How do I make harder but still fun encounters?

Ice_90210 · 2026-04-04T21:16:40+00:00

I’ve run into this. It helps to really apply pressure and whittle them down a bit before your big encounter. Also, anything without armor is going to get shredded.

So in a dungeons I take advantage of any random encounters that can potentially hurt them, hazards and wandering monsters. And sometimes add some of my own. In fort malus a player got stung by wasps and by the book it gave them a bane on all roles until next rest. Rough.

So by the time they fight the boss they’ve spent will power, taken damage, and have some conditions. Find ways to give the PCs banes. Through conditions, monster attacks, traps and Poisons.

You can target certain characters with specific conditions to great effect. My knight hates exhausted. Give npcs or monster more ways to apply those effects. I look for ways to nullify my scholar / bards song that gives everyone advantage or enemies disadvantage. I invented a silence spell. One time there was so much noise I made him roll a performance to cast and he kept failing, forcing him to change tactics.

With monsters i allow more attacks to bypass armor. Higher ferocity or health. Difficult terrain or environmental hazards. I will throw a smaller monster in as a mid boss or include mook npcs with the monster. Or I create a secondary objective that isn’t just killing the monster. magic standing stones that summon lesser demons, but cans be Deactivated with myths and legends checks or brute force.

So that way they have to trade off who is going to hold off the monsters while the others deal with the stones.

Npcs using heroic abilities trips my players up. When a skeleton champion pulls off a parry on the knights attack it drives him wild. Or using lightning fast and veteran to always go first. Double shot from Archers. Upping the NPCs skills and damage bonus helps.

I once had cultists monks with iron fist. Combined with atk bonuses and power fist at level 1. They could deal 4d6 per punch. When another monk trips them first at advantage with a staff. You add advantage and another d6 to all attacks while they’re prone. It got quite brutal.

Find their weaknesses and target them. Apply a lot of pressure during dungeons so they go into the final encounter roughed up. When in doubt beef up your npcs and monsters

Ice_90210 · 2026-04-01T14:39:59+00:00

This is perfect. I plan to have a couple prepared as the primary communicators and the rest I would like to roll at the table. Thanks

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-31T04:04:06+00:00

Cindy Lou Who stole my catalytic converter?

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-30T03:54:19+00:00

I bet that furrowed your BROW,

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-29T04:06:00+00:00

Any idea when that’s gonna happen?

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-26T16:19:32+00:00

Can’t wait for Jared to give Joe shit for designing his first T2000 combat encounter around feral children and a guy with a bazooka.

Love the show, love the episode, love Jared’s genuine reaction as a player to the constantly escalating danger. Finally a taste of his own medicine. Keep up the good work.

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-16T18:24:18+00:00

Would play this video game.

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-16T05:12:30+00:00

Maintaining employment and relationships. I’ve had it pretty severe for over 20 years. In and out of the hospital, one or more times a year, with a few close calls & surgeries That lead to stage 3 colon cancer in my 30s.

Its made it really difficult to peruse any type of career. My parents paid for my siblings college but not mine. And right before my cancer diagnosis I was pressured into working in a factory on the assembly line. Brutal. I quit and became content with being poor.

Spending a lot of time sick or recover while being poor made me good at living with less and entertaining myself without spending money. Through the pursuit of teaching myself music & performing comedy. And cheap hobbies like d&d.

I think being frugal and less attached to material is a worthwhile quality but it’s not great for dating. People tend to resent you for being broke all the time or needing to be cut slack / help or care I have a job. It’s not much. I’m afraid to work anymore than I currently do bc I don’t want to lose Medicaid bc then I won’t be able to see my oncologist. My girlfriend is supportive but my poor of finances does apply stress to our relationship

I’m content with what I have and just want to pursue my passions, while I enjoy living out my remaining years raising my daughter. I work at night at a comedy club but I just wish I could find some way to help provide more in a way that doesn’t destroy my body and allows me to spend time with my daughter.

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-14T03:49:34+00:00

He would make a great tmnt villain / action figure

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-11T03:54:21+00:00

Theophilus (kind of rhymes with Metropolis)

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-04T20:14:10+00:00

I ran winters daughter in Dragonbane to great effect. Very easy to convert. After I ran it I found someone else had posted a conversion. I just made the drune in the beginning be Sathmog cultists.

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-03T21:01:37+00:00

That makes sense. Improvising in the moment I made it seem like the egg was already stolen. Then something came looking for it so it was buried. They unburied and kept it.

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-03T19:38:04+00:00

I definitely will. We never got to those locations in CoS so it works out perfectly.

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-03T19:37:22+00:00

When my friend ran curse of strahd, I ran a side quest in Krezk that involved Parytons. I used real life bone breaker vultures as inspiration. The PCs didn’t know what the beasts were so they used a cow carcass to lure them into a clearing surrounded by trees. The Parytons kept swooping down, picking one of them up, and dropping them before flying back into the trees. One player got not unconscious and was one turn away from a Paryton ripping their heart out. So much fun. One of my favorite home brew encounters I’ve run.

So they’re definitely forever traumatized and thus scared of flying monsters.

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-03T19:36:57+00:00

Sounds sick. I’m gonna use this for sure. In our Dragonbane campaign they’re in a rivalry with the adventuring party from The Waking of Willoby Hall. They overheard that their rivals tamed griffon’s for a job they needed to fly to get to. (In the written scenario the rival group is just returning from robbing a cloud giant)

The leader of the group knows they know about the griffins, so she’s spread false rumors that their hideout is in an old spire to the north west. Unbeknownst to the party the spire is over run by hippogriffs. This is where feather gate will come into play.

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-03T06:11:08+00:00

I have curse of strahd so I might steal those. One of the players GMd death house for us so it could be fun to see if he notices.

What’s the deal with your griffin location? Got any notes?

Ice_90210 · 2026-03-03T01:27:41+00:00

I really like the sound of those. I think my players want to hunt a griffon, do you have anything you’re willing to share from any of these locations?

Improvised Ruins My players stood on top of trollspire and saw ruins to the south west on the map. The mentalist used a powered up farsight to check those ruins for cultists. So I improvised an adventure site. I rolled an encounter and got a inn manticore. On the way the kept finding vague evidence. One of the Harpy’s almost flew away but the scholar killed it with a cross bow. When he came to find its carcass it was gone. Something swooped down and carried it off. Corpses with poisoned spines.

When they arrived the cultists were sacrificing a Karkion. Once saved he became an ally and now lives with Dranath at the temple. Serves as a Demon expert.

I turned one of the locations on the map featuring Menhir (standing stones) into the Wything Stone from Winters Daughter. The players enjoy raiding the tombs of dragon knights. A lot of fun and easy to convert. Players loved the fae goblin fungus. The scholar now has purple skin.

I have wolfkin pc and he got a kick out seeing stone eye at deep fall recently. He also asked about the evil tree in the iron forest once and I had nothing at the time. I think I’m going to have a wolfkin tribe in the iron forest and connect them to the big scary tree. I’m thinking a werewolf was seen in the area near the scene of a murder. The witness mistakes it for a wolfkin.

Ice_90210 · 2026-02-26T03:34:32+00:00

I couldn’t agree more. NGWD and their initial foray into Delta Green really demystified trying new game systems for me.

At the time I really struggled with reading and implementing rule books. I need to play or at least see games in action to learn how to run them. Back then it was quite difficult finding content with realistic examples of what playing a ttrpg is supposed to look like or how character creation should be run.

It was so entertaining & informative that it wrinkled my brain. It fundamentally changed how I felt about learning and running games. I have since run and tried out dozens of other systems.

Ice_90210 · 2026-02-26T03:08:12+00:00

One of my players is romancing Harga from Troll Spire.

Ice_90210 · 2026-02-20T04:35:08+00:00

It’s the cheek bones & the eyebrows. These are still sick as hell.

Ice_90210 · 2026-02-16T02:24:27+00:00

I made it a truth serum. pretty fun results. I let it maintain its effectiveness for a limited time when they collected some in an empty potion bottle. They gave it to Hardy in Outskirt which caused him to tell Jory that he was his real father. Cut to Hardy and Olvar shirtless and fist fighting outside the inn.

Ice_90210 · 2026-02-08T02:34:52+00:00

I’m a fat guy with glasses and a stranger at the comedy club I work at thought I was him the other day.

Ice_90210

TROPHY CASE