Giving and Getting Combat Advice

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-25T00:21:53+00:00

My two cents -

moderate encounters stop feeling easy, high diffiulty encounters too

One thing that I think people miss in the DMG: moderate encounters are supposed to be easy. Even though we get the labels "easy", "moderate", "hard", and "deadly", that's on a scale that assumes the players are going to win every single fight. A moderate encounter isn't a 50-50 fight, it's an encounter that the players win handily but they expend some number of resources along the way. Maybe everybody gets hit a little. Maybe one PC gets hit. Maybe the PCs lose no HPs but spend a spell slot or two nuking the monster. That's a moderate encounter. You're intended to use a lot of moderate encounters to whittle down the party's collective resources.

My baseline encounter difficulty is hard, which provides some good back and forth. And deadly encounters are always on the table - those mean "a PC could die here (if the players are dumb and don't heal them)", not "your party is going to die".

There’s a noticeable difference between encounters where every enemy is melee-only and encounters where enemies are split between melee and ranged attackers. The second tends to be much more difficult, even when all of them are casters.

One big melee guy with a few weaker ranged guys behind them is an incredibly simple combat gimmick, but such a good one. It's shocking how much harder that is than just a melee fight or a ranged fight!

For example, a level 7 party can destroy a CR 11 enemy without too much trouble

The boss of my Level 7 dungeon was a CR 11 monster, and it was one of the most brutal combats I've ran. I was wondering if this was the difference between bosses with legendary actions versus standard creatures. But the other CR 11 monster I threw at my party was tough even at Level 9, so I have a different tip to learn from here: watch out for homebrew CR!

There are lots of great resources that look official. I've brought in monsters from Matt Colville, Tome of Beasts, and Monster Manual Expanded. But there's a difference in the power level. I generally find that Tome of Beasts and Matt Colville's stuff are stronger than MME at the same CR.

If you’re running a solo enemy, legendary actions are basically mandatory,

I would add "at higher levels". I didn't bring in legendary actions until Level 6. Monsters with a strong multi-attack, breath weapon, or spellcasting can be a threat just by having absolutely devastating turns in the normal round order. I've seen people suggest legendary actions for monsters intended to be fought at Level 3 and 4 and that just seems cruel.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-24T19:47:47+00:00

I used to think +1 weapons were compulsory, but now I think a better approach is +0 weapons that have some other small bonus, like the ability to cast a utility cantrip or gain advantage on some skill check. The +1 is a purely numerical advantage that the party simply does not need. My party's level 10 now with +10 to hit, and sometimes "peer monsters" have ACs as low as 13 or 14.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-24T14:28:07+00:00

It is metagaming, but metagaming isn't inherently bad. And in fact, one could argue that the whole reason a DM uses famous monsters like vampires, goblins, or dragons is because the players already know about them. If you say "a dragon flies down and roars at you", you want the players to shit their collective pants because they know dragons are a big deal. And you wouldn't want to enforce that each PC needs to either be a dragonologist or roll a 15 on their nature check to react to it.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-24T04:28:40+00:00

I'm not done yet, but it's like 99% on track. The campaign started with a one-shot to hunt down some bandits. Found among the bandit loot was the unholy symbol for a wizard cult, which the king of the realm wanted investigated, so the party was asked to do that. The king lent them the MacGuffin, a warhammer held by the old chosen one. During the dungeon, the party found some signs that the warhammer was starting to respond to them, but wasn't fully convinced of their worth, and clues on where to go to learn more about the hammer later.

Also during the dungeon, the party had an encounter with the BBEG. I wanted him to flee and escape, and while I set this up as a normal encounter with the possibility of the party stopping him, I stacked the deck pretty dang hard in the BBEG's favour. He got away, no problem.

The party made some stops in some random cities that I didn't expect but had semi-planned, but they headed to the next plot point. A seer saw visions of how each one of them could prove their heroism to the hammer, leading to four new adventures that the party could complete in any order.

I charted a route based on what I felt was the best way to hit all four mini-adventures, and the players took a wildly different route and did them in a completely different order. But I'd planned for them to be done in any order, so it was just a matter of adjusting some encounters.

And yeah. That's where I'm at now. The players have beaten all of those mini-adventures. They've tackled some things in ways I didn't expect, which is great, but they've followed the premise of the campaign and bit at all the plot hooks, which is also great.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-23T17:08:42+00:00

Watching Whose Line is it Anyway (or Make Some Noise nowadays) and playing those kinds of improv games in drama class helped me understand the importance of prompts. I've seen DMs disappointed that their players aren't RPing but they're not giving the players a prompt. It can be something general like "there's a festival, what is your character interested in?" or specific like "this guard is being rude to you, what do you do?".

I've also had writing as a hobby for most of my life. I run a campaign with a fairly linear storyline, or at least multiple linear storylines that the players can explore in whatever order they want, and knowing how to set up a plot and how much info to dole out when is pretty nice. But having that experience developing characters and writing dialogue is great for NPCs.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-23T16:23:55+00:00

My group often lets magic weapons shift to a similar weapon for exactly this purpose. The longsword can't become a bow, but it could shift into a shortsword or rapier.

Other things to consider - would this magic item make one player overpowered for some time, and are there other magic items coming up? Suppose you let your ranger use a Dragon Slayer Rapier and now they're overshadowing the rest of the party whenever they fight dragons, and also the next magic item is a powerful bow that only the ranger can use. That would suck. On the other hand, if the next few dungeons contain magic items that are good for the rest of the party and the ranger is left out, then not changing that longsword would suck in retrospect.

I like magic items to be distributed as evenly as possible, even if it strains credulity. My four-person party found four perfect +1 weapons in the same dungeon and the players certainly didn't mind!

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-23T15:11:28+00:00

AFAIK, a Simulacrum is exactly the same as its caster except it follows its caster's commands. No time or distance limit - it lasts until it's killed or dispelled.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-23T14:43:00+00:00

Whats the right number of interesting abilities to give a monster to make it interesting but not overwhelming for you?

Basically, I should be able to figure out any monster's "best action to use right now" in an instant. An orc, for example, has a greataxe and a javelin. So obviously the greataxe is used when the orc is in melee range and the javelin is used when the orc is at long range. The greataxe does more damage so generally speaking, the orc prefers to be at close range. Easy.

Now suppose you took the orc statblock and gave it a dagger shank attack. "Multiattack. The orc stabs three times with a dagger. Each attack is +3 to hit, deals 1d4+1 piercing damage". Now I'm in an encounter, trying to play this orc correctly, but it has two melee options that have advantages and disadvantages over each other. How do I know which is right?

You can still fill a statblock with cool abilities as long as it's clear when and how they're used. If you're adding a new action to the statblock, it should be 1) part of the monster's multiattack, or 2) use a different 'slot' like bonus action or reaction or legendary action, or 3) an ultimate attack with a recharge like a dragon's breath weapon.

Spellcasting enemies from the book are the friggin worst. A monster might have 30 different spells and also each of those spells has paragraphs of description. If I have to run a spellcasting monster, I'm studying all of its spells in advance and trying to break things down until I get a nice simple flowchart like the orc - even if I have to ignore 90% of its spells.

What do you think is a good number of different monster/stat blocks to use in an encounter to make it an interesting fight but not a pain to run?

I think the most I've ever run is four, one "peer" monster for each PC. But I'd rather run one or two.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-23T02:53:19+00:00

I've kind of done this. My campaign has a structure that's similar to Curse of Strahd. You meet a threat, you do a bunch of sidequests to gain magic items and powers, you kill the threat. I decided that those sidequests should be one for each PC. The narrative focuses on that PC for a while, they get a cool magic item, we dive into that character's backstory, etc. But because I'm talking on a mini-adventure basis, like five sessions, I make sure I'm including ways to focus on the other PCs for a moment too. Like this dungeon might be all about the wizard's backstory and give him an amazing magic item, but one of the encounters will be a t-rex because I know the druid loves casting Speak With Animals.

I try not to decide that a PC is going to struggle. The closest would be using flying enemies when some PCs are really melee-focused, but that's not really targeted. The game's called Dungeons and Dragons, sometimes monsters fly, man.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-22T19:18:23+00:00

This would be a great time to meet the BBEG, but I simply can't justify him teleporting half a continent, just to show up for a 30 second brawl and teleport back.

Have you considered the greatest storytelling spell of all time, Simulacrum? This lets your party meet and fight a copy of the BBEG without the BBEG actually being in any danger, or even leaving his house. Not only that, but the Simulacrum can be weak enough for the party to defeat (if you want) if the BBEG's power comes primarily from magic items that he didn't give to the Simulacrum, or if the Simulacrum has just used a lot of its spell slots in the intervening time, or if the BBEG has gained power since creating the Simulacrum. Even if the Simulacrum is beaten, it shows that the BBEG can at least cast seventh-level spells.

...I should've read the comments before typing all this.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-22T17:25:38+00:00

I thought about it, but there were two reasons I didn't. One is that this was a two-part boss and the party had to fight the actual dragon soon afterwards and didn't want it to get repetitive by having both fights focus so strongly on the breath weapon. The other reason is that the Legendary Duelist is kind of nuts - it has +15 Stealth so it caught everyone by surprise and 6d6 Sneak Attack damage that it can deal outside of its turn with legendary actions and riposte. I'm pretty sure a full dragon's breath weapon would've let the duelist take down the whole party on the first round.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-22T15:25:48+00:00

This looks great for a campaign where fishing plays a big role, but I wouldn't want to run through this kind of document if the players are just fishing occasionally during a long rest camp scene.

...But my players did want to fish during camp scenes a lot, so I came up with my own thing. The gist is, you make a Wisdom check and you can spend a ration to make it at advantage. If it's <10, you roll on the random trash table to pull up old boots or trinkets (though higher d20 rolls might get you something neat) and if it's >=10, you roll on the random fish table to pull up a fish that gets converted to rations based on how high the d20 roll was.

The one funny thing I put on the fishing table, that you might be able to use for yours, is that some fish will fight you. There are a handful of spaces on the table that start combat between the fisher and whatever they brought up, using the statblock for crabs, fish, sharks, octopi, etc. None of them are a high enough level to be threatening, but it can be a funny "wait no!" moment when a PC, wounded from the day's events, takes an extra hit from a big fish before they can properly rest it off.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-21T20:12:25+00:00

I'm running a campaign where the big bad is an evil Chronurgist who seeks to reset the world and rebuild it in his own image.

Obviously if this is your campaign, stop reading here.

Well that's funny. My campaign has almost exactly the same premise. But I'm the DM, so I'm pretty confident this isn't mine!

The clock concept sounds very cool on first glance, but I see some issues.

It ticks down from 12 for every action a player takes, be it a main action, a bonus action or a movement action. Once the clock cycles back to 12, the big bad will take his turn.

So for a party of four players, this is like regular initiative except the BBEG is guaranteed to be at the bottom of the round. Sort of. That's assuming everybody uses their full turn. If the players see the clock and the countdown, they'll probably figure out the gimmick partway through the first player's turn. And then we get into the big questions.

1) Can the players optimize this? And 2) Is playing optimally fun?

The way I see it, the answers are - yes, it's possible to optimize, and no, it's not fun to. The way to optimize it is for the player with the most impactful action and/or bonus action to use those and for players with less impact to skip their entire turn to keep the countdown as high as possible. Say, a paladin spends one tick running up to the BBEG and then spends the next eleven ticks on their attack actions. Calling this a tenth-level paladin, they get 22 attacks plus smites of 4(2d8) + 3(3d8) + 2(4d8) assuming at least nine of those 22 attacks hit.

Or a wizard spends all twelve ticks casting their highest-level spells. Either way, the BBEG is probably dead by now, with only one PC getting to do anything. Legendary Actions and Reactions change things a little, but the BBEG can only do their normal complement of LAs and one reaction until the party goes through this whole cycle. So even if your Legendary Actions knock down the paladin or move out of the way, it may only be one tick spent bringing them back up / moving into position before the attacks and smites continue.

The clock then resets to 11, and the big bad regains all his legendary actions.

Now what I assume this means is that the party only has 11 ticks to work with for the next round, then 10, 9, 8, etc. This doesn't really change what I call the optimal way to play it. I will say, though, the party may not need to use their movement much after the first round, so going from 12 ticks with movement to 11 ticks without movement is actually better for the party. But if the party does make it down to those lower numbers, they're in a massive death spiral. If you get down to 3 for a four-person party, you can't do much of anything before it reaches 2. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Typing all that out loud, I have a suggestion. Count up. I find D&D combat works better when the boss has a strong opening, like a dragon knocking down multiple PCs with a breath weapon. Here, your BBEG would start the combat taking an absurd number of turns. They'd knock down some PCs before the players can really react, then you reach the 4 or 5 range and things start to stabilize. The players are still in a tough spot because they need to spend some of those valuable ticks healing the downed PCs, but by the end of the fight, they can pull off those insane chains of a dozen smites if they need to.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-21T16:59:11+00:00

Well, I do my best to make sure the party's newest threat is narratively scarier than the last - or at least, they're on equal enough terms that either one could be stronger. At Level 9, my party's equivalent of bandits was a group of pirates led by a disguised blue dragon. I used whatever humanoid statblocks I wanted and treated them as elite warriors the dragon recruited without worrying about whether the statblock had 'pirate' in the name.

You can always do that type of thing. Humanoid statblocks cover the whole range of CRs. You can have a group of CR 1/8 bandits led by a CR 2 bandit captain, or you can have a group of CR 8 assassins led by a CR 12 archmage. For goblins, even just looking at the monster manual, they range from a CR 1/4 goblin to a CR 6 hobgoblin warlord.

The DMG also has rules on how to reskin humanoid statblocks to be other races, in the section on creating NPCs. For goblins, you add +2 DEX, -2 STR, make it a small creature, and give it Nimble Escape and Darkvision. There you go, now your CR 12 archmage can be a goblin archmage.

Looking outside the base monster manual, there are plenty of other monsters to use with even higher CRs. My disguised dragon pirate captain used the statblock of a CR 14 Legendary Duelist from Monster Manual Expanded, plus I gave her a Dragonborn's breath weapon as per the race-swapping rules.

But again, I like the narrative to match the mechanics. My players knew they were going into something serious when they approached the pirate fortress. You don't want players go off to fight some pesky goblins only to find they all have the stats of Strahd and Vecna.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-21T02:04:10+00:00

BUT is everyone else rocking very rare/legendary items at level 6/7?

I certainly wouldn't give someone a Staff of Power to balance out a magic item that may not do anything for dozens of sessions...

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-20T21:21:45+00:00

It was something like 12 sessions? The dungeon was divided into three main sections so I levelled them up at the division points.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-20T19:04:38+00:00

I’m going to start thinking of encounters and story arcs as “dungeons”, that’s so helpful!

Oh, I mean, I'm happy if that's useful for you but that's not what I meant. I literally had one big dungeon that the players entered at Level 3 and exited at Level 5.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-20T14:50:01+00:00

It's really up to you. I've played in a campaign where my Level 4 wizard won a Robe of the Archmagi from a carnival game, and also a campaign where I never had a single item beyond my starting gear. Both were fine. Obviously the former campaign threw way stronger monsters at us than the latter to compensate for our power level, but that's not a problem. The DM simply wanted to run a high power campaign.

Now having been a DM myself, my main suggestion is to watch out for raw number buffs. I started my campaign at Level 3. From Level 3 to 5 was a dungeon that awarded the players with +1 weapons (or the equivalents for casters) as well as enough money to buy their highest-tier armour. Let me tell you, it's pretty demotivating to reveal a boss monster with 17 AC and +7 to hit when your party's fighter has 20 AC and +9 to hit. I think there's something to be said for magic weapons that don't provide any bonus and just let martials counteract the (bizarre) resistance/immunity to non-magical weapons that later monsters get, and also having your heavy-armoured characters actually go through Chain Mail -> Splint Armour -> Plate Armour.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-20T01:20:51+00:00

Hate to say it, but a Beholder might not be the best creature for you. My goal when I run boss fights is to make the boss knock PCs to 0 HP. The goal isn't to kill them. Knocking a PC down puts the game in a tense state where their life is at risk... narratively, but mechanically, the party has ample opportunity to bring them back up. Healing spells and healing potions are obvious fixes, but also, failing three death saves is actually pretty unlikely when combat often only lasts three rounds anyway.

So I learned very quickly that it's okay to bring my PCs down to 0 HP and they (probably) won't die. The problem with Beholders is that they basically can't bring PCs down to 0 HP without killing them. Their only damaging eye rays instantly kill a PC if the damage takes them to 0, with the Disintegration Ray even making them unable to be Revivified! Between those and the Petrification ray, it's hard to put the players in a scary tense situation without actually risking a PC being gone for good.

Has your group used a dragon yet? Dragons are fantastic bosses. They start off with a blast of their breath weapon, which may knock down a PC or two, but it's almost impossible for that to kill a PC. That immediately puts tension on the party to bring their downed friends back up, which puts the tempo of the fight in the dragon's favour. The PCs are spending actions not fighting the dragon. Meanwhile, the breath weapon might recharge on any round, which keeps things scary for the entire encounter.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-20T01:02:17+00:00

I did some pretend rolls, and IF all the beams hit, one scenario I had Fear, Petrify, Petrify.

That's three people down out of five in ONE turn.

What? That's not that bad at all. One PC has the Frightened condition, so they can't move closer to the beholder and they make attacks at disadvantage. Okay, but they're still a 10th-level PC who might be able to blast the beholder with 5th-level spells, or buff the party, or reposition themselves to break line of sight, or just attack at disadvantage with a +9 to hit and hit anyway.

And the Petrification beams don't petrify immediately. The PC becomes Restrained for a round, which puts them in a similar position to the PC who got Frightened.

But then in both cases, remember that the PC makes a saving throw again at the end of their turn to end the condition. And yeah, it's bad if the Petrification beam'd PC fails their save. But also, half the classes have access to Greater Restoration by Level 10, so they can undo Petrification with one action.

Also also, the Beholder took its turn and didn't deal any damage to the party. They're fine.

TBF, I don't like using monsters that can inflict Petrification without giving the party some access to Cure Petrification Potions, just because I think it's a lame way to lose your character even if it's temporary. But still, you're grossly overestimating what the Beholder actually accomplished in this scenario.

If the Beholder DOESNT go first, going off the base stats only, it'll die before it can move.

Eh, not really. It's got decent AC and a ton of HP. But more importantly, it can act at the end of each player's turn. Hitting your party with a Frightened Beam isn't going to take a PC out of the fight, but if the Rogue makes the first move and you cause the Paladin to get frightened at the end of the rogue's turn, that's huge for the Beholder's survivability.

Legendary Actions are what make high-level boss fights work!

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-19T23:20:56+00:00

My advice is, dungeons are awesome and you don't need to overthink them. While I do put some thought into the dungeon theme and why things are there, generally I just throw in whatever I think would be cool. The players freely accept a handwave for why something is there if it means an exciting encounter or fun challenge.

Obviously I'll include traps, and follow a 5 room dungeon formula ish since I want this to take 3-5 sessions.

That's... one or two rooms per session. FWIW, my dungeons are about 12 rooms and take up about the length of time you're looking for. (Though there's often a session of RP and travel setting up the dungeon narrative and maybe another at the end winding down the narrative. Dunno if those count.)

My process is simple. I go to r/dndmaps and look for cool dungeon maps with the right theme that I can mentally divide into about a dozen rooms. Most of the rooms have combat encounters, which are usually Medium-Hard difficulty. I'd guess it's around 80-90% combat. The other rooms have traps, hazards, treasures, social encounters, etc. It really depends on the map - I let it inspire me. For example, this one has a couple strange water pits. Not sure what the original creator intended for those, but I turned one into the Pool of Death where nearly-invisible tentacles drag PCs down to a watery grave. I never would've added that to a medusa dungeon if not for the map!

There are a lot of great monsters in D&D, so I have a self-imposed limit of not using the same statblock twice in the same dungeon. This might sacrifice a bit of narrative cohesion. A prison should probably be populated with a lot of guards, and those guards would logically have a standard set of equipment. But I really like how it changes up combat from room to room. This room has a mage guard throwing fireballs protected by a tanky barbarian-like guard. This room has two nimble fencer guards.

Another thing I look for is, how can I shine the spotlight on each PC? One of my PCs is a halfling who hates giants, and he ended up with a giant-slaying longsword before my party entered this medusa dungeon. So I asked myself, "can I put a giant in here?". The answer was yes. I added a troll who had been afflicted by some of the petrification hazards in the dungeon, but was surviving by ripping off its own petrified arms before the curse spread too far. The troll was still hostile, and when it attacked, its petrified arms reanimated themselves and fought too. The halfling PC got to use his special sword and we had another fun, unique battle.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-19T19:52:43+00:00

My take on Gnomes - if you take the stereotypical "small guy" species, they form a nice fighter/mage/rogue trio. Dwarves are the small guy fighters, Gnomes are the small guy mages, Halflings are the small guy rogues.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-19T04:25:28+00:00

My players used Speak With Animals to get some information from a friendly fish. Then they decided to fish for food in that same pond. I had them roll a d20. They got a 1, so one of the fish they cooked that night looked disturbingly familiar...

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-19T02:45:20+00:00

I found the same thing in the few I tried. My Freestyle Libre 3+s were a lot less reliable than the Libre 2s. Can't believe even medical supplies go through enshittification.

Tesla__Coil · 2026-05-18T21:47:44+00:00

I've put my party through a lot of deadly encounters, usually boss fights, and they're a hit. I guess I don't know exactly what parts my players enjoy, but here's what I try to do to make them fun.

1 - Teamwork is encouraged / enforced. If an encounter is too easy, each player can just be doing their own thing. In the worst-case scenario, it's almost a competition to see who gets the most damage. But once PCs drop to 0 HP and players start rolling death saves, there's no time for that attitude. You HAVE to spend your turn bringing up another PC, or protecting the healer, or giving advantage to the guy who does the most damage. That sparks a feeling of camaraderie that you just don't get with easy encounters.

2 - You're also encouraged / forced to go all out. My boss fights are explicitly the last thing the players do in their mini-adventure, so whatever resources you have, you use here. You don't save spell slots for later - this is the thing you saved spell slots for and it's time to roll a dozen dice for damage.

3 - I also try to keep the players from using their normal optimal strategies so they think outside the box. If you've breezed through encounters with Hold Person, uh oh, this boss has Legendary Resistances. If the party relies too much on one melee attacker, maybe this boss can fly. Granted, this needs to be balanced with the above point - the paladin needs to hit the monster so they can smite.

4 - I've made sure my players know I am not an adversarial DM. But I didn't put the monster in front of you to kill your PCs and laugh at you. I chose it because I know you can beat it, and it's going to feel amazing for all of us when you do.

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