Big thanks to Pete, Elliot and Forrest for workshopping some of these ideas with me after our last session! Additional ideas: Maybe they can charge the action more times for more damage? Maybe they are vulnerable to certain damage types while they are charging? Maybe they have multi stage attacks, where each stage has a specific AOE? Maybe they move as part of the big attack? Also almost definitely: They shouldn't move once they start charging unless they cancel it, and they should be able to use their action in place of a legendary action to launch a charged attack.
Alright, You’ve inspired me. Magical Glide Flings a player 20 feet, launches them 30 feet into the air, and gives them the feather fall effect. The player has full control of their movement while feather falling (their movement speed), and if they land on something they deal 2d4 bludgeoning damage. This can be taken advantage of by using it as a guaranteed hit against a boss/enemy that has this spell. Great stuff Zee!
this is cool, but fyi, there is no facing in 5e, you can see in every direction at once per the rules this type of things still works regardless and i have used it in the past and its great fun
Maybe an archer arcs a single arrow into the ground to find its range and stuff, and then they'll rain arrows down in a 15ft radius cylinder around that arrow.
I really like this honestly it allows players to actually move around and protect each other also most legendary actions are boring but this is a fun spin to them
@@utes5532 He said only one player gets to have a turn before the attack lands and its not the player who just went. If you just hit the enemy with a weapon you're stuck there and only a party member can get you out. Your movement does nothing when you literally cant move on your own. Plus If its a ranged AOE it doesn't even matter if your close with a melee or far with magic/ranged it will hit you unless a party member is close enough to save you
@@MyWaifuNow Remember that this wind up attack has facing, it is possible to move while engaged, as long as you don't move out of the engaged range.I have actually used this to pull some situation in our favour by utilising large summons. Most people, including DMs don't expect this, because usually there is no reason to move after you engage the enemy.
How badass would it be for someone to run up and put their shield in front of an impending breath attack to protect their party, probably taking some damage themselves, but preventing the rest of their party from taking damage? Iconic, and for all the things, D&D let's you do, it never let you do that.
One of my proudest moment was having a boss that used 8th and 7-9th lvl magic but had it on a wind up. It started casting at round start, then at round end it would cast whatever it was doing. The players could break its concentration, but when concentration was broken it would on the next turn use focus to protect its concentration for a turn. There were also suicide clowns approaching the group that would then fireball themselves if they got close enough. The finale was the boss focusing on a meteor swarm and with enough damage the boss was taken down and the swarm launched into random directions. Good times, was stressful to the players.
Dude, I was just literally thinking about telegraphed boss attacks for a campaign I’m going to run and just using legendary actions is such a great way to simplify it without making it less grand, can’t believe I didn’t think of it.
I did this with a whole round of lead up. The boss hunkered down with magic shields increasing his defense while he charged an aoe centered on himself. Next turn he unleashed it. It gives the players a whole turn to lock him down or get clear but the extra defense doesn't make it feel like the boss lost a turn. The players thought it was super cool.
I ran a one on one Zelda RPG using 5e for my fiancé and this is how I ran boss monsters. Each attack had a telegraphed wind up followed by an attack. Each attack had a way you could avoid it or straight up interrupt it to negate it altogether. It worked really well! And I’ve started using it for other actually dnd monsters as well!
I’ve been in a couple zelda games. One started more based of one of the games then spun off. The other was more just using the world. Both were really fun.
A DM of mine has been running telegraphed attacks as 'paragon actions', telegraph happens at start of round, and event resolves at the end. This could be anything from an attack to an environmental change. I loved it and will be using it in future games.
I've been doing this for years. My favorite flavor is combining a boss telegraph with a lair telegraph. The lair telegraphs at initiative 20 and executes at initiative 1 and has bigger AOEs like hitting half the room or a starburst from a point. The boss then does a line or cone which limits the safe space and maybe leaves behind a puddle for them to stand in and take damage later.
I've run telegraphs in a game before. The problem I see with this one is that, whoever has their turn after the wind up is suddenly relegated to rescue duty, and it kinda feels bad for them unless they explicitly were planning to do that, or if they have a means to rescue someone without cutting into their own actions. From my experience, you want to make sure telegraphs don't stifle the boss's action economy, and the players can deal with the mechanics and actually have a chance to react if they'll be the ones affected. When I did it, it was in PF2 (so opportunity attacks weren't a concern), and I created two types of telegraphs: One, at the end of the boss's turn, it would switch weapons with a declaration. At the start of its next turn, it would get a free area of effect attack off, based on the weapon it equipped. E.g., a sword might be a spin attack to cleave everything adjacent, a scythe might cleave everything greater than 10-15 ft away (forcing you to get close), or a spear might just do a wide line AOE targeting the last person to successfully hit it. These go off immediately, before it can move, so it can't cheese things. It took players a minute to realize the AOEs were related to the weapon the boss had, but once they did, they were dancing around a lot more readily. The other thing it would do sometimes is summon some pylons. Before the boss's next turn, they'd fire off attacks in a cross-line pattern for automatic damage. Players would know to move to the sides / out of the way. You can do something similar with say, environmental elements like cannons or geysers that the boss can activate to erupt or fire. This worked out really well and kept players moving a lot. You just gotta be careful about throwing too many effects in at once, otherwise you can sometimes make a scenario where there are no safe areas, or they're impossible to feasibly reach.
I had an idea once for a "resistance wheel" ..so like the monster will roted a resistances between rounds (mybe last dmg type delt or the most in the round or just in order /random) on a wheel of dmg type (a elemental wheel , pysical wheel or a special wheel (nerco,psychic extra). Now the players need to plan there attacks and not rely on one weapon or spell
My big thing that drives me insane about this sorta thing is just negating it entirely using stunning strike, and PCs using forced movement to say it cancels the entire thing.
@@joeystuart2949 tbf, since I was running in PF2, stun works differently. It's not as accessible to players, bosses are more likely to save against it when it is, and stunned only reduces the actions the boss can take based on the stun value, instead of completely negating their turn. Since monsters don't have opportunity attacks by default in PF2, it also made it easier to move around. For 5e, specifically Zee's way of running it with legendary actions, I'd say stuns and forced movement are fine for solving that, though I'd also say that OA's are disable when it's priming a telegraph. But stuns are kinda badly handled in 5e (and makes monks kinda gimmicky).
@@Zedrinbot Plus on top of that, if stunning strike fails, they're now directly in front of the attack. I'd also probably add something to stronger charge attacks that they have advantage on saving throws if I wanted to counter that, kinda like superarmor, however have them autofail dodge based saving throws and if I'm feeling generous, lower their armor class/make them get advantage to being hit... or just convert them into a different type like Strength or Constitution if you wanted to make them really imposing.
Another 'fix' to the flanking problem is to not run the DMGs "flanking gives advantage" version - it's way too powerful and overshadows all the other ways to get advantage. Instead, run the popular homebrew "flanking gives the opposite of half cover" version. ^^
@@VentrexTheXVth it's an ill-conceived optional rule to begin with. if you actually want positionally interesting combat, use the optional facing rules instead. flanking is like giving everyone knockoff pack tactics.
@@harperna3938 so you would rather give the enemy onidirectional sight? The whole point of flanking to to divide attention. And yes that's what a party is a human pack
I'd probably introduce this mechanic by having a creature without legendary actions spend its turn winding up a hit for the next round. That way, when a bigger monster *uses a legendary action* to mimic such behavior, it should cause the players to recognize that and, hopefully, put 2 and 2 together regarding the legendary actions.
I’d suggest starting off with the first boss suddenly using a reaction, before you mark the area around them, confusing the players… Then next turn, the enemy does an attack that does a small amount of damage to the marked squares around them, but it sends everyone in the area flying. It would act as an aha moment, so that the next time those marked squares pop up, they realize that they need to stay outside of that area.
Giving the whole party a full round to continue laying into the monster and run away while it charges up sounds like a great way to have an anticlimactic result. It's an important note that Zee has both the charge up and the follow through as Legendary Actions. The boss didn't waste any time on its turn.
Ive already planned on doing this with dragon breath weapons. Each time the dragon regains their charge of breath weapon, make it very evident that the dragon is taking a deep breath, and is facing one specific direction (either one specifically annoying character or randomly rolled with dice), giving the impression that anyone in that same direction should probably skedadle or at the very least employ the dodge action. This is also very important to allow players to utilise protective spells and resources, because what happens too often in DnD is that you cast protection from energy but either the enemy just doesn't hit you (either missing or focusing on someone else), you shielded the wrong type of energy, or spent the spell slot on a fireball that is more rewarding in general.
Our DM used FFXIV style telegraphed AoEs as the layer actions for the final boss fight of one of our campaigns. It added an extra layer of movement strategy instead of just the normal run up and deal big damage. It was one of the most unique fights I have ever had in D&D and it was a lot of fun! I highly recommend.
@@dracoslayer16 while not exactly what you're asking for, there is a full thorough homebrew for dnd5e for every race and job in ffxiv, that you could definitely work with
I've thought of using telegraphed mechanics similar to this, but it never occured to me to use legendary actions for the wind-up and resolution. This is ingenious. I will definitively be trying this mechanic in the next session. If the players respond well to it, I will be incorporating it into my boss fights from now on. Love this idea so much.
I love doing this! Combined with locational and limb damage impacting big monsters (severed limbs, blinding, etc), it allows for a lot more nuanced combat and evolving strategies, as well as great opportunities for storytelling and roleplay beyond "the monster is hurt." I definitely don't recommend doing this with more than 3 monsters at a tine since you still have a game to run, but certainly wherever you can manage. Also, great video as always
I recently used the Fleecemane Lion from the Theros book, a CR3 creature with legendary actions. I loved it! Legendary actions shouldnt be limited to high CR monsters, because they improve the flow of bossfights at every level. If your players are going to fight a single, strong monster, try giving it one or two legendary actions! That way it feels like a dynamic bossfight instead of the party stomping a helpless creature for 10 minutes until its the things turn again. Make sure to balance it, though. If your bossmonster has multiattack, just use one of those attacks later as a legendary action. Or give the monster legendary actions that dont deal damage, but interact with players, like an Ogre picking up the fighter and tossing them at the wizard to throw both prone.
Reminds me of spells like Moonbeam that trigger at the start of the creature’s turn. Lead to fun “GET DOWN” moments to save the party’s doppelgänger from being revealed.
Been doing this in my campaign for a year-ish now. I love this mechanic so much as it makes spacing very important and prevalent especially in boss encounters. Spread the word!
I like this. I like it more if very occasionally the telegraph refers to one or two lesser used aoe attacks with a slightly altered style to remove some of the repetitiveness.
I think only if it’s a very different telegraph. If the players are left guessing which locations will be dangerous in a turn, the tactics become a lot muddier and a lot less fun.
Telegraphing has definitely been one of those things I have liked the idea of, but was always hesitant on doing, because I would be worried about people perceiving it as too 'video gamey', but seeing you explain it really made it seem a lot more dynamic than I had imagined, especially with the various examples. Its honestly pretty cool to see what small changes and do mechanically, but also cinematically to the general game.
I absolutely love this! As an old souls player, this is a great way to run large aoe spells. Using other area control abilities, like a wall of fire, can help the BBEG make this more threatening.
I’ve been wanting to do something similar, making creatures with recharge attacks roll to regain them at the END of their turn instead of the start, and give a visual signal that they can use it again, like having an area on the dragon’s neck begin to glow. I really want to start telegraphing things more and giving players more agency in combat so that it isn’t just a slapfest to see who goes down first.
What I did was using a "complex trap" for an encounter, where on initiative 20 the device would light up and mark the areas of effect and on initiative 10 the effects would fire. (radiant damage in a cone, summon a small radiant elemental that blinds and does minor damage in an AoE) But this one is good too, however it leaves little space to manouver I think.
I learned about your channel a few days ago. I like it so much, I think I binged just about every video you've uploaded. This is my first "new video" so I'm excited. Thanks for the awesome content. It's already positively impacted my group's campaign. Cheers!
I do this with dragons breath weapon. One round of wind up and when it goes off, it does max damage. Combine this with claw attacks that can auto grapple and you can see the fear in the party as the dragon grabs their fighter and prepares to roast them specifically.
Okay Auto Grapple plus an Auto-hit breath weapon is too much, especially if you're also doing Max damage. The Grapple is already gonna be hard to do against a FREAKING DRAGON, let alone get the fighter out of before the end of the next player's Turn. Because even the lowest CR Adult Dragon, the Adult Brass, has a breath weapon that can deal 78 damage. You're gonna at best melt the fighter's health and at worst knock them unconscious. And if you are doing the wind up thing, then why is your dragon spending 4 legendary actions or it's turn, and 3 legendary actions to grab 1 person in particular and roast them alive when it could just fly around and roast the party when it swoops in close? That party member had better be really, REALLY valuable and really really stupid to NOT get grabbed by the dragon that's eyeing them up like a corndog.
Hmm so how does that run? Dragon winds up it's breath at initiative 20 like a lair action then fires it at the bottom of the round? Does he still take his action? Legendary actions?
@@Phourc for the breath weapon, the dragon spends the action on its turn to breath in and prepare the attack. It can spend legendary actions as normal but if it moved, I would count it's grapple as immediately over. Then, on the dragon's turn on the next round, the breath goes off. Just to make sure that everyone gets a chance to help.
@@thedragonknight3600 different strokes. It could very well do all that on one round and then decide that someone in particular needs to die. It's more about cinematics than tactical acuity.
I'm very very interested in making my own almost monster hunter styled table top adventure and combat in this way has intrigued me greatly. But since every hunt in this game would include these telegraphed attacks, I fear there would be obvious, overpowered strategies that people can hold on to to move another player.
That might just be realism sneaking in. Hunters with D&D capabilities would naturally be much more adept at using friendly repositioning as part of their combat style. You could discuss this with your players and see if they'll agree to removing/limiting a lot of the movement spells and abilities, maybe compensating them with magical weapons to keep with the theme, or some other boon that would encourage the playstyle you're looking for like a tracking fly analog. Or you could accept that your hunting party has actual magic and embrace what a hunt looks like when you can dimension door in an S-AED, but that's just my personal preference lol.
Then don’t make whatever a boss is doing consistent with others. To me, a big part of this idea is the initial unpredictability. Make one dude cast a spell, another use a weapon. Heck, you could make it be lair actions that the BBEG causes.
@@fyshman152 Monster hunter is like a fighting game but you fight small kaiju. In the videogame, learning their signals and attack animations and dodging in and out to do damage is the main combat mechanic, like Darksouls. So the problem isn't keeping the attack patterns varied, it's preventing the party from figuring out a cheese maneuver that works against all telegraphed attacks because every meaningful fight will be against them.
what is not necessarily a bad thing, I'm sure the player will feel super clever for figuring out a way to cheese boss mechanics... just like monster hunter. you can also have the bosses use different kinds of attack to force the players to adapt and memorize mechanics, like for example the boss will use a line AOE in front of him, but then the line will explode and damage adjacent tiles the next turn, but then if the boss charges a similar attack but with a different color, it will do the same thing but the inverse.
@@danilooliveira6580 i somewhat like this middle ground take on it, being telegraphed attacks with a degree of randomness to each. The type of cheese that i dont want is for a creature to repeatedly run into a wall because the flow chart the DM uses is flawed. I feel that especially early game monsters who cant use crazy ass energy blasts or huge AOE attacks will be troublesome to find a way to keep players out of their comfort zone.
They actually do this in Fire emblem, where when a monster lands an attack on its turn, they wind up an AOE that can hit a 4x2 area, but in any direction, so the party has to maximize for who gets hit, whom the monster aggros on, and how the party is spaced. I like it a lot!
I've been wondering how to best do telegraphed attacks in dnd for a while cause its such a "video game boss staple" that I wanted to replicate it somehow and this seems like a great way to do it. The wind up lasting every party members turn always seemed too easily avoidable and this is a good way to fix that.
@@darkmatterpancake9824 It's a bot, most likely. Bots like these copy other people's comments on the page. This one copied one of mine. As for the likes, either they're also bot-generated, or there are guys who "like" any post whose profile images look a certain way.
@@youtubeuniversity3638 damage reduction, I think. So X being between 8 to 15, for every point the player AC is above it, you reduce 1 point of damage.
Great idea Zee! I'll definitely try this. Love your videos. I noticed the warlock song at the end on this one. I watched that short every now and then for the lolz.
I'm glad to see that someone has come up with a similar idea to what I had. It's a really cool idea for fights and creates an amazing sense of uniqueness for your bosses. Maybe don't use it for every boss fight, but pull it out for bosses that you want the players to remember.
This is an interesting idea. Feels like bit of a cheap shot to have the boss do the swing that's meant to be 'step out of this' when a player doesn't have the ability to get out of said aoe since action economy is a thing. Still its an interesting idea as previously stated, and one I might use in my games in the future
@@Phourc Am wondering if it’d be worth it to even try to get another player out of the way, unless you can do it in a bonus action or they’re going to die from it.
It encourages a riskier playstyle where characters might save some of their movement, since 5e lets you move, attack, and move again if you still have speed left. Obviously there's no way to know if a boss is going to use their special attack before they start their wind-up, but that's the risk you run - risk an AoO, which has a chance of failure, or take the chance that the boss will charge up their auto-hit. Usually it's going to be worth the AoO - and once the boss has done one AoO, they can't do any more. You might also homebrew some escape options, magic items or spells or whatever, that can be used once per battle or so (maybe recharge on a 6 or something) as a reaction. Another option is to balance the auto-hit such that it doesn't do a *ton* of damage - I'd probably say it should do half of the average damage of the boss's most powerful normal attack, as a rule of thumb. If you want to roll it instead of just doing flat damage, that would be half the number or half the size of the dice, and also divide any flat damage added in half. If you want it to be more powerful, make it easier to avoid - charges for a round rather than just a turn, or something like that.
@@lonestarlibrarian1853 Yeah I think a system like that would only work if the hits are scarily big and the boss only had a limited number per round, meaning most of his damage could be mitigated by smart play while at least some players get a chance to attack.
Zee… Thank you. 1. For your comedic addition to my day, and 2. For the wonderful ways in which you teach me to further scare my players. Good luck with the move!
I've been wondering how to implement something like this! As I like player facing combat, you could easily implement this into that kind of system since the players already roll to avoid getting hit.
"The boss performs a wind-up legendary action. You have until the boss' next turn to kill the boss or break their concentration before a party wipe." Definitely feels like a mechanic translated from an RPG video game into the tabletop.
Great idea! As always, love the vid. Congrats on moving, which for us kicks off years of finding buried boxes. Our house is like a dungeon crawl for months afterwards. Have fun with that!
My man out here reinventing D&D 4E. It had some good, modern combat design and everyone seems to disregard all the lessons learned from that edition just because the critical reception was bad.
And as 4e in turn just renamed to Trigger and Boss actions the assortment of the randomly bullshit named monster traits that let them take FRA or standards as immediate or ready only bits (and the channeled spell series of .5), it cant be praised for it other than for streamlining (while often misusing, like oh so much content from 1st and 2nd mm and essentially majority of pre essentials DM side content).
This is awesome! I've been thinking here and they're about a way to implement almost exactly this for a little while but never thought to use the legendary actions for it, brilliant! Though I'll need to workshop it for my table for sure but SO doing this
I mean I mean just because it was short does not mean it wasn't high quality you have no idea how much of an impact your videos have on me and the groups that I play with thank you so much for all that you post
A neat idea, would be cool to see in some games to add a bit of flavor, even if it does gameify it a bit. Hope the move goes well Zee! Thanks for bringing out these wonderfully animated, humorous and even education animated spell books the past couple of years! Can't wait for next season, haha
Yo, just wanted to say that these little shorts miiiiiiight have saved entire campaigns for me, so keep up the good work, Zee, really helpful, even the small stuff
Yeeees! Thats so cool. I really wanted to do a Souls like DnD game, but i never got around the attack pattern of the souls Bosses. This Video is such a great Inspiration (and the art and animation in Top as allways). Thabk you my man. :) And a wish you a great move, hope everything goes smoothly.
