Building Combat Encounters in Dungeons and Dragons 5e: Difficulty & Mechanics (Part 2 of 3) 

bahahaha you guys switched outfits lmao! looks like you're wearing each other's shirts.

Thank you for this comment, it helps 😊

A little bit of food, sleep and something to drink would be nice too.

Haha I know, it's so sweet! 😆

At this point, I'd take someone who looks at me the way that Kelly looks at the Monk class.

@@theEpicGeek21525 that bad, huh?

That sounds amazing.

but you didn't tpk them. that means you lost

@@FirstArchon OOPS

This sounds amazing! (I'm about to start my own campaign and most of the players haven't played D&D before too, and I really hope I can have the same effect on them as you did with your party!)

Wait, if the pally and the dwarf made their saves why did they wake up in a well with the rest of them?

Absolutly true! And its missing in most of the education systems all around the world. We need games like this!

Dying in the final fight to kill the BBEG is the most Barbarian thing you can do.

Beware the Swolbold! i.imgur.com/yk2RQSM.jpg

Once, my party was camping in a ruined castle we found while we were searching for a dwarven ruin we knew had kobolds in it when we found a crack in the basement. We kept an eye on it during the night and kobolds started swarming out. We never even went inside to get killed by the traps, we just got swarmed until we were all exhausted and blocked off the hole with a large piece of rubble. Kobolds don't even need traps against lower level parties. Their willingness to die for the warren is enough.

@@zacsnowbank7632 Sounds right! My players thought clearing the kobolds from beneath the gnome neighborhood was going to be a lot easier job than dealing with that bronze dragon that was attacking the town for some strange reason, but when they barricaded themselves in that kobold kitchen for a rest, they came across a strange looking bronze egg. After that it was a race to the surface with the egg, as the kobolds got tougher and the party's resources whittled away. They escaped the lair within an inch of their lives, and you can probably guess what was waiting for them at the exit. ;)

You could say it was warrented

Kobolds rock. In 13th Age there's a monster city called Drakkenhall, ruled by 3 god-like dragons. Their personal army is the Glinting Legion, a force of kobolds equipped with the best equipment a dragon's gold can buy. When the party arrived they wandered the goblin market before a commotion caught their attention. A bulette had emerged nearby, the ruined side of the city housing all sorts of beasts. Of course the players charged in but a group of "Glinters" charged in beside them. The proficiency and ferocity the city's kobold guard showed taking down the bulette left everyone with a new respect for the little lizards.

SpitefulCrow When we played this, our DM changed it to the doppleganger being disgusied as Gundren. So we had two Gundrens and had to figure out who the real one was. We had them duke it out with planks, Joker Dark Knight Style, and used a Revivify Scroll to revive the real Gundren.

Haha, two Gundrens! That's brilliant. If I run that again I'm using that! @@claduke

@@claduke Yall did Gundren dirty. Killed him and revived him.

@spitefulcrow And that, my friend, is exactly how D&D encounters should go! Awesome.

That's an awesome idea! I also use a broader spectrum of dragon ages. I use the MM to determine mechanical size, but ill adjust the breath weapon damage dice and the dragon's HP according to how old it actually is (and how challenging i want it to be)

I guess you could call it an en-counter Ill see myself out

when things got too hard we ran off, and came back a couple levels later and mopped them up

I put in the work to create a table of "If I have X monsters who need to roll Y to hit, these many automatically hit, the remainder miss"

John Healer that's certainly a way to resolve it mass combat faster. In the right game it would be a great solution, unfortunately it's not really suited to mine. There are two main reasons I don't do if that way, first I roll all of my dice in front of the screen, I want my players to believe everything is out of my hands and anything could happen. (Even though I still have considerable influence over the outcome by dynamic adjustment of other variables) If I resolved it via table there would be no hiding it from my players and they would probably understand the implications of this method. Second, I don't want the players reverse engineering the math and making decisions based on the absolute certainty of an outcome. I want them to take risks, knowing five goblin archers might happen to hit and ruin their day when the average should be two. Conversely none might hit and make the whole thing easier for them. If I had more players or my method was slowing combat down I would probably have to switch to a table method, but I feel at this point making the rolls works better for me. One major question with such a method is resolving crits; a crit should occur on average once in twenty roles, if you have twenty goblin archers you expect about one crit per round. Is it alright to hit players with an auto crit? I'm not so sure. If you have ten goblins you expect a crit in two rounds, would this resolve to no crits? Is it alright to completely remove the possibility of a player getting crited because the mob fell below an arbitrary number? I'm not sure how I would resolve this in my game, though if it works for you I'm sure it works.

@@deplorablemecoptera3024 keep in mind, I use these tables for hoards of monsters like Minions from 4e. Something players can easily cut swaths through. I usually don't have them critical hit, because the player is already taking enough guaranteed damage as is. And that's why I use the system I use: Guarantees. A solid middle ground that my players can predict and do the math on. Because my big bads or bosses or other particular threats already have an air of mystery.

John Healer I can see the appeal, but prefer the madness of random outcomes myself when dealing with large numbers of combatants. The best stories at my table often come from those "little goblin that could" scenarios.

Chris Shelton it also works with encounter design. having a combat with randomly chosen monsters Might be fun, but it won’t have any polish. a fight with a line of infantry, 1-3 artillery enemies, AND a brute or a striker causing extra problems, that’s an interesting fight.

:D Glad to help!

yeah or black puddings... players love black puddings encounters , right?

Ian Meza you two aren't thinking devilishly enough, rust monsters

@@deplorablemecoptera3024 Thanks. Now I'm gonna go roll a halfling monk/cleric. 8/

1 colossal gelatinous cube the players mistakenly have walked onto, square in the middle of its topside and now they're sinking into it......

ShaneDeeZee time to break out the shadows

Just be careful if you are running a campaign that starts at lvl 1 as that is when players are very very vulnerable and can die easily, you may want to avoid hard and deadly encounters until level 3 maybe 2. Just my opinion of course :)

@@MikelPagano Duely noted. I've heard similar opinions from other sources as well and will take that into consideration. Though my expectations for my game are just a simple drop-in drop-out game for my co-workers who have little to no knowledge of the game, so I doubt they will be overly attached to their characters.

Please tell me it's LMoP. Hehehe

@@ashenwuss1651 it's my own Homebrew

@@danieldosso2455 oh. Congrats. I hope it goes well and everyone enjoys it. I've backed out twice from homebrewing a game. I really want to do a short campaign in Ixalan from MtG

If you want to really challenge the tactics of your party and challenge them for having so many glass cannons... give the bad guys a good healer. It sounds like this could really stretch their abilities and push a longer more epic encounter.

So, how did it go

@@Diablos-ic9vd The campaign ended long ago but to this day one of my favorite enemies I've had and the group liked it as well

Yeah, I think the "bore factor" with easy and moderate encounters can to be addressed with some good stakes, a mentality shift that it's okay for an easy/medium encounter to only last 1 or 2 rounds, and seriously: try the cluster method we describe here when building adventures. Tactically minded-players love getting to "divide and conquer" foes -- the enjoyment from this mental challenge tends to overshadow the relative "boring" combat encounters that result, because the players get to feel rewarded for executing a great plan. It really makes for a fantastic and fun scenario, and if they mess up, the worst thing that happens is a really hard combat encounter where they have to pull out all the stops (which is often fun and dramatic on its own)

Two words: puzzle monsters This is something from classic DND which 5e has started to move away from. A puzzle monster is a monster with some kind of gimmick a perfect example would be trolls which regenerate unless fire hits them. A puzzle monster is very tough when you don't know the gimmick but much easier to beat when you know how they work. In some cases you might be able to avoid the encounter if you know how it works, giving you that feeling of growth as you are now a more capable adventurer who needn't fear that threat. A gimmick might be the particular way the monster attacks, or it might be a mechanic due to a particular damage type, it might even be based on how much hp it has left or which abilities it is using. A monster which attacks with advantage when fire damage is dealt to it, a monster which can put you to sleep if you come too close, a monster which is natively invisible, or a monster which prevents players from gaining the benefits of a long rest when they're around are all examples of gimmick monsters which can really make encounters more interesting even if they aren't more deadly. Imagine wading through the swamps of Mortari, mosquito bites gradually driving you and your party insane, the elvin ranger perks up; "something's wrong," The birds, which had been chirping loudly in the noon sun had suddenly fallen silent, cicadas had ceased their droning, a harsh silence descends upon the swamp, only broken by the whine of mosquitoes and the occasional smack of a bloodsucker being crushed by an adventurer. The party stops, listening and watching the bog intently, clearly on edge. The dwarf it the first to notice the white fabric partially hidden behind a nearby tree. "There" he says pointing. As he uttered the word, the fabric suddenly moved fully out of view. The adventurers advance weapons drawn towards the tree, the ranger readies an attack against whatever is there hidden, fearing an ambush. Suddenly the fighter who had been leading the group is swallowed by the swamp, a massive maw opening beneath him. A skeletal figure wearing a white dress and suspended on a long tendril swings out towards the cleric, it takes an arrow from the ranger but there is no noticeable effect. It strikes the cleric, her heavy armor and the muck making dodging difficult. She finds it covered in a sticky substance, it picks her up and swings her into a nearby tree wounding her. It's initiative and the players begin to counterattack, the fighter inside the maw strikes at the darkness, dealing massive damage and causing it to spit him out, later one of the characters will remark "well we know one thing, they don't like the taste of dwarf." On its turn it rises from the depths, a massive angler fish like monster covered in sludge, it bites at the party and swings its lure, still entrapping the cleric as a flail at the party. It isn't a spectacularly dangerous encounter, but certainly less boring than 4 goblins.

A good piece of advice I read is to make at least one creature in every combat an NPC in the sense that they have some motivation or other beyond “kill the pcs” that hook or by crook is revealed to the characters. This can give them a greater understanding of that creature type, the dungeon as a whole, or perhaps simply insight into the life of that lone creature ultimately felled by their blades.

@@jmass4207 IMO only animalistic predators should have the sole motivation to "kill the pcs". Most enemies should be more complex than that - perhaps they want to take the pc's stuff so when they start losing they just turn and run perhaps setting up a better ambush for later, or maybe they are defending their territory and want to scare the pc's off, or maybe they want to take prisoners for ransom or as slaves, maybe the pc's are the attackers and the creatures are trying to delay them until reinforcements arrive or until the creatures can evac.

V Star 1300 Adventures I think with most of this advice it comes down to the table as to whether it's useful. If you have a pretty good group of players who know what they're doing, are paying attention, and are decisive when their turns roll around 10 rounds of combat is perfectly acceptable and can be very fun, it might be less than 30 minutes and depending on what happens could be epic and memorable. On the other hand if you have players (or worse a single player) who aren't paying attention or who sit around on their turns trying to decide on what to do, it can take hours to get through combats that are this long. Especially if you have a more RP focused group multiple sessions bogged down by a single combat encounter might be pretty annoying. Everything comes down to the group, some groups like mechanics based slug fests and high mortality games, D&Darksouls if you will, others play a more RP or exploration focused game where mortality might be more taboo. I personally run a game where death is a very real possibility but the world isn't set up for or against the players. If the players piss of a powerful NPC they might die; or they might find themselves fast friends with that NPCs rival.

@@deplorablemecoptera3024 I love the possibility of a character death. That means your choices matter. You must choose, but choose wisely.

V Star 1300 Adventures I tend to agree, I'm not precious with PCs and they know that. I try to set up circumstances where players won't die in dumb ways unless they're really trying to die, but if they make a massive blunder and don't prepare... Let's just say I roll all my dice in front of the screen. On the other hand if you run a more story based game there can be a distinct problem with story momentum if there is high PC turnover. Imagine giving five Heroes a quest and five different heroes arrive a few months later to claim it. You can fix this somewhat by giving each PC joining after a death a hook into the current adventure, but this requires the player being willing to work with you during the backstory writing process. Of course if you don't play a really story focused game (which by the way is perfectly legit) this isn't even really a concern. As I said at first, it really depends on the group of players, and the kind of game they showed up for.

I thought each turn in a round was "about six seconds", and a round was "about a minute". Is that wrong?

Michael Sorensen It might be a little difficult to understand in writing, but I’ll give it a shot. A round is also six seconds, but a PC’s turn is simply what that one character does themselves in that six seconds. When everyone in the initiative has taken their turn of what they’re doing in that six seconds, that equals a round of combat

Thank you!

kioim

So many people have requested this -- we are absolutely going to do it!

@@DungeonDudes Oh fantastic! Looking forward to it! Thanks for putting these out by the way, worlds better at running my game!