Glad to see people getting back to good content again! The OGL thing was annoying and deserved the reaction it got, but I'm happy to see real content again.
Hm, to save an ill girl players need to get a crystal that is in the chest of a zombie. But cristal starts to decay as soon as it is removed from the zombie body. What you do? 😉
This is why I subscribed! You come up with ideas that challenge me as a DM to make things fun. You're defined by your hard work Dungeon Couch! Thank you for what you do!
Good video. I'd say that the longer a combat is the more moving parts it should have. If you don't think some crazy objective or setpiece is justified then the combat better last 2 rounds at most imo.
I think its totally fine to say Dungeons and Dragons. Many people still play the game, we just aren't spending money with wizards. The war was not against dnd, it was against wotc to SAVE dnd. DnD is the victim, not the villain.
This is the perfect level of chaotic energy; well thought out, but thinking on the fly, knowing what your creatures/terrain can do, but changing it if you think of something cooler. Love the advice and energy you bring.
One thing I've tried to incorporate is the PC's reaction to things. If the PC has NEVER encountered an undead creature before, or a zombie they should have to make a save vs fear. Maybe their gag reflex engages. If I IRL met a zombie about to explode I would scream bloody murder, and fight v flight instincts would take over. If your PC has encountered thousands of zombies in the past, they would be less likely to react badly to them.
I think these tips are all OK, definitely stuff Ive thought about, but when I make complex encounters like this, I fail in the execution. How do you run an encounter with 5 different stat blocks and various other moving parts and remember it all? Invariably, if I have this much stuff going on, I forget most of it. How do you make it interesting but simple?
Another option for "spicing up" a potentially combative overland encounter could be to add a stampede. The danger it poses would depend on the size of the stampeding creatures: ranging from fairly trivial, such as throng of lemmings, when their population gets too big for the carrying capacity of their home area & they have to disperse in all directions, to quite deadly like with the wildebeest stampede in the Disney movie "The Lion King".
When giving ownership to a word ending in "s,' the pronunciation doesn't change. Instead of Star Warses, it's just Star Wars. I left out the single quote to focus on the pronunciation. I ONLY post this because it was a bit of a question.
In Shadowrun their is a spell called eyes of the pack, where you can see through other's eyes. Blind creatures who have bonded familiars etc that work as their eyes.
Getting balanced encounters that are consistent to a desired threat and the 5e CR rules is tough for a DM. Especially random encounters on the fly. Thoughts on tools?
04:24 "...bulging and pulsing and about to explode"... well that's what he said!.... Thank you! Thank you everyone! You have been great this evening! I'll show myself out 🎩
I love D&D, I guess a lot of us still do. I'm curious about new stuff and I was pretty livid with the whole OGL thing, but it feels very weird if you so to say "apologize" for making D&D content in the beginning of the video. That being said, great video. :)
Yea I filled this while everything was still bad, so that was a little old clip there by the time it came out! Was in a weird state if you know what I mean! I still want to make content for people that love DnD too though!
Great ideas yet again Coach! Love to see your gears turning when you're getting into it just talking about it haha, I completely understand. I agree with you on all these points. For creatures I use standard creatures (goblins/bandits/etc) but I shake them up by making them resemble some of the classes in my game. Giving one warrior type abilities, one archer abilities, one rogue abilities etc to make them warriors/assassins/archers etc. My last session I had the party facing skeletons. One skeleton type I made was a spearman that had an ability (impale) which required them to move 20 feet in a straight line, but if they had that, gained +5 on damage for that attack. So it forced the players to fight all the other skeletons while trying to use the terrain and positioning to avoid that massive impale.
Great ideas and inspiration as usual! Def going to pick up that pdf for some ideas. This video reminds me that for the D&D tournament that I organized and ran last year at a local convention, I had 3 "combat" encounters but the primary goal of each encounter was not to "kill them all" but some other objective. Sometimes the objective was obvious, sometimes they had to gather clues during the fight. All in all, they turned out to be very dynamic and exciting for all the groups, and it was awesome to see how every group handled each encounter. Dynamic encounters for the win!
Would love a "How to effectively build an adventure" type video. Something like an adventure template or something. There's a lot of these already out there but they don't scratch the itch
I'll be running Stormwreck Island next week, and this video inspired me to have one of the zombies in the first encounter covered in seaweed that it can use to lasso a PC and pull them into melee. "Get over here!"
Putting a goal beyond "kill all hostiles" really is the key to making any combat encounter instantly more interesting, and I recommend giving it a thought when preparing your session. You can leave your random and improvised encounters simple, but should give all your planned encounters that extra spice to elevate your game.
