Making D&D Combat More Fun, Maybe? DM Tips

[@magnusanderson6681]

Video summary: 1. Use a VTT (Fantasy Grounds) 2. Keep the ball rolling, 1 minute turn timers 3. Designate someone to look up rules while you make a ruling or otherwise keep going 4. Hidden death saves 5. Adjust combats on the fly to get your intended difficulty Some things I'm thinking about (but haven't playtested, so they might be crap): Players always win initiative, and all act together, BG3 style. I think this reduces somewhat the difficulty of encounters, but that means you can throw bigger fights at them; I think initiative is a boring mechanic, and so this I think should be good. Players acting together hopefully allows for better planning together, and reduces the chance of a turn timer messing someone's plans up but also means each person can be thinking for longer. It also lets you get through monsters' actions faster in response. Saving throws are setup+response, so you might say, "The wizard draws glyphs of fire in the air and casts fireball. Barbarian and Wizard, you get a split second to save, what do you do?". This is inspired by a line I read about how Gygax or some other old school GM ran dungeons. They might drop to the floor (okay, DEX save as normal) but the barbarian might say "I charge through the pain and try to get close to him when he doesn't expect it" or the mage might say "I'll try to cancel his effect with all my magical power". Have a "intended save" (DEX for fireball) and if the player doesn't use something related to that, impose some cost but make the save with the chosen ability, and maybe give a different effect entirely. The barbarian here might take full damage and use his reaction, but get to Stride towards the wizard. The wizard might lose a spell slot, but get to roll Arcana to mishap/counter the enemy spell. Design monsters with many more saving throws in general. Players rolling is more fun than monsters rolling, and making decisions is even better than both. Telegraph effects. Good ways to do this: - Start an action that, unless interrupted, will go off next round. Reading a scroll, drinking a potion, knife to the throat, golem forming before your eyes, etc - Tell the players after one round what the monster plans to do the next round. "The ghoul breaks past the fighter and snarls, eyes set on the wizard, mouth slavering". I like Dungeon World (worth reading up on) and rules-lite systems, so after reading up on that maybe take this with a grain of salt, but I think this kind of play encourages good gameplay and can work even in D&D.

[@sceleton1453]

Great video :) I agree with practically everything, although I personally prefer D&D in person... A little anecdote: I recently noticed my own combats were easier than intended and my players always came out from them without a scratch, because I didn't want to kill anybody... But that made the combat less entertaining, harming the experience, so I came to the conclusion that as a DM I should go for the kill (if it makes sense for the enemy objective of course), and finally, the more recent fight really felt more challenging as I intended... Ironically enough, I ended up actually killing a player, because of an unexpected nat20 crit with max damage... which was just unfortunate... My next session will be centered on the party trying to resuscitate that player... xD If you read everything, thank you for your time and have a D20 of nice days! :P

[@KivoxEnder]

I did read everything so you Also have some nice days, let’s make it a D20 +5.

[@Michael-rv5ib]

Jumping into a level 10 character is hard because even if you review a characters abilities it’s easy to overlook something that screws up your entire plan