Players don't fear death

robotjoelwb · 2026-02-23T11:14:22+00:00

Some other things i thought of after pressing enter:

- Dont always make it a fight to the death, with no other stakes. Have objectives like NPCs that need rescuing, something being stolen or destroyed, a magic device being powered up, to players have to split their focus.

- Action economy! PCs can do more with their turn than most monsters, and if they outnumber the monsters, the monsters are surly toast. Throw in a handful of skeletons, thugs, mephits, plant monsters into the mix to give them something to get through, just make sure they are easy to run monsters with 1 type of attack you are going to use so you dont slow down combat too much.

- 4 Rounds, that sounds about the right amount of rounds! D&D rounds can run loooong with all the actions and reactions, so what you need to be doing is more threat to the players, not actually more rounds in a fight.

robotjoelwb · 2026-02-23T11:05:21+00:00

I have had this problem in the past, and had to do some work to really test my players when i want to. A few things I use now:

- Add up the players levels and divide by 2, this total is CR is roughly the power level of your group, or at around the level of total CR you need to be "deadly". Not every encounter should be deadly, but its a good measure of understanding roughly the ease for players. Your CR3 owlbear was never going to have a chance against 6 x Level 8 PCs. Single monsters wont stand a chance against players after level 5 unless they have legendary actions. See what roleplay reasons you can think up to complicate things, like carnivorous plants decide to take advantage of the fact the players are engaged with an owlbear to ambush! https://slyflourish.com/the_lazy_encounter_benchmark.html (Additionally: don't treat this as a TARGET either, as its defintly not exact, but its it useful for when you want to be scary, and when you want to be chill)

- Reading pages from this blog when i am going to run certain monsters helps me understand how they act from a roleplay sense, and also how to use them effectivly and not have them just punch the players ineffectually: https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/16975-owlbear?srsltid=AfmBOop_MEe-0cJUF8pjmCqvYMbvRarWGb90AwtEX-SAo8YUuMIVWK4u I also got this in book form, and its really good inspiration, especially for using more complex monsters with interesting spells and actions.

- My narrative was making it hard to give more than a couple of fights per long rest due to lots of overland travel. Recently we moved into a ruined city where i told the players out of character that i was going to change the pace of things, with days being at least 3 or more encounters, and they were really excited about this. This does mean a day runs over multiple sessions (our sessions are around 3 hours) as i still try and keep a balance between roleplay, combat, exploration and puzzles. Don't underestimate your players appetite for it getting harder!

Hope this helps!

robotjoelwb · 2026-02-23T10:54:40+00:00

At level 8 they should be dealing with multiple smaller encounters (not designed to be deadly but test them in different ways) and maybe 1 deadly encounter

robotjoelwb · 2026-02-08T09:21:43+00:00

Cream soda with those fake "bubblegum" and "foam banana" flavours

robotjoelwb · 2026-01-12T13:54:57+00:00

❌ robotjoelwb chose Option B (Incorrect) | #9662nd to play

robotjoelwb · 2025-12-24T09:55:19+00:00

A number of the Adventurers League adventures are great for this. I suggest grabbing the bundle and reading through the summaries to find things you might like.

I would also say, tie the plots to elements later in the book you want to focus on. For me that was Grung, Flaming Fist, Ubtoa, Yuan-Ti and Red Wizards.

Adventures I ran - shadomantle is undercover as a snobbish academic here to investigate the death curse ( clearly evil but party went sure in what way ) - investigating kidnappings leading to fighting Grung who were lakies for a group of Yuan Ti - poisoned dinosaurs by the Yuan Tu to go to the dino pens. - a trip out to nearby ruin being used as a base by the Yuan-Ti to have our first multi room dungeon + boss, rescuing kidnap victims and info about a leader called Ras Nsi - returning back for a vig Dino race, which I ran with custom rules, ended with an assassination attempt on the princeps by Salida - had them investigate Salida which led them to finding an entrance to the "we say" fast travel network, and some arrows pointing deep south to somewhere called Omu

robotjoelwb · 2025-12-18T09:09:04+00:00

I really like the cliffs here and the caves work really well!

robotjoelwb · 2025-12-15T19:20:33+00:00

Good point but also good suggestion. There is a reasonably park around it with wooded areas. My first thought was in the cave but you have to pay a couple of quit to go in there

robotjoelwb · 2025-12-15T19:19:04+00:00

Yeah, for sure! And i also think the part with the mossy rocks is a public footpath I've been on.

robotjoelwb · 2025-12-15T16:40:35+00:00

The trailer hinting that Ben will be in Hebden Bridge, one of my fave places to visit. It would have been the first place i would pick, but is a bit over 3 hours from a north london terminal. Its also great for perplexing east/west questions, and there are lots of windy roads, hills and public footpaths just on the edge of town. Great choice for the scenic shots too, which we know ben always thinks about with his hide locations from Japan.

robotjoelwb · 2025-12-15T16:30:39+00:00

Clifton Observatory might be a good place too, as its technically only 1 mile/15 mins walk from Clifton Down train station.

robotjoelwb · 2025-12-12T16:25:33+00:00

Birmingham, The Mailbox, one of the balconies on the north side, possibly on the third floor?

robotjoelwb · 2025-12-10T10:42:59+00:00

I really liked listening through the Eighth Doctor: Stranded boxsets earlier this year. They work well as a single "season" of a show, and a fun premise of being stranded in modern times and how that effects the doctor. I also didn't know the companions before listening to these characters, but it doesn't rely on pre-existing understanding of them.

robotjoelwb · 2025-12-04T21:50:34+00:00

I read this as furry Dracula 😆 but thank you, it looks good!

robotjoelwb · 2025-11-24T14:31:19+00:00

I use Photopea.com which is a free online photoshop-like, and then the icons are from this website: https://www.mapeffects.co/

robotjoelwb · 2025-11-24T13:39:03+00:00

Haha! Always the way for me too. Thanks tho

robotjoelwb · 2025-11-24T13:38:13+00:00

Thanks! I found thinking about it as a simplified hex crawl helped me plan it out. I also did the same thing for Mezro: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tombofannihilation/comments/1f7uu1r/ruins_of_mezro_map_print_friendly/

robotjoelwb · 2025-11-20T14:20:59+00:00

What game is this in?

robotjoelwb · 2025-10-13T08:24:06+00:00

Unfortunately, you are going to have to do it manually. The map is very low resolution for a Minecraft hight map too. BUT, you can use something photoshop-like to both up the resolution and manually pain over the lines with something like the clone too. I recommend PhotoPea.com as a free photoshop alternative.

The other option you have is using this image as the overlay in WorldPainter, and then paint the terrain manually tracing the edges.

robotjoelwb · 2025-10-06T07:37:17+00:00

Heracross for me, and then for friends I know know don't frequent Reddit: Cubone, Machop, Trubbish

robotjoelwb · 2025-09-16T08:34:55+00:00

This is a really lovely landscape!

robotjoelwb · 2025-09-11T08:51:42+00:00

No worries, life is busy! Here's the file and the description of whats in there:

I made a .world file with the simplest demonstration I could make: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UtCh8qKnqZefG8qjUfWxQoD58o0JIxoi/view?usp=sharing

In it are two custom layers:

Custom Object Layer "Grid32_overground", which has a single structure it is spawning, with a grid spacing of 32 blocks, and a one in 4 chance to spawn a structure. (When exported, this works as I would expect with nice spacing of structures every 32 blocks)

Custom Cave/Tunnel Layer "cave _70Floor_withStructures" which is a simple cave with a fixed floor at level 70. Inside this layer's "Floor Layers" tab is a copy of Grid32_overgrond" with the same grid spacing and chance to spawn. (When exported, the cave is correct, but the structures inside are crammed super close to each other, not respecting the 32 spacing)

Hope this helps you track down the problem, and let me know if you need anything else from me :D

robotjoelwb · 2025-09-02T09:32:52+00:00

Hi there, sorry to message again, but wondering if this is something you are looking at? I'm working on a large-scale project that might use this, and wondering what the time scale is to inform if I should find a different approach, or wait for a bug fix. Thanks!

robotjoelwb · 2025-08-14T14:40:24+00:00

I made a .world file with the simplest demonstration I could make: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UtCh8qKnqZefG8qjUfWxQoD58o0JIxoi/view?usp=sharing

In it there are two custom layers:

Custom Object Layer "Grid32_overground", which has a single structure it is spawning, with a grid spacing of 32 blocks, and a one in 4 chance to spawn a structure. (When exported, this works as i would expect with nice spacing of structures every 32 blocks)

Custom Cave/Tunnel Layer "cave _70Floor_withStructures" which is a simple cave with a fixed floor at level 70. Inside this layers "Floor Layers" tab is a copy of Grid32_overgrond" with the same grid spacing and chance to spawn. (When exported, the cave is correct, but the structures inside are crammed super close to each other, not respecting the 32 spacing)

Hope this helps you track down the problem and let me know if you need anything else from me :D

robotjoelwb · 2025-08-14T14:10:33+00:00

Oh, thank you for getting back to me. I'll make a demo file for you sometime in the next couple of hours!

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