![]() ![]() They definitely should have been, I gave the druid an extra wildshape as a very loose rule of cool action they did, and thankfully that bought enough time for the warlock to roll a 20 on a death same and pop back up and finish the job with a crit on the demon. Long story short, the party nearly got TPKed. He then also decided to run at the demon, ignoring the rest of the minions/townspeople. The one person who went and saved a towns person killed the minion, I described the demon cry out in pain. I described this healing process as magic visibly leaving from the townspeople, flying through the air and going to the demon, who looked visibly recovered each time. They stood near it and just swung/shot away, meanwhile it heals a lot of their damage every turn from the stolen townspeople. What my party did was all except one charge at the boss. Given this damage was high, I had the demon be pretty strong, to make it still a challenge. If these minions were killed, significant damage was done to the boss. This demon had minions which took townspeople and utilised these to heal itself. This culminated in an unexpected (for them) boss fight, where the boss had carried out a ritual to summon a home-brewed demon. I setup an one-off event in a town, which the party engaged well with and found interesting. Sharing a story below as a bit of a lesson learned relating to this. This is great advice and it definitely makes things interesting. So next time you need an encounter, forget everything else and just make the PCs move. Whatever you can do to lessen the cognitive workload of DMing is the key to better sessions. In stead of thinking about enemy tactics, terrain, hazards, cover, complications and a billion other things, I just need to come up with something cool or exciting that makes them move around the battlefield. “Just make them move” helps me to streamline encounter-building. You better start paying attention and do something. Easy and simple! And if the fight feels boring, it is easy to improvise something on the go. All I have to remember while planning the encounter is “make them move”. What ever it is, something dynamic is always going on. Maybe the enemies dash in, steal something and dash the fuck out of there and the encounter your party thought was an old-fashioned slogfest turns in to a chase. Maybe the monsters use the cover too! Maybe the enemies have abilities that force movement? Or some wild magic hits certain spots in the map every other turn and you can see the energy building up and know it is not safe to stay there. Maybe I should do something with the terrain? Or maybe there is some great cover all the way over there. Something that makes it hard or impossible to just stand there.Įvery time I make an encounter, I think: “How do I make them move?”. Or a gelatinous cube on a predictable path eating PCs and enemies that stood in its way. Maybe there was a ritual that needed stopping, a door that was slowly closing or a forest fire that moved through the map. So I decided to make them move in every combat. It makes sense: opportunity attacks make fights “sticky” and there is no added benefit to move if your ranged weapon can hit all the way from here. They just stood there hitting the monsters until the party was victorious. Then I noticed a pattern: the party never moved. Like every DM, I too have struggled to make combat interesting. Combat areas for every conceivable encounter. Collection of Podcasts, Vidcasts, and other D&D Multimedia for your consumption. Worldbuilding, Storybuilding, DM Discussion. The DM Help Multireddit Check out our wiki! Message the Moderators Keep Little Questions in the megathreadįull rules with additional explanations can be found here.Keep Problem Player talk in the megathread.External Links & Advertising are limited to active community members.Only three kinds of posts are allowed here: DMing Questions, Advice and tools. Please refrain from downvoting legitimate questions. We are not only for new DMs, but the bulk of the posts will no doubt be submitted by newer DMs. We welcome DMing questions, DMing advice or tools to help DMs old and new. The aim of this subreddit is to serve as a platform for learning to DM. Before Submitting a Question, Please Check our Rules Remove All Need Advice See Advice Only See Resources Only Join the Discord ![]()
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