My favorite thing to do throughout all of my DMing is giving random expendable NPCs lots of personality and characterization. And yeah I prefer to straight up arbitrate rather than ever change a dice roll result. If I call for a roll that I didn't really need to and I recognize that, I just make something up in post to justify it. Unnecessary Perception? There's now a random hooded figure stalking the party. Unsatisfying character death? Such as it is, if the players are okay with it, that can be a K.O. or a lasting injury or they can be brought back with CPR within 5 minutes, or maybe they are dead but they wake up in a new body in a new dungeon (clone spell). Or they get brought back to life later for a bargain/quest with their soul at stake, maybe even their bloodline too if they have any children. And you don't have to undercut character death at all if people are fine with it! Remember to insert upward thumbs into the video 😈
I rather roll and have a bad result but arbitrate for things that I planed to make happen before the session (such like an npc succeeding or failing on attacking another npc, but always when pcs does not have a chance to interfere) and I only roll when necessary and a casualty component is included, to me the storyteller of the campaign it's a dice, the players command the characters and the dm are a neutral judge that are there to narrate what happens based on what the dice decide and prepare the set of events, locations and characters that make an adventure, it's up to the players and the dices to decide how the adventure is meant to go
I don't roll initiative at all in my games. Instead I basically borrowed some of the old BECMI combat checklist, and tweaked it, cut out turns. I get a declaration from my players, and I set the monsters to do what they're meant to do. Everyone moves. All the missile attacks are made and resolve at the same time, so yes, archers can shoot and even eliminate eachother in a Halo 3 style kill trade. Magic goes later in initiative in my game, helping to counterbalance caster dominance over martials without needing to make martials magical. The knowledge that spells can be interrupted makes the casters more willing to rely on and work with their martials. And it keeps the *chaos* of combat, while still ordering things in a way that somewhat makes sense and keeps a flow.
I do this as well. My initiative order is: 1. Movement 2. Missiles 3. Melee 4. Magic If a martial wants to move in on a caster, he gets blasted without a game plan, because he moves then melees.
Really good video! And I agree on streamlining combat, and especially on not fudging the dice! Sometimes the dice giveth, and sometimes they taketh away. That's why my characters are all written in pencil until they get a few levels up.
I make my combat realistic, brutal, and short. Nothing like having a PC get shot in the face and one-shotted, or a giant robot grab a PC and tear his arm off. Make attacks mean something. And I don't use initiative at all.
I do opposed roll combat, where everyone declares ahead of time what they do, and then everyone rolls AT THE SAME TIME. This means everyone is dead silent when the rolling happens, then the GM narrates what happens as a result, with successes trumping the opponents actions. Very spicy gameplay which creates a caution around getting into combat without having a huge advantage
@@joshhumphrey3452 That's not a bad idea, simultaneous combat. I also like the idea of a speed stat, that keeps everyone more or less in the same order. Highest speed goes first. But if everyone gets a final action, even if they "died" this turn... That is worth further pondering and playtesting.
I run a campaign in the Star Wars FFG system which does combine minions into small clusters for initiative and actions which makes it quicker. While the more significant opponents get separate initiatives. On the converse side some things I've experienced have made combat worse like when I last played GURPS which has an action economy where each round is one second. That was pain.
My biggest gripe with TTRPG combat taking too long is never the GM because some admin on their end is to be expected but I just find some players take way too long to figure out what they're doing or arguing over rules for half an hour. At my table I set 5 minute timers for turns and if a ruling dispute comes up I give a ruling to the best of my judgement and we have a discussion after combat/session.
@@LokisLair I understand, buddy. Sadly Palladium 1e is a little messy when you need to create a character. Anyways, just look for information about its combat system. It helps you to think every combat in a descriptive way.
You have a differing opinion and im so angry that I'm in the comment section! Jk been watching your shadowdark plays and I like your combat style, keep up the goof work brother
Mostly commenting to boost the algorithm, but I wanted to say that rolling group saves and even sometimes group damage has really helped me out when I'm running a lot of monsters. I also just sometimes decide a monster fails its saving throw if theres a lot of them and they have a low chance of success anyways. Calling combat is also a big thing, if the outcome is already decided theres no reason to drag it out, have the monsters run away, surrender, or narrating the ppayers mop them up, there's plenty or ways to do it depending on the situation.
These are some fun suggestions. I think most of them are very good, and even the two I disagree with I think are working towards a good. Having turn order be players > enemies > players > enemies does have that nice collaborative factor (though I think that point is overstated, there is plenty of collaborative stuff between players using normal initiative.) However the flipside of the coin is giving a huge advantage to whichever side goes first. 5e balance is a lot about action economy, so one entire side being a full turn ahead of the other side leads to problems, especially if surprise rounds get thrown in there. There is a game called Shadow of the Demon Lord that uses sort of clumped initiative. Players and enemies choose if they want to take a slow turn or a fast turn (fewer actions) and turn order goes: Player fast turn, enemy fast turn, player slow turn, enemy slow turn. You could implement something like this where on a fast turn you can't take a bonus action, but then you'd have to rewrite monsters to give them bonus actions to have a reason to take a slow turn. Not adding Con to health seems like a nice idea to move combat along, but I think it unbalances things in a not very interesting way. In particular it disproportionally hits Barbarians, who now get much less out of a stat they need to index into. It makes ranged martials (Already a very good type of build) even better without hurting them at all. Tanking in 5e is hard enough as is, and it is an archetype that many players want to play. If you wanted to reduce total HP for whatever reason I would take a more even approach and just drop two health off what each class gets on average (and not roll HP) d6: 2 + con, d8: 3+ con, and so on. Even though I disagree on some of the ideas it was a good video that presented your views in a clear way! Keep up the good work. And as always, if those rules work at your table, then keep them going!
Players - be ready to go when your round comes up. You should have all your maths sorted out and you should be able to declare, roll, and go. GMs - how about having the players that have already gone, or won't go for a while, roll to-hits for the monsters? GM still rolls the damage so those numbers can be "controlled". This way everyone can stay busy and the players get to roll a lot of dice. Plus the GM has the advantage of saying "hey, I didn't roll the crit on you, your buddy did". }: D
One of the things I do as DMing and also as I'm running a solo rpg session, is limit the number of enemies to 2 per player character. (At least initially), if there are more enemies just around the corner, they'll show up in a round after the initial enemies have been defeated. This allows me to use the round combat encounter disc if I want to. I feel like this provides a realistic focus (I don't think many militants can focus on more than two attackers at a time.) while allowing the rest of the battle (which is still there if the group is larger) to kind of fade into the background until the main characters can focus on the action.
Big fan of group initiative and your comment about taking out CON as the buffer is fantastic. The collaboration and group strategy is far better as a group rather than waiting to see the outcome of someone else’s turn. Declare as a group what all happens and if the situation changes you would not have noticed in 6 or 10 seconds of the combat.
I generally do all of this, but I’m making a greater effort on making enemies have more motives and reasons for fighting or not. I’m working on this so rp doesn’t end when combat starts rather than just having fights till death to make the experience overall more dynamic and engaging.
Shadowdark mostly removes the Con adjustment to hit points. You only get the adjustment at first level, which is really useful if you rolled a low Con score. This is also probably the reason why 1st/2nd/BX put a hit die cap on PC's once they pass a certain level. It really starts to flatten out HP progression once you get into the higher levels. Also, in regards to mass saving throws you could probably work up a quick reference chart to compare the DC vs monster count to see how many should have saved on average. So if it's 10 goblins vs DC 13 save, the 4 save and 6 fail.
I spiced up specifically 5e combat through two main alterations, that I am fond of. Firstly, there is always a round timer, and it’s duration changes based upon scenarios and danger. High octane moments feature a shorter round for players, rushing them. Secondly, for the sake of spicing things up, I got rid of AC for players. When players are attacked they just roll saving throws. Something about them being responsible for getting hit instead of just the enemy’s die rolls makes them accept getting hit. Plus it allows for them to do something during enemy turns. I will add, but I will not elaborate too much, but armor is changed too.
@@samusamu5342 A lot of fun ones. It has ranged from dodging under a troll’s legs (Dex Save) to grabbing a troll’s fist and interrupting its attack (Str Save.) Casters suffer under this though, pushing them to the back line unless they posses some physical ability scores.
@@samusamu5342 I look at stat blocks and make judgements based off of the Challenge Rating of each monster as well as what attack they are using (whether it is high damaging, if it has multi attack, etc). Generally speaking I have DCs at increments of five. 5- easy, 10- average, 15-moderate, 20-hard, etc
I ended up doing opposed roll combat, where everyone declares ahead of time what they do, and then everyone rolls AT THE SAME TIME. This means everyone is dead silent when the rolling happens, then the GM narrates what happens as a result, with successes trumping the opponents actions. Very spicy gameplay which creates a caution around getting into combat without having a huge advantage
I play in a group of 8 players and 1 DM, and there have been times I've had to interrupt someone who tried to go when they thought it was their turn, but I had been skipped, even with my Initiative falling earlier in the round than the other person's character. Once the number of players gets above 5, I get that it can be difficult to keep track of individual initiative, but in situations like that, I feel like a Group Initiative is a better way to proceed.
The best solution I have found for dealing with combat time: dump individual initiative. It's a bad idea and it takes too long. Granted, some games like 5e or Pathfinder don't make it easier with the sheer number of actions that each player can take per turn. But individual initiative adds even more time to that. First with the long process of everyone rolling, second with keeping track, and then having to jump around the table. Instead, use group initiative. One player rolls, the GM rolls, higher side goes first. Initiative order takes a matter of seconds, one side acts, the other side acts, players aren't waiting forever between turns, and it works so much faster. It helped even more when I switched systems to Castles & Crusades that only allows one action per turn. Then all of the creatures fighting a certain PC I roll all of the d20s for at once and it speeds it up massively.
