Creating Interesting Encounters for D&D

[@SmugLookingBarrel]

Something I wanted to add about difficulty: Even if you're running a campaign that you want to be consistently challenging, I don't think it's the best idea to run hard encounters every time. I think mixing in a few easy encounters can help to make the campaign as a whole more challenging (on top of being more interesting) because it makes it so that if the players see an encounter coming, they're not necessarily sure whether it will be a difficult encounter or not. They might be more willing to take risks, or to push further into areas when they may not be ready. If the players know that every encounter will be deadly and they see an encounter coming, they'll be sure to only fight it if they have as many resources as they can.

[@fishbonesinc]

I’ve also found that constantly turning the knob can seem like a punishment for making good decisions. Sometimes they’re having an easy time because they’re playing well.

[@MrMrtvozornik]

I know it's 3 years old comment so I'm being a bit of a necromancer here. That being said, I find the opposite for my party, because they're TOO eager to take the risks, I prefer to have sparse but difficult encounters. I also play by the rules "If you can do it, they can do it" and I value INT stat a lot in running encounter. For example, a simple animal might not have tactics, average 10-12 INT creatures might play in formation, but fighting an 18 INT wizard means he WILL counterspell your healing word on a downed PC. This is for multiple reasons, first one being that I despite how DnD is balanced around 3-4 combats a day, which is utterly unrealistic and archaic bygone from days of dungeon crawling (which there are plenty better games if you want, but not TTRPGs), so I prefer a single fight in a day, unless there's some rush like village being burned, but in that case I'm less tuning encounters to whittle down their resources and more cranking up "You can't be everywhere, choose whom/what to save" feeling. Second one is that I really dislike when my players want to abuse humans and civilized NPCs. Given the opportunity, majority of them would never leave the city and just get their riches by stealing/murdering others. So I have to have intelligent NPCs who put up just as many barriers to being robbed as a PC would. Hell, even more, because I'm paranoid. Third one is that I consider it slap to my face when PCs are special. If PCs have Counterspell, that means the world has it, that means any other NPC of level X will have it. And if PCs think of it as great spell, then NPCs do as well. Same goes for Healing word or any other meta spell. However, I'll also go the opposite route, where if players plan their fight well, and plan around enemies planning, I'll gladly have enemies play right into their hand and get obliterated. tl;dr I'm a fan of difficult encounters because it forces planning, and best combat encounters feel like you've barely got on top. I'd much rather always have difficult encounters than risk of my players constantly "taking risks" which usually means I have to allow them doing something really stupid or I have to kill them. Basically, I'm playing with bunch of ADHD people who are terrible at making and executing plans, and it annoys me.

[@maltheopia]

The easiest way to add challenge to encounters without having them being lethal? Add alternate victory and defeat conditions. For example, if you're assaulting a pirate fortress, you're also trying to stop a quartermaster from making off with the treasure and also looking into freeing some military hostages to help you in the battle.

[@johneubank8543]

Good point. One of my first Adventurer's League modules, as a player, we'd gone hunting to feed a village - but as we were getting ready to feast, the gnolls we'd angered (by invading their hunting ground) attacked. Every round the panicked citizens ran around, and we were told things like "a little boy climbs atop the well to get a better view, not understanding the danger - he's surely going to fall in and drown unless..." - then "a milk cow gets loose and runs here and there in a stampeding panic - unless its stopped it will surely trample a citizen to death" - and so on. A token was placed on the map to represent the boy or the cow - and unless a player gave up their action to grab the boy and get him off the well - or sleep the cow, or do animal handling on it or something, a citizen died. If citizens died our renown or something was damaged. This made the fight much more challenging.

[@bacchus8081]

Skarn the Slayer of the Full Stop is now on the hunt for his arch-nemesis, the Comma, so he can rid himself of all puny punctuation.

[@migueldelmazo5244]

Conan the Librarian wishes to aid in this most noble quest.

[@anarcnamedjustin3451]

As the player of Skarn, this is my quest

[@anarcnamedjustin3451]

Anyone with any questions about Skarn by the way, he is now dead in the session after this fight in the video, goodbye Skarn, he is one with the stone

[@ryanthomasjones]

Very helpful to see specifically how to set up the encounter on Roll20. I am still unfamiliar with so much of how to use Roll20 effectively. I will come back to this video again to see how you set the encounter. I also really like choosing themed music as a part of building the encounter itself.

[@tomgymer7719]

Another thing I think is worth considering, is how you organise and use your monsters and NPC's turns against the party. I think there's two main points here. First is that it can be good to think about some special actions they might take that aren't in the statblock, like a rogue spreading out oil to set alight, or something like that, it's both more interesting, and it can help the party realise that they can also do more with their action than just attack and cast spells. Secondly, you should think about how many actions your monsters have in comparison to the party, not just on a difficulty scale, but also just on how much of the fight is going to be you doing things rather than your party doing things. If most of the time is spent on your turns, that can get pretty boring. So for example, if you have a horde of enemies, it can be good to make sure they each only have one attack, as that will make their turns a lot shorter in comparison to the players. A group of quicklings and a group of ghouls might both have the same challenge rating, but you're going to spend a lot more time on the quicklings' turns than you would on the ghouls.

[@tomgymer7719]

Another thing you might want to do to help play flow quickly between players and monsters is to have group initiatives for your stuff. But you don't have to make it all the same creatures go on the same time, you can break it up differently for more variety. For example, I had a group of animated armours, but paired up for initiative reasons.

[@trevorsmith4230]

Such a great video! I've been looking for an encounter building video exactly like this, giving tips AND examples on the entire spectrum of what things to consider, and I love your points about backstory and your opinions in general. Thank you for this!

[@johneubank8543]

Very helpful video - gave me some good ideas - thank you very much! I sometimes play a normal 5e campaign (that I DM), and I often play Adventurer's League. It's interesting that in AL some of the local DMs (I'm in a big city, so there are a lot of us) have been cooking up some very interesting ploys to make encounters more challenging. Sometimes, if a table is mostly optimized characters run by experienced players, the DM alters the stat blocks for some to most of the monsters. Trolls might be cursed so that they aren't vulnerable to fire damage - finally on round 3 or 4 we learn it's lightning that stops them from regening - or necrotic - or w/e. A wight might have been a monk in life and can still make ki powered attacks and stun! An ogre or giant might be able to reckless and might have a barbarian's resistance to damage, and so on. I'm dreading running into a fire giant or something that has the great weapon master feat! Anyway, this is another option for adding something new to a fight and could be considered. I like, in your video, you used a regular MM feature - earthglide - in a non-conventional way - and used it in a tactically maximal way. Very cool! That's much less drastic than giving a wight a monk feature or stuff like that (this could be considered extreme by some, not everyone will like what I mentioned, and I understand that) - but using an in-book feature in a cool way is very strong. I'm going to be looking for options like this in the future - using in-book features in ways that are not commonly done. When I DM for AL, it can be particularly hard to provide the right challenge. Because it's AL and who knows who is going to show up each night, we often have mixed parties, meaning 2 players might know tactics inside and out and run highly optimized characters, and 2 players are okay at DnD but are still learning and are not optimized, and one either is bent on mostly role-playing or is brand new and clueless or w/e and is running a character that contributes very little to combat. You have to be prepared for a spectrum of ability (in the players) when you show up as a DM, because it's very important to make encounters easier if almost everyone at the table is new - and if most players are skilled you're going to let them down if you don't now how to make the encounters tougher (I think that's why my DM friends have taken to adding features to the monster stat blocks as appropriate, this solution can be added or not added on a whim, based on table performance - I need to talk to them about this is covid ever ends and we're back in the stores). Anyway, I will think about your advice and guide new AL DMs to your videos. Also, I've been mentioning you on other DnD social media platforms, urging players to look up your youtube videos - it's a lot less typing for me, and you explain things very well - very thoroughly and thoughtfully. We appreciate your hard work and dedication to your channel and mission. Thank you!

[@chadfitch3293]

Great vid. That covers two things for me 1. How to create an encounter 2. How to do it on roll20 I’m prepping for my first campaign using roll20. Again thanks, that is great stuff!

[@KevShaw808]

Great video! I often have that problem with trying to balance encounters. Most times I make combat encounters a tad easy but will occasionally make them hard or deadly. You had great advice about making different kinds of encounters though.

[@cp1cupcake]

Those 2e pics five me such nostalgia.

[@collegeoffoliage6776]

Great vid. A lot of people don't seem to consider character optimization and strategy when building encounters, and just blame the CR system for being broken. It's also fun for the party to feel powerful though. I know from experience that the higher level the party gets, the harder it is to challenge them, but even at heroic levels, some parties can be really tough! As an example, in a game I play in, our party of four level six characters pretty effortlessly took down a fire giant and a troll in a straight up fight, which should be a double deadly encounter. I was the only one in the party to take any damage, but still ended the encounter with well over half HP remaining.

[@maltheopia]

A thing that gets missed a lot in character optimization encounters is how smart party tactics can completely upend encounters. One of my favorite examples was when our party was fighting a demilich and the druid summoned a bunch of Giant Spiders out of a 7th-level spell slot. The Demilich got hit with a web and then proceeded to be completely helpless for the rest of the encounter because we stayed back 30 feet and the demilich didn't have anything to handle the webs.

[@collegeoffoliage6776]

@@maltheopia brilliant! 😂 I totally agree. In my example my character (cleric/paladin/sorceror) antagonized the giant and the troll into swarming her, but she had 24 AC at the time, as well as the shield spell, and I used the dodge action. The rest of the party attacked at range, but when the fire giant realized he should be attacking them instead, I booming blade+divine smited him for massive damage with my opportunity attack, and moved up to him again on my next turn, to discourage him from leaving combat with me without disengaging again :P

[@jonahsalyers5979]

The auto subtitles on my homepage began this video by saying “hey aftermathers, Chris here...” and now I’ve accidentally stumbled upon the name for a group in a D&D world. Now to determine what a group called The Aftermathers would do...

[@Graxil]

Man I love this channel! Nice video!

[@opsecmedic]

Second! Lol I love your videos and they are so useful to me as I'm stepping back into being a dungeon master for the first time since I was a teen with 3.5 I am now the one introducing the next generation of nerds to d&d

[@Rubidius]

It might be interesting to have videos that talk about ways to get the most out of under performing sub classes without resorting to house rules.

[@maltheopia]

1.) The quick-and-dirty way to do it is to give the underperforming players boons and rewards. A character might get a special animal companion, or a custom magic item, or get command of an airship, whatever. 2.) The Big Brain way to do it: add alternate victory and defeat conditions. For example, if you're assaulting a pirate fortress, you're also trying to stop a quartermaster from making off with the treasure and also looking into freeing some military hostages to help you in the battle.

[@Rubidius]

@@maltheopia Those are good ideas for DMs and it is definitely on topic for this video. I guess I was thinking more along the lines of "What can a player do with a bad subclass when using optimal tactics?" Things like knowing when to use the berserker's frenzy for maximum effect while minimizing the impact of the negative effects. Or how beastmaster rangers may find creative uses for their animal companions. "Use a different subclass" may be one form of advice for this but what if a player wants to play one of the bad subclasses for the challenge? What can they do to try to keep up with better optimized party members?

[@maltheopia]

@@Rubidius Oh, sorry, I thought you were talking about from a DM's perspective. For bad subclasses, you need to do things at a case-by-case basis. Especially because how some of them, like the Beastmaster Ranger, can change depending on things like magic item availability.

[@Rubidius]

@@maltheopia That is true. I mostly posted this as an idea for a topic in a future video.

[@mateofantasma]

Great video! Learned a couple things about roll20 too! I realize I do not really know how to use it properly!

[@coreyburton8]

wouldn't you love to have Treantmonk as your DM?!?

[@migueldelmazo5244]

Thanks, as always, for great content.

[@SmugLookingBarrel]

Another great video.

[@goranfrka]

Nice series ! Gj TT

[@FlutesLoot]

Michael Skarn, anyone? Now I want to reskin CoS as Threat Level Midnight.

[@Alfrebaut]

Bit of an off-topic question, but does anyone know the artist of the piece at 11:41? It's really nice and I'd be interested in seeing more of that artist's work.

[@burningwp]

I am wondering as well

[@burningwp]

found it: www.artstation.com/artwork/mLqVd

[@duelnomancy5128]

Great vid, something I want to say though is that Roll20 has a lot of problems and my DM has swapped us over to a much better system. Yes thats right Im here to tell you about FoundryVTT or TheForge! just give it a look, and if you discus it anywhere like in a tweet I think that'd be swell.

[@TreantmonksTemple]

I've been playing in a campaign on FoundryVTT that is hosted on The Forge for a few weeks now. Overall I think it is very nice, but we have not found it to be bug-free either.

[@duelnomancy5128]

@@TreantmonksTemple Wow thats awesome! My DM helps contribute so we are on an alfa version and have had a sort of inside track and it has been fantastic. Its been improving steadily but some of the best parts have been the add ons like diceSoNice and weather effects he has added. If it gets to a point where you have more thoughts on it Im sure my group would be interested. Escaping Roll20 was a big thing for us.

[@TreantmonksTemple]

@@duelnomancy5128 I like both platforms. Did Fantasy Grounds for awhile, that one was a big miss for me. Both Foundry and Roll20 I find pretty easy to use and navigate. One thing that bugs me about Foundry is showing everyone's cursor on the maps. Distracting.

[@duelnomancy5128]

I thought that would be optional, ill bring it up and hey who knows maybe* that gets put in an update :)

[@XinKotetsu]

@@TreantmonksTemple Cursors can easily be disabled by the DM in the Foundry settings.

[@kolskit]

First comment! :) Thanks for this. I'm excited, as my group has a big encounter coming up, and I've been at a touch of a roadblock.

[@geniumme2502]

Hello Treantmonk! Are you willing to tell us about your players? I would be very interested about the dynamics of an optimized party (not in terms of rp but power level :) im well aware that optimizing and roleplay have no correlation at all ^^) - specifically i would be interested if even in an optimized party an optimized sorlock is too strong. I will be playing in a high power optimized campaign - and my DM will allow anything in the rulebook (and some more like lv1 feat more stats high magic etc) and im concerned that even in this kinda setting a sorlock is just too much ^^ toughts? Thanks as always for the awesome video and your contribution to the community!

[@TreantmonksTemple]

The party actually has 2 sorlocks! (both Hex/DSS). A DSS/Forge Cleric, an AT/BS a Conjuration Wiz and a Gloomstalker Ranger (archery). The ranger does the most damage, the forge cleric is the hardest to hit. Sorlocks are well balanced against the other PC's.

[@geniumme2502]

@@TreantmonksTemple Ty! glad to hear that :D looking forward to my own Hex/DSS sorlock^^ Forge with shield & +2AC, haste, and warding bond, 18+2+2+1+5* =~ 28 AC with no magic items hmm yea he wont die :D I strongly assume you ban coffee locks?

[@dylank7732]

Hey Chris sorry this is off topic but I'm about to start a campaign using your diviner build and I'm just confused about your choice to take Tasha's Hideous Laughter over Sleep. You say its better for a diviner because they can use the Portent to ensure it's success but in your spell analysis videos you say it's not worth using Portent on. Was it just a case of varrying up the spell choices to keep the builds fresh or is it actually superior?

[@redactedredacted2621]

Sleep tends to work at low levels, and then becomes useless really quick. A lot of CR 4 monsters are going to have more hit points than the max roll of an upcasted Level 3 Sleep Spell. On average, you’ll get a 40 as your total, which would work when the monster is at half health. Hideous Laughter works no matter what the health level, and use can guarantee the success with Portent pretty much. He probably meant to say that your shouldn’t waste the Portent at higher levels when you get better spells.

[@TreantmonksTemple]

Sleep is really good at levels 1&2, but beyond that point I wouldn't bother.

[@collegeoffoliage6776]

Yeah, sleep is great against super weak enemies, but has quickly diminishing returns. On a slightly related note I have planed an encounter with an embodiment of the vice of sloth. He has the ability to cast sleep as a 9th level spell for free. Silly, perhaps, but I am just looking forward to rolling 21d8 for a spell and seeing how worried my players get 😁

[@ComradeFurious]

How did you create the circular token for the earth elemental? It looks much better then the square image and I'd like to be able to do the same.

[@TreantmonksTemple]

Google "Tokentool" it's free software and very handy.

[@ComradeFurious]

@@TreantmonksTemple Thank you!

[@mikeclementecard]

Next week back to build vids?

[@TreantmonksTemple]

Not quite yet. Doing some monster analysis...

[@jordanlockwood527]

@@TreantmonksTemple OOOOOO, get HYPE

[@rich63113]

"A CR appropriate encounter is like nothing for this group - there's a distinct possibility they'll take no damage". Sorry - but this comment really bugs me - because it's a common misconception that a single CR-same monster should be an even match for a party. A "CR Appropriate" encounter (say, 4 level 5s against a CR5) is an "Easy" encounter per the DMG - "An easy encounter doesn’t tax the characters’ resources or put them in serious peril. They might lose a few hit points, but victory is pretty much guaranteed." That's the expectation. It's not until a CR8 until you should expect meaningful damage to that party.

[@squidheadss7105]

What are the other characters in this party?

[@TreantmonksTemple]

Currently an Arcane Trickster/Bladedancer, a Conjuration Wizard, a Gloomstalker Ranger, another Warlock/Sorcerer and a Forge Cleric.

[@squidheadss7105]

@@TreantmonksTemple Ah, so not the epitome of high op, but pretty up there.

[@geniumme2502]

@@squidheadss7105 what would you consider to be the epitome? just curious ^^

[@squidheadss7105]

@@geniumme2502 Something like Artificer1/chronurgy, hex2/eloquence, hex2/dss, hex1/paladin

[@geniumme2502]

@@squidheadss7105 thanks :) interesting. Im currently planning for a high power optimizer campaign - and have previously run exactly that, an A1 Chrono19 and a hex1 Elo14 DSS5 (DM allowed UA feats: Eldritch adapt so no lv 2 WL) The Hex3/DSS is the sorlock im looking at for the next campaign :) im planing a hex pala but i never tried that before ;/ Craziest thing i ever saw was Gloom3 Lifecleric1 Fighter 11 (UA brute allowed) Bloodhunter Mutant3 Wizard2 (war) that build had fairly consistently (Action surge) 800++ average damage rounds - without assassin surprise stuff. Late game was ... uhmmm weird.