Make Elementals Formidable in Your D&D Campaign! | DnD 5e | TTRPG | Grim Hollow | Ben Byrne

[@heyitsMattyP]

I misread the title as "Make ELEPHANTS Formidable," which is surely some lucrative and untapped content

[@GhostfireGaming]

🤣 Alright, Cersei Lannister… Legitimately though, make Beasts formidable? 🤔🐘

[@ZsDante]

​@@GhostfireGaming we could narrow it down to o e beast, idk, an ELEPHANT maybe? :D

[@thanzirg1418]

@@GhostfireGaming Kind of late to the party, but you know what? Great idea. Getting attacked by animals is very scare in real life, even for armed and trained soldiers. In dnd, wild animals are usually second rate random encounters when camping. I for one would love to hear some ideas about how to make dnd characters be legitimately afraid of entering the woods unprepared

[@jacoborourke454]

To be fair, elephants are pretty scary. They're the largest animals on land. They have long tusks and their trunks function almost as well as our hands do. Plus, they can hold grudges. One elephant attacked a woman and then traveled 100 miles to her funeral to desecrate her body. Honestly, one of the most terrifying animals after hippos, bears, and chimps.

[@PyrotechNick77]

@@GhostfireGamingyes please

[@noahmehringer29]

For different elementals, adding additional effects to them could be fun. Water and Earth Elementals make all ground around them difficult terrain, Ranged attacks against air elementals have disadvantage from strong winds, and hitting a fire elemental set you on fire. I would also make the range of the fire, water and air elementals be 15ft, while the earth one is merely 5ft, but every hit from it triggers a STR save or the target is knocked prone.

[@GhostfireGaming]

All fantastic ideas for making the fight more challenging and forcing players to adapt their tactics.

[@PyrotechNick77]

My favorite monsters are elementals and I'm happy that you made a video of them getting the formidable treatment. In my world, the Elemental Primordials are the oldest of the manifested beings, they are the ones that created the dragons and other scalykin which were the first created beings.

[@thewelshdm]

I've never had much satisfaction running elementals, but this video has given me plenty of ideas to make it much more interesting now. I especially love the "alternate win" states, definitely doesn't make sense to see a fire elemental killed by an axe that would just pass right through it. Also love the creative point on "Plane of Water" is a stop gap, and should have a proper name. Definitely going to consider this for my setting going forward.

[@SadeGames]

The way I do mine in my world is that there are actually five elements - air, fire, water, earth, and life. Just like there's a spirit realm known as the Abyss, which is a cold, lifeless purgatory version of the material world, there is also one known as Solika that is home to the primordial forces that existed before life itself. But those primordial forces only represent air, fire, water, and earth, because the fifth element, life, has its own plane which is the plane everyone is *living* on, aka the 'material plane' as it would be known in D&D

[@TheElectrikCow]

That's basically exactly how I have the planes, in this case specifically the elemental planes, working in my Grim Hollow world. It should be noted that I don't have every plane exactly mapped out or fleshed out yet, but I have a basic overview that I can tap into if I never need it. The Material plane sits at the center, with the other planes connected to it and floating around it. The entire planar structure then floats in the endless gray expanse of the Astral Sea, with a few nearby planar structures also existing but rarely having any connection to the Material plane, and this is also where the Aether Kindred call home, being massive plane sized (or larger) entities themselves. The Material plane rests upon the plane of Earth, dig far enough down and you will eventually find denser rocks and more gemstones than you could ever hope to imagine. Beneath the Earth plane lies the hellish planes, where devils and demons call home. Their influence seeks like tendrils through the Earthen plane to take root in the Material plane, look for the darkest corners of the world where the light can't reach and you will find places where these tendrils reach. Surrounding the Material plane you will find the Water plane which encompasses the plane, sail far enough from the mainland, and you will find yourself in the Water plane. The Air plane sits directly upon the Material plane, swirling in chaotic dances. Any storm that you see striking the ground with lightning is just large condensed collections of the plane of Air, if you find youself caught in a storm at high elevations becareful not to get trapped in the plane of Air. Above the clouds of the Air plane lie the Upper planes of the celestials, once anyone with celestial blood could walk upon the roads of light, but when the gods lost their power during the God End war these roads weakend, and so all but the most pure of celestials were cast down to the earth, quite literally falling to earth. Without some extreme form of flying, the Upper planes are possibly the most difficult and rare of the surrounding planes to reach, but there do exist a few mountains tall enough to reach into the broken remains of the Upper planes around the world. And there is the most chaotic of the surrounding planes, the Fire plane, which exists everywhere and nowhere. The Fire plane exists where ever the plane is called to, it grows and shrinks like a writhing tide, however some places do exist where the plane exists in larger collections, typically volcano's or the lairs or Red and Brass dragons. No other plane can be called upon quite as easily as the Fire plane, making it that much more dangerous. A simple campfire may not be strong enough to summon any fire elementals, but a forest fire may give birth to many which will attempt to spread to other fuel sources, which unfortunately usually mean towns being attacked by swarms of fire elementals and mephits. Obviously all the planes are much more intereconnected than what this shows, while the Water plane may surround the Material plane, it also exists within it in the form of rivers and lakes, and flows through the Earth plane beneath the surface in underground channels. And there are places within the Earth plane where the Fire plane is strong, such as volcano's and rivers of lava. But this is the basics. I imagine that if somebody decides to use a spell like Planeshift without a destination, it will just take them to the closest, strongest source available to them.

[@mikecarson7769]

fun and creative ideas in here! i especially like the idea of the momentarily exposed core

[@GhostfireGaming]

Thanks so much! Hope you get good use out of them in your campaign. 🙂

[@smoati9ap309]

My elementals are like some kind of cryptids - extremely hard to come by, basically indestructible, but can be fended off by dealing enough damage or getting rid of the reason why they are where you found them. These are called 'reasons' pretty arbitrarily, as my elementals don't even have a mind of their own, but they do have patterns that can be recognized - or these things can be captured by someone or something, or set upon someone or something, etc. Captured elementals can even bring up pity in characters as they are pretty desperate to free themselves, and are meant to be free. They are seldom enemies in my adventures but rather plot devices, or complications, or sights. Earth, water and air elementals are hiding underground, on the bottom of bodies of water, or above clouds, while fire elementals are like wild spirits that can't find a place for themselves. This makes them less predictable and more dangerous, but also more vulnerable for those who seek their power. For example, in one of my adventures a captured fire elemental was used as a giant heater for a northern settlement of an expanding empire, making the climate milder... and angering fire mages who were paid to heat the settlement before.

[@TheFearsomeRat]

I like having elementals in magically potent areas, the stronger the source the larger the elemental, so from particularly strong sources of elemental magic, you'd be able to possibly see a titanic elemental and they'd gradually get smaller the further you get from the source, with elementals the size of house cats, being the most anyone would typically see of elementals as they don't require as much power to conjure forth a physical form, and can show up naturally practically anywhere, and are barely capable of causing mischief, a tiny wind elemental lifting a skirt/dress here, a fire elemental lighting a wig on fire there. However their populations need to be controlled as the more elementals of a specific type that gather in an area the strong that specific type of elemental magic becomes, so those titanic elementals would have hundreds of the smallest ones around them, and that upset of magic would start to reflect on the terrain, so in a magically "healthy" area that isn't particularly potent for a specific element you'd see elementals of all types in relatively equal numbers but all in the smallest sizes and of relatively peaceful (if a bit chaotic) demeanor, whenever they are able to physically manifest at least as they would technically be everywhere just they are invisible and incorpereal most of the time, essentially just drifting along magical currents.

[@carlsxeeinar]

As an exciting puzzle encounter with fire elementals, I let the players throw a bucket of water on the elemental, killing it! Riveting every time!

[@kalenova4436]

I would make it be one time trick. Next time when the player try it, let the fire elemental absorb the water and throw in back at them as boiling water or super heated steam.

[@NathanielNow]

I think a fire elemental should have some sort of driving need of fuel. It needs to keep moving in search of fuel, otherwise it will die. The way to beat a fire elemental is not to hit it, but rather prevent it from consuming anything flammable. Isolate it. Maybe the fire elemental doesn't even have a "body" until it is isolated and assumes this form as a last resort.

[@Daggoth65]

Just ran a variant encounter on the Mine full of Mjorks, party had a blast though we still wonder how the hell to pronounce the name lol

[@GhostfireGaming]

A name that was not meant for humanoid tongues! 😅 "M-york", kinda like Mjolnir.

[@TheSaphireKatana]

In my campaign I'm planning a plot line where a city capital is conquered by a powerful mage and their army of elementals, I'm just imagining for the battle of the nation to reclaim its capital has a ground force of fire and air elementals unleashing and wafting the path of a wall of flame towards the charging human armies Not sure how I can make puzzles for them since just feel when fighting multiple elementals it may slow init but still a useful video regardless

[@zachariaravenheart]

What is that scene at 9:12 from? I have never seen that before.

[@ZsDante]

Spiderman - Far from home

[@zachariaravenheart]

@@ZsDante Thank you sir. Now I really want to watch it.

[@natezabinski5615]

Nice haircut

[@benbyrne2429]

Hahaha, thanks. 😅 This was actually shot about a month ago so it was looking really fresh back then.

[@sixoffcenter80]

Is there a name for the Elemental Plane of Air in Grim Hollow? idk If I'm just missing it in the book.

[@kelpiekit4002]

For elementals I like to take inspiration from L5R and animism. The form is meaningless. The actual elemental is a natural spirit connected to that element. You can exhaust them and so stop them gathering a physical form for some time. But it may be better to appease them, calm them, or redirect them. Facing an elemental should be somewhat spiritual and primal. I've also had in a game that primordial languages were not purely verbal. You needed some way to manipulate the element, such as shape water or control flames, to communicate with it.