fog, and leaving it up to the party to figure out how to deal with that. Mephits being tricksters by nature are rarely attacking mostly aiming to get the players to hit each other or push them into traps. It was fun and they had a great time using Light to flush them out (bit of homebrew but good)

[@Glandulf19]

One of my DM's threw us the exact same thing a few months ago, while we were fighting as gladiators in an arena filled with really creative encounters. We started the combat at the center of the arena, in which we had a 30ft line of sight, but were surrounded by fog (and mephrits), memorable time

[@dallinbernhardt4540]

It’s important to remember how dangerous curses and secondary effects on attacks can be. I threw a few specters at my players without realizing how brutal the life drain secondary effect was until it was too late. Now I’m a player and got affected by a mummy curse at 0 hp, so I guess karma always finds a way.

[@billionai4871]

I did a very similar thing: There were 5 ghouls against 3 lv5 players (and an imp)... they almost got wrecked and had to focus on the "mooks" before even looking at the "commander" otherwise they'd have died for those CR 1 enemies. Really tough battle

[@Ziminator200]

I did this my first time DMing. I used mummies against my players without realizing they had a curse on their attacks and it turned a relatively moderate level fight into a dangerous encounter.

[@grave2501]

@@Ziminator200that is the problem with CR, specters for example have low TP and moderate AC, but a lot of bad decissions and shitty rolls can make them a dangeous foe

[@Tdelouis]

I agree. One of my most memorable battles, was against a bunch of mooks who were tough, but normal. We snuck up to a stairwell and could hear several of these brutes below. Our squishy but resourceful catfolk caster had a feat which allowed him to yell out a barrage of insults so bad as to drive the enemies that heard it into a frenzy. He stood at the top of the stairs and yelled down and succeed in angering all the bad guys. They double moved so the first one was just a step below him and next turn they would tear him apart, but on his turn he used an ablity which bull rushed the first guy 15 back down the stairs and piled every one of the fighters at the bottom of the stairs as they all failed their reflex to avoid falling down the stairs as their friends fell on top of them. After that the rest of our group split between the stairs and back stair to cut the guys down as they fumbled around trying to stand. It was amazing.

[@mackthisarrowhearth295]

Love that the video is more about preventing and solving mistakes, then just calling them out and say, don't do that

[@Kantohammer]

I recommend referencing your players' spells and abilities when encounter building. I like to build an encounter so that someone in the party has a chance to shine when they realize they have the key spell or ability to the encounter. Just make sure to rotate who gets to shine so you don't come across as playing favorites. The tricky part can be getting them to realize they have the key spell or ability on their own and not just blatantly tell them. Worst case scenario, have them roll a wisdom check then pass them a post-it note. For example, a DM had us trapped in an entangle spell and had a line of archers firing at us. I was able to completely neutralize their ability to shoot arrows at us by using wind wall. In actuality, he didn't plan on this since no one at our table had ever heard of wind wall, but this is the kind of "encounter solved by one person's ability" idea I was talking about. This was about 14 years ago and everyone who was at the table that day still brings it up.

[@lancelobato]

Just last month, I used a stone shaping spell to lock a Demilich inside a stone box. We were level 5 characters and had no chance. But the Demilich can only damage creatures, so he was locked there forever and we were able to escape, all alive. :)

[@TheodoreMinick]

So, I assume you are all level 10 now?

[@talongreenlee7704]

I love stone shape. Especially when combined with animate objects, creating a temporary stone golem.

[@lancelobato]

@@TheodoreMinick I wish. but the adventure was a short one. :(

[@lancelobato]

@@talongreenlee7704 yeah. It is an awesome spell. one of those that with creativity can be as game-changing as a level 9 one.

[@patchodraws9200]

I'll admit, I'm still very new at building combat encounters with my group, and most of the groups I've run have said it's the one area of the game I need to work on (though they all love my RP encounters). However, the one combat encounter I ran that was basically unanimously enjoyed in one of my groups was an altered version of the Lost Mines of Phandelver Black Spider encounter. Instead of putting him in the office, I put him in the underground lake area, upped his hit points, and gave him the Echo Knight's ability to send out a mirror image to attack with, as well as giving him a Lair Action (for context, I'd changed the module slightly so that Wave Echo Cave held a powerful lake of Illusions that the Black Spider was using). Half of the boss battle was some players trying to fight him off, the other half of the boss battle was players being unconscious and trying to break through dream illusions pertaining to their character backstories; the longer they were in the dream, the more Black Spider was able to siphon their hit points to keep him alive in the actual battle. My players really enjoyed having a boss battle with a bit of danger with certain members not able to actively fight Black Spider, and they really enjoyed the dream sequences that they tried to battle out of!

[@RIVERSRPGChannel]

An encounter for a party of 10 PCs can be tough to do. Especially if the party uses good combat tactics. Always looking for ideas. I like using multiple targets such as magic users and a commander with a good Lieutenant. I like to make the bad guys surrender or run too. Good stuff

[@DungeonDudes]

Ten players... oof. Have you considered splitting the group or running a rotating table?

[@h20hawk17]

Maybe try an encounter where the terrain factors in. I had my party have to cross bridges over a ravine (small islands like in Avatar), while being attacked by large griffons more intent on plucking them up as prey. The party had to think how to break free but also save their party members if they were picked up.

[@RIVERSRPGChannel]

Dungeon Dudes yes but they all like the way it is

[@dhawkeye4439]

How did you end up with 10 people?

[@XoRandomGuyoX]

10 PCs that know what they're doing are going to be a tough nut to crack. You mentioned that enemies might run. That provides an interesting potential hook: the enemy that successfully escapes might report back on all the abilities, tactics, and behaviors observed in battle, resulting in the BBEG forming a task force custom crafted to combat the party. This is where you throw out all the stops for an encounter. Let the enemies use the same brutal tactics that players employ, targeting healers and spell casters, attempting to incapacitate a front line fighter before skewering them with a phalanx formation(if this is in the form of the spell you can 'warn' the party about an enemy spellcaster chanting something on their turn, assuming that they use the Ready action to ensnare the fighter just before the phalanx goes). You can have a flanking force show up 2 rounds into the combat, maybe all of which are ranged and have been ordered to target single targets with each volley. For maximum effect the enemies on the force should probably name drop individuals through battlefield dialog and thus set themselves up as a formidable anti-party.

[@nelsongutierrez2699]

Thank you for this, I've notice my encounters have been slogging down a bit, but last session I ran a Se Fury with her whole lair stuff, the only front runners where the Fury and a Hunter Shark. Encounter started with the room flooded in water, I used the Fury's lair and legendary actions against a party of 4 level 9 players, after the encounter o asked them if they liked it and they were completely stoked, they were talking about running away after one of her warlocks used hunger of Hadar on the battlefield. My group likes challenging encounters, and mixed in with battlefield advantages and disadvantages for them, totally not regret putting them in controlled danger.

[@zendikarisparkmage2938]

1:37 Introduction 2:33 Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Melee Only) 4:31 Too Many, Too Few, Too Obvious (Targets) 7:58 You Haven't Even Got A Name Tag! (Pointless Fights) 10:50 Stunlock Shutout 14:43 Empty Rooms 18:28 Conclusion

[@puretestosterone9614]

You deserve a medal

[@kamphuis89]

I love it how you guys addressed the somewhat random encounter with no name or tags. Just the combat for the sake of combat. I personally hate these random encounters and they take a lot of time during the session where I find it more valuable to spend on something else. I like your vids keep on going! :)

[@1003JustinLaw]

A commonly left out thing in combat environments is actually something as simple as darkness, or lighting. Even if most members of the party has darkvision they are still seeing everything in black and white, and this can add a whole layer of intrigue with shadows and shades. It's even better for characters without darkvision because they'll have to rely on light sources which will attract attention to them and, by extension, the party. Even having a room lit by torches or lamps is fun, as the players have the option to put out the lights to create darkness. Another thing that I tend to do is (through the story) kind of force the players to consider what's the best way to defeat enemies. I recently ran a game with a group of 4th level characters that involved fighting two Owlbears. Pretty standard, Owlbears with their melee attacks and brutish mentality. I made that encounter interesting by hinting, before the battle while the characters were in the market, that whole Owlbear pelts are kind of valuable. So my players can still go to town on the Owlbears and rip them apart, but then they won't get to sell that nice pelt for some shiny coins. This added this optional "difficulty spike" that the players can choose to ignore if they're low on HP, but can also choose to embrace for some extra cash.

[@grahamwatson756]

Arngeir I once had a group of mixed humans and dwarves in a dark cavern fighting a group of humans on a ledge above. The enemy above would throw a lit torch down amongst the party so they could see targets to shoot. One of the characters kicked the lit torch into a stream in the cavern so the enemy could not see them. After this happened a couple of times the enemies suspended a torch where it could light up the party but not be kicked into the stream. At this point the wizard used mage hand to pour water on the torch. Meanwhile the Dwarven archers were picking off any enemy who showed themselves. The enemy despite superior numbers were forced to retreat.

[@1003JustinLaw]

@@grahamwatson756 So many people either flat out ignore lighting or treat it as an instant-blindness syndrome, there's so much fun to be had around lighting for those who knows how to use it.

[@ShirotoraGodsbane]

One tip I have for large numbers of monsters, make use of swarm rules. Say you want to throw a hoard of kobolds at your high level players, instead of throwing thirty kobolds at them, throw six swarms consisting of five kobolds each. Also, for random monster fights, plan out a stratagy. I once nearly wiped out my party of four level 6 players with six imps through simple hit and run tactics using their at will invisibility. Another time, I presented a simple giant crab in an underwater cavern, only to have a glass gater they didn't see pop up from underneath when they charged it.

[@Hazel-xl8in]

Shirotora Godsbane alternatively, use the 4e minion rules for large groups. a minion is the exact same as a normal creature, but it only has 1 hp, and ignore half damage on spells. this means no bookkeeping, whenever they get hit they die.

[@ShirotoraGodsbane]

@@Hazel-xl8in The problem with that high of numbers, though, is having to give each of them a turn. Each has a movement, each has an action, each potential has a bonus action, etc. Making them minions doesn't fix that, it just makes them not be a problem for long. I could see that working for a moderate sized group of CR 1/4 creatures against a level 15+ party, though.

[@Gnomeitall]

One of the reasons I like having npcs traveling with the party is that they can become targets for debilitating effects in first encounters with recurring monsters and villains with those kinds of abilities.

[@F2t0ny]

Great idea for a video!

[@kentmcdonell1778]

The Band of Thunder marched into the next room on their way into the fabled treasure vault of Durlond. This steel room had a broad flat ceiling, yet the floor was a large, steeply sloped cone which posed a threat, for if any were to slide to the bottom, they would be consumed by the raging fire at the very base. On the far side of the room stood the iron golem, the queens chosen guardian to protect her treasure. It could only be controlled by one carrying the queens jewel, which the fearless paladin carried aloft into the chamber. The jewel allowed its bearer to cast dominate monster (thanks @DungeonDudes), yet for the first 4 rounds the adventurers spent in this room of fire and steel, the golem continued to resist the effect. The Band of Thunder fought frantically, fending off the beast until the power of the queens jewel could be brought to bear over the golem. The combat was engaging and inspiring, for the room was a threat on its own, the monster was foreign and powerful, yet the heros carried a weapon/clue to overcome the challenge of only they could survive long enough.

[@mikem3074]

i think a variety of encounters during an adventuring day is important as well. sometimes a single tough creature is fun...and it may get that Paladin to spend that one smite slot or that wizard to use that single first level Tasha's. not every encounter needs to be perfectly planned and thought out.

[@Rysto32]

One big mistake I made in one encounter was giving a monster a nasty ranged attack to encourage them to go to melee, and combined it with an even nastier AoE that could stun all enemies within 5ft of the monster for a round on a failed Con save. I figured that I might sucker 2 or 3 of them into walking into that -- I never expected the whole party, including the Warlock, to promptly go into melee range. To top it all off, they all rolled terribly and failed the saving throw. My players never need to know that the monster as originally designed had no cooldown on that stun ability.

[@warrenprice5221]

Good stuff. Could you guys one day do a video getting into the specifics and rules around Illusion magic?

[@Stefan-gy2ik]

And I feel that you do not have to fight every single game. Sometimes the ''combat'' encounter can be a purchase in a forest or a town or just be a negociation for an item or a lord to have a support from them. The best encounter I have put my player into was in a bidding place for a relic and every single player around the table were trying to bid and win the relic. But what the player didn't know is that every single player were trying to get the relic for someone they know. That was just an awesome game session when they realized what was happening. Combat must be special as you say and must have a purpose. I never like personnaly the random encounter when travelling. I feel like there is no point and it is just a waste of time. Good video as always.

[@paulfreeborn1493]

I agree with you on the importance of describing the environment and giving the players ways to interact with it. A memorable combat my players still talk about involved spiders and an ettercap in a heavily overgrown forest setting with lots of webs hanging from the foliage, almost in sheets in some places. The spiders themselves were not much of a threat, but heavy webs throughout the area caused problems (hard to see due to density, hard to move). Finally, one of the players had the idea to "clear" the webs with a torch--setting the webs on fire. Unfortunately, he decided to 'test" the option while the players were in the midst of the webs. Suddenly, the PCs, the spiders, and the ettercap had to deal with the fire as well as escaping. Smokey the Bear would not have approved, but the encounter left the party with one of the best lines from the campaign so far--"I hold my torch up to the webs to see if they catch fire. Oh--by the way--are they flammable?" As the flames from the torch jump to the dense sheet of webbing, you discover that yes--they are indeed flammable. (Rest of the party groans...) In any case, your point about the environment is well made--I think the environment and the set-up for the encounter (combat or otherwise) is at least as--and likely more--important than the choice of monster itself (or perhaps, the best encounters match the opponent and the environment to create interesting situations for the PCs to deal with).

[@All4Tanuki]

Number one should be "trusting CR"

[@coreypatterson5827]

Absolutely. WotC has no idea what they're doing with CR, and never did. The fact that shadows are a low enough CR that lowbie teams with no real way to fend them off can be faced with a group of them is proof positive of that.

[@Alresu]

@@coreypatterson5827 The problem is that it's pretty much impossible to create a formular that takes into account special abilities. But without that savety line new DMs might feel lost pretty fast. I agree that the system is far from perfect, but it's good enough to be helpful as long as you are aware off its flaws.

[@texastaterbug5395]

Thanks guys! Last month I was asked to DM for the first time since 1994 for a family introducing their kiddos to D&D. Your guides are very helpful for me and for my players. I also have them watching Dungeons of Drakkenheim to get ideas for how to roleplay their characters. Keep up the great content and stay safe!

[@cowardly_lion5512]

Recently had an encounter with wood elven archers where the players were on platforms and bridges weaving between massive trees, with the archers perched even higher in the trees. Just the deadliness of a significant elevation and the fact that they were trapped above the forest floor with few avenues for escape made DC10 landing checks after jumping gut wrenchingly tense, and the cutting of rope bridges and knocking enemies off added a lot of interesting dimensions to the encounter

[@cherry_buzzsaw]

Hard to understand everything you have speaking about, because I'm bad in English (most your videos have more words on screen: names of topics, other keywords). But I tried and I think some tips makes sense to me. Thank you!

[@godsamongmen8003]

From time to time I have an idea of how I might use a spell, or combination of spells, in combat. Encounters happen as part of the story, but I like using them to showcase tactics or less-popular spells that my players may not have tried. Once I had a warlock who cast levitate on a player. The player failed his save and was stuck up in the air, but he still had throwing weapons. Silly me, I put him all the way to the roof of the cavern. He asked if he could run along the roof, and I agreed that he essentially just had reverse gravity until the levitate broke. He could even jump off the ceiling if he wanted

[@kramerfortuna7228]

Great video (as always!) Just in case anybody's interested, I'll offer my own way of building "epic" encounters. Granted, I usually run my own homebrew game system instead of D&D, but I've been running games for about 16 years now and this seems to work out pretty well for the big battle scenes. I start with a big bad or a few important targets. These are named characters (like lieutenants of the campaign's villain) that have been giving the players trouble for a while. Then I throw in hoards of minions to distract the PCs. The minions are very weak and die to any attack, but are usually arranged into squads with a commander that can put up a little more of a fight. (It's important to mix up the squads too. Send a squad or two of infantry to put the pressure on them while snipers bring the pain from afar. Stabbing the same thing every round can get pretty stale during longer fights.) Every round or two, a new squad will probably show up for reinforcements, just to make sure things stay challenging. (In my system, most of the PCs can attack a lot of enemies very quickly, so it's not uncommon for my party of 5 to face down 50+ enemies over the course of one of these large scale battles.) I try make the battlefield interesting too. Players and smarter enemies can get an advantage by throwing someone into lethal machinery or flipping over a table for cover. Finally, I give my players a goal, and usually a time sensitive one. For example, they have to defend several computers while they download the plans for the big bad's super weapon, OR they have to take out the enemy spell casters who are resurrecting their fallen soldiers, OR they have to stop a captured rebel commander from being executed. Having an extra goal adds to the stakes and stops the fight from becoming a drawn out, push and shove battle. It works pretty well for my group, and I hope it can help some of you. Have a good one!

[@betci90]

thank you so much, this is so helpful, you guys are awesome as always

[@hqueso]

If I want to use a lot of foes but don't want to take forever on my monsters' turns, I create minion type enemies that have two main features: very low hp, or even just a 1) or two hits kill (a crit counts as two hits) and 2) abilities that don't require a lot of rolling. Things like aiding the actions of their allies so that only half of them are rolling or manipulating the battlefiield ("Two of the crossbow-wielding henchmen turn the heavy dinner table on its side to create a firing position with some cover. They prepare their crossbows, but don't have time left to fire this round."). I also sometimes create unique abilities. I once had a caster with several cultist minions among his force. The party was wondering two things- why did the cultists only take defensive actions and avoid combat, and why was the caster able to have multiple concentration spells up at once? The cultists had no fighting ability or spells of their own, but could maintain a spell each for their master. They figured it out when the bane spell on the group went down when the barbarian killed one of them. "Hey guys! I can dispel magic!" Another thing I use when dealing with more chaotic, less disciplined monsters is have monsters ready to back off individually. Grort the Orc Thug doesn't care if the warband might win the fight if he's sure to die before that happens. Or maybe Grort and his two buddies see an opportunity to kill the chief mid-battle, take over the warband, and earn a favor from the heroes for whom they just turned the tide, ending the fight early.

[@MasterFarrell]

You guys are the best, Dungeon Dudes! I always recommend your videos to new players and new DMs. From my own experience playing D&D I can say with certainty that your advice in this video is spot on.

[@AbyssArray]

Hmm.. I've had fun with two encounters I built, though, I probably should have spaced them out a bit more - since they were back-to-back long fights. I think I liked my first of the two more: Mimic dungeon (level 2 PCs - 6 players): Party split into two groups, treasure chests across the dungeon, some were mimics.. almost every chest dropped basically dropped alphabet clues (pretty much Al Bhed). The mimics were like... 7 HP, 15 AC, dealt a flat 2 damage, but applied a stacking poison debuff (1 stack applies the Poisoned condition, 3 stacks applies half max HP). Some unknown potions were dropped, some magical items were given, riddles were everywhere. The boss at the end of it mostly used a lot of aoes to hit people for some minor damage and different conditions/effects (knockbacks, restrains, poison stacks), and the bite dealt 1d4 + 2 (plus an additional d4 per poison stack on the target), also could hide and protect itself to boost its AC and such [some reinforcement units were called as well]. Also let it have a "multi attack" but it just did a non-bite action + a bite every turn once it dropped under half. Boss had a solid 55 HP, which was right on the dot for what I wanted (and how it actually played out, basically wanted 1 full rotation of abilities.

[@ThymeSplitter]

My wife and I used to be part of a group where the DM would always run encounters where an enemy was able to stun or mind control. There was never a way out of it either. One time three party members got hit by Mass Suggestion, mine being in an elevator shaft with them. We were trying to deal with a Mind Flayer problem, and one of them ordered them to attack anyone trying to come out of the elevator. So my wizard misty stepped out of there since the next floor was visible enough. Now, they all started chasing me (all physicals too), and I asked my DM if I could roll for Arcana to know what effect they're under. Denied the opportunity. We even tried stuff like Dispel Magic. Flat out denied, saying it doesn't work on spells like that because it's not a magical effect (which sounded like major bullshit). I didn't know you could snap someone out of it by damaging them, and my character not being the type to hurt friends was just trying to get to safety at that point. Then my character went MIA into the Astral Plane (Robe of Stars, and he decided that I would end up face to face with an Astral Dreadnaught), another party member was Suggested to leave the mines (which for some reason could not be dispelled), and we both had to roll Kobolds, and as per my DM they had to have 4 Int or less (I sure wonder why). We spent the next two (and our last) sessions messing up his plans with my Shadow Monk and his Assassin Rogue. But ultimately, the DM was planning on having us all wiped out in the last encounter, but not dead, just mind controlled. It sounds like he just wanted us stuck there so we could get saved by his NPCs. Because after that, he told me one of his NPCs shows up in the Astral Dreadnaught dungeon to take me out (was able to communicate through Sending with an ally that sent help), and we would have been on our way to save the rest of the group. But after witnessing such a shit show of an unfun experience, my wife and I, and two other players we made friends with left. We were supposed to start a new campaign, but then COVID happened. Anyway, stun-locking the party and mind controlling them without a chance to help sucks. I remember many instances where at least one or two players per encounter would get stunned and fail their saves. DM always blamed everything on the dice.

[@XuntosIzor]

Sounds like a story you should submit to CritCrab, that's a lot of DM sins in one campaign. I would find a new DM if I were you

[@goranfrka]

I am player my self and you guys are totally right about feeling after unique encounters and those with just group vs group in empty field/room .. even in empty field i remember one interesting fight we had against griffons which tried to grab us and throw down .. so , interesting monsters and environment rly make the difference .. keep up the good work!

[@necogreendragon]

I love punting the fear in an overconfident player by teleporting an enemy directly next to them. Great video dudes. Love your GM tips. I can use all the help I can get. XD

[@valasafantastic1055]

Great stuff! I took notes. I'm now writing out a d% chart of options for objects to add to encounters first an 'outdoor' option (then in parentheses the indoor one)!

[@TheCaptKankles]

I recommend the book 'The Monsters Know What They're Doing' as well. It has ideas on tactics that different monsters in the Monster Manual would use, and it really has helped make my combat encounter more memorable. My players no longer underestimate the power of a group of goblins thanks to that book.

[@storytime7408]

I've watched a few vids now on encounter creation and this is one of the most helpful. Great hint on avoiding stun, but opting for something like grapple instead. Thank you

[@Daragausthedragon]

I forgot how much I love your videos, guys

[@darienb1127]

Here's a tip i have. Look at the spells in the game besides damage spells, and use them! Have the enemies use similar strategies to what players do, with buff and support spells. You could have a sorcerer and their disciples as the main threats as they call forth knights to charge dow the party, while spells like Haste and Enlarge are being casted ok the knights. Also, Farie Fire can put a party into a scramble if the monsters use a lot of roll to hit attacks. But for the love of god, be sparing with spells like Hold Person. That's no fun just not being able to do anything for an entire combat.

[@TheAurgelmir]

One of my favorite encounters was in my last session, but it was great mostly because the players decided to be clever, which logically wouldn't work. So the players were trying to save this Halfling who had been kidnapped by a tribe of goblonoinds, as a sub-quest for their main quest to deal with the Goblins that's attacking a halfling hamlet, and people on the roads. Anyways, they have locaded the caves the goblins live in, and figured out that the first two doors they encountered leads to a large room. Due to roleplaying events earlier the players are certain that there's a dragon (or something else that's big) in this dungeon, so they choose to avoid the large room for now. They have learned the name of both this large creature, as well as what they assume is the leader of the goblins The third door they peek into trough the key hole shows the halfling locked in a cave, with at least two hobgoblins resting, and maybe more, inside. My players LOVE to lay plans and get the upper hand, so one of the players who knows goblin knocks on the door and say's that the leader want's to see them. They off course assume that the goblins would come out into the hall, and that the players get the upper hand. What they didn't know is that the room has two doors, and that the other door is a more direct rout to the leader, leading to all the goblins leaving. At this point I had them roll for initiative, as they themselves realized that "We don't have much time". Of course the goblins would soon figure out something was up. They quickly free the halfling, and arm him with a bow. Then get's ready for the coming attack. During the course of this combat they end up triggering both the first combat, but also the combat I had set up for the Goblin Captain. Having scores of goblins and Hobgoblings rushing down on them. What I think made this encounter fun for the players was: 1. The fear that they had triggered something nasty. (They have no idea who Testomoth is, and is very afraid). Knowing that the goblins who retreat will alert other things further into the dungeon. Who want's to fight two deadly encounters and ALSO a possible dragon! 2. The sense of power that they were able to take on two pretty difficult encounters. (It doesn't help when one player critted the Hobgoblin captain for 31 damage on the first hit) 3. The battle became dynamic, and the players got a feeling that "this wasn't what the DM had planned". I think the last point is often what makes encounters fun, at least with my group. We love it when we get to feel like we didn't just "paint by numbers". Ironically I had planned for THREE ways this combat could trigger, all changing the dynamics of it... but they opted for a fourth one. "Sadly" my dice rolls were abysmal, so as a DM I didn't feel like I was much of a threat, but the players used a LOT of their resources, so they still felt they needed a long rest afterwards. I tend to make my encounters this way: 1. Conceptualize what I want the players to do in the dungeon. What I call the "pull", the thing that draws them in. 2. Make a rough note of the type and number of encounters. (This can also help me see what level the players are at which point, like in the above example, I knew I wanted the players to be lvl4 before meeting Testomoth, so I layed out the adventure in such a way that they would most likely reach that before the end.) 3. Throw together the combat encouters in DnD Beyond. Now I know what monsters etc inhabit my adventure. I tend to stick to some themes, and build from there. (Or add puzzles and trap rooms) 4. Draw my maps. Here's where I can make a deadly encounter winnable for the players, or a boring encounter more interesting. (I need to be better at the latter part) 5. Apply loot to the dungeon.

[@sinthalous3649]

Cause of you two awesome dudes, I got back into gaming. It's been 11 years since I last gamed..Now I'm about to run my first game after so long. You two are the best, and Thank you for sparking up that love I thought I lost for table top gaming.

[@SpartinWolfE]

One encounter I made in the first campaign I ever ran as a DM my players actually noted that they really liked. The encounter actually set up the plot for the player driven curiosity as to why the events happened. I did this by establishing a structured and methodical nature to enemies that aernt typically structured and methodical. The game started off with my players camping after a hunting expedition for an important festival when in the middle of the night when they were swarmed by goblins. The players had to make a choice as to whether they wanted to fail the quest they were on by leaving behind their hunt or leaving behind magical items that they had to run away as they didnt have time to do both otherwise they would have been trapped. To their surprise when they ran with the hunt they acquired the goblins didn't chase but rather gathered their magical items and promptly left. This made the players curious as to why that event would take place, why do the goblins want to aquire magical items, how are these seemingly simple minded creatures operating within an objective besides kill those they encounter. Although this fell under the caviot of not overwhelming the players with monsters it was necessary to do so otherwise it would have just been a hack and slash encounter with no real gravity. After the encounter the players natural curiosity towards the event is what drove the plot forward.

[@jakeholmes9296]

Some great things to consider. thanks for this

[@puretestosterone9614]

Regarding the stun lock stuff, it can also be applied to when the players stun lock the monster on the first few turns, and then it becomes just a game of rolls and boring instances where the players just say, "I attack." Just to get it over with.

[@TheAgavi]

Just noticed Kelly's rainbow flag.

[@JnJake]

One of my all time favorite NPCs was a godblin named Geoff that was the last one standing after an ecounter. I have to give my friend Josh a ton of credit for that one!

[@jimmeier547]

This happened a couple weeks ago in my current campaign. We used to have a very large group (Around 18 of us) that would play every Monday at a friend's house. We'd meet, break into three smaller groups in different rooms and play. After my friends' work became too hectic and others had broken off, we were left with a group of seven. Then two more were added (a friend of a friend and the daughter of one of the players). So I am currently DM'ng for a group of eight. With the group all being level 12, encounters can be over in just a couple of rounds. Which with so many players is best or they can become bored waiting for their turn to come up. With the pandemic we moved to playing on Roll20. It's workable, though it can be laggy at times. Though part of that can also be our own connections. So with the current part of the campaign, I have the group searching through an ancient floating city looking for a magical power source. AKA a mythallar. But there is another group also searching for the same item, but for different reasons. And while the other group is from a guild full of assassins, they are led by a high-level mage. The party didn't think anyone other than an assassin would be in charge. So during one encounter, they came across the mage, who could hear them coming (they set off a trap in a nearby room), had prepared Sunburst. As soon as they entered, under the conditions set, the spell went off. Blinding the entire group. One by one they began to regain their eyesight and attack the mage. But they had already been weakened. As they began to attack him, I let them get a couple good hits before he cast his next spell of Power Word Kill on one of their strongest combatants. At which point his next action was to teleport away. Thus foreshadowing a future encounter with him. For which they will be somewhat prepared as they've been discussing some tactics on how to deal with him.

[@yodaleiaheehoo9960]

What a coincidence that this is the topic for the week and upon reviewing what I put my players against just before last session I realized its waaay more powerful than I thought and someone will likely die. I think its fine though nobody had died in a year so its about time. XD I enjoyed the video. I love that no matter how long someone has been a DM there is always more to learn and more you can improve on. I never come away from one of your DM tip videos without learning something.

[@jeremyleonjonas7657]

A really great video 👍 I did make some of those mistakes, though those drops in set-ups did highlight the better ones. My favorite of my own fights would have to be the battle my players fought against Tauren raiders in a dwarfen forge. I put some magical weapons amidst the rubble and added environmental hazards (assembly lines to mix up the positioning, mechanical hammers and pools of molten metal for obvious heatung up) to seek out and activate, forcing both teams to adapt. It was quite difficult to keep track of, but very cool; especially when the parties assassin (who activated all the machinery in the first place) jumped right into a hammers swing 😂😂 she didn't die, but the shocker was a pay-off, gotta admit.

[@croissant2434]

the one thing I think i'll be doing with status effect is doing a system of "point" when using effect that effectively don't allow the player to play: a 3-point paralysis mean that it will last at most 3 turn (-1 point at the end of a turn) a successfull saving throw can erase the full status. depending the source of paralysis, I could allow another player to do a medecine check, or a dispel magic/magic ect to remove 1 or 2 point of status effect. this, on the flipside, maybe allow monsters to refresh/increase stacks by multiple use of that ability (however, requiring full on action/recharge rule for such ability, to make sure it isn't the 100% go to strategy to spam the ability.) I just found the "point build-up" format of status very interesting, and I think it can be a good way of making uncapacitating effect on players fun and interesting, instead of plainly frustrating (+ you incentitize co-op: to help reducing the status AND to keep the monster busy to not allow them to spam the ability)

[@charlestawa8145]

Great suggestion in making encounters interesting .

[@XoRandomGuyoX]

Not just named enemies, but it can be fun to have a recurring minor named cadre within the enemy group or faction. Just as the player party works together to achieve something, this enemy cadre might have their teamwork tactics to display. The players might hear reports of enemies matching the description of members of the cadre being sighted in specific places, with a specific objective or action being taken. It's a chance to pump up the players for a more engaged and layered fight, and might have them wondering why this group decided to aid the BBEG of that arc.

[@Kasino80]

Regarding spells that take over the PC, I wouldn't choose a spell they aren't familiar with. If a Bard or druid has used feeble mind in a previous setting, that would be ok to use against them.

[@leejamR]

OMG I needed this so much! I've been looking for exactly this video for so long. Thank you!

[@DungeonDudes]

Glad it was helpful!

[@ethancheney4371]

The most memorable combat encounter I can remember was when I ran a fight that had an adult white and black dragon, and a young red dragon, vs my players on an airship. The airship had two balloons with 50 hp each, and the dragons needed to destroy both in order to send the airship into an uncontrollable free fall (in order not to make this too easy, I ruled that as long as a crew member stayed at the helm and spent their action guiding the ship, the ship could have a saving throw vs breath weapon). The strategy I thought out was the red dragon fire breathing the balloons from afar, while the white dragon (least intelligent) fought the characters on the deck to make use of its melee attacks, and the black dragon using its breath and tail attacks at medium range. There were 5 players at 11th level, as well as a crew of 5 CR 3 monks. What followed was both a desperate battle for the characters as they struggled to keep their wooden air ship afloat, and a desperate battle for the dragons as they struggled to not die. This led to moments like when the rogue ordered the monks to shoot him at a dragon using a ballista. However after his turn but before the monks could fire him, he was frightened by the dragons frightful presence which resulted in a hilarious scene where the rogue was screaming at the monks to let him off right as they fired him toward the dragon. He fell several thousand feet before using a rope harness and immovable rod to arrest his fall. He didn't die, but he did break his back, which pained him to no end as he lowered himself to the forest below a few feet at a time. In the end, with one balloon destroyed and the air ship battered, the dragons still alive withdrew, but too late as the sorcerer shot them down with long range fire balls

[@patrickduvall6855]

If they allowed clerics to heal the stun condition it would make things more fun and elaborate

[@adcyuumi]

I'd like to offer a word of advice, about how to create an encounter. --- THE NECROMANCER Let's take the example given in the video; a necromancer and his motley band of lesser undead find themselves face to face with the meddlesome band of adventurers that were hired to find out who has been robbing the local graveyard of its bodies. Thanks to his undead, there's no ambush. His minions feel the living nearby and begin to stir, restless. But he has no time to escape. What to do? His minions can't fight alone. But if he fights with them, he'll be the first to die even if his undead can kill these interlopers. This has all the makings of a "badly designed encounter" if it is just a smash-em-up. --- But wait! The necromancer has known about the PCs snooping around for some time now. He is prepared for the possibility that they will find his hideout. He has had no time to build a back door (and maybe that's just an extra way for them to find a way in, anyway). But he has a few tricks. The necromancer is just powerful enough to have "Magic Jar" prepared -- he can hide his body, cast Magic Jar, then try to join with the intruders to sabotage their efforts. The barred door to his room guarantees he has time to cast it. He has applied a poison to the weapons of his skeleton and ghouls, and upon the teeth and fingernails of his zombies -- the skeletons are armed with bows, to help make sure things aren't so easy for any intruders. A large fish-hooked net trap, made of sturdy rope and soaked in yet more poison, hangs on the ceiling ready to be dropped -- and his more intelligent undead know of the trap, to set it off as soon as the intruders walk into position. A barricade at the back of the room has a slit through which the necromancer can see to target the enemy with magic... without looking like much more than an innocuous decoration to his victims. And maybe this necromancer has some magical object that could be used to help protect him or assist his escape should things go badly-- something like a "Ring of Blinking". --- THE GUARD CAPTAIN Some well paid but morally bankrupt soldiers, in service to the local baron, have been ordered to find the strangers who came into town throwing a bit too much coin around. He wants their assets seized, to be added to his own reserves. "Kill them and dispose of the bodies so that they definitely will not be found. You'll be well compensated as usual." These guards, a small group of eight trusted men handpicked by the baron, track the part to the local tavern and lure them out of the public eye by hiring them to "help us kill some oversized rats infesting an abandoned house outside of town". But once outside of town, they ambush the party. Just a lame smash-em-up in the end, aye? But no! --- Two of the eight men have been talking; the baron has been going too far with his orders lately. They aren't murderers for hire, and a glance between them tells them that they can't do this. But the other six of their number might just kill them if they back out or protest, and there is no good way to warn these strangers. But when the ambush comes, it's sabotaged by one and the other follows suit. These two guards fight FOR the PCs, turning what might have been an instant party-wipe into something for the PCs to figure out. What IS happening right now? Why are these guards fighting each other? Why are they attacking us? Do we restrain them? Kill them all? Are any of us affected by whatever is going on? It's a lot more interesting than just an us-vs-them fight.

[@SpeakDemon]

Change for the necro... have a hidden side door for him to enter then near the "main entrance" a single minion to "Throw the lever!" (Make sure there isn't a wrong lever) whenever anything enters from that entrance. Likewise have a minion done up to look like the necro, have the necro (hidden or invis) puppet the double. Giving the necro 1 to 2 lvls in illusionist helps.

[@420blzkn5]

Great video guys cant wait to improve for my next session

[@BlackShadow1991]

Thank you for making these guides, Dudes, they are fun, informative and well made :D

[@christracey9476]

My best encounters: - Gnolls attacking a town, and the players having to defend various entry points and NPCs that ran off to 'help' poorly. Basically wave based attacks of weaker enemies - A gangster Elder Brain and gangster mindflayers holding the son of a PC hostage (who had been converted but they didnt know) - Fighting a god (always fun) - Fighting a group of people who were the heroes of the group that they now have to kill in a time travel adventure to ensure the timeways stay clean (5 PCs vs a group of 8 NPCs - should be brutal, coming up next session :))

[@samhaggard8759]

Kelly has been decking his wall out during iso - looking good mate!

[@bluelionsage99]

A tricky part of encounters making them art rather than science is that the PC level drastically affects what design approach will work. Higher level PCs can often only be properly challenged if spell casters or special powers are on the enemy side while a level 1-3 party could get trashed by a simple sleep spell. The actual point I want to make though is that DMs writing a game scenario should look at all the probably encounters as a whole and design with the entire play experience in mind. Try to guess how much resources they will burn, if you will let them rest, etc. Look to get away from the small simple fights before big end session encounter mold. Maybe two fairly sharp challenges, then the main BBEG battle - then the players have to deal with surviving minion groups before the PCs get away. Perhaps a crumbling tower, dungeon now filling with water or gas, crashing airship or such with the big leader down and everyone is scrambling to get away. But a few lesser followers want revenge against the PCs, some will run from the PCs or ignore them, some might even work together. Even without a serious time crunch if the players penetrated deep into an enemy lair to take out the enemy then try to make them fight their way out if you can. Note that higher level parties can often magic out of an area which means make the main fight tougher as the party will not need any resources to escape.

[@joeofdoom]

Dont take spells away from enemy mages the players should fear mages! Mages are scary that's why you have to squish them first.

[@DungeonDudes]

In our experience, enemy spellcasters using damage-dealing and battlefield control spells like Web, Fireball, Wall of Fire, and Cloudkill are much more fun, and often more challenging -- compared to enemy spellcasters who shut down players with Hold Person, Hypnotic Pattern, and Banishment. It's a bit of an inversion of the player logic, in fact.

[@HurricaneBlade1]

Spells like Hold Person should only be on the enemy's spell list if the party has Counterspell or Dispel Magic at the ready to defend against it (and then for the love of Bahamut, don't shut down the counterspeller. While yes, it's technically sound tactics, it also results in the players getting up to get a drink while you wail on the party unopposed).

[@joeofdoom]

Nope screw them they get all the cool stuff, shutting them down every so often is fine lots of monster abilities do it already why the hell would a mage not?

[@a.spirit8408]

@@joeofdoom if you are thinking in terms of 1-to-1 fairness between a PC and an NPC, then yes you can stunlock the players as much as they stunlock NPCs. But if you are thinking in terms of game design, then stunlocking is incredibly frustrating. If one enemy creature is stunned, the DM still has others to play with. But when a PC gets stunned, the player may as well checkout completely until they pass a save. Because of that asymmetry, a 1-to-1 fairness expectation can lead to a frustrating or boring experience.

[@joeofdoom]

@@a.spirit8408 what's boring is just having a slug fest every fight theres no reason to nerf your monsters just cause your players might have to think for once to get through a fight and spells that cause effects tend to use concentration so attacking the spell caster can cause the effect to end, it's about presenting an actual challenge not someone for your players to arbitrarily mow down to get to the next room.

[@StoufSto]

THIS WEEK'S EPISODE OF OUR SHOW! holy fuck dude

[@greenhawk3796]

i gave a monster a frighten ability with a low DC that occurs when a creature is within 5ft, where if you failed by 5 or more, you're paralyzed while its in sight. this same creature can shift through surfaces though meaning that i can up & decide to stop paralyzing someone, but then also trigger the save again when it reappears. this creature has a low ac & low hp, but the point is more about the fear that it instills due to its "uncanny valley" type visage.

[@JonnyLOV]

In our Decent into Avernus campaign, we keep fighting the demon Odious. The DM plays Odious with a great taunts. Every time we kill him, he goes to hell... where we are. So we get to fight Odious over and over. Odious is everyone's favorite enemy, even if he's not that challenging.

[@Alresu]

One of my players really seemed to wait for the oppurtunity to do the chandelier-thing. Asked right away if there was one when they were in a battle in a room that seemed like it might. Had to add it on the fly and it was not really a smart thing to do, but he used it against the single enemy they faced.^^

[@Wineblood]

My best encounter was actually the end of tier 1 in my campaign and it consisted of 4 combats. The first was taking out a goblin scouting party and not letting them escape. The second was the front of the goblin camp/cave where some worgs were in cages. The third was the main room with fires, elevation and 2 lieutenants. The final one was the goblin boss with his massive worg pet and a bunch of caged boars he was toying with which he set loose to charge at the party.

[@syrupchugger421]

Real good ideas, thank you!

[@BabyBlackNinja]

“Tank and Spank!!!”... Hilarious! Love it, and gonna use it... 🤔😂🤓

[@GunnerM60]

My group's last session we were doing a side quest that semmed pretty mundane & easy gold. It was a total trap & the lady we talked to trapped us in a room & released Basilisk's to try & petrify us. The Kenku in our group had some knowledge of petrification & warned us all by saying, "it's eyes are creepy". That was a subtle enough hint to know not look straight @ it when fighting. That made comabt slightly harder for our melee fighters to divert the eyes, which cause disadvantage. Luckily, me & the other spellcaster in our group had saving throw spells that require line of sight, but NOT an attack roll.

[@chaseellett7498]

In our last session, we fought a group of bandits who would call out to each other during combat. Their names were Michael, Tod, Ben, Steve, Greg, James, Fred, Bob, and their leader, Williams (who we nicknamed Cart Williams). By the end of the combat, James repented of his ways to sell jam for an elderly couple. I agree that combat doesn't need to always be linear. DnD is about the sandbox of possibilities. James was a lowly bandit that I would now burn down the world for.

[@stw7120]

"Too obvious target" can actually be a good encounter design. For greater effect you can even have all the zombies turn to dust when the necromancer is dead - and tell your players that in advance. This changes usual "war of attrition" D&D combat into a desperate lunge into a crowd of undead outnumbering players several-fold (all of them minions, of course) to kill the boss. I find it the easiest way to not let your bossfight turn into a slog Obviously, bodyshield ability is the absolute must-have for those situations

[@onlinealiasuk]

"dont put a bunch of toys in the room and get upset when yours plays end up playing with them" In my first game i set up a climax encounter for the session a Holmgang (norse deul) with a the objective of being the first to break three shields set round a sacred ash tree. what did he do legolas up the tree (nat 20) and wouldent come down