Fixing Boring Encounters With Better Variety in D&D
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- čas přidán 15. 05. 2024
- We look at ways to improve your encounter and adventure ideas by adding twists and layers to them.
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A great twist: encounters in a densely populated area.
A dragon attacks during a town fair. You must pull of a heist on a busy road in broad daylight. Smuggle a disguised imposter on stage while the theatre is packed. Contain a rising lake as the villagers are still in the fields.
It’s a great way to add drama and tension.
Only if the goal is to protect the civilians *and* that's something your players even care about
@@MajorHickE There’s heaps you can do. Some in the crowd might aid the monster. Some might begin looting. Some might turn on the party and be working for the dragon and it’s all a trap. Maybe it’s a cover for the BBEG to escape and you need to locate them in a crowd and pursue while the attacks happen.
There’s heaps you can do, get creative.
5 Words: "Anything Can Be A Mimic"
I ran the mimic house encounter from one of the previous videos and it worked fantastically well.
Players: "why is this tavern called 'm house?'"
Adult oblex posing as a tavernkeeper: "Its an inside joke"
Players: *confused* "Okay, when are you going to clue is in on the joke?"
Me: "right about now... roll for initiative."
I've never actually used it, but I have a scenario sitting around where the PCs are in a dungeon's trash heap or an area with lots of furniture or whatnot. When the PCs restore the power or something, an alarm triggers and all the doors out lock. Mimics have been detected, and the loudspeaker announces that the whole area will be purged/incinerated/compacted/etc in 10 minutes unless all mimic biosigns are eliminated.
Cue the PCs running around, hitting every piece of furniture they can find to locate and neutralize all the mimics.
And the mimic can be an illusion
I just wanna say I love the way the way Monty and Kelly look at the Camera whenever the other one is talking for an extended period of time. I feel like my darkest secrets are uncovered through the gaze of the person inside the screen it is the perfect level of creepy......
I love the idea of picking a monster you wouldn't associate with an area, like the example of modrons in a cave, then writing up the adventure to explain why they're there! Simple but effective.👍
Monty looks so happy when talking about a plague outbreak . . . :)
Great ideas. I had a “Relevant Encounter” setup for our next adventure. A Tabaxi mystic tarot reader and magical trinkets dealer. Originally I had him in a road-side tent between locations, but this has inspired me to put him in a natural cavern accessible at water’s edge near a lake, putting his whole operation inside a crystal-filled grotto rich with potential wild magic. I made a table for various effects to unfold if they decide to venture below.
Khajit has wares if you have coin
Another thing that I find helps spice up combat specifically is adding in lair actions, regardless of having a creature associated with them. Trying to think of "what would this environment do as a lair action" can make combat much more interesting if you don't feel like it fits the theme to have random or unexpected monsters involved. A fun challenge arises for me when I try to figure out a lair action to go off every round in an urban area, or a forest. Perhaps if the party is fighting off bandits in an allyway, every round a player rolls, and a good result can have guards show up whereas a bad result means more bandit buddies show up. That idea has saved a few boring encounters, and sometimes leads to interesting narrative moments in the middle of combat.
Totally! I had a basic encounter set in a graveyard. A tribal group was using the burnt-out cathedral as a base of operations. I gave the leader lair actions on odd rounds to either activate collapsing grave pit traps or summon undead out of crumbled mausoleums. I always thought of lair actions belonging to the most powerful creatures in the manuals, but if a group has been hanging out in the same place for a bit, they absolutely have some home field advantages.
I had an encounter with kuo-toa on a fishing vessel. It was a stormy night. The lair actions were things like a powerful wave striking the side of the boat, or things on board scattering across the deck. It was good fun.
In every campaign (it’s honestly a sickness at this point), I must include one mimic. One time the party followed an interesting squirrel to a large dead tree with a door sized opening in it, or this last time the party followed scratching/mumbled sounds beneath the path towards a well which they climbed into. One large mimic per campaign keeps the boredom away.
I’ve also put an abandoned dwarven mine in my most recent campaign. The dwarves have lived in the town outside the mine for years and none of their battalions have come back after entering the mines to retake their birthright. Fire giants have taken the mines; with a particularly maniacal leader who throws dwarves heads at the party while wearing a leather belt with alive dwarves snapped in all around it like armor.
Whichever advertising exec came up with "now we're cooking with gas" deserves mad respect!
(I just looked it up and it was a guy named Deke Houlgate nearly 100 years ago! )
Catoblepas. Design an encounter around that monster. It will be memorable.
Lots and lots of fun monsters to play with. Bulette is another of my favorites
Just changing a monster's damage type, immunity, and/or resistance is a big change up to have them fit in to different environments.
Good and simple ideas to make more interesting encounters. As a forever DM I can't thank y'all enough for all your helpful guides
Beholder in a volcano? That sounds awesome!
The dudes' tops are definitely giving different vibes haha
My favorite home brew encounter used a timed element where after each round the main baddie grew stronger after ‘consuming’ one of its ally baddies. This evolved the dynamics greatly after each round. The party went from being outnumbered to having to deal with a primary baddie that was growing in stats and abilities each round. The end goal was if the primary baddie got ‘to strong’, it would leave the fight and deviate the nearby down, and the party would have a quest series to figure out how to defeat the baddie in a future encounter.
In the preparation stages to run a Drakkenheim campaign in a few months, and I've been thinking of all the fun new encounters to place in the ruins for the party to encounter
My favorite example of this is the final dungeon in the Wild beyond the witchlight. The final chapter is all inside a castle that’s been frozen in time. Just ran this one for my last campaign.
I love these advice videos, they have great ideas and spur me to think laterally.
I'd love to see a video of this (or one of your other topics for DMs) where you build out concept/s as you would use them at the table. Like Kelly's beholder volcano example, but fleshed out to give a true story arc rather the the seed of the idea. Practical examples would really show a DM how to implement your great conceptual ideas!
You should check out some of our “how to run (monster)” videos. We detail the monster as well as environments and adventure concepts for them.
Also this video here: czcams.com/video/ittli7jQFNs/video.htmlsi=blHkMawtes7alSBP
We do a practical look at building a whole dungeon and adventure hook in 3 steps.
I do think a dedicated video on the topic could be interesting. I’ll see what we come up with.
Break from the traditional themes: Maybe the 'monsters' are the victims and the villagers are the 'bad guys'? Make that vampire that is too easy for the party into a powerful wizard or cleric, too (you don't have to follow the Monster Manual exactly). Intelligent creatures are unlikely to leave powerful magic items in a locked chest - they will wear/use them if they can. PC's have backstories. Use them to create side quests or conflicting priorities.
My players are on their way to Neverwinter with a NPC that they need to keep alive. I rolled for heavy rain and how many days it lasts, they are still currently fighting for their live because I made a flood encounter. Some of them are 3 points in exhaustion, and our clever little bard has been using Leomunds tiny hut to make a shelter within the flood, the group were stoked that it wasn’t just another monster fight. I told them after the session not every encounter is a monster fight.
omg yesss i was just looking for a video like this! as a new dm, you're both such big inspirations :33
The dungeon dudes are a fantastic duo (/group on arcane arcade!) to take inspiration from and use it for your own imagination, it's always great to hear of new DMs and I hope you have a fantastic time playing with your group 😁
@@coffee1139 hehe thank you for the encouragement 💗 i love how welcoming and open everyone here is!
You've inspired me to start brainstorming encounters for my "intermission campaign" (a 3-to-8-shot for when our current long campaign ends and our GM needs to take a break to prepare for the next one). It's in a modern urban setting, but I think I can get really creative with its locations!
Since I've purchased or been gifted a number of 3rd party books, one of my goals for encounter variety (and making sure I get my $$ worth from those books), I choose a different book for each story and only use monsters from that one book to the extent that I can. So far I've been able to match some pretty weird stat blocks to the evil archetype I want to use without too much trouble regardless of the source. Helps me to use more of the material I own, keep things from getting stale for the players, and saves prep time compared to having to make or modify official monsters to do what I want.
I would have loved to see more ideas/suggestions here as the video felt a empty. Kind of a "mix things up, draw the rest of the owl" takeaway without much on offer. Some good ideas might be to make a roll table for environments, enemy factions, and crazy complications, possibly drawing on movies, shows and books for inspiration. Or create workflow for tying the story into the environment and vice versa, like picking a major NPC and tying each significant area to something that happened in the past, or is ongoing. Maybe some mechanical considerations to help validate exploration or role play and keep combat in its third of the pie, like having an NPC interaction or role play for every 4-5 combat encounters at minimum, and ensuring that most fights have at least 2-3 different approaches, incorporate elevation or places to hide and sneak around. Check out tools in the official material, third party resources, and advice from other games and editions. Many of them have sections on building dungeons and encounters.
I love your content when it's packed on a 15 minute video
I just finished writing “Sir Geoffrey’s Gallant Games” for 5e to alleviate this in campaigns.
Fun & quirky shenanigans in a competition with axe beak races!
This will legit help out my planning, i was just writing my next session! I've been experimenting with different goals in combat, but extra challenges and focuses during that will be a great addition for next week (Muahahaha)
Always a pleasure to watch your vids dungeon dudes!! 😁
I've been watching you guys since I got back into DND and first got with my current play group. Thank you for consistently making thoughtful, interesting and useful content. It's meant a lot to me
These are some useful tips on setting up an interesting adventure but I'd love to see more zoomed in look at the individual encounters. I personally struggle with building engaging encounters (especially combat encounters) even when I have a solid adventure idea.
I’ve started writing a campaign in the spelljammer setting, where the characters are investigating the corpses of various gods to find magical treasure. The basic idea for the “dungeons” is inside each god is a pocket dimension that mirrors the pantheon of the god when it was alive, so the dungeon could literally be anything you can imagine. Goddess of nature, it’s a jungle filled with dinosaurs.
God of mystery, it’s a stone labyrinth filled with undead and the players have to escape in time or be trapped forever.
God of knowledge, it’s an endless library full of traps and puzzles.
Thanks dudes! Love you guys ❤
An idea I had for a campaign actually only takes place in the same small town in the middle of a desert. For inspiration, the PS1 game Azure Dreams. The Landmark of this town is the ominous tower looming over the town. The town is rundown. The tower levels are randomly generated EACH time the players go through it unless someone not native to the tower is on it or maybe some kind of magic anchor. The insides of each layer can even present differently whether it would be the castle dungeon walls or when you go up the stairs you find a forest, or even an underwater level. The idea I had was there would be clusters of levels for themes. For example, caverns, forests, dungeon, different planes. Then at the top of the tower would be some great reward. Typically I envision 100 levels to the tower. The tower could also provide loot for the party to bring back to the town and potentially build the town back up while building relationships with the townsfolk.
Been on a real ddudes kick lately. Currently tearing through the actual plays. Keep up the great work guys!
I like reflavoring epic monsters into younger or larval versions so my players can have epic boss fights at lower levels. Most recently there was a "Larval Aboleth" that kept projecting itself to the party to get them to come and "play". Full on lair actions and hazards associated with an aboleth encounter but for a 4-person, 4th level party.
I like this. I feel it also makes your world feel more alive. These aren't just monsters. They're animals which are part of the environment. They are born, they feed, they grow, they find mates, have young, and die.
This sounds like a great way to hint at actual ecosystems and food webs that are just doing their thing.
Love seeing collvilles books on the shelf behind you
Love the Care bear shirt Kelly!!❤
Monty with the thousand yard death stare at the end there.
So far running shadow of the dragon queen has had a nice enough variety of encounters despite sticking to a war theme.
That being said I've still had fun adding extra bits that aren't in the book
Adding a secondary element to the combat is a good call. Basically "while fighting, protect/destroy/capture/prevent _____". It could be for the players, the enemies, or both.
As online discourse and pearl clutching have gone on, the way I approach encounters has changed.
Whenever I hear panic over playable races with fly speeds, I bring up my counters to flying PCs that I never see anyone else talk about. These tactics also apply to varying up tired encounters.
1. Use the Z axis on your battle maps. Unless your campaign is doing esoteric sci-fi nonsense, your PCs exist in three dimensions.
Put enemies on the ceiling or in the forest canopy. Use "drop bear" style enemies like giant spiders, cloakers, dark mantles, chokers, creep vines, or any of a hundred other options.
Have the party fight their way up or down the scaffolding around a giant statue, building, or cliff face. Take the mine dungeon from Elden Ring that goes up the side of the mountain that players may have to use if they don't get the 2 key items that turn on the Altus elevator and drop that mine in your game. Turn a goblin encounter into an Ewok encounter and have a captured party need to escape a tree house city before they are slow roasted over an open fire.
Use enemies with climb speeds and put climbable surfaces all around the battlefield.
2. Always use enemies with ranged attacks.
I said this in a comment before, and the first response was an indignant child crying about how giving crossbows to wolves breaks his immersion. We'll get back to wolf encounters later, but for flying PC issues and encounter variety, the point stands. Don't just throw a dozen wolves at the party. Wolves don't attack groups of armed, fully grown humans on a whim. They certainly wouldn't attack 2 humans and a tiefling with pockets full of bat guano and weapons that look like wind chimes, an elf that has a pet dragon or owlbear and smells like the traps all over the woods, 2 half orcs covered in metal and spikes, an 1 half naked goliath who has been screaming while swinging a greatsword all day.
If you must use wolves, give them a reason to attack the party. Put saddles on their backs and put pixies with bows or Thorn Whip cantrips in those saddles. Or hell hounds being ridden by imps with fire bolt. Or a Gray Render with a siren or nymph growing out of its back.
Anything that takes a nonsensical fight to the death with easily spooked wild animals and justifies why they're not running the first time a PC raises their voice.
If you don't know how easy it is to spook an "apex predator," then go watch the video of the grizzly bear setting down next to a guy fishing by a river. The second the bear even looks like it might turn its attention to the human, the guy stands up and says, "Hey, hey, hey!" and the bear runs for its life.
If you're going to throw real-world endangered animals at the party like they are actual threats, then make up a fantasy setting reason why they're not acting like their real-world counterparts. Either make them the mounts of beings that have issue with the PCs, or copy the plot of Cocain Bear and establish that there is something fundamentally wrong with the animals that's causing the aberrant behavior.
3. Use magic.
Whether it's web or earthbind spells, or you've designed a dungeon built by a mad graviturgist and the ceilings are dotted with reverse gravity fields and shafts that go 50 feet straight up into stalagtites, there's plenty of ways to Uno Reverse a flying PC.
These were initially made up to counter flying PCs, but they work just as well for varying standard encounters. There's plenty of other tricks I use.
4. Give generic stat blocks key features from subclasses.
I said don't use generic wild animals. That doesn't apply to their stat blocks. I use the bear stat block all the time. I just give it a move that summons 2d6 fathomless warlock tentacles every round. The tentacles have 1 hp and basically go by Matt Colville's minion rules. Whether the tentacle bear is an eldritch horror or an Eldrazi Spawn, it doesn't matter. I describe it as a writhing mass of sinew, muscle, and wrongness dredged up from the depths of the uncanny valley. The players don't need to know why I have a copy of the bear stat block paper clipped to my DM screen.
I also have a Chaos Witch NPC. She's an elf princess with the archmage stat block. Every time she casts a spell, I roll on the wild magic sorcerer table. Every time she takes any other action, I roll on the wild magic barbarian table. Her formerly evil vizier is an elf transmuter who their orc allies call the Frog Maker. He saved their tribe from a white dragon. He carries a bird cage around with a white horned frog in it. As a reaction, he can rattle the cage and cause the frog to fire off breath weapons. The chaos witch's girlfriend is an ancestral guardian themed spirit caller who summons ghosts from the tribe's fallen, and the spirit caller's brother is the tribe's warchief who has all the zealot barbarian tricks rethemed as if he were a Keldon Warlord.
5. Look for reskins.
Several monsters in later 5e books are great examples of the devs making 5e monsters out of critters from IPs they don't have the rights to. I can run a full Fall of Rapture campaign set in the city from the first Bioshock video game with the Ravnica setting book alone. The Nivix Cyclops is a Big Daddy. The Cackler Demon is a Little Sister. The Simic Hybrids are Splicers. The different Horrors and Krasis monsters are swimming by all the windows or skittering through the maintenance ducts.
While we're on the MTG books, all three are gold. Nothing breaks up the monotony of the Forgotten Realms faster than running crime noir in Ravnica, Jason and the Argonauts island hopping in Theros, or simply dropping the Strixhaven campus in any other setting and having your party of murder hobos recruit a few private school drop outs to round out their numbers.
If nothing else, Ravnica and Theros are useful tools for changing up older stat blocks. The Krasis Adaptation tables in Ravnica and the Chimera features tables in Theros are incredibly useful.
"Why does that wolf have the head of a goat?"
"That's a good question. We might find out after I get dex saves from everyone. Fireball incoming."
To me one of the great things about 4e encounter design (at least in the modules I ran across) was that every battle was in a different environment yes ... but _more_ than that, each environment offered different ways you could interact with it. So suggestions for the environment _mechanics_ were something I'd have liked to see, not just a list of [insert every single building in a medieval city].
Cool idea (love the zerg creep reference), but I feel it needed to be actually fleshed out a bit more.
To steal from Xenoblade, a great way to make an encounter interesting: a “normal” enemy in that area that is a cut above the rest. So much so that they get their own name from the locals. A unique monster.
It’s been like a year seems I’ve seen dungeons dude, when did they get so handsome omg?!
Hey Dudes, thank you so much for your content. Many hours of my days the last few years have been spent watching and thinking about the ideas you've given me. For a while i was just watching and wishing i could play. Basically Copium. Now I'm dming for two great games now, including Drakkenheim, and couldn’t be happier
Thank you for the kind words and we hope your games are rewarding and fun!
Nice video. Short and sweet. Thank you.
You guys ROCK!! Thank you for all the great ideas!!
LOVE The Care Bear Shirt!!!
The Dudes!
Thars a terrifying encounter idea.
I combined the stats of kobolds and skeletons to homebrew a kobold driving a Thri-Kreen exoskeleton with webs used as tendons and muscles. It was based on the setting of fantasy penal colony digging up ancient Thri-Kreen dungeon that slammed into planet thousands of years back.
A fun way to do it too is how these different monsters/encounters can be affected by the current state of the world. Like if there is a epidemic plaguing the nearby kingdom or village maybe some of these other creatures are also showing symptoms of it
As for environment changes, anything done in Delicious in dungeon is pretty cool.
Some times doing the simple things can greatly change things
This is EXACTLY the video I’ve been craving
Aside from the "Tucker's Kobolds" approach, I liked BG3 because it gave class features to monsters and NPCs
I got into Warhammer 40K recently and picked up the leviathan box and christmas box for tyranids. I was trying to decide what game I was going to run this summer while home from university and in the middle of painting my bugs went "Oh! These would make for a great DND enemy!" so now my summer game is about a nice peaceful village slowly being overcome by genesteelers while dealing with the variety of tyranid bioforms. It's great. Can't wait for a mawloc to swallow the town hall. It's gonna be great.
i still think the most proud i've ever been of a random monster decision was when i decided to make a small arc about a mind flayer in an ancient ship far beneath a lakeside town, whose presence after millennia in animated suspension was causing mass paranoia, bouts of telepathy between people, and the inadvertent domination of some of the local wildlife, including several hydras. i think i used a lot of my creativity in that set of sessions that i'd never used before, trying to figure out what creatures could be native to the area that the mind flayer had dominated, what was the mind flayer doing beneath the town at all, etc.
i'd decided that some of the mind flayers in this universe were actually somewhat of mad scientist types who played god by altering life forms and turning them into superior weapons, all before their supposed extinction at the hands of the planar gods. i got to play around with including some nifty aberrations in the old derelict ship, and even brought in xenomorphs as a fun nod to the inspiration for the mind flayer's motives (and also because i love them). i think it's the most fun i've had selecting monsters in my campaign, especially since up until then the party had been primarily facing humanoids and undead humanoids.
One thing I’ve done in my homebrew to justify brining in all sorts of wild monsters is that the invading army has developed a mind-control technology associated with Psyquartz (which is like a 70% rip-off of delerium), where they install a piece of the crystal in the skull of a beast/monster and then have effectively a controller set up with another bead of the crystal. The players eventually started just destroying the crystal in the heads of monsters….which led the army to start installing steel plates over the crystal. It’s actually worked great. A high point was when the players made it past a checkpoint with a combination of seeming, their bag of tricks, and silent image to create the illusion that the summoned beasts had psyquartz in their head.
I've looked for opportunities for monsters to be domesticed or otherwise displaced from the environment they normally live in: hence Leucrottas in a Lord's mansion, Behirs employed to provide electricity to a wizard who needs it, orcs enslaved in a mine to work the machinery.
Do you guys know about Dungeon Dad? He has a CZcams channel about bringing back monsters from D&D’s history that were left out of 5e and converts them to 5e. That’s another cool way for fresh campaigns
Don't clean off the dust. New extraplanar creature.
One thing I like to do is build a representation of the environment in minecraft and stream it to my players.
We use a couple mods so they have custom character blocks.
This also allows me to more easily create a grid for them to keep track of position on and turn encounters 3D.
I my last session I got to use my reaper minis ‘Over-gourd’ as a monster. It shot pumpkin seeds, had 10 bite attacks but best of all had a ‘pumpkin head curse’. The curse was pass a charisma saving throw or your head becomes a pumpkin. While you have a pumpkin head you are blind and cannot speak until the curse is removed or you have eyes and a mouth carved into your pumpkin 🎃 head. I now have one of my players going around with a pumpkin head and it might be a few sessions before the curse can be removed. Oh, also a dire cabbage killed the Druid’s wildcat companion 😢 and there were chicken swarms as well.
Monty is amazing at making encounters
once fought cultists that were a combination of druids and monks. staying next to a flaming spere or getting punched in the face made for interesting choices
This video was great:)
I like looking at the different monster types and picking ones I haven't used in awhile. Oh, I haven't used Giants or Plants in awhile... What about a evil giant using big carnivorous plants as it's minions?
Alternatively, looking through my old Magic cards for interesting creatures is a good sort of inspiration
Toying with the idea of the boss in one encounter im planning literally freezing the entire environment making movement waaay more difficult.
You are in a factory theres flames every where you break the engine.... a cresture bursts forth after being trapped inside, immediately setting about putting out those flames and freezing the room around you. Roll initiative
Mr Welch has two more 'Pillars of RPG':
#4 Character Goals - the goals of the individual characters such as Revenge, creating a church or orphanage, a business, establishing or gaining their own fiefdom, wooing that NPC, rebuilding or improving their home town, etc.
#5 World Shaping - As they grow in power, they also grow in responsibility and their effect on their world (social, political, economic, etc)
I would completely rewrite the three pillars of rpg.
Conflict, which includes combat, but also faction intrigue, politics, and diplomacy which currently get labelled social interaction.
Exploration, which is learning about the world, so doesn't just include wilderness and dungeon exploration, but also finding and talking to expert NPCs, solving puzzles and mysteries, etc.
Progression, both non diagetic like leveling up, and diagetic such as finding loot, travelling to new places, and defeating the bbeg.
Currently running a seige into a castle town infested with dragons. Due to all the acid, poison, and smoke, they cannot long rest (level 14) at this point, they are in the castle after 3 sessions with only maybe 8 hit dice and 0 spell slots left, a great way at high levels to make a fight with low level enemies a massive challenge. (I expected them to retreat 2 sessions ago, but they are persistent)
Just inspired me I me and I will be taking my players to the moon in my next session.
More builds please 🔥🔥
Video idea! How to run a revolution campaign.
Cave Modrons! You guys are great
I’m about 6or 7 sessions into Waterdeep (Alexandrian) and am realizing it’s hard to have a variety of creature types in a guarded city of humanoids. Same with the environment, fights in the sewer or a alley or a abandoned building. I gotta figure out how to create some fantastical settings and variety
So for monster variety I do have a smuggler who organizes "pets" for rich people... some escape before even getting to their new owners, some eat them and the escape and might even terrorize other citizens. :P
I'm working on a heavily adapted Descent Into Avernus campaign and I'm sure players will be bored or feel oppressed by the hellish desert landscape, so I'm adding bits and pieces in other locations or secret locations with different characteristics within Avernus to break the monotony. When played over months or years, it surely can get boring to keep the same setting, especially with creatures of the same type (devils and demons)
Hi! Is there a reason that Sebastian Crowe's Guide to Drakkenheim is no longer available at Ghostfire Gaming?
Something I do is I treat my monsters as if they want to stay alive fighting to zero hit points should be a pretty rare occasion
Ooo spicy dungeons 🧐
Usually maps help me pick what kind of encounter or exploration I'll be using.
I just realized Monty cant say “ague” words like vague or plague he just drops the “ue” on the end
Woah, a Short Video, eerie
Of you're going into a swamp USE GRUNG. 👌🏻❤
Have a typically evil creature ask for help. Stopping a worse enemy from conquering a nearly enemy still protects the town.
Think about what type of encounters you have been running lately and choose the path less traveled.
where is the art in the thumbnail from
How about inspiration from old modules like the players having to find the spot and dig to find the door to the deadly place…
Canadians pronouncing "plague" 😅❤
Rad
Do a review of some unofficial vtt campaigns available on roll20 or similar services. Alternatively, a review of some of the best unofficial content creators for vtt.
Also, real life can be a source of inspiration. Google Lake Natron Animals, or Son Doong caves.
I m second (and no one cared)
I care
@@DungeonDudes 🥹
You may be but you are the highlighted comment
I cared
I’m still waiting for the day when I have played enough to feel bored with D&D.
25 seconds in and its already unrealistic. You guys are helping the people after killing the treasure and looting the antagonists in a nondescript cave™ next to a generic town™?
Did I make it first!?
i think so
Most people don't care.
🎉🎉🎉🎉
@davea6314 the ones who really don't care, don't bother to say anything...
🎉🎉🎉🎉
TL;DW. Probably full of the same old, boring advice that have kept D&D combat boring for the past 40 years.(No offense.)
Give every mob a legendary action, or two. Bonus points if larger enemies have a death rattle which turns the encounter on its head as the enemy gets closer to death. Warning, this WILL lead to frequent TPKs, as most players approach D&D combat with the mindset of 'roll dice until their number = 0 while keeping my number above 0'. Then get whip lashed as a legion of goblins absolutely steam rolls them because they have advantage on every attack through Pact Tactics and deal damage equal to the number of goblins alive in any given pack. (8d4 at full strength, btw). It's really extremely easy to make D&D combat fun. The problem is you nerds only play D&D, so you have no clue what fun combat design looks like. Again, no offense. Just speaking facts.
An idea would be to have the battle take place in the area of a terrain spell. Like for example, what about a battle in a Druid Grove? Maybe even multiple connected Druid Groves, maybe with Guards and Wards cast in it? What about a battle taking place in a Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion? Stuff like that could be interesting to see in play.
My players don't know it yet, but their entire campaign is set on an artificial world. The races that built it have long since abandoned it and the ruins in the world are all remnants of their crumbling infrastructure. There are adventures like:
- a zoo filled with cryogenically frozen flora and fauna which are now escaping
- an ancient weather-control station which is going haywire and causing unpredictable cyclones and precipitation
- old subterranean terraforming equipment causing earthquakes and levelling towns
- an ancient prison filled with mindflayers who have recently broken free
- a miles-wide array of solar panels that resemble a crystalline forest occupied by malfunctioning construction drones.
And the final dungeon I have planned: climbing a giant space elevator that leads to the astral lair of the last remaining precursor, who's been driven mad by their thousands-year station as a celestial jailor.