I don't know what anyone else's problem is, I love your combat advice! I get a lot of great ideas while listening to you talk! I'm prepping for a new homebrew campaign in a few weeks and find a lot of value in these!

We had a fun role play moment in combat the other day where an enemy mage made the building we were fighting in collapse. Our sorcerer made the dex save but my warlock failed it, so the DM flavored it that my warlock pushed them out of the building before it fell, and then after combat ended we had a sweet moment of them and the party digging out and rescuing my warlock.

I like the recharge at the top of the round thing. I often need to make reminders is my problem.

People think your combat talk is annoying? I love listening to a fellow tactical combat fan! 💜

One way I like to spice up fights is to give the bosses multiple "turns" in the initiative order (no more than three) to help spread out their actions. One turn would be dedicated to a basic attack cycle, one turn would be doing some sort of lair action, and another would be telegraphing a special move that would go off next turn that the players would have to prepare for. It makes the fights more engaging and gives the players something more to do than just beat the bit points out of the boss or heal up allies.

@Soggy2002

2 ай бұрын

Legendary Actions?

@legomaniac213

2 ай бұрын

@Soggy2002 Those are more meant to go off instantly when used. For the way I do it, on one initiative round I have the boss do a smash attack that drops rocks or stalactites onto the ground and bury themselves around the arena. Then, on another of the boss' turns, I have it charge up a big AOE attack that goes off next round that the players can avoid by using the embedded rocks as cover.

Something I like to do is to chain fights in a mini adventure. So the party fights one group, finds evidence of another, and so one, until they reach a conclusion with a good reward. It allows them to follow a narrative path through combat and it allows me to really challenge them as I can make the combats as time sensitive as I want.

Something I do in my game and that my players love when I do, is to add weak spots to my NPCs. One of the PCs can use their action to spot this weak points and comunicate this information to the rest of the party. Then, when the NPC is doing an attack on their turn, players can use a reaction to Attack this weak spot. Usually the NPC won't take any damage from this when it comes to hit points, but depending on the nature of the place where the weak spot is, it will have either reduced damage (-10 on dmg roll, maybe), reduced AC, reduced movement (maybe it can't walk more than 10 ft. or maybe it won't be able to fly), disadvantage on attack rolls (or advantage for PCs on Att. Rolls), or won't be able to use liar acctions.

Ok the recharging skills at the top of the round and making actual things on the battlefield to interact with for lair actions are amazing ideas. I am for sure using those

This is super handy! I always enjoy your videos, Crispy! I'd actually love a Crispy Deep Dive on Flee Mortals someday! My co-GM and I use Flee Mortals, Forge of Foes, and Conflux Creatures a lot!

I actually have a bit of a milestone combat coming up in the game I’m running and am a little worried it’ll be too easy/not engaging enough for my players and this has given me some ideas. Thanks, Crispy!

Actually I would enjoy MORE combat talk, please. These tips were great!

This is very eye-opening, thanks Crispy!

6 minute and 36 views? You are doing great lad!👍

I adore Critical Role and Dimension 20 for their narratives and roleplay. I’m a story-focused person, and I’m very interested in rules-lite systems as well. But one thing apart from the amazing storytelling that makes those shows great is the engagement, creativity, and dynamism of everyone in combat. And I’m not even saying they’re combat experts! They mess up, make wrong calls, and are sub-optimal a lot (not all the time, I’m not shitting on them, just making a point). What I’m so envious of is the engagement they all have in the combat. They are all feeling the stakes, invested, and excited to use their abilities. Not just for narrative reasons, but mechanically. I want that. It looks like so much fun! I can’t force my players to feel the way those players feel, but at the very least I can try to set up the playing field for it. I find that as a DM I switch up what I’m working on improving until I’m satisfied, and then move on to the next thing. Currently I want to be better at engaging combat, and this video is a great help. Thanks, Crispy!

When you mentioned about how the players can't really do anything against the dragons breath beyond roll to see if they dodge.... what about a homebrew rule where you can use your reaction, as a reaction? Allow the players to RP what they would do in the situation, and treat it like how some give inspiration for good RP. You could either literally give them inspiration/advantage/disadvantage on the roll based on what they come up with. Or, to keep it all hidden from from them, you could raise or lower the skill check for success/failure.

I think a neat way to get players to RP during combat is to try and get players emotionally invested into the fight. There's a HUGE reason why a lot of fights from the Yakuza series are so memorable and its because of the emotional investment on top of the awesome fight choreography during the QTEs and banger music.

Narrative X Combat!

Wait, people don't RP during combat???

@YuainLucky

2 ай бұрын

I really can't picture that. I always RP a bit even if there's not much to be said. I always describe what my character does or what the enemies and NPCs do.

Narrative x mechanics!

My current 8 Dex forge cleric feels very targeted by thus video n_n TBH, 5e rewards Dex enough, you don't need to add more on top of a stat that most characters don't have under 14 unless they're trying something specific.

Hard agree on needing mechanics to spice up fights. Far too often I see some nerd hear "add narrative" and take that advice at face value, just to get frustrated when their big boss who talks a big game just goes down in two turns. Or, worse, get padded out with 1000 hit points so the players just face a non-threat that just won't die for 5 hours.

"Isn't that scripting?" you can have a script to read from during combat without it being scripted combat. You just read lines as they apply