I've used massive creatures as "environmental hazards" before. In one case, the party was trying to recover some notebooks from a ruined village, and in the center was a massive demonic worm creature. They were level 5, it was something like CR 32. Half the party held back and harassed it from afar with bows and such to distract it. The other half stealthed around it to find the notebook. It was very memorable.

@kassassin_brahgawk

2 ай бұрын

My players were going through a forest at night. Fought and killed a giant spider, looked up and saw a ton more webs in the trees. Moved cautiously but quickly forward until they spooked a giant grasshopper that flew across the path. The artificer stopped in his tracks and said, "okay, now I'm scared. I know the stats of a giant spider. I have no idea what the fuck a giant grasshopper does." 😂 And then they got attacked by a banderhobb.

@mordisgaminggedons5119

2 ай бұрын

mine will fight a living city at level 6. using the beta rules from Ryokos guide is great, that way you can split the CR32 creature into like 6 CR6 Damage zones with their own AC, attacks and stuff, plus climbinr/Riding rules, etc. and when they killed enough, it retreats lightly wounded and the way is clear. and your PCs probably both, traumatised and Celebrating

@Yaratoma

2 ай бұрын

Wow living city is a cool construct and your sections divide sounds fun to play.

@mordisgaminggedons5119

2 ай бұрын

@@Yaratoma yes, its a Lot of Homebrew and said inofficial Content. If you want, you can also use those Chaos thresholds at which point everything changes, like a Giant ice Dragons Scales break and everyone on it has to do a safe every round, nur gets new vulnerable spots. Or maybe a gigantic Hydra starts bleeding and that creates poisonous puddles on its Surface (where you are Clubbing and fighting it) Its a great Thing for gigantic Monsters from Level 1 to 20

@robertnett9793

2 ай бұрын

I think that's a good way to think about it. I once utilized some form of 'undead horde' when the players had to rescue someone from the cursed camp outside the long since fallen city. Basically the remnants of the besieging army - undead, but still following their daily routine. At a certain point the soldiers of the camp would follow the orders from the long gone mad general and attack - making it a chase situation, where the players had to escape the camp. I didn't place individual monsters - but there was the constant looming threat of pursuing undead - too many to win, just holding them off to break open doors in ruined buildings or crawl through debris tunnels and so on.

Like the start to Skyrim with the dragon you don't fight but get to witness destroy a small town

@DumbChaoticFuck

2 ай бұрын

Probably the coolest opening I’ll ever see

@HeraldOfOpera

2 ай бұрын

What's even better is what happens if you're dumb enough to stick around; not only does a character have a voiced line calling you out on the violation of basic common sense, but because the dragon is canonically there to kill you specifically he'll eventually start actively targeting you.

@DumbChaoticFuck

2 ай бұрын

@@HeraldOfOpera neat

That point about not using overpowered enemies to "bully the players into doing what you want" is a good one. Had a bad experience with a DM once who was pulling all kinds of stunts to make sure an NPC wizard overpowered the party. Turns out he didn't expect us to fight the guy who was... *sigh* ...ordering us to burn down an orphanage and refusing to release us from captivity unless we went along with this mission. You don't have to take first blood for your actions to be aggressive.

@GreedyDrunk92

2 ай бұрын

Burning an orphanage? Your dm is a memer

@OhNoTheFace

2 ай бұрын

Bad DM if he did not foresee pushback forcing a party into anything, but especially that. "Look you either stop strongarming us into this nonsense or you have no players"

I usually write a note that says "death is on the table" and just leave it unadressed in the middle of the table as a sign that things are gonna be tense or there will be monsters i don't intend for them to attack its a nice way to designate sessions as serious or climactic without being like "im gonna have to level with you you'll die if you attack this thing" the tension is so much more real if they just know the session is gonna be heavy but not which aspect because option 1 usually sees them keeping an eye out for a big beastie to fight specifically to spite my warnings... and I'll give them props they really get the better of monsters they really shouldn't sometimes

One of my favorite ways to introduce a major plot hook/villain is to have the players get into a really tense encounter with a bunch of enemies and then all of a sudden the enemy flees from or is killed by some shadowy figure in the distance. It heavily implies that not only is there a much stronger threat out there but that threat is both aware of the party and is controlling the events around them.

A problem with the "you're really not supposed to fight this" encounters is if you don't tell your players you're not suposed to fight this, your players assume they can take it on, or your players assume you must have made them easier to fight.

@OhNoTheFace

2 ай бұрын

I mean, some things are obvious. Dragond and deathclaws at level 1 are not to be fought. You assuming they are easier is on you

I have also used cutaway scenes, where I have the players take on other characters for a moment, characters I can kill to show how dangerous an enemy is. It also is very cathartic for me, so I am less likely to TPK the main PCs 😉

I probably posted this on a different short. But the party saw their first big bad in session 3, an ancient purple dragon. It was leading its cult in an invasion on the lands that once belonged to that 5 headed dragon diety lady. The party was given the chance to flee by some reference characters from past campaigns. As they ran and ran for hours, in the storm riddled sky, they watched the purple dragon do battle with the gold who had stationed itself as gaurdian to the cultural festival the party (all kobolds) were attending. Flashes and flares of gold flame and blinding purple plasma illuminating the night sky with such intensity that it burned as the light touched their skin, letting even the blind character know that the danger was all too real.

In Fallout 2 there is a pack of intelligent deathclaws, so in this case you could use them for world building

I once dropped an adult Red dragon on a lvl 6 party as an encounter. She was just hanging out being sadistic and evil messing with some kobolds doing some work for her and turned her attention on the party when they came. Was a very deadly social encounter as she was not gonna attack unless provoked but would mess with them and possibly give them sadistic options for fun like "chose one of you that i can eat and the rest can live". The party warlock managed to talk his way trough the encounter and even amuse her enough to me her like him. She is now a major NPC and the warloc is an emisary and agent of hers giving him some powers trough a magic item. She is still suuuper evil and sadistic but has an interest in preventing major dangers to the world means she can work with the good aligned party for now (one of my favorite unplanned major NPCs iv run)

When my players first met their BBEG for the campaign in session 1, the evil sorcerer's mini was on a shelf on top of my screen while an army of cultist minions advanced across the table. The eventual lich himself was unreachable this early in the campaign while the players settled into their characters during a wave battle/Tower defense montage.

Okay imagine you're walking wasteland with your party and then all of a sudden you come across two death claws going at it because it's like a territorial dispute or something, and they don't care about you so much as they want to kill each other but you still got to stay out of their way you don't want to get any of their attention maybe you have to get across or around

So far, ive found the most success by just telling stories or legends of some sort of environmental hazard monster, or putting them in places that the PCs cant quiteeeeee reach and letting them make nature/perception/history checks on it to see what they can figure out (or other checks, with a compelling explanation). In one of my last campaigns, I had a town in, essentially, the arctic circle, but even though it was -5 out i still made it a point to pretty consistently mention that there was about 300ish feet of deep blue water one all sides of the city, sollowed by ice sheets, and along with that, while there was a consistent stream of merchant ships, the city had no naval pressence or any sort of shoreline defenses, yet theyd pretty much never been successfully attacked by sea. Throw in some legends about sundering waves that devoured a demi-god despot thatd come to take the city, and eventually the wizard got curious enough to start actually investigating the waters around the town, only to roll high, look down, and realize that the strange patterns on the sea floor surrounding the entire city were VERY similar to snakeskin, and the massive eye peering back at him only further backed that up. While most of the party went "yeah, lets just leave that thing ALONE", a single guy really, really wanted to get up in its face for some reason, and he was rollin real low on almost everything lol so I was giving his character semi-vague answers. I dont like wiping out PCs at all, esspecially when its permanent, and thats because id rather a player have to live with consequences and boons from their decisions than just go "well, stepped wrong so youre outta here, roll up a new one" - when a player can do somethin about it or at least fully sees it comin, its obviously fine. When he started decending a ladder into the water, i genuinely didnt know if dude just wasnt understanding that this would be the end, even with all the foreshadowing. Eventually, i had to full stop the game and ask dude what exactly he thinks is gonna happen. His response was, essentially, "maybe hes friendly" lol I ended up needing to go through everything that his character would logically understand here: this thing is BIG, it can swallow you in a single bite, its eaten a demi god before, you are gwtting up in its face, and its likely way, way faster than you underwater. I ended up having to directly tell him that, if he approached it, hed need to make a dc 20+ check or, most likely, instantly be considered KIA without a recoverable body, just to get him to understand how bad this could be. While I'd LOVE for this lvl 2 paladin to toothless a god-destroying super being, i also would feel like such an ass to be like "welp, get blindsided by this horrifically bad thing - start rollin d6s dumbass" when that inevitably goes wrong. Ye, itd be his own fault, but still. That way too many words just to say: using folklore and features of the land itself works really, really well for these sorts of legendary monsters. These are creatures that often fundamentally restructure the areas that they find themselves in, so use those alterations to show your party that this thing is bad news. And sometimes, it may be necessary to just flat out say to a player "hey, i respect your decisions, but for full context, this WILL be bad. I dont wanna blindside you with this - most likely your character wont survive, and neither will any of your party if you do this. Your character would know that these things mean business, and resurrection magic wont be an option." While it may suck to pull everyone outta the immersion like that, itll keep your players from getting upset, keep you from 20 rolls of cheek-clappin, and itll show your players that you respect and care about em

Or, you can give them that one intelligent deathclaw companion as a random encounter, like maybe they're a salesman?

I placed a hydra on a battlefield when they had access to a trebuchet, it was fun.

You could later on have the players come across the body of the deathclaw that they had first encountered/observed. Leaving the players with a big question. What was the big bad that could drop one of those terrifying things, and how could we kill it if we had to? Or maybe, the enemy of my enemy.....

I tried this with something the players could easily handle at the beginning of a one shot to sort of introduce them to the story and they all tried to attack. They rolled poorly and were like “why is it taking so long just to get in”because they didn’t seem to gather that I wasn’t intending combat despite the NPC literally suggesting they try to just sneak by since the monsters they were sneaking past lacked eyes. I also explained they rolled significantly below average. Sometimes when I DM especially for a larger group(6 people) it really wears me down especially when they kind of show signs of not caring.

Unless *that guy* says "I cast fireball"

my best idea (against a low level party) was one really fat goblin boss. the goblin attack power was effectively just firebolt(1d10) every round, and he had all his minion goblins fight for him. as motivation, he would even firebolt one of his own minions. the only benefit he got from being so fat was a massive HP pool for level 1 party.

I like to have the party battle another thing first, and then have the giant monster just kill it. Sometimes the players will take part in a tournament, and the champion that beat all of them suddenly gets eaten, or a demon is attacking them when a great wurm destroys it in seconds.

Next time I’m gonna get the chance to make an Eastern dragon I’m going to have it as above the ground and create a valley

Giant monsters work great for environmental hazards, stealth sequences (that sometimes turn into escape sequences), or just simple set pieces. They're also awesome for roleplay, both to do as DM and for the party to interact with

@mordisgaminggedons5119

2 ай бұрын

Oh yes, like the immense sleeping Giant in a cave (which I totally didnt steal from that one Fantasy Movie with the funny two headed dragon). Using Monsters in unusual ways is great

I runned a dnd campaign where the party traveled to a distant future where the evil lich magic won and corrupted the land after centuries of wars and it was a fallout setting. Put a group of supermutants first aftee a time there, the party already learned how to manage on the setting with new weapons and armors, so after they finish barely beating the supermutants in a hill, i make it so they hear another group coming to them and they were readying weapons and olanning on escaping but from behind a cave by some rocks a deathclaw came out and destroyed the group of supermutants singlehandedly, so the party knew it inmediatly that the creature was beyond her power level, and then after they decided to leave on stealth by the other side, i show them up something from any other game except fo4 that make deathclaws more terrifying: they live in packs, another 3 lesser deathclaws came out and started eating the mutants and the party have a wtf moment when another even bigger deathclaw came out and sliced a mutant in 2. For dnd5e purposes, it was a dragon and just change the breating with a thunder damage with a wisdom save to be scared, leave the claws and the tail attack and add an attack as a ranged rock throwing or a jumping slice, for the alpha add a grappling attack, and add a stomp prone and a tail attack legendary actions Also, make even the lesser deathclaws have 40ft of speed, those things are really fast and increase 10ft by increased range of the creature and add a Damage Thresshold to bigger ones so they not just resist damage but also take less damage

I have an idea for an encounter in my desert campaign where they're fighting two factions of bandits, and then suddenly.. One side begins to flee back to their mounts, before getting swallowed up by an enormous purple worm! The rest of the encounter would be running towards the nearest cliff where the ground is stone to escape the creature, the other faction of bandits heading that way as well so you get a very tense and cinematic battle/fleeing section. Still gotta work out the mechanics for the purple worm chasing them though since it has much higher movement speed, maybe it'll only show up only once per two rounds or there'll be some indication where it'll burrow from.

Imagine players meeting a deathclaw, that would just stare them down menacingly

@OhNoTheFace

2 ай бұрын

Like just guarding a nest but not fighting yet. Just back away slowly haha

Fun fact, the Deathclaw's Design is directly inspired by the Tarrasque, specifically the 2nd Edition Tarrasque.

Also like, the dm can nerf or homebrew smaller stats. My party of lvl 1 adventurers fought an undead owlbear cause it was cool, just had to nerf its hitpoints and damage by a lot

First session of my current campaign, I had three lvl 1 players and I warned them right off the bat that they were immediately going into combat with higher lvl monsters. The idea, and again I did tell them this, was to have them try to survive 3-5 rounds of combat, after which the monsters would be called to retreat. One or two of the players went down, one of them multiple times, but they survived and had a lot of fun. I might've not told them that they'd be resurrected/revived if they got TPKed before combat was finished, but I did have plans for that in such an event. The idea was to show that they were in a war and should act like it, without sacrificing their ability to go on an adventure after the fact.

My DM just threw a level 12 False Hydra at us, for story reasons. I'm the highest at level 5, with 3 level 4 players, and 3 NPC's level 2-3's. He allowed us to make a run for it before the FH started to sing and turned the getaway sequence into a series of skill checks to escape. Our Bard was keeping his eyes on it and telling us when to dodge then he failed a check, tripped, and got hit with a whip attack... He actually almost died. Story wise he would not have died but the FH rolled low damage and dropped him down to 1 HP. After that encounter our DM 4th walled and told us he actually limited the FH to only one attack and is thinking about not having it attack at all in the other groups he's running through. Scary story threats like this are awesome.

Sorry i wasn’t listening I was looking at the deathclaw’s big shoulders and hands

Played in a homebrew fallout game it used the warhammer 40k only war rule book the gm used a talking death claw as our bbeg it broke into the vault our characters were frozen in and it was hunting us as we escaped the vault it was so good I wish the campaign lasted longer

I tried to give my players a dragon egg to return. It was a way for our characters to befriend a dragon as an IOU for later on. With the egg in their bag, they decided to keep it and tried to skip out on the dragon only to be hunted internationally by a now angry mama dragon. I eventually had to just call it off because i didnt want to ruin their game with a TPK

Oh no, y'all stumbled upon a deathclaw attempted a mating ritual on the tarrasque, it rolled super high too!

We fought some Behirs a few sessions ago. We weren’t supposed to beat them. We just rolled like gods. Last session, we fought a Jabberwock. Again, we weren’t really supposed to beat it, but if we did we would immediately raise our status with whatever the town is called that we are traveling to. We are playing WBTW. Kinda curious to see what happens next. Fae haven’t jumped us yet. I’m surprised they haven’t.

I think breaking the 4th wall is definitely the move here if you know your party cant handle it cause otherwise you might end up with a Lou Wilson almost getting Fabian Aramaeus Sea-Caster killed in season 2 of adventuring academy

Or you can take after an actual mission that is given to you early in FO4. Exploring the museum of witchcraft faces you with a mother death claw (an incredibly strong deathclaw for low level), and you don’t even fight it for the first few minutes. You can hear it moving and snarling and eating above you as you sneak around the basement. You can see it dragging bodies around and see blood that has fallen through the broken floorboards, and all that is topped off with a very close quarters fight where you can kind of cheese it by sitting in a room. But that’s beside the point. Just have it be a high stakes mission where you are going to retrieve something, have the enemy be the deathclaw, and never actually be forced to face the enemy, or make it very clear that running/avoiding it is the best option. But don’t make it impossible

I dropped a black dragon on a party once. The intention was to teach them that not all encounters are won via killing the enemy. Later on I dropped a Flesh Golem. It was falling apart, another lesson where the goal was to show how sometimes defensive combat is more appropriate than aggression

I dropped one of those CR 30 Greatwyrms on my players at level 2. Power dynamics are fun to explore

I threw a monster at my players and I gave it disadvantaged on everything and basically just made it Chase them. I also gave them many ways to escape. Also, this monster turns to stone in daylight. So the encounter only lasted a few minutes before it got turned to stone

A good display of force might also get them to deterred. Like a known knight is in a valley and this thing just wrecks him. No chance of the lvl 3 party helping. This monster is 2 shotting this awesome person. Its ok to build an npc as cannon fodder to display power levels.

Holy crap, an Orc half dragon!

I threw a giant, cybernetic scorpion at a low level party as an encounter that would give them some plot clues. This thing was completely homebrew and about onpar with an Adult Dragon statwise minus flight and breath weapon, and most of the party understood that i didn't intend on attacking them, or figured that they shouldn't attack it and hid so they could watch what it did. Except for one of my players who charged it with a sledgehammer, and i immediately crit him and blew his head off with a single attack. Afterward he got super pissed at the rest of the party for "not backing him up," so these encounters can be good, but you have to know your party. I definitely had fun with it tho.

Hey Cinder, love your content! I have a question for you. I had a homebrew idea for a game i want to run. I want to have a "hidden" or "secret" subclass(es)that the players dont know about. And what I mean by that is it wouldn't be available to be picked at lvl 3 like most other subclasses, maybe around lvl 10 or some other stipulation. I'd want it to be a little more OP than a normal subclass. Maybe have it be a story progression/side quest reward, like after an encounter with the BBEG or one of his close subordinates, they off handedly mention they can't be hurt except by an attack from a secret ki form or maybe a weapon made by some legendary kind of atificer. What are your thoughts? How would you implement this? I thought it was an interesting idea.

I love the idea of inelligent non-aggresive top tier monsters early on. It sets the stage of the world, especially if they are MH. Step out of the road that is guarded. That is starting Shi, and as we all know start shi get hit. 😅

One of the best moments in my current campaign was when my party rolled incredibly high on a random encounter. They then had an intense run-away scene as they got caught up in an Ancient Black Dragon facing off against an Adult Red Dragon. The party was level 3 and never were in any real danger, as the only real hit they took was the side effect of the Black dragon's wing attack. They talk about this quite often now

I usually make it super clear that the characters feel like they're out of their depth. Like they aren't necessarily afraid, but their experience is telling them that this isn't a fight worth having.

Honestly I'd let them fight it and get destroyed, but offer a "restart from checkpoint" option to let them know they goofed if they actually chose to fight it.

You could also heavily damage or handicap the creature

My first death claw encounter was me boppin around the wasteland, killing mole rats, hitting vats. Hit vats, ope! Enemy in area, click over to it, ITS A FREAKING DEATH CLAW. Cue me running backwards, screaming shit shit shit fuck shit, firing all my my shotgun ammo into it, falling down a massive hill, used that moment to stimpack up, ans then i threw a bomb at the death claw and managed to kill it.

I threw a werebear at my level 3 party today. They kicked his ass. He has 135 hit points and i gave them a +2 greataxe

I remember when I was a young GM who didn't know how CR in dnd worked and threw an ogre at three lv 1 players because I thought is being a CR 2 meant it was only one level above them. One character got knocked unconscious with ita first attack and they ended up having to trick it into running off a cliff. Fun times.

@mordisgaminggedons5119

2 ай бұрын

Meanwhile my Level one at Start, Level 0 at end of the fight, players casually killed a Sea hag who Additionally can Mimic Level 3 Claws Features as Bonus Action. CR is BS, Ihres are was stronger than they should be, Werebears are far weaker than they should be (Just an example)

U know Cinder, I like that Fallout is so popular that people made it into a video game

@Cinderblocksally

2 ай бұрын

😂

They could also just steal an encounter from Fallout 4, where they have you fight a deathclaw WAY TOO EARLY. Except that they also give you insane power armour and a minigun to buff you up for the encounter. Just do that and find some reason why it wouldn't be feasible to keep the buffs for the whole game.

I don't like how the new tarrasque is just a T. rex. I use its older edition start block. I don't use a dinosaur mini for it, I hang a poster. The party isn't going to succeed if they choose to attack it directly. The tarrasque arc is about interrupting the cultists trying to wake it and getting people out of harms way when plan A fails.

Creatures with a Massive CR are a good way to at least turn the party around if they're heading in a direction they probably shouldn't be. Not saying to send an Chromatic Red Greatwyrm at the party to fight. But a simple narration of one visibly flying around a nearby mountain, seemingly on the hunt for prey, should be a good enough heads-up for most adventuring parties to either start being more careful, or turn another direction. Hell, even at Level 20, depending on the mission, a Chromatic Greatwyrm could still be a good deterrent, cause no one is gonna want to fight a CR 28 Monster, if they're in the middle of something important. Anyways, Massive CR Monsters are great *tools* to subtly guide the players away from locations they probably don't have prepared yet, or places that they might not be ready to handle, long as it's a more "You see a Giant Dragon flying off, just in the distance" and not "The CR 30 Tarrasque awakens underneath you Level 5 Characters, roll initiative and start running!"

how do you feel about con based armor class, i think it's neat and i would like to see more ancestry options that have ac based on their sturdiness, and not just their speed and nimbleness.

I keep thinking Deathclaws are the failed lichs

Or do how I do siege monster's, creatures which are raiding a fort and yku must helpt defend said fort using artillery and machines untill its repelled (monster hunter moment)

See, why would you try to rail your party towards the objective when you can just sprinkle a few tpk mobs here and there to "organically" guide them instead?

Thay are literally a first edition tarrasque

Cinder, two of my players were killed because of a dumb mistake by one of them (basically he locked them both in a room with a dragon) I decided a very powerful npc would be able to take their souls and put them into two wooden bodies for them to stay alive, what should I do with the story now? The players aren't powerfull enough to go against the already established villains, but they don't wanna make new characters

Or maybe find a mummified one in a dungeon??

There is Goris.

Yaaaay

new vegas ftw!

Hi

49th

And remember its you against the party. Destroy them..😂