Giving your D&D players Rivals! 

What if we had a ship-teasing, thinly-veiled-ridden swordfight duel at midnight over the roofs of the city? haha just kidding Unless? 👀

I like the idea of the cleric/healer that doesn't have a rival in the rival team, and when the parties fight the two clerics just sit on the same rock healing their party while complaining to the other about all the stupid stuff they had to fix.

Another cool idea is to have a conflict triangle involving the hero(es), the villain(s) and the rival(s), bonus points for having the "enemy of my enemy" moment, give your players one or two chances to temporarily join forces with their rivals to defeat the villain, depending on how the players treat their rivals have the rivals join the Villain or the Heroes

i literally met my party's rival team in a session today so this is perfect timing... i hate them so much and it's so good ♥

I appreciate that Dwarven girl's beard quite a lot

One of my favorite rival teams was the first I created. It was entirely to prevent a TPK in a low-level dungeon. The PCs were pretty deep in the dungeon and after a few bad rolls they were ALL making death saves as the monsters loomed over them. Then another adventuring party showed up at full health (because most of the dungeon was already cleared!). The players HATED that they had to be rescued so THEY made this adventuring party their rivals!

I thought of a funny rival being a necromancer wizard who is jealous that one of the PC's has such a large group of friends so the necromancer summons and takes control over undead to have their own friends. The further you progress in the game the more powerful undead they have like at the start they have a skeleton or zombie for each PC -1their idle. Then they slowly turn some them into stronger undead such as wights, ghouls and vampires.

Antonio, you’re so creative and hard-working, it blows my mind. I’m so happy that you make videos for people to tune into to enhance their roleplaying experiences. You should be so proud of yourself

Remember, you don't have to make rivals for the group ahead of time. You can turn an npc that a player has interacted with into a rival. This way you can see what basic premise the players respond to, then build from there.

I absolutely love how both Moira and Turmeric have round animal companions

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, inspires more murderous hatred in my players than me trying to set up a rival team for them to face. Like, I don't know why they always jump straight to "we must slit their throats in the night" mode... but they do. Always. It's kinda frustrating....

I feel called out by the Wizard Apos'Trophee Hyphen-Name, and I am here for it. I need a Wheel of Goals for villains to let the players spin for what is happening.

I gave my players a Cambion Rival, he fought them 1v5 at like level 2 (he had no armor) with no magic items. Quite close, and they won. He escaped with his superior flying speed. They met him a few times after, mainly doing his own thing. Any he made his own little party that is doing many quests the party ignores, they even worked together once. To keep up with the party, he also gained levels at Barberian (his AC is made from DEX+CON+CHA ;)) He mainly focuses on gainning political influence and getting in with the important tribe leaders

I appreciate that you've given the dwarven princess a beard. It's a travesty what they did not giving dwarven women beards in rings of power

one very important thing, a "devil is in the details" kind of thing, is that it is VERY important thing actually know your players characters before even considering a rival. i'll say to give your characters a session, or two, or half the campaing ok maybe not that much, to get to know yout players, what they actually do what they actually think how do the actually react, it's never easy to get any of that on the character sheet the first time without some experience precisely because characters are always iterating upong themselfs while playing. your paladin may have syad that he is the shining face of honor and piaty but maybe the player themself isn't actually aware of sayd details and missed an oportunity to help someone or an insult to the crown simply flew over their head whem they heard it idk, a very important and specific detail that informs that a rival atacking sayd desire may not be able to fully succed in their objective but a ruval constructed in other direction upon the same character might have a bigger impact. but still, rivals are their own people even if the narrative role they have isn't "as strong" as it can be, and it can also be worked arround in the same self iteration and improvement the character they are reflecting is going throw. be careful and have fun, after all that's always the goal

What if, hear me out, what if we had a Wizard Hat tier list? I honestly believe humanity needs it.

Zuko and Aang is a fantastic example of god tier rivals

I ran a rival group delving into the Underdark alongside my party once. At first, tensions were very high. They travelled together for the majority of the time, but they weren't as high levelled. Instead, I built them to be perfectly working together while the party still had a few issues with communication. Instead, they were proactive and had strong opinions, as the rival teams were all basic copycats of the party, with classes switched. The rogue-sorcerer became the bard, both being the heart. The Coffeelock became a cleric. The cleric and bard had a small fling, where as the Coffeelock and rogue-sorcerer were an active thing. They spoke about relationship stuff during downtime. The ranger became the... ranger... Different subclass. Planeswalker to horizon Walker, and from skeleton to aasimar. Lastly, our cleric, which became the eldritch Knight. Firbolg to Goliath. They had similar backstories to the party, but they were all based around a prominent location the party was exploring, where an elder Evil had touched the earth and permanently scarred the land. Had a lot of fun making new aberations for Y'chak. Anyways, the party had a lot of fun bouncing off these NPCs, and without prodding, they gravitated to their counterpart, as well as the party's leader, the dwarf cleric. When they had to split up, I swapped a character out for a doppleganger, and that doppleganger was caught within minutes. The problem was the doppelganger was hunting the party and had his own group of baddies actively hunting the party down for main plot reasons. Long story. However, because they got caught early, the rest of the enemy party wasn't ready, leading to a 7 v 2 against a monk and hexblade. The monk and hexblade where higher leveled than the party. Level 14 to the party's level 9, and the rivals' level 7. With the numbers advantage, the doppelganger monk fled, covered by the revenant hexblade, who perished for the 4th time. Suicides, killing the rival ranger. One revivify later, and the only question was what happened to the eldritch Knight.... He was killed hours before, body lost in a river. He was revived via clever use of a homebrew item that summoned a Coatl to aid the party, and brought back to life later by the party's cleric, his foil.

I'm going to introduce a rival to my party's warlock: and it's his older brother. This video gave me everything I need to make this rivalry dynamic and fun!

Gosh Darn It, you constantly impress me. Rivals, Angels, and pop singers (burlesque bards with fan blades). I'm not surprised that your views are getting close to the 100k, because every aspect impresses me: Animation (Love your aviator btw), voice (made for voice over - figure you either L.A. or Miami), and number one...your creativity. Gosh, that's where it gets hard to quantify. Creativity. You have it and your whole production shows it in spades. Keep up the great work, your steady growth in subscribes, shows that you've got "it". Now, get sponsors.

Your content is excellent. Thank you. I would love to see how you portray "Pointy Hat" as: an NPC, a Monster, and a magical item.

I dm’d a campaign with two parties in the same storyline, one week party 1 had a session, the next week party 2 had a session and one week, both parties came and it turns out I collected party 2 to be rivals, so it was team vs team, and the parties loved it.

Had a tough day and this really cheered me up. Thanks pointy hat. Love the vids.

It’s cool to see that I’ve had the same idea of giving my characters rivals! I’m going to play a warforged bard who decided to abandon his life of violence to pursue his newfound passion: music. But his foil is his former commander who zealously believes it’s the purpose of a warforged to live and die as a soldier (and begins hunting his former comrade because in his eyes “you serve no purpose”).

the little chibi illustrations of the party are SO good!!! I love it

HI! I LIKE SHORTS! THEY'RE COMFY AND EASY TO WEAR!

Rivals are so fun if you have players that get invested in that sort of thing.

I adore your art on this episode. Top notch. Also, I used your Hag and Tiefling ideas on my campaign and it's great, you, my dude, are a genius.

Outstanding content. This series might be even awesomer than your DnD with a twist. They’re both great, actionable, and entertaining. Thank you!

Dude, you are awesome, the editing, the drawings, the references, the jokes... You deserve every single subscriber and like

Steve is the guy that convinces you to play Minecraft for like 2 weeks max and then never touch it for a year

I love your videos so much! It's not just the very interesting content, but also your edgy humor & superb editing skills.

This is INCREDIBLE material. I'd honestly never thought of non-villain antagonists in D&D, and I absolutely love this concept and how you approached it. Thanks for this video!

Based Pointy Hat with a pro public transportation message

3:30 I love how all the options are "Destroy the world" except the "WWIII allegory"

I always get excited whenever I see a new pointy hat video. Seriously, I love all of the stuff you make!

You deserve the success you’ve gotten recently look forward to your new videos

The Premanger reference earned my subscription. Marvellous taste.

My favourite kinds of foils are the mirror foils. There’s something incredibly cool about seeing all the cool tricks of your hero in the hands of someone he who may not share your protagonist’s morality.

Not me at the edge of my seat for how the hunt competition turns out only to have my hopes dashed as the video ends

You are quickly becoming one of my favorite dnd creators. You are amazingly creative ane put so much love into your work. Your energy and passion is honestly contagious, thank you for your work.

Dude, I cannot believe your timing. I was preparing a rival team (with a really silly name gimmick) but was having trouble figuring out their personalities. Now I have a good source to do so, I'll probably play that card a little earlier than I had planned, to give my gang more time to expend with them. Big thank you, great material as always. pd: I'm also using the Dragontouched idea, plan to have my gang taking part in their revolution. Huge thanks for that too.

Love the fact that the autosubtitles changed Palpatine to Papa Putin

In my own personal Exandria game, I made a 'mirror' team of rivals that reflects a lot to my players' characters. Just making them was so fun, thinking of arcs to intertwine with theirs and personalities to 'mirror' them. I absolutely love what you made and love within this video of what are rivals, how to use them and how to make them in ones own game. We are going to celebrate hard when we reach 100K and rightfully deserved for the amazing content ya make. The characters and rivals you made, GOD I LOVE THEM SO MUCH AND THE ART IS ADORABLE! I relate so hard to the Royal Knight and Blacksmith Revolutionary, also just an absolute sucker for a run away rich Pirate gal! Mi pana eres el mejor! Y mucho suerte con todo! 💛

I adore all of these characters you made so much!!! Their designs are so good, especially Darios, Cerella (not sure how to spell those names XD), and Turmeric. I especially appreciate Cerella having a small beard and Turmeric being non-binary and how naturally those things are presented. The names are great too, my favorites being Cerella sounding almost like a condensed version of Cinderella and Turmeric just straight up being a spice and presumably a name they chose themself.

I'm am so happy your Dwarven princess has facial hair ❤️❤️❤️

My DM did this after I gave him the sob backstory of my character; basically a character my Tiefling Paladin thought was dead, wasn't...I really love him for it...

ive been doing this and it is honestly so much fun. when in need of inspiration, anime is v helpful!

I tend to make the rivals strong counters to certain party members while being neutral, and weak to others to create an interesting dynamic in combat.

This was fantastic! Thank you so much. I can't wait to try this out in the campaign I just started running for my friends. Love you, Antonio!

I made a campaign where the main quest is searching for exotic ingredients for the king's birthday feast. I made it a point to make the antagonists be competing guilds. My players really liked that concept and how those other guilds had optimized teams that they may or may not have the synergy to compete with.

Can't wait for your rival channel "Heel of the boot"

the problem with the Rival system is that PCs die. will that make the rival just keep living & declare victory? will the DM have to make another NPC to rival the new PC?

Always love your video hat man. I've put some of your stuff in my games!

Aloys' little "Oh Beans" just broke me. So cute.

What a generous, entertaining and entirely charismatic content creator I have stumbled upon. Thank you for the tips and guidance, you're certainly helping a new DM!

This is one of the few acceptable ways for a DMPC to exist.

pointy hat you are overthinking, sometimes the most mundane things are the strongest rivalry points, for example, what goes first, milk or cereal

I love the classic trope with mirror matches. I've been in games with rivals like these, and it's so fun to interact with them!

I can't express how good of a video this is. Your ideas are immaculate

He explained how much I love frozen unironucalky because of how its two mcs are antagonist to each other. (plus idina & Kristen) I like it a lot when I look back at it.

How do you reveal this very complex and detailed volume of information to the players? Will they sit still for pages of boxed text?

I'm always so excited to see your videos!! Such a treat every time ☺️

I can’t believe your channel has grown so much! I’m so happy for you and I love your content

Seeing Serena joy is weird to me, I see her as a straight up villian not an antagonist. Unless I'm missing something new from the new couple episodes

I love that the party is she/her, they/them and cool -definitely not pointy- hat

I’m always so excited when I see a new video from you pop up on my feed. You have quickly become one of my favorite creators on the platform. Thank you for all the amazing work and free dnd content you make.

Leverage has a great rival team with one of the rival characters actually being villainous. The characters' responses to their mirror foils are: the two hitmen are competitive but mostly attracted to each other, hilarious; comparing strategies awkwardly but excitedly; absolutely hating each other; hating being compared to each other but mostly caring about their relationship to another character Straightforward, very fun.

I'm literally GMing a Pokemon campaign and I needed this so badly, thank you Pointy Hat

Dude, i cannot tell you how much I enjoy your vids. This is amazing in every way. Keep up the good work!!!

this is so cool! Thank you for your ideas! Your videos are always so informative and I love the illustrations you do for them! Good luck on 100k!

I confess part of the reason I read pre-written adventures is to sort of do this in reverse: who are the antagonists, and how can my character be a foil to one of them? I find it heightens the drama and makes my own character feel more like they fit in the story instead of being some rando who just wandered into a plot because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Never seen your channel before today, but this video was so awesome, helpful, and genuinely entertaining it made me want to pick up DMing again. Needless to say, you've earned yourself a subscriber this day and I can't wait to see what else you have in store going forward.

I never make comments on videos but I was extremely impressed by the quality of this video and decided I HAD to leave a comment. I was already impressed by the first half of the video, then came the stunningly illustrated example characters and I was blown away. Bravo!!

This is really well done, I love your channel man!

I would’ve never guessed I could fall in love with a video

You are so darn great!! Honestly, the fact that you have so many Docs to read is a great way to help, at least, me memorize these. Also love your analogies that help with figuring these stuff out.

I've always thought it'd be fun to have a rival party who while not particularly effective in combat, are a band of talented acrobats and illusionists who constantly try to upstage the party with elaborate staged battles and performances.

This is awesome. My brain feels so full and I love it.

One of my DMs went a step further with this! He's given the party itself a main rival, a villain that's sort of a benchmark for us to compare ourselves to and ultimately surpass. But for each of our characters individually, he's given us a friendly rival, and a bitter rival. For example, as a friendly rival, my character has his formed childhood bully turned love interest, and for his bitter rival, he has his half brother from an enemy nation. It gives all of us a common enemy, while letting everyone also have their own little rivarlies EDIT: It's actually funny that shonen is brought up often in the video, because it's actually a campaign set in the Naruto universe. And a lot of tropes you see in Shonen oddly work REALLY well in a D&D campaign. Nearly every fight has been extremely engaging, because we're rarely just fighting some wizard or some goblins: we're often fighting against friends, comrades, enemies, rivals. My character doesn't just want to fight his friendly rival because she's his rival, he wants to beat her to prove that he has worth to both the Village and to himself. The party doesn't just want to beat an enemy Team to save the Village, they want to do it because that team in particular scarred each of them in their own way and keep popping up. I want MORE rivals in my campaigns because of that

Character foils are so fun. Once a pattern is set up between two PCs, they really help eachother shine.

From an overachiever to another. This is an amazing channel. It’s refreshing and nothing like other channels. Congrats on that! You are very inspiring!

These are so amazing I cant wait for what you do next

MAN you're a goldmine 🤩 you always give me excellent ideas

One thing I like about rival teams, on the foil aspect, is using them to show how much more effective a team is instead of a group of individuals doing their own thing. I've had far too many group who would rather risk death than consider doing even minor actions to use teamwork.

I'm really happy your channel is blowing up and that you have such good content, good work, Pointy Hat! (Also your series names are unreasonably well made, "Tip of the Hat" is just a good name)

This video is an absolute goddamn gold mine of DMing advice. You, sir, are awesome and you should feel awesome. I inadvertently already came up with a rival character for one of the players in my upcoming campaign before I watched this, now I'ma make up one for everybody else.

Something that didn't get mentioned that I'd like to bring up- make it so the rivals also have their abilities be foils. This example isn't from DND but in one game there's a character called Feng. Big shark pirate captain with a cannon and summons her ghost crew to support her. If I were to make a rival, they'd probably be a high priestess of Atlantis. At her call is a legendary beast, the leviathan. Where as Feng is a powerhouse that can call support, the princess is a meek and very squishy support that calls on a massive monster to do her heavy lifting.

This was a incredibly interesting watch! Your videos are both informative AND funny at the same time. Its remarkable! Its inspired me to start working on a rival team for my own players :D

Congratulations Antonio! Your videos are awesome and help alot! Thank you very much.

You’re absolutely spoiling us with this banger content. Funny and interesting as always, and some really solid general writing advice to boot!

Most recent campaign had a team of npc mercenaries also going after the same villain target. Wanting the fame/ recognition/ reward for themselves of taking down the big bad so from time to time they show up just long enough to try and throw a wrench in the players plan. It was great. The main hatred was still directed at the final boss, but the excitement of the players throwing the rivals off course or beating them to a quest objective was real. And nothing stoked the fires more than the players reaching the end of a dungeon only to find the objective already gone and a snarky note left behind for them.

A NEW video? Oh heck yes. Sadly gotta go to work soon, but I know what I'ma listen to when there! Keep up the good work man. Can't wait to listen.

just wanted to point that I think it's very cute that you've given a little goatee to the dwarven princess

I don't know why it's so cathartic to see these dynamics. Probably because I love character creation that is based on simple conceot but grows complex due to relationships and their dynamics. Good stuff

I love making parties of adventurers filled with the classes, races and alignments that my players didn't pick and making them sort of rival/parallel adventurers; They are not necessarily against the party, they simply are using different means to reach the same goals. Sometimes my players have antagonized them, other times they've formed relationships, but ultimately they are simply other adventurers trying to reach a goal

I love your videos and I'm definitely going to work on this in the future. I never even thought about it. Thank you for all you do to help with better DnD games and discourse! 😊

POINTY HAT UPLOAD LETS GOOOOOOOOOO!!! :) I actually love your videos and have watched all of them.

All of your videos are amazing. Rival parties are one of my favorite things in games and media, and it makes me happy to see it described and explained so well. I love that you provide specific examples in existing fiction and also provide insight on how to craft new ones custom-made for player characters. Keep up the good work!

I love when you say you quickly go to saving the world. Over in BG3 El just said that the threat threatens the whole universe and I'm just staring at him like "Dude the level cap is 12, that puts me in "Master of the Realms," what you're looking for is a "Master of the World" like you, dude, sounds like this is your fight not mine, I'm gunna focus on removing the tadpole"