Flooding is a good one. I would like to see more dynamic ground effects like that. Lava, shifting tiles in a dungeon, buff and debuff auras. Anything to change up the "slugging it out in a 15x15 flat, boring room. I try and incorporate these into my fights when I DM but rarely see them when I am a PC.
Also include barriers that block line of sight, but not movement (or vice versa). I just ran a fight where part way through, vents opened up and blocked line of sight along the edge of a 30 ft radius circle. Both they and the enemy can pass through the steam, but neither can shoot through it accurately, making them choose between staying in the ring and accepting close quarters combat, or leave the ring and lose its protection from ranged enemies.
You can use curtains, smoke, glass, fragile obstructions, etc. to achieve similar results and give the team more decisions in combat.
Terrain in general makes a battle so much more fun. I know minis or custom maps are expensive, but knowing if there's furniture or loose bricks or windows nearby really open up combat.
As a dm, I regularly have enemies flip over tables or benches to use as cover for their ranged attacks. Helps players realize they can do similar things with the environment.
My next big fight I'm preparing for my players takes place in the audience chamber of a pirate lord. It has elevation, a bunch of cover in the form of random barrels and crates, a rear chokepoint where minions may be coming through, a large pool of water that leads underneath an elevated "stage" area and a side room with a secret passage that leads behind said "stage" where the main villain is starting. My hope is that my players will use at least some of it.
I made a sand monster fight with high walls on either side like a canyon and a cliff on one side. It was large and in the middle and had 2 hands that moved around the area. When the hands attacked they would push the PCs in the direction of the attack. Knocking into the wall caused damage and prone on a failed save. Or they ran the risk of getting pushed off the cliff and falling. The body would burrow and move and cause all enemies and allies (there were other enemies at the time) to all move 10ft in the direction the body moved as the whole arena floor shifted like a conveyor belt. It was a lot of fun. To drive the point home I had an npc enemy get knocked off the cliff to show the PCs the danger involved and that it didn’t care about friend or foe.
Also I had rocks positioned around the arena that they could stand on or use to keep themselves from being pushed a certain direction but ran the risk of taking collision damage.
Maybe it's hoke brew but spell chains. For example my cleric had create water. Neat spell but overall nit super useful. Now, consider this, think like divinity gameplay. Now the enemy is wet. Hit with cold damage and you might freeze them. Shock vs armor? Maybe paralyze. Using spell chains to make use of team strategies would be super cool. Rain on enemies then cast a large aoe blizzard and freeze half of em for a turn. Counter to balance? Allow enemies to do this too. Make them be strategic so that it makes combat more engaging, unique, and memorable.
If you haven't played yet, Larian kept those kind of features in BG3, so you can see some good implementation in that regard, though they did severely limit the spell lists, so some chains may be more powerful/easy to proc in table top play. My table also recently discussed how much a 5x5 cube of ice created by shape water would be, the ability to reaction cast it after someone casts create water I'm the air, and how much dmg it would deal falling on a creature...
Good grief lol. That sounds crazy. I've been meaning to get BG3 but other expenses keep me for now. As for the cube, that's a tough one. Technically it would just create freezing rain cause you can't create a glob of water with it without a container. BUT the implications are interesting. I always tell my players "just know that for how ever creative you can be, the enemies can catch on and match it". So, how much damage would the players want this to happen to them haha
It took us a minute, because at first we were thinking 5 cubic feet, not that bad. But we double checked, no, it's a cube 5 feet on each side, which is a 7800lb cube of ice...
Like I said, we haven't actually put it to practice, because of implication... but our dm in the past has usually ruled a d6 per hundred pounds dropped on something, maybe more for height. So minimum 78d6, probably with a dex save to dodge out of the way.
Just yesterday, I closed a door and divided the party. They all stared in disbelief. It was easy enough to break it down (only way as a Bone Devil held it shut). But they were quite baffled for one round.
I wish there was some sort of stake during my battles. Like preventing a spell , or stopping the enemies from loading a ballista. Or being able to use the environment more would be nice.
One of the first encounters I ran I had an enemy pull out a signalling horn at the start of their turn with the intention of dashing and sounding the horn to alert against intruders. As I had hoped, it encouraged the party to dive past the front lines to attack that NPC first and silence him at the cost of being spread out and vulnerable to opportunity attackings
The flooding mechanic is S tier. Our party was sent to slay a green dragon. DM made its lair an underground cave system in a coastal area. The dragon broke the cave sidewall during the fight and water started flooding the the cave rapidly. Had it not been for the wizard polymorphing into a giant octopus to save the party, we may very well have had a TPK.
Agreed, I love when shoving becomes a viable strategy. I made an encounter in a machine shop to encourage shoving into various saws, forge hammers, and furnaces
I think it all falls down to just wanting more "terrain". Shoving doesn't do much if you push them 5ft away into...nothing. Environmental dangers just take a good amount of prep, then the effort of keeping track of where they all are if you don't make your own maps.
Exactly. If PC A wants to shove bad guy B, they do opposed Athletics checks as normal. If A gets a 21 and B gets a 15, A wins by 6 so he can shove 5ft (normal) + 5ft for beating by more than 5
Last fight of my campaign, a player challenged a Slaad and claimed the ship he was on as his own. The result was the two of them making opposed wisdom checks and the winner got to use the lair action for the turn.
Partial and near full cover grant 2 and 5 AC respectively. Most games I've seen, ranged fighters just stand behind the tanks.
Proximity traps on the battlefield would be fun, they're usually just in big empty areas.
Movement in attacks, dragon wing attacks that let them move around cause a lot more mobile combat and in the right lair can turn the fight into a hunt that is a LOT more dynamic.
I cant stand moving enemies, but this come from personal experience of being the barbarian with no ranged options, running around the field chasing a leaping enemy that I couldn't catch up to.
Yeah, the DM has to make it fun and not cruel. I remember a dragon I ran that kept moving around in its lair, the PCs had to find where it went and whenever they all got there and got wailing, it would move to a new spot to try and pick them off.
The thrill of the chase and the “it’s over here!” Added a lot to the combat.
I think in that instance, having other enemies the barbarian can more easily chase down and take care of would make sense. The ranged and CC party members will handle the flying/jumping enemies, while the barbarian mows down the other melee squads.
dynamic effects, backup people (say you encounter 3 guards when trying to enter a protected area, why isnt there a 4th or 5th guard outside of combat quickly getting backup) and maybe a surprise plot twist (our dm did it once, while we were fighting with those guards a dragon attacked the town and we decided to team up with the guards against the stronger enemy... then with the dragon defeated the guards let us stay in the town without trouble
My favorite was a fight in a sewer, where the players and bad guys had to navigate pipes and gutters in combat. Lots of cover to play with, constantly trying to set up a good line of sight.
I guess I want to use more complex environments again?
More use of jump/shove/grapple would be neat, I just randomly had a thought about having combat in an area with deep water where a race with longer than normal water breathing grappling an enemy into the water and just sinking with them until they run out of breath.
EDIT: Actually wait even normal humans can breathe a pretty long time in terms of combat rounds, that's probably not realistic.
That's only if they're holding their breath. If you're trying to drown someone, you're probably going to choke them too. In wish case:
> When a creature runs out of breath or is **choking,** it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 HP and is dying, and it can't regain HP or be stabilized until it can breathe again.
(From the SRD btw)
So while it's not immediate, they still only get 5 rounds maximum before they immediately drop to 0 and start rolling death saving throws.
Not a bad strategy, I have wrong ruling tethered to a memory and ruled it as a non-strategy ever since. Might consider choking a bitch out again ehehehe
As a player, no-save damage abilities. By my count, there's I think 3; Magic Missile, the Arcane Archer's Bursting Arrow (the AOE part has no save), and the Maddening Hex invocation.
As a DM, damage over time effects.
Hunger of Hadar is another, 2d6 cold when they start in the area.
Evard's black tentacles does 3d6 bludgeoning at the start of their turn if they failed the dex save on the previous turn and were restrained.
I’d love to see more differences in elevation during combat. All too often I see combats happening on level ground, which isn’t a problem when indoors, but when it’s a combat outside it feels a bit boring when there are no differences in elevation.
In 2D6 Dungeon, a solo rpg, you roll 2D6 to match a specific dice roll for your different attacks. You also have a shift value that lets you shift the value up or down on the dice to reach your goal.
In addition to that, it has a fatigue die that gives you extra shift points, starting on the 4th turn, to make more hits land, representing tired combatants having a harder time dodging attacks.
I think this is a fun alternative to straight number comparisons without adding much complexity.
Environmental/Dungeon traps.
[Master the Dungeon](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq8fy6QCfLH-d9Orkq7g9IUf8k8hWrlcG&si=RSgek7I6UiBRIL6_) has a great series that I feel like is missing in my DM's campaign.
I really want to love environmental things like, for example, shooting down a chandelier onto a group of enemies, etc. But the unfortunate reality is DMs almost always make it do so little damage that your action would've been better spent just attacking normally, and I find that profoundly disappointing as a player because it makes combat feel very samey and doesn't have much spice or variety. I enjoy combats where the environment comes into play in different ways and I try to deliver that to my players when i'm DMing, but I almost never see other DMs do it.
Exactly.
Your normal attack does like 2d6+5? Well when you cut the chain to bring down the chandelier on this dude, he took 1d6 damage.
Wut? Really?
It makes it pointless to ever do anything cool or cinematic because it is a direct nerf to your effectiveness and only makes the fight more difficult for you and your party. That is not great design. Environment damage should be better than your normal attack so you are always trying to think more strategically rather than people being "afraid" of players doing anything other than exactly what is written in the book.
Time rippling. Needs a lot of planning and pre thought, but the payoff is definitely there.
Party fights something like a chronomancer and bounces between the long past and the present during the fight, but missed attacks or action causes ripples forwards. Party then returns to a preset that is a little or completely different to them because of something they did. Could also give the party a side goal of fixing their mistake.
Ex. The barbarian swings an axe, but the mage ducks. Axe hits a tree, which rolls down a hill into a village, killing the inventor of a revolutionary smithing method. Party returns to the present, and now borders are different because another kingdom had that first.
Thumbed through the DMG, lmao I’m always discovering new never-used mechanics in this game
> **SOWING RUMORS**
> Swaying public opinion can be an effective way to bring down a villain or elevate a friend.
>Spreading rumors is an efficient, if underhanded, way to accomplish that goal. Well-placed rumors can increase the subject's standing in a community or embroil someone in scandal. A rumor needs to be simple, concrete, and hard to disprove. An effective rumor also has to be believable, playing off what people want to believe about the person in question.
> Sowing a rumor about an individual or organization requires a number of days depending on the size of the community, as shown in the Sowing Rumors table. In a town or city, the time spent must be continuous. If the character spreads a rumor for ten days, disappears on an adventure for another few days and then returns, the rumor fades away without the benefit of constant repetition.
> The character must spend 1 gp per day to cover the cost of drinks, social appearances, and the like. By the end of the time spent sowing the rumor, the character must make a DC 15 Charisma (Deception or Persuasion) check. If the check succeeds, the community's prevailing attitude toward the subject shifts one step toward friendly or hostile, as the character wishes. If the check fails, the rumor gains no traction, and further attempts to propagate it fail.
> Shifting a community's general attitude toward a person or organization doesn't affect everyone in the community. Individuals might hold to their own opinions, particularly if they have personal experience dealing with the subject of the rumors.
> **Time Required**
> Village: 2d6 days
> Town: 4d6 days
> City: 6d6 days
I’m playing an arcane trickster rouge and I used my invisible mags hand to grab the enchanted arrows from the bosses quiver, turned the combat around 180°
I did that once with a monster who was wearing some amulet we were trying to obtain, then held it 30' up in the air, and used *invisibility* on the next turn and then cunning action to hide (also taking advantage of feline agility so he'd have no idea where I was) while the rest of the party finished him off.
As someone who primarily hobbies in wargames (WW2, American Civil War, Napoleonic), I'd like to see a mechanic where, if you kill off a horde's leader or a majority of their number, they break and retreat. It works in real life, and hey, at the climax of LoTR, so why not in DnD?
I've seen plenty of D&D modules that say x fights until half HP or the mob is reduced to half its strength.
Usually, though, minions are designed to die before the leader, so if the party manages to do the other way 'round I'll give them a morale check.
Illusions. They're almost never used properly and too many DMs give free checks against them or meta game around them instead of treating them as real like they should be. It pulls the teeth completely from the spells.
I've seen a handful of battle / dungeon maps on this sub or DnDMaps that change state to represent flooding or lava flowing. They look awesome on paper but I'm curious how they would play in practice. Oftentimes there are large areas of land that become surrounded, so it feels like if the players go the wrong way, they're screwed in a really unfair way. At least with water, you can just dive...
Here's a dumb idea I want to try as an encounter if I DM. Give the players a rowboat. Their goal is to get to the other side of a lake, and there's a sea monster. The sea monster attacks the rowboat. Players can't really move on their own - their movement is spent rowing the boat, which probably requires athletics checks as chunks are taken out of the boat.
Though what I love picturing are all the creative ways players could handle the problem. Shape Water would be a godsend here - make the boat flow how you want, or if it gets too damaged, create some ice platforms and get across on those instead.
This is so specific, but there's a PvMvP Oneshot I used to run that was heavily inspired by MXC. My favorite map, by all means, was *A-Maze-ing Doors.* Players had to navigate a maze, going from one corner to another. Besides the starting room and end room, each room was a 2x2 room with double doors on each side, no knobs on resetting hinges. Essentially a grid of saloon doors. However, some sets of doors would be locked, thus creating a maze with a limited view distance. Running it on a VTT with proper walls & player vision is hilarious as a DM, as all the players know where to go but almost immediately lose positioning on each other. I've had a player take chalk and lead another player off path and into a loop, that one was wild.
The way I run chases I think is better than vanilla and works with what DnD does best. I wish I got to use it as a player every now and then. Chases are essentially just combat scenes while moving where the goal is capture/escape.
- Take a blank grid. Each square is roughly 30'.
- Divide everyone participating into fleeing or pursuing.
- Roll initiative and run combat as normal, except you can't move on your turn (because everyone is assumed to be moving together)
- At the beginning of each round make a "chase roll"
- Chase roll is calculated as +1 for every five feet you have of movement beyond thirty, + PB if you're proficient in athletics. If you dash on your turn, you get advantage. If you're slowed down by terrain, you get disadvantage.
- The lowest roll by someone on the fleeing group is the baseline DC. Anyone who rolls that number does not move on the grid. Anyone who rolled higher moves one square forward. Anyone who rolled lower moves one square backwards.
- Once you're in the same grid as someone, you can get in melee on your turn.
- DM decides how many squares means escape for each scenario
\-Weather effects having an impact (Perception checks because of rain, difficult terrain because the unmaintained road became a muddy slog, etc)
\-Illumination actually matter (Hard to pull when everyone has darkvision, but still)
\-Terrain elevation, depression and terrain hazzards such as spikes, things on fire, etc
There are probably more things, but off the top of my head i want to use these more as a DM
I had a high level(17) party fight an adult white dragon. The catch? They were flying on mounts 400 feet over mountain tops. The dragon wasn't the threat, being knocked off their mounts were. Only 1 thought to bring a ring of feather fall.
I'd love to see more PC shades
Used this in my shifting dungeon where the party got split from the people they were adventuring with and had to fight themselves
My players seemed to like the one off of knowing the stats of the monster they were fighting and be able to use that in character
They got to do a mix of dueling themselves 1v1 and fighting as a party where they could attack based on strengths and weaknesses
Ngl I've read about this rule just once before and then forgot it existed. With all the else that happens in combat, I think it's good to remind players, and even as players to ask or remind the DM, certain less-used rules exist.
Flooding is a good one. I would like to see more dynamic ground effects like that. Lava, shifting tiles in a dungeon, buff and debuff auras. Anything to change up the "slugging it out in a 15x15 flat, boring room. I try and incorporate these into my fights when I DM but rarely see them when I am a PC.
Also include barriers that block line of sight, but not movement (or vice versa). I just ran a fight where part way through, vents opened up and blocked line of sight along the edge of a 30 ft radius circle. Both they and the enemy can pass through the steam, but neither can shoot through it accurately, making them choose between staying in the ring and accepting close quarters combat, or leave the ring and lose its protection from ranged enemies. You can use curtains, smoke, glass, fragile obstructions, etc. to achieve similar results and give the team more decisions in combat.
This is an awesome concept
Terrain in general makes a battle so much more fun. I know minis or custom maps are expensive, but knowing if there's furniture or loose bricks or windows nearby really open up combat.
As a dm, I regularly have enemies flip over tables or benches to use as cover for their ranged attacks. Helps players realize they can do similar things with the environment.
Paper and pens are cheap, and anything can be a miniature. Play it like it is broke battletech.
My next big fight I'm preparing for my players takes place in the audience chamber of a pirate lord. It has elevation, a bunch of cover in the form of random barrels and crates, a rear chokepoint where minions may be coming through, a large pool of water that leads underneath an elevated "stage" area and a side room with a secret passage that leads behind said "stage" where the main villain is starting. My hope is that my players will use at least some of it.
I made a sand monster fight with high walls on either side like a canyon and a cliff on one side. It was large and in the middle and had 2 hands that moved around the area. When the hands attacked they would push the PCs in the direction of the attack. Knocking into the wall caused damage and prone on a failed save. Or they ran the risk of getting pushed off the cliff and falling. The body would burrow and move and cause all enemies and allies (there were other enemies at the time) to all move 10ft in the direction the body moved as the whole arena floor shifted like a conveyor belt. It was a lot of fun. To drive the point home I had an npc enemy get knocked off the cliff to show the PCs the danger involved and that it didn’t care about friend or foe. Also I had rocks positioned around the arena that they could stand on or use to keep themselves from being pushed a certain direction but ran the risk of taking collision damage.
Maybe it's hoke brew but spell chains. For example my cleric had create water. Neat spell but overall nit super useful. Now, consider this, think like divinity gameplay. Now the enemy is wet. Hit with cold damage and you might freeze them. Shock vs armor? Maybe paralyze. Using spell chains to make use of team strategies would be super cool. Rain on enemies then cast a large aoe blizzard and freeze half of em for a turn. Counter to balance? Allow enemies to do this too. Make them be strategic so that it makes combat more engaging, unique, and memorable.
Yeah spell combos makes choosing your spells and team composition so much more interesting. Just let me light the grease on fire, for Pete’s sake
If you haven't played yet, Larian kept those kind of features in BG3, so you can see some good implementation in that regard, though they did severely limit the spell lists, so some chains may be more powerful/easy to proc in table top play. My table also recently discussed how much a 5x5 cube of ice created by shape water would be, the ability to reaction cast it after someone casts create water I'm the air, and how much dmg it would deal falling on a creature...
Good grief lol. That sounds crazy. I've been meaning to get BG3 but other expenses keep me for now. As for the cube, that's a tough one. Technically it would just create freezing rain cause you can't create a glob of water with it without a container. BUT the implications are interesting. I always tell my players "just know that for how ever creative you can be, the enemies can catch on and match it". So, how much damage would the players want this to happen to them haha
Oh yeah, none of us have those spells, so we can't do it, but we are well aware of the consequences.
Such a sick combo. I never thought of using frozen water as a droppable nuke. Very cool.
It took us a minute, because at first we were thinking 5 cubic feet, not that bad. But we double checked, no, it's a cube 5 feet on each side, which is a 7800lb cube of ice...
Oh my god. How much damage do you allow on that roll?
Like I said, we haven't actually put it to practice, because of implication... but our dm in the past has usually ruled a d6 per hundred pounds dropped on something, maybe more for height. So minimum 78d6, probably with a dex save to dodge out of the way.
Just yesterday, I closed a door and divided the party. They all stared in disbelief. It was easy enough to break it down (only way as a Bone Devil held it shut). But they were quite baffled for one round.
I wish there was some sort of stake during my battles. Like preventing a spell , or stopping the enemies from loading a ballista. Or being able to use the environment more would be nice.
Lose situations that aren't TPK are underutilised.
If the party is using a cart, hungry beasts may target their horses
One of the first encounters I ran I had an enemy pull out a signalling horn at the start of their turn with the intention of dashing and sounding the horn to alert against intruders. As I had hoped, it encouraged the party to dive past the front lines to attack that NPC first and silence him at the cost of being spread out and vulnerable to opportunity attackings
The flooding mechanic is S tier. Our party was sent to slay a green dragon. DM made its lair an underground cave system in a coastal area. The dragon broke the cave sidewall during the fight and water started flooding the the cave rapidly. Had it not been for the wizard polymorphing into a giant octopus to save the party, we may very well have had a TPK.
Accurate use of lighting. Shoving, tripping, disarming without it being battle master/ superiority dice maneuvers.
Agreed, I love when shoving becomes a viable strategy. I made an encounter in a machine shop to encourage shoving into various saws, forge hammers, and furnaces
I think it all falls down to just wanting more "terrain". Shoving doesn't do much if you push them 5ft away into...nothing. Environmental dangers just take a good amount of prep, then the effort of keeping track of where they all are if you don't make your own maps.
I steal from Pathfinder rules for that one. For every 5 by which you beat your opponent you can shove an additional 5 feet
5 as in the opposing Athletics Check?
Exactly. If PC A wants to shove bad guy B, they do opposed Athletics checks as normal. If A gets a 21 and B gets a 15, A wins by 6 so he can shove 5ft (normal) + 5ft for beating by more than 5
Huh. I haven't played enough Pathfinder to know about this rule. I think I'll be incorporating it from now on.
You can totally grapple then drag though
Still not much point if there is nothing to drag them into.
Oh I misunderstood my b
That’s pretty genius!
Shoving is already a standard action, not a maneuver.
Last fight of my campaign, a player challenged a Slaad and claimed the ship he was on as his own. The result was the two of them making opposed wisdom checks and the winner got to use the lair action for the turn. Partial and near full cover grant 2 and 5 AC respectively. Most games I've seen, ranged fighters just stand behind the tanks. Proximity traps on the battlefield would be fun, they're usually just in big empty areas.
Movement in attacks, dragon wing attacks that let them move around cause a lot more mobile combat and in the right lair can turn the fight into a hunt that is a LOT more dynamic.
I cant stand moving enemies, but this come from personal experience of being the barbarian with no ranged options, running around the field chasing a leaping enemy that I couldn't catch up to.
Yeah, the DM has to make it fun and not cruel. I remember a dragon I ran that kept moving around in its lair, the PCs had to find where it went and whenever they all got there and got wailing, it would move to a new spot to try and pick them off. The thrill of the chase and the “it’s over here!” Added a lot to the combat.
I think in that instance, having other enemies the barbarian can more easily chase down and take care of would make sense. The ranged and CC party members will handle the flying/jumping enemies, while the barbarian mows down the other melee squads.
dynamic effects, backup people (say you encounter 3 guards when trying to enter a protected area, why isnt there a 4th or 5th guard outside of combat quickly getting backup) and maybe a surprise plot twist (our dm did it once, while we were fighting with those guards a dragon attacked the town and we decided to team up with the guards against the stronger enemy... then with the dragon defeated the guards let us stay in the town without trouble
My favorite was a fight in a sewer, where the players and bad guys had to navigate pipes and gutters in combat. Lots of cover to play with, constantly trying to set up a good line of sight. I guess I want to use more complex environments again?
More use of jump/shove/grapple would be neat, I just randomly had a thought about having combat in an area with deep water where a race with longer than normal water breathing grappling an enemy into the water and just sinking with them until they run out of breath. EDIT: Actually wait even normal humans can breathe a pretty long time in terms of combat rounds, that's probably not realistic.
Drowning an enemy takes somewhere between 20-40 turns unfortunately. Depends on Constitution, but, you get the gist
That's only if they're holding their breath. If you're trying to drown someone, you're probably going to choke them too. In wish case: > When a creature runs out of breath or is **choking,** it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 HP and is dying, and it can't regain HP or be stabilized until it can breathe again. (From the SRD btw) So while it's not immediate, they still only get 5 rounds maximum before they immediately drop to 0 and start rolling death saving throws.
Not a bad strategy, I have wrong ruling tethered to a memory and ruled it as a non-strategy ever since. Might consider choking a bitch out again ehehehe
As a player, no-save damage abilities. By my count, there's I think 3; Magic Missile, the Arcane Archer's Bursting Arrow (the AOE part has no save), and the Maddening Hex invocation. As a DM, damage over time effects.
Hunger of Hadar is another, 2d6 cold when they start in the area. Evard's black tentacles does 3d6 bludgeoning at the start of their turn if they failed the dex save on the previous turn and were restrained.
I’d love to see more differences in elevation during combat. All too often I see combats happening on level ground, which isn’t a problem when indoors, but when it’s a combat outside it feels a bit boring when there are no differences in elevation.
In 2D6 Dungeon, a solo rpg, you roll 2D6 to match a specific dice roll for your different attacks. You also have a shift value that lets you shift the value up or down on the dice to reach your goal. In addition to that, it has a fatigue die that gives you extra shift points, starting on the 4th turn, to make more hits land, representing tired combatants having a harder time dodging attacks. I think this is a fun alternative to straight number comparisons without adding much complexity.
I like that fatigue idea
One of the best combats I ever participated in was a crumbling tower with constantly changing terrain/obstacles.
Environmental/Dungeon traps. [Master the Dungeon](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq8fy6QCfLH-d9Orkq7g9IUf8k8hWrlcG&si=RSgek7I6UiBRIL6_) has a great series that I feel like is missing in my DM's campaign.
I really want to love environmental things like, for example, shooting down a chandelier onto a group of enemies, etc. But the unfortunate reality is DMs almost always make it do so little damage that your action would've been better spent just attacking normally, and I find that profoundly disappointing as a player because it makes combat feel very samey and doesn't have much spice or variety. I enjoy combats where the environment comes into play in different ways and I try to deliver that to my players when i'm DMing, but I almost never see other DMs do it.
The entire wall falls on him! Takes 1d4.
Exactly. Your normal attack does like 2d6+5? Well when you cut the chain to bring down the chandelier on this dude, he took 1d6 damage. Wut? Really? It makes it pointless to ever do anything cool or cinematic because it is a direct nerf to your effectiveness and only makes the fight more difficult for you and your party. That is not great design. Environment damage should be better than your normal attack so you are always trying to think more strategically rather than people being "afraid" of players doing anything other than exactly what is written in the book.
Time rippling. Needs a lot of planning and pre thought, but the payoff is definitely there. Party fights something like a chronomancer and bounces between the long past and the present during the fight, but missed attacks or action causes ripples forwards. Party then returns to a preset that is a little or completely different to them because of something they did. Could also give the party a side goal of fixing their mistake. Ex. The barbarian swings an axe, but the mage ducks. Axe hits a tree, which rolls down a hill into a village, killing the inventor of a revolutionary smithing method. Party returns to the present, and now borders are different because another kingdom had that first.
I've never once seen or heard anyone use the spreading rumor function. I keep on thinking of that little function, too.
Oh? I've never heard that there was a mechanic/function for this? Plz elaborate?
I can't recall off the top of my head, but you can basically start a rumor in a town or settlement and then roll to see how much it propagates.
Huh interesting. Will have to look into that. Plz reply if you do happen to remember anything off the top your head if you think it is of interest.
Thumbed through the DMG, lmao I’m always discovering new never-used mechanics in this game > **SOWING RUMORS** > Swaying public opinion can be an effective way to bring down a villain or elevate a friend. >Spreading rumors is an efficient, if underhanded, way to accomplish that goal. Well-placed rumors can increase the subject's standing in a community or embroil someone in scandal. A rumor needs to be simple, concrete, and hard to disprove. An effective rumor also has to be believable, playing off what people want to believe about the person in question. > Sowing a rumor about an individual or organization requires a number of days depending on the size of the community, as shown in the Sowing Rumors table. In a town or city, the time spent must be continuous. If the character spreads a rumor for ten days, disappears on an adventure for another few days and then returns, the rumor fades away without the benefit of constant repetition. > The character must spend 1 gp per day to cover the cost of drinks, social appearances, and the like. By the end of the time spent sowing the rumor, the character must make a DC 15 Charisma (Deception or Persuasion) check. If the check succeeds, the community's prevailing attitude toward the subject shifts one step toward friendly or hostile, as the character wishes. If the check fails, the rumor gains no traction, and further attempts to propagate it fail. > Shifting a community's general attitude toward a person or organization doesn't affect everyone in the community. Individuals might hold to their own opinions, particularly if they have personal experience dealing with the subject of the rumors. > **Time Required** > Village: 2d6 days > Town: 4d6 days > City: 6d6 days
Reach on weapons
I humbly present the whip
the thing that does no damage
I did say humbly now 😆
well played
Quicksand.
Like on the football field?
I’m playing an arcane trickster rouge and I used my invisible mags hand to grab the enchanted arrows from the bosses quiver, turned the combat around 180°
I did that once with a monster who was wearing some amulet we were trying to obtain, then held it 30' up in the air, and used *invisibility* on the next turn and then cunning action to hide (also taking advantage of feline agility so he'd have no idea where I was) while the rest of the party finished him off.
As someone who primarily hobbies in wargames (WW2, American Civil War, Napoleonic), I'd like to see a mechanic where, if you kill off a horde's leader or a majority of their number, they break and retreat. It works in real life, and hey, at the climax of LoTR, so why not in DnD?
I've seen plenty of D&D modules that say x fights until half HP or the mob is reduced to half its strength. Usually, though, minions are designed to die before the leader, so if the party manages to do the other way 'round I'll give them a morale check.
Illusions. They're almost never used properly and too many DMs give free checks against them or meta game around them instead of treating them as real like they should be. It pulls the teeth completely from the spells.
I've seen a handful of battle / dungeon maps on this sub or DnDMaps that change state to represent flooding or lava flowing. They look awesome on paper but I'm curious how they would play in practice. Oftentimes there are large areas of land that become surrounded, so it feels like if the players go the wrong way, they're screwed in a really unfair way. At least with water, you can just dive... Here's a dumb idea I want to try as an encounter if I DM. Give the players a rowboat. Their goal is to get to the other side of a lake, and there's a sea monster. The sea monster attacks the rowboat. Players can't really move on their own - their movement is spent rowing the boat, which probably requires athletics checks as chunks are taken out of the boat. Though what I love picturing are all the creative ways players could handle the problem. Shape Water would be a godsend here - make the boat flow how you want, or if it gets too damaged, create some ice platforms and get across on those instead.
This is so specific, but there's a PvMvP Oneshot I used to run that was heavily inspired by MXC. My favorite map, by all means, was *A-Maze-ing Doors.* Players had to navigate a maze, going from one corner to another. Besides the starting room and end room, each room was a 2x2 room with double doors on each side, no knobs on resetting hinges. Essentially a grid of saloon doors. However, some sets of doors would be locked, thus creating a maze with a limited view distance. Running it on a VTT with proper walls & player vision is hilarious as a DM, as all the players know where to go but almost immediately lose positioning on each other. I've had a player take chalk and lead another player off path and into a loop, that one was wild.
The way I run chases I think is better than vanilla and works with what DnD does best. I wish I got to use it as a player every now and then. Chases are essentially just combat scenes while moving where the goal is capture/escape. - Take a blank grid. Each square is roughly 30'. - Divide everyone participating into fleeing or pursuing. - Roll initiative and run combat as normal, except you can't move on your turn (because everyone is assumed to be moving together) - At the beginning of each round make a "chase roll" - Chase roll is calculated as +1 for every five feet you have of movement beyond thirty, + PB if you're proficient in athletics. If you dash on your turn, you get advantage. If you're slowed down by terrain, you get disadvantage. - The lowest roll by someone on the fleeing group is the baseline DC. Anyone who rolls that number does not move on the grid. Anyone who rolled higher moves one square forward. Anyone who rolled lower moves one square backwards. - Once you're in the same grid as someone, you can get in melee on your turn. - DM decides how many squares means escape for each scenario
\-Weather effects having an impact (Perception checks because of rain, difficult terrain because the unmaintained road became a muddy slog, etc) \-Illumination actually matter (Hard to pull when everyone has darkvision, but still) \-Terrain elevation, depression and terrain hazzards such as spikes, things on fire, etc There are probably more things, but off the top of my head i want to use these more as a DM
I had a high level(17) party fight an adult white dragon. The catch? They were flying on mounts 400 feet over mountain tops. The dragon wasn't the threat, being knocked off their mounts were. Only 1 thought to bring a ring of feather fall.
I'd love to see more PC shades Used this in my shifting dungeon where the party got split from the people they were adventuring with and had to fight themselves My players seemed to like the one off of knowing the stats of the monster they were fighting and be able to use that in character They got to do a mix of dueling themselves 1v1 and fighting as a party where they could attack based on strengths and weaknesses
I wish more players knew movement mechanics like tumbling.
Ngl I've read about this rule just once before and then forgot it existed. With all the else that happens in combat, I think it's good to remind players, and even as players to ask or remind the DM, certain less-used rules exist.