Using Monster Tactics to Choose the Perfect Battle Map (feat. Keith Ammann)

[@SupergeekMike]

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[@AlysIThink101]

Overall this was a great video, but wow. I understand people will call anything a Dinosaur, but still, literally a Giant Eel? It might be worse than calling something like a Mammoth a Dinosaur. Here's a quick Dinosaur identification guide for everyone: If they can fly and aren't a Bird or a close relative of Birds then they aren't a Dinosaur (So Pterosaurs (Or as they are often incorrectly called, Pterodactyls) aren't Dinosaurs), if they live underwater they almost certainly aren't a Dinosaur (So things like Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs and Icthyosaurs aren't Dinosaurs), if their legs are sprawled out to the sides instead of being right under them then they aren't Dinosaurs (So Dimetrodons (Which aren't even Reptiles, they're Synapsids (Basically Mammal ancestors), plus they didn't even live at the same time as Dinosaurs), Lizards and Crocodilians aren't Dinosaurs), if they aren't a Reptile then they aren't a Dinosaur (So things like Eels and Mammoths aren't Dinosaurs) and if they don't have scales or/and feathers then they aren't a Dinosaur (So extinct "Giant" Insects weren't Dinosaurs.) Dinosaurs are a very specific group of Reptiles that came into being about 245-230 million years ago, a lot of whom went extinct about 66 million years ago. Though more than 11000 species still remain, about double the amount of species of Mammal that currently exist. If you want to learn about them I'd highly recommend a book by Steve Brussatte called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. It's what got me passionate about palaeontology, it's extremely approachable for your average person and while it's over 6 years old at this point, it still holds up incredibly well.

[@Stitchers_Whimsy]

I really like the idea of the hydra encounter in a hag's swamp. You could even make it her familiar and that way she channels spells and such through it the way a sorcerer does.

[@Cassapphic]

I think doing this to try to "fix" the hydra is really interesting. I personally went a completely different direction to try to better capture the fantasy of the hydra, fully accept people are not going to deliberately attack the heads unless forced, by giving the hydra abilities to force it to attack the heads. The Orphic Hydra is inspired by the end of the myth of Orpheus, where after returning form the underworld literally empty handed, he falls into a heavy depression, and writes a ballad so tragic it curses the land around him, crops wilt, people get ill, stuff like that. In the myth people eventually group up and kill him to try to end the curse, but in this version the curse turns him into a hydra, with at least one head always singing that mournful ballad, one that is so painfully tragic that any who hear it are compelled to take up arms and silence the head that is singing it by cutting it off. That way you can remove all the normla hydra head cutting mechanics and have ti just be tied to a saving throw that if failed your next turn you must attack the hydra or cast an offensive spell on it, which will cut off a head guaranteed.

[@garryame4008]

I love the concept of considering the biological needs of the hydra. Like, of course it needs a large body of water! It is giant predator, so it needs a lot of prey, or large prey animals. Stuff like that (gygaxian realism?) makes the world feel so much more alive. It combats the theme park artificiality some games can easily slip into; it makes verisimilitude more possible I love it

[@risperdude]

Love the idea of swamp gas adding that little bit of complication and risk to using fire. Also, because of swamp we can't forget that creatures/things in water are resistant to Fire damage which makes only using fire less than ideal and encourages other choices... and strategies. It makes sense a creature with such a clear vulnerability/weakness would live in an environment that would potentially mitigate this danger. In fact it is likely the non-swamp hydras were likely more easily culled of the years by adventurers.

[@MorningDusk7734]

I think certain creatures (such as a hydra) are best used not as an opponent to kill, but an obstacle to escape. Think about Coraline with the Other Mother, The Kraken in Pirates of the Caribbean, Polyphemus in the Odyssey, or the opening to the Chroma Conclave Arc in Campaign 1. There’s a dynamic to “you can fight it off, but not for long, and you cannot realistically defeat it at the moment, so run”

[@ultimatearick7692]

I love the idea of modifying the length of the heads to be potentially seen by the players as vines that they maybe mistakenly swing from. Necks so long they don't know where the body is so part of the fight might be trying to locate the body itself

[@KingSejongTheGreatOfKorea]

Great video with some really creative ideas. It's such a shame how bad the Hydra is implemented in 5e. I think Pathfinder 2e does a great job, as the Hydra keeps regenerating HP until all heads have been cut off and all stumps have been cauterized with fire or acid. Pathfinder generally also doesn't have targeted attacks, but specifically allows attacks against individual Hydra heads, which require a certain amount of damage in a single turn to be cut off.

[@grinninggoblin3698]

This makes so much sense, its iconic, its dynamic, its everything you want from a hydra fight.

[@ilmari1452]

Oh Mike...you've just given me my next session! I was designing a swamp encounter for this saturday but struggling to come up with something new. This is a perfect idea! I *will* need to significantly boost the hydra to suit 4 level 16 characters, but - the principle should would work! Excited to see how this goes...

[@abcrasshadow9341]

Consider saying it takes less fire damage due to being submerged and that the heads dip down into the water to refresh it on its turn. That way the first fire damage attack each turn doesn't turn off the regeneration and it deals half damage due to resistance. Also consider saying you have to apply the fire after a head has been destroyed for the players to turn off the regen. Next just boost the regen by like 50 points.

[@ilmari1452]

​@abcrasshadow9341both sound pretty good ideas! This party has surprisingly little fire damage - the forge cleric gets his divine strike and the paladin has searing smite, but the only arcane caster in play is a bard.

[@leviphipps2462]

This occurred to me with the idea of the hydra living in a lake, bit this makes it a way better fit for a swamp: You don't give any hints that the hag's swamp or whatever has a hydra. You talk about "Ol' Three-Heads," treating it like Nessie or a particularly rowdy alligator. So you let the players discover that it’s a hydra *along with* the challenges talked about here.

[@dziooooo]

Borrowing from a hydra design, the False Hydra is a super fun idea to run, although difficult to execute. My players enjoyed it A LOT, I could do some interesting things with sound and background music during the session, and the adventure had a huge influence on my setting.

[@masterofastra]

This is such a great miniseries, I really struggle to think of ways a small number of foes can be a challenge so I usually end up bogging down initiative trying to win back that tug of war through the action economy, but this has given me a lot to think about!

[@Piqipeg]

I like to borrow from the hydra from an older edition of Dragonsbane, where the heads are treated as individual mobs with their own hp, and whenever you cut one you have to roll to see how many heads sprout next, on top of every time heads sprout you have to also roll for random mutations of the heads. These mutations adds other abilities to the fight, like hypnotic gaze, gripping jaws, tearing jaws among others.

[@JoULove]

Good discussion, i don't know how much I as a player would enjoy the chore of burning a hydra corpe in a swamp personally, I get that it's a problem-solving thing but yeah it could really be a pain 😂

[@aaronbourque5494]

One simple way to justify the "25+ damage = head falls off" thing is that the heads can sometimes act like the detatchable tails of certain lizards. That would imply the heads are almost vestigial, but that would be a great way to make the hydras really weird and horrifying...

[@TheOprative9]

I actually ran a hydra encounter for my party years ago and I think I came up with a cool encounter! So in short I handle metagaming as: if you know this about the monster from another pop culture source that isn't dnd your character can know that info too. i.e. trolls are weak to fire in Skyrim and in the Heracles myth if you cut off a Hyrda's head two more grow back. You know that, your character knows that as well. The party was taking a raft across a lake and I describe something in the water moving toward them. Then long, snake-like creatures burst from the water on one of the sides of the boat. The water was murky so they couldn't see that all the necks were attached at a single point. They would "kill" one of the giant snakes, and then more would come back the next round. The "serpents" would go under the surface of the water and all pop up on another side together. When one of the players used repelling blast on a head I described how ALL of them were pushed back. They got suspicious. One player dove into the water and with a high perception check realized that it wasn't multiple enemies, it was one. The cat was out of the bag and they started using fire to prevent heads from going back and successfully slew it and made it to the other side of the lake. Pretty fun encounter deploying the Hydra in a way they were not expecting!

[@stephendragonspawn6944]

I got that book too. His other book about lairs, I’ve been reading off and on, and it’s good too but this means the DM has to spend more time prepping the encounter.

[@67oldsD88]

Under water catacombs, 20ft wide hallway with 30-50 ft tall walls, waist deep water, pitch black lighting... Our DM had multiple chuul crawl down the walls and start to grapple and take us away up into the dark away from our torches.... If they didn't get dropped into the water and extinguished first... It was a TPK...really liked that Goliath monk I was playing too...

[@brendonfernandez]

Great discussion! Really enjoyed it!

[@themindwright9021]

Mike, I love you and your videos, and genuinely get excited when I see that little bell light up with a new hot tip video from you! But I'm coming out of lurking to mention that your breath sounds are so noticeable when you interview folks. If others have point this out and you are working on it, pretend this comment ends right now!

[@turningintoacrazydolphin1211]

Mike realizing new ways to torture players during the interview

[@jonathanschaefer9848]

I also wanted to run a hydra after this! I ran a sort of lackluster one a while back so it would be nice to get more out of it.

[@kelpiekit4002]

Imagining a spell casting dragon that makes itself look like a hydra when resting to avoid people aiming for a quick kill by beheading. Also, there are lots of myths of creatures being birthed from spilled blood. So, an idea of change to the hydra is the heads don't grow from it. They grow, like magical meat flowers, from the splashes of blood and in time, if not taken care of, they will grow into more hydra, like growing a plant from an offcut. It loses a head simply because one withers from the magical transference of this 'germination'. Afterall the book says it grows new heads. Nothing about where from. (Yes. I'm fully and wilfully misinterpreting)

[@tonysladky8925]

How can you pass up a trope like this? They're walking through the swamp stepping on logs only... Oops! One of those "logs" isn't. It's some sort of aquatic reptile. Traditionally, an alligator, but nope! It's the Hydra. I do really like the "the body is submerged, and the heads just pop up wherever is most terrifying and/or advantageous, but I feel like that also somewhat falls afoul of RAW for the same reason the dumb heads-fall-off mechanic exists in the first place. RAW, the Hydra is one creature occupying x squares on the battlemap (I forget their size and don't have a Monster Manual handy). I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with having different Hydra head minis that you're placing all over the map (or Kraken tentacles) instead of one 3x3 Hydra, but you're delving into homebrew (or even scarier, theater of the mind) for this. Definitely do it because it's cooler, but I don't see how it works without the homebrew.

[@RobKinneySouthpaw]

Maybe you could give the hydra's heads vulnerability to damage, And a lower AC, but if you do 30 or more damage in around the head gets cut off and the regeneration happens like normal. That way there's kind of a risk reward calculation.

[@nealbutler3332]

If the hydra only surfaced one head the players could mistake it for a serpent. Given the opportunity they will almost certainly decapitate the beast. The neck slides under the water and two more “serpents” surface to attack the party. Eventually they will figure out it’s a hydra but what a journey to get to the conclusion.

[@stephendragonspawn6944]

It can hunt on land too. A large lazy river could be a good habitat too. Any place where herd animals would go to get water. I’m thinking they would live and hunt like an alligator or crocodile.

[@justinsinke2088]

I mean, I'm sure someone's made their own Lock Ness Monster as a hydra in a lake before. And I can see a hydra being an ambush predator, so in a D&D game instead of worrying about an ambitious alligator if you get too close to deeper water in a wetland, there's the risk of a hydra. If the hydra is smart enough (and adventurers not observant enough), it may try to pass off its necks as logs that seem like a way to cross a deep section of water. I'm not sure how large a typical hydra is, but if it's Huge then it only needs to be about 10-15ft deep water (depending on how much of their size includes the height of their necks), which for a body of water isn't that deep. I could see a Hydra harassing an isolated pier in a wetland/river delta area leaving players in a quandary of if they should try to fight it to use the boat at the pier for the shortest route to their destination on its home turf, see if they can lure it out onto land where the party might have more of an advantage (if it can be lured at all), or avoid the risk and take the longer route and potentially jeopardize the reason they were wanting to take the faster route.

[@AlysIThink101]

Overall this was a great video, but wow. I understand people will call anything a Dinosaur, but still, literally a Giant Eel? It might be worse than calling something like a Mammoth a Dinosaur. Here's a quick Dinosaur identification guide for everyone: If they can fly and aren't a Bird or a close relative of Birds then they aren't a Dinosaur (So Pterosaurs (Or as they are often incorrectly called, Pterodactyls) aren't Dinosaurs), if they live underwater they almost certainly aren't a Dinosaur (So things like Mosasaurs, Plesiosaurs and Icthyosaurs aren't Dinosaurs), if their legs are sprawled out to the sides instead of being right under them then they aren't Dinosaurs (So Dimetrodons (Which aren't even Reptiles, they're Synapsids (Basically Mammal ancestors), plus they didn't even live at the same time as Dinosaurs), Lizards and Crocodilians aren't Dinosaurs), if they aren't a Reptile then they aren't a Dinosaur (So things like Eels and Mammoths aren't Dinosaurs) and if they don't have scales or/and feathers then they aren't a Dinosaur (So extinct "Giant" Insects weren't Dinosaurs.) Dinosaurs are a very specific group of Reptiles that came into being about 245-230 million years ago, a lot of whom went extinct about 66 million years ago. Though more than 11000 species still remain, about double the amount of species of Mammal that currently exist. If you want to learn about them I'd highly recommend a book by Steve Brussatte called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. It's what got me passionate about palaeontology, it's extremely approachable for your average person and while it's over 6 years old at this point, it still holds up incredibly well.

[@starscream71288]

For those more experienced than I...what would be a good level for 5 players to fight a hydra?

[@skarn81]

It depends on how optimised the hydra is run as. But it is CR8, so if you run it well and use some creative battlefield pressure, I'd say lvl6 would have a hard time defeating it. Lvl8, if they have had a lead up fight, could be interesting. Really it comes down to: does anyone have reliable fire damage? If no, then it is going to be a really hard fight. If yes, then the fight is much simpler.

[@Lionbug]

Gotta say it: if you want an awesome hydra encounter, play pathfinder and throw it at your level 4 party with some warning… My condolences in advance

[@mihokspawn]

Hydras ARE river deltas, if you get my meaning

[@RealWorldGames]

The problem with the hydra isn't the hydra or lore.. .the problem is 5e

[@jltheking3]

Great ideas in the video. But damn. Really goes to show how terrible 5e is to GM when it takes so much effort and thought just to make a monster work. This is far too much needed for me 😢 Thankfully, there are other third party monster manuals that create interesting fights right off the page and without needing to do the brainwork needed in this video. Awesome thoughts in the video. Just wished this didn’t need to be done.

[@link5236]

For the algorithm

[@norandomnumbers]

I generally love your videos, but recently the drawn out "and have fun" at the end has really started to irritate me. The videos would be nearly perfect without that bit.