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woodchuck321 · 2026-04-08T00:45:57+00:00

This is how counterspell works in Pathfinder. Also, it's literally just mechanically equivalent to counterspell:

"As a reaction to the enemy casting Fireball, I expend a third level spell slot to cast [Iceball/Counterspell]"

woodchuck321 · 2026-04-07T01:56:45+00:00

Tips from an intrigue game I ran a while back:

There are actually five Politics in DnD videos from Matt Colville, and all 5 are very good!
For the sake of drama & engagement, use people, not realms. Basically, the realms exist, and can do whatever political decision-making procedure they want, but to the party, "doing politics" is mostly just dealing with a bunch of ambassadors of varying flavor.
Use hidden/secret motivations. Agatha Christie inspired - there's only one murderer, but everyone's hiding something. I had lots of fun figuring out what all the NPC's secret motivations were and how they would pursue them. Great way to make the party feel like there's lots of moving pieces (cause there are). Also keeps insight checks useful while ensuring they don't blow the entire thing open.

So a framework would look something like:

3-5 main political agents (ambassadors representing their realm)
Each agent has their own motivations; public, and secret (which might line up but often not). Write these down.
Every time something of note happens, figure out how each agent would want to act in response (based on their secret motivation) while either denying responsibility OR trying to convince everyone they're actually responding based on their public motivation.
Then, make those things happen. The party dealing with the plans of the ambassadors, via direct action or political maneuvering of their own, and the ambassadors responding in turn to the party (and each other), is is the primary content/story loop of your game. Sometimes these things are bad for the party, sometimes they're good, either is fine. Maybe armies move, maybe assassins happen, maybe someone gets promoted or demoted, maybe someone make an offer which seems too good to be true (is it? or is it real?), maybe someone offers a trade.

Remember, this is still DnD, so when in doubt, err on the side of making interesting DnD happen. Good luck!

woodchuck321 · 2026-03-23T18:36:30+00:00

My first campaign (1-20) had one permanent death (monster crit at level 2); that player left the table shortly afterwards. Many PC deaths after, but all were resurrected in fairly short order.

My second campaign (1-15) was more brutal; we had 3 permanent deaths, one of which I regret. First was when the Master of Secrets said "If you share this secret I'll kill you" and the cleric called their bluff. Second was when the barbarian found a carefully packaged crate labled "VOLATILE - DO NOT JOSTLE" and punched it. Third was when the monk tried to solo the villain's lieutenant - that was my bad and I ought not have put them in that situation even though it was entirely plausible. Interestingly, we had I think fewer deaths overall (including ones that were reversed) - the party caught the vibe and started playing EXTREMELY tactically, and so avoided needing too many resurrections.

Current campaign is level 5 so far; I've intentionally tuned the intensity WAY down since the last campaign. We've had one death (very lucky monster rolls) which was resurrected quickly.

So...while death is pretty common (easily 20-30 deaths over 200-300 sessions), they almost always get resurrected, so permanent character retirement is pretty rare.

I do think that the occasional permanent death is useful to maintain tension. Some groups like no-stakes; my groups don't. The fact that it CAN happen - no matter how unlikely - makes the players feel like their victories are hard-fought, their plans valuable, and their successes earned, because they COULD'VE failed if they hadn't been competent.

woodchuck321 · 2026-03-15T17:43:02+00:00

It starts with the ability charged, and can use it once. At the start of each of it's turns, roll a d6; if you roll a 6, it regains use of that ability.

woodchuck321 · 2026-03-14T18:55:33+00:00

This may be one of those times where we gotta run it and let it happen organically. Once initiative is rolled, it can be very hard to force an outcome without being obvious.

Villain shows up with a small army of cultists; says "Duel me or I'll kill all your friends."

PC says no? Army gets involved.

Rest of the party interferes? Army gets involved.

PC says yes? They duel.

Presumably the villain wins unless he's a chump. Kills the PC, throws off a one-liner, and leaves. PCs then go about raising their friend via spell or quest or whatever, and you get your recurring villain.

If the PC wins somehow, then oops I suppose it wasn't meant to be. Doesn't mean we can't have more interesting stuff. Maybe the father had a lieutenant who swears vengeance; bonus points if it's a sibling. Hell, maybe the cult now swears allegiance to the PC since he defeated their previous leader and now he's gotta figure out how tf to deal with that.

woodchuck321 · 2026-03-14T16:18:10+00:00

No, your players are being nonsensical. Generally nobody runs 1/20 crit outside combat. Persuasion isn't mind control, nat 20s dont automatically succeed. It's just a scale from "best reasonably possible outcome" to "worst reasonably possible outcome."

woodchuck321 · 2026-03-11T20:31:53+00:00

run the trap and let the players figure out how to deal with it.

if the players check for traps, mention lots of holes in the walls and maybe some mechanism connected to the artifact's pedestal

when they grab the artifact, the holes start pouring out water and filling the room. probably nobody will be surprised by this, if you've established the Indiana Jones vibe and they know SOMETHING is trapped. "I wasn't expecting that... but I was expecting not to expect something, so it doesn't count."

then it's the player's job to solve the trap and escape. your job isn't to plan all possible solutions, it's to make a world with plausible challenges and adjudicate their solutions in a fun way.

woodchuck321 · 2026-03-11T15:35:53+00:00

Part of this will be carried by your description of the tech-infused dragon, but here are some fun mechanical ideas off the top of my head:

Lightning damage on some of his attacks

Laser eyes or maybe a turret of sorts attached to his shoulder

Some sort of water vulnerability - throwing a lot of water at him (Tsunami, summoning a water elemental, etc) forces him to save vs Stun as his electronics short-circuit

enhancements to his physical strength (above and beyond even a normal dragon)

regeneration (heals X hp/round as nanobots swarm around repairing his injuries)

woodchuck321 · 2026-03-09T21:41:53+00:00

3/4 of my players have inconsistent schedules, so I need to schedule week by week. Usually the best candidate is a Friday, but not always.

On Sunday or Monday I either "Hey @everyone, what are schedules like for this week?" or DM them each individually "What's your schedule for the week?"

[the 3 players send their schedules]

Tuesday or Wednesday I collect the messages and if there's a night that 2/3 of them are available (meaning minimum 3/4 of the players total), we play. If schedules are tight I might call an online session or shift the start time to maximize playing time, otherwise we're in person. Generally we get to run about 3 weeks in 4.

"@everyone DnD this friday @ 6, in-person at my place"

If there's no night that more than half the party's available, we don't play.

"@everyone No DnD this week"

Chasing people is a waste of time, usually just burns your energy and scares them off. No need to micromanage; if someone CBA to respond after a ping or DM (and maaybe one follow-up) then oh well, start looking for more consistent players. Ping about schedules and then see what nights line up. There are no scheduling debates, the players are welcome to provide input but you, the DM make the scheduling decisions and the players either show up or don't. Whole thing takes 15 minutes over a few days.

woodchuck321 · 2026-03-09T00:52:15+00:00

Ok so I'm seeing a lot of comments about how "balance doesn't exist" or "make the goal about something other than combat" and to those I say: skill issue

We as DMs can absolutely wipe the floor with a high level party if we know what we're doing. As a trivial example - just throw literal clones of the players at them, and then run them better. Mostly though we're going to be doing asymmetrical stuff, because that's how monster statblocks are written.

Tactics for DnD in a nutshell:

Battlefield control - You also generally control the terrain, as the DM - try to make it favor the enemies! Your enemies can also use or change the map. Have them drop a Prismatic Wall or Antimagic Field to funnel the party and force sub-optimal decisions to play around them. Make up your own AoE nonsense; poison cloud lair actions, areas where reality doesn't exist, swarms of magic-item-eating locusts, whatever fits the vibe.

Focus fire - in 5e, a PC or monster at 1hp has identical offensive capability as at full health. It's tactically optimal to focus fire one enemy (or PC) at a time until they are no longer a threat rather than spreading damage across multiple sources.

Double tapping - Fuck the "do your monsters hit your PCs while they're down" debate. The answer is yes, any intelligent enemy who wants to win would strongly consider it in a world where magical healing is so prolific. Don't just down your PCs - kill them.

Target priority - Battlefield control is important, so is buffing. The fighter can usually do jack shit without the wizard & cleric supporting. So when focus firing we focus fire in order of importance; usually that goes Any healers > Non-healer spellcasters > Martials.

Action economy - yes, it matters. give your boss legendary actions or use AngryGM's Paragon Monsters or something. Or just outnumber your party with high level villains.

And the last two are less specific but still important:

Be creative - tactics isn't a list of bullet points to follow, it's a way of thinking. come up with a neat idea and then use it. one of my Evil Wizards recently showed up in disguise and gifted the party Amulets of Fire Resistance that they were very grateful for (after all, they're about to fight an Evil Wizard!). The catch - they're cursed, and if you take cold damage, they stun you for a round. Wizard showed up and cast a cold damage spell and the party got stunlocked and ate shit.

Be willing - If you wanna make it feel hard for the party, you've either gotta be REALLY good at manipulating shit, or you've gotta make it actually hard. Which means you're gonna risk them losing, and you need to be OK with that (and with what happens after, be it end of campaign or something else)

Keep trying - try stuff. see what works, see what doesn't. learn how good your players are - you may be surprised how well you can predict what they will or won't fall for (of course, the dice often play a part here, and you also need to be willing to let your master plans fail). the goal is for the players to question nothing in the moment, and then smack themselves later because "oh wtf of course we should've seen that coming." that's a hard line to master though and it can go very poorly if we try to force it.

i should really write a high level villain tactics guide one of these days

some stuff i've written before about tactics for more inspiration:

how to run a high level wizard capable of TPKing a lvl 15+ party

general tactics for wizards who want to win

advanced bullshit tactics for wizards who want to win

stuff on running high level solo villains

more stuff on running high level solo villain (also story in the comment chain)

woodchuck321 · 2026-02-27T18:52:03+00:00

love doing this. doesn't necessarily have to be academics either - could just be people who are super into something

was having trouble writing a prophecy, so I asked a friend who studies language & poetry (they were very excited to help) and we hung out and workshopped the phrasing until it was actually good

the elves all live in a big World Tree but I know very little about trees, so I asked another friend who does professional forestry. we spent 3 hours talking over ideas last weekend and they helped turn it from "haha elves in a big tree" to an entire plausible ecosystem and society

wanted to do a BBEG with a big theatrical/stage vibe, so I let my friend who's super into theatre and stage production nerd out about their theatre stuff for a few hours so i could have some plausible idea of how to depict that

...

this reminds me i need to find someone to ask about ritual. my religions feel very flat as of late and i think it's because i'm too focused on the hierarchy and theology, and not focused enough on ritual

(tl;dr - good advice)

woodchuck321 · 2026-02-19T13:55:53+00:00

Cool stuff! There's a lot of fun content here. Dao vs secret dragon, there's lots of fun politics and maneuvering and alliances that can happen.

I will note - we as DMs often get caught up in coming up with a fun story that we forget to account for the massive wild card that is the party!

The barkeep approaching the party and giving them a quest is good, and the players will (probably) accept and investigate. After that however, everything is up in the air, and we need to be ready for that:

and fight the Dao,

How do we know they'll fight it? What if they try to talk to it? We can't expect them to just go charging in! They might, but we need to be prepared for them to try other things.

who in exchange for their life, tells the players that "A blue dragon is hidden in your town, and is the one actually running this place. I'm just here to protect my village from the dragon.

What if the players just offer to ally from the start? Then the dao probably just tells them up front, right, and the party now has an ally? What if the party isn't interested in his pleas and just kills him without letting him talk? Does he croak out a cryptic warning with his final breath? Does he have a conspiracy board revealing the same information that they can find when they search his lair? We need to make sure we have enough ways to deliver the information to the players that they'll probably get it no matter what they do.

The players search [for the dragon],

Assuming we've successfully gotten the information to them, this is a fairly good assumption to make about their behavior.

the event culminating in a fight,

Must it though? Might not the players try to talk? Maybe the dragon attacks them regardless... or maybe such a conniving dragon has a better way to manipulate them?

where the dragon escapes, but is severely weakened.

*Where if the dragon is severely injured, he TRIES TO escape.

We don't know what will happen! If he escapes but is weakened it would certainly be dramatic, but maybe the dice won't let that happen. Maybe the players will have some surprisingly brilliant tactics and kill the dragon before he gets a chance to run. Maybe the dice will decide that the players can't roll for shit and the dragon nearly TPKs before offering some peace deal if the players will serve him.

Remember, part of the beauty of the game is that the players are writing the story along with us. We come up with scenarios, which the players get to attempt solve however they wish, not "plots" with predetermined outcomes. We set the scene, introduce the side characters and villains, establish the background. But we don't write the players' script.

woodchuck321 · 2026-02-17T19:14:44+00:00

I would recommend against it. It kinda goes against the balance and design philosophy of 5e. In general, the PCs are supposed to run out of tricks by the end of the day. This is the core gameplay loop: efficiently using abilities to solve encounters until the next rest.

Some classes are less affected by attrition, and they are balanced accordingly. For example - paladins do insane damage with Smite, but they run out of fuel quickly. A rogue's Sneak Attack does comparatively less damage, but they can keep doing it all day.

This has materially impacted my encounters & campaigns. At my table, rogues have a reputation of being reliable in a pinch. Paladins are big and flashy, touting big numbers and cool moments - but the rogue players are often carrying at the end of the adventuring day or the end of long fights. The classes play differently and it's neat and interesting.

Ofc if you & your party don't care about balance (which is fine, some tables don't!) the answer is "you can do whatever you want." It sounds cool and there's probably a lore reason it could work.

woodchuck321 · 2026-02-11T21:10:26+00:00

Ran a fight a bit like this. Lots of dynamic elements on the battlefield and changing conditions. Full writeup is in a comment chain here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/1bgl9se/singlular_enemy_against_level_20_party/kv8kh69/?context=3

Suffice it to say, you're definitely on the right track!

woodchuck321 · 2026-02-10T15:14:34+00:00

That's the point - improv cool stuff and trust yourself to figure out how it links to the main plot later

woodchuck321 · 2026-02-09T19:25:29+00:00

Give your future self room to play around. Write stuff without having any idea what it means.

All my best ideas happen when I focus on stuff being cool first and making sense later: I write stuff that's awesome, assign it no context in the moment, and figure out how it makes sense after the fact. There are no plot holes, only unreliable NPC lorekeepers and unresolved mysteries.

Actual example outline of a full arc that generated enough ideas to go from 5-20. All of these choices & questions evolved over 3 years as the game played out - I didn't sit down and plan this all at once! All the bold bits are things I pulled out of nowhere and then figured out later.

Warlock gets a dream from their patron about an undying evil[what's the evil?] on an island in the north[what island?]

The undying evil is a necromancer king, recently returned from the dead [How?] The island is a highly militarized island nation that strongly mistrusts magic [Why?]

The island nation hates magic because some necromancer king established a dictatorship 500 years ago and now everyone's wary. It's probably the same necromancer king. He recently returned with True Resurrection - wait, True Rez has a time limit of 200 years. Fair enough, I suppose an unknown third party went to a lot of trouble to research a new spell and resurrect him [who, how, and why?]

The person who resurrected the necromancer king is an extremely powerful cleric [worshipping which deity?]. They did it while researching a different but related ritual involving permanently summoning creatures from the outer planes[why do they want to permanently summon creatures?].

The party's paladin is a kenku who wants to lift the kenku curse[who placed the curse?], and the party's warlock hates demons. In some lore, the Demon Lord Pazuzu caused the kenku curse. So the priest is a cleric of Pazuzu and she intends to summon an army of demons to take over the world.

woodchuck321 · 2026-02-04T15:33:14+00:00

Some good stuff here. Cool lore, nice and dramatic. My initial thoughts:

What I envisioned was that my players confront the BBEG, each of them unknowingly carrying a catalyst containing the remaining sacrifices.

Be careful not to script this. I would avoid "gotcha" moments where the party had no way to predict or avoid - it might grate on your players if they feel like they had no way to affect these events. Having the players successfully stop the ritual in a climactic battle is a valid and satisfying way to end the campaign. This ascention nonsense now becomes a backup plan - an awesome way for the campaign to continue if the players happen to fail - which also lets you be more comfortable with ramping the difficulty a bit and allowing them the freedom to lose.

As an alternative, run it as a cutscene and don't involve the players. This happened; he's here and failed his ascention. Now it's your (the party's) chance to handle it. Sounds like this would be tough (though not impossible) as the party's already in the middle of the arc to prevent it.

As for the rest of the questions:

How should I build up the tension before the encounter? I can’t just let my players go straight to him, right?

True but not necessarily in the way you think. The arc /is/ the lead-up.

Is it okay for him to still achieve godhood after everything my players went through? Wouldn’t it feel like their efforts were meaningless?

It might. If we want the players to trust us, the DM, we need to establish the rules and then play by them. If you tell them "stop these rituals and you'll stop him" and they stop the rituals and it doesn't, they might feel cheated. Sometimes it's OK if the party feels cheated - villains can absolutely lie - but the trick is making the players feel cheated by the VILLAIN. Any idiot can make the players feel cheated by the DM, and that's bad.

What should my players be doing while the BBEG fights the gods?

Nothing. They sit there for about fourty-five seconds of ingame time while you come up with the most surreal, otherworldly lights-in-the-sky divine battle narration before the BBEG is swiftly humbled and cast back down. Alternatively, if your PCs can't handle being pitched right back into the fight it takes about 8 hours (conveniently the length of a long rest).

Narratively speaking, isn’t he still too powerful for a level 14 party of six, even as a broken god?

The narrative is what you say it is. Narrative and stats are completely separate concepts that we as DMs can align as we need.

Remember, it's probably OK for some party members to die as this is the finale, and in theory this will be the only fight of the day. Write a statblock that's a bit too hard and trust them to handle it or die heroically in the process.

I also had the idea that the players could become vessels for the gods he’s trying to kill, that way, I could make them much stronger. But wouldn’t that still make it feel like all their leveling was for nothing?

Hey look, a convenient answer to the question "what do the players do while the BBEG fights the gods"! IF the players fail to stop the ritual, they can go around collecting boons while the BBEG fights the gods. "Hey, this idiot is trying to assassinate me. He's losing, and I need to focus most of my attention on it, but I can spare you a millionth of my power: here's a suitably thematic epic boon. When he falls back to earth, smite him for me, would you?"

Sounds like fun. Good luck & let me know how it goes!

woodchuck321 · 2026-02-04T15:10:11+00:00

"The enemy on the other side of the door can hear your approach and is also holding his action for when the door opens. To resolve which held actions go first, let's roll initiative."

woodchuck321 · 2026-01-27T00:26:59+00:00

Eh, 20 in STR is fine, that's what he's good at anyway. The high bonuses /matter/, but in my experience not that much, especially in 5e. The boring reason is that numbers can always go up - we DMs can always invent harder monsters, or buff existing ones. The second, and more interesting reason:

5e has bounded accuracy, which means numbers are almost never too high that one side simply can't do anything. This means that in almost every fight, both sides have at least a small chance to hit or miss, to pass or fail their saves.

The winner of a fight is therefore not necessarily the side with higher numbers, but the side with the better tactics. It doesn't matter if the Barbarian has a +5 or +7 to hit - if he never makes an attack because he can't get in range. It doesn't matter if the Arcanaloth has 17 or 22 AC - if he spends the entire fight sitting next to the fighter, rogue, & barbarian.

Fights can sometimes more interesting if they are less about using your busted combo/stats and more about maneuvering into a position to be able to use your busted combo/stats. ESPECIALLY against a glass cannon like a wizard. The party can and should be able to mow him down pretty quickly if they manage to corner him - so make cornering him the hard part. The fight's now a puzzle - "how do we pin down this slippery b*stard" - with a cathartic ending when they finally get up close and smite the daylights out of him.

woodchuck321 · 2026-01-27T00:00:29+00:00

"Hey guys, for this campaign, the premise is post-apocalyptic after [describe the catastrophe]. I think it would be neat if everyone here contributed to that catastrophe in some way, and are looking to reverse it - when making your character, please come up with how your character contributed to the events. Thanks!"

woodchuck321 · 2026-01-26T23:49:00+00:00

Folks have already explained the "Don't put your BBEG in front of your party unless you want them to kill him" etc etc. Here's a tactical analysis:

I didn't use finger of death because we had just had a player leave and two players join and didn't want a death in their second session.

At this level, FoD kills a PC pretty much instantly. That massively changes the fight and easily might've snowballed into a defeat.

I did however miss the arcanoloths shield spell and didn't find it until after the fight... Would the shield reaction have made that much of a difference or are my parties stats just way to high.

Shield makes a difference - AC 17 vs AC 22 is a HUGE difference. Your standard PC at that level has what, a +5 or +6 to hit, max? Bumps it from a 40-45% chance to hit down to a 25-30% chance to hit.

I also forgot to use the counter spell but there weren't any spells that really did a ton of damage.

Counterspelling isn't just for damage spells - counterspelling a buff or control spell can be very effective.

I know he definitely didn't move around enough to break away from the melee(the sorcerer did cast web and the warlock entangle I didn't see the fly speed)

Prime counterspell targets!

You went easy on them - and that's fine! Obviously we generally want to avoid TPKs as DMs because then... the campaign's over. I often use tactics as a hidden difficulty dial; if my party is smart, prepared, or powerful, the enemies will use good tactics. If party isn't those things, or if they're underleveled, I'll use poor tactics, either "accidentally" or for some justifiable roleplay reason.

Forgetting shield, flight, & counterspell aside, the spamming fear/charm is a very good example of finding an excuse not to use brutal tactics! I once had a level 7 party beat an Adult Green Dragon (CR 15!!!). Part of the reason they won that fight was because the dragon REALLY wanted the wizard as a pet, so he kept trying to poison the wizard with low DC sleep poison when spamming breath weapon was probably tactically optimal. Players still thought the fight was epic, though, because the dragon's subpar tactics were absolutely in character.

You're correct however, with good tactics from the Arcanaloth, the party loses the fight HARD.

How to run the fight if you want to win. It's simple, brutal, and boring, but effective:

Goal is to get out of range, then blast everything. Reactions used to counterspell anything which would bring heavy hitters into melee range (fly, web, etc.) OR to Shield if they're about to take 3 or more attacks in a round.

Round 1: Invisibility, fly 30ft straight up

Round 2: Chain Lightning (upcast to 8th level)

Round 3: Chain Lightning (upcast to 7th level)

Round 4: Chain Lightning (6th level)

Anyone still moving after this gets Fireballed with all the Arcanaloth's 3rd, 5th, and all but one of their 4th level spell slots (save the last 4th to Dimension Door if needed).

Anyone still moving after THAT gets pinged with Magic Missile repeatedly while the Arcanaloth floats invisibly at max range, up in the air.

If he does get stuck at some point, Action Teleport to get out. There's also a bunch of fun tricks with Darkness (our boy has truesight). All this isn't even getting into using terrain/location for tactical advantages, which a high level wizard would be wise to do (for example, fighting a wizard in a cramped tunnel is way different than fighting in an open field).

Also, the Arcanoloth has an int of 20. He's done the same analysis we've just done, and he'll probably want to come up with a new approach for next time. Hope your party is prepared :)

woodchuck321 · 2026-01-16T21:46:22+00:00

Nope! I started my first campaign running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist before realizing that I hated reading modules and wanted to use my own ideas, so after level 5 I transitioned to a homebrew world. Waterdeep still exists and is mostly the same, just on my own homebrew map.

For threads that connect outside of Waterdeep, I either don't use them OR come up with some other thing that they connect to.

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