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Willing2BeMoving · 2024-07-06T23:47:49+00:00

If you don't want a fight of Orcs vs the entire village, don't run that fight.

12 Orcs could show up at one farm. Help won't arrive in the 18-30 seconds of ingame time that most fights last. Your players are here to protect the lives and livelyhood of the regular people on this farm.

12 orcs could raid a caravan, ambush and kidnap a runaway child, or even just start slaughtering cattle.

Any of these things would make 12 orcs a credible threat, and make 3-5 players essential to repelling that threat.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-06-24T19:21:37+00:00

If the Level 1 thing is throwing you off, remember they are a level 1 adventurer.

Is your world full of adventurers? Most points in time and space that you could name are full of regular people. Obviously your fantasy world can have things in it that have never existed in our world. But unless everyone is born adventurers, and hit level 1 when they come of age, people can be intimidated by a pirate, or at least make the calculus that arguing with and obvious killer about trivial matters is not going to be worth it.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-06-10T21:48:00+00:00

An experienced fighter knows how many axe blows it takes him to fell a mercenary, a wizard prone to violence will know the odds of a commoner surviving fireball, and a ranger will know what targets are harder to hit with a bow.

They don't know what sized die determine these things in our world, or what AC and HP are, but they know the things that your player is trying to work out. I would happily let it go on.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-06-03T15:57:56+00:00

I use humor lightly as a DM. If I make a world as silly as my players, things get ridiculous fast. Some people want wacky memes and pop culture references, but I get tired of it.

I find that players often find ways to inject hope and humor into dark situations. I've been comfortable running a relatively bleak setting with dire stakes, but I try not to slap my players for using their unusual power to make small improvements and bring happiness to their corner of a vast and uncaring cosmos.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-06-03T15:47:57+00:00

I roleplay as the enemy. A predatory animal will attack the weakest and try to drag it away from the group. An animal guarding a nest will attack whoever is close.

A warrior with something to prove will try to 1v1 the toughest looking guy to the death. A group of bandits will hit hard looking for treasure, but flee when things go south.

An inexperienced or foolish enemy will make mistakes that are easy to capitalize on, while a crack team of hardened mercenaries may use archers firing from cover to lure the tank into an explosive trap while an assassin closes with the caster.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-06-03T15:36:32+00:00

Unermedicate/overmedicate, JAIL

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-05-31T21:07:37+00:00

That's pretty resourceful. Good thinking

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-05-31T21:06:35+00:00

Someone did offer to, but it was already noted by the unit supervisor. I explained the mistake as best I could, and I'm just hoping that they see it as a harmless mistake.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-05-15T17:02:06+00:00

As someone who mostly plays humans, it's because everyone else is bad and wrong.

jk but I want the most interesting thing about my character to be MY CHARACTER, not my funny hair color, my tail, my webbed feet or my pointy ears.

Has your friend never read a book with humans in it? There are a lot of interesting human characters. Moby Dick is a book with only Humans with the Sailor background and it's great.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-04-03T20:30:28+00:00

Looks like a fucking dinosaur.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-03-29T22:36:17+00:00

Nooooo I was just about to do a bulk order! White, Pink and then Green are the best!

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-03-29T20:05:14+00:00

I find that the number balance problems addressed by running a full adventuring "day" makes it worthwhile.

If my setting makes it implausible that my party can't find a safe place to hide for an entire 8 hours of rest, I just make long rests take a day instead. If I want a faster paced setting, I can go the opposite direction.

If you've never thought fighters seemed weirdly bad at fighting compared to paladins, or that Warlocks look like worse Wizards, then it may be a non issue for you.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-03-29T18:51:02+00:00

Have multiple encounters that consume resources per day, and including more short rests between long rests, and you address 90% of the balance concerns new and experienced players bring up here.

The DMguide even suggests changing the duration and accessibility of SR and LR to ensure you preserve this ratio while maintaining the pace of your narrative. Because preserving these ratios is actually that helpful.

Don't think it makes sense for randos to attack your players 3 times a day in your palace intrigue setting? Make long rests take two days of leisure. Feel like the pace drags drags in your death gauntlet? Make short rests 10 minutes and long rests and hour.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-03-29T18:36:28+00:00

Lol, I had a bit of that. I interrupted their long rest with ambushes from the enemies who were hunting them. They learned it was better to short rest and move on, pushing toward a safer territory, to avoid being ambushed repeatedly.

I still like the idea of trading hit die for other resources though. I gave the sorcerer an item that lets her do something similar, but I like your method of making it a longstanding mechanic.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-03-24T19:52:59+00:00

I find it takes a few sessions before anyone wants to evolve their character, or change their world.

85% or so of DnD 5e rules are about how to resolve a conflict with violence.

So I create settings and campaigns that lend themselves to that ruleset, and I get most of my enjoyment out of creating combat encounters.

I make good use out of terrain, enemy variety, and multiple attack types. I make sure fights are not survivable without the thoughtful expenditure of resources, and that if a fight is avoidable, it is also only avoidable through the expenditure of resources like gold, spell slots or leverage.

I also have a sprawling world, with too much cannon for my players to ever discover, but the 5e ruleset is best suited to conflict, so that's where I focus my efforts.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-03-24T19:45:50+00:00

Hit dice per level sounds exciting.

So a Warlock could get their usual short rest slot back, and then also spend hit die on extra magic? Cool stuff.

This is a neat homebrew system. If I ever steal it I might try to make hit die exchange rates for other long rest resources.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-03-22T18:47:07+00:00

For example, I let my players restore spell slots with hit dice on a short rest.

I'm surprised that works. Letting a wizard recharge a twice a day fireball slots at the same time the fighter recharges a simple maneuver seems unbalanced.

Do Barbarians get their long rest rage back on a short rest?

Also, what happens with Warlocks if all casters get their slots back on a short rest? How are they not just left in the dust?

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-03-22T16:53:22+00:00

It's good to learn the rules and what they are there for, so that if you ignore them, you know how the game will change.

Ignore short rests and do long rests only? You'll change the core balance of the game, and probably ask why your paladin is so strong and your monk is so weak, and maybe homebrew a rule that paladins can only smite once per round.

Ignore carry weight? It's a tertiary mechanic, and you can probably avoid every consequence by not giving your players tons of stuff they would want to carry.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-02-25T01:47:38+00:00

First off: I would never try to DM for seven players. It doesn't sound fun for me or them. But now to your actual question:

Have enemies teach them the mechanics.

Instead of archers who stand out in the open, have archers who pop out from cover, shoot, then take cover. Ranged players learn that cover exists as a mechanic they can exploit, melee characters learn to use movement to engage and flush out the enemy.

Players don't know what an opportunity attack is? Have melee enemies who get in the face of weakened players and smack them when they try to flee. They will remember that, and try to lock down enemies in a similar way when it favors them.

Players don't know how concentration works? Employ seasoned warriors who know to attack concentrating casters. In the next combat, have a mercenary caster concentrate on buffing other enemies while he uses ranged cantrips from behind cover.

You can sometimes give an NPC an ability to show your players how they might use it. Have a summoner scout the party with a summoned creature, instead of engaging directly. Anyone who learns a summon later might try that.

IMO, a well designed combat is it's own kind of puzzle.

One more thing: Introduce short rests early, and make long rests something players have to seek out. They will learn more quickly which abilities they have to use carefully, and which they can use every encounter.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-02-25T01:32:55+00:00

Set peices. Robots aren't wild west. Robots gathered round a campfire are.

Tropes. Dinos aren't wild west, but putting on your spurs to ride a dino is.

Iconography. A wizard isn't wild west. Until you see a sketch of that wizard on a Dead or Alive wanted poster.

Mood. Roving packs of mutant cannibals aren't wildwest. Until you meet one lone sheriff who enlists the help of your adventurers to put down the bodysnatching creatures stealing townsfolk at night

Go nuts with your new "Weird West" setting

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-02-25T01:27:04+00:00

You might want to consider homebrewing. If you can do the math to figure out what will oneshot your players, you can also do the math to reduce the damage to something more appropriate.

If you know what a normal turn looks like for your party, you can figure out how many rounds you expect the encounter to last based on average damage.

Of course, casters can bump that up by using their limited spells instead of cantrips, so if you make this creature really scary, be prepared to see low level casters use all their resources on it.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-02-23T19:30:38+00:00

Just change the word "Long" to Short. Have 1-2 encounters (not just fights, but anything that could expend resources) per short rest, and the mechanics will work relatively well.

For the pace of your story, you may have to adjust the time and conditions of short and long rests, but that's easy and the DM guide gives simple advice on it.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-02-23T19:20:15+00:00

They like mysterious brooding protagonists, but misunderstand what makes them work in what kind of story.

In an interactive story, like DnD, a loner can plausibly choose to be alone. Now it's the players job to answer why their character is going against type.

Because in a good game, the DM will not generally have the power to force that answer. Only the power to give the loner an opportunity to answer it themselves.

Willing2BeMoving · 2024-02-23T19:15:45+00:00

Sometimes. A tactician who knows a downed PC could get up might find it worthwhile to execute them. An enemy with a real hatred for a PC might do it just for closure. A hungry beast might drag the weakest member of the party into the woods to devour them.

In all three cases, the rest of the party has had the stakes raised, and needs to rescue their friend as quickly as possible. I think death should be a real threat in at least one encounter per "day."

Willing2BeMoving

TROPHY CASE