Building Combat Encounters

This is posting eight and a half hours early because somebody is whiner and wanted something to read while he was at work.

Just a forewarning, this one is a lengthy one. It took me over a week to complete and there are parts where it kind of bounces all over the place. Hope it is useful to someone.

Building encounters is a tricky thing in DnD. Every edition has rules and guidelines for doing so based on an assigned value to players and their level and an assigned value for the difficulty of monsters and NPCs. These rules have in my experience always been a bit off. They don't really account for things like min/maxers or unique features of your campaign (which admittedly makes sense) or even having an imbalanced party (one that isn't made up of varied character types like the classic Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard setup). As an example, guns in Pathfinder completely negate the majority of the difficulty in combat encounters in a faux-medieval society because they're treated as touch attacks and touch attacks don't factor in armor bonuses to AC. My point is that there's always a bit of fiddling you have to do as the GM. Which is ok. That's what GMs do. We fiddle with bits and pieces of rules and stories till something develops and everybody has a good time and players shit all over everything you've built. I'm not going to give concrete numerical advice on challenge ratings and tweaking them. You as the DM are going to have to base that on your players. You're going to have think critically about it. A group that relies on direct weapon damage is going to have more trouble fighting foes resistant to weapon damage than a group with lots of spell support. A group without a caster capable of healing is going to have more trouble recovering from fights and staying in fighting shape during fights, than a more balanced group. A group with fairly low Wisdom scores is going to have more trouble facing off against enchantment magic or creature with mental attacks. A group of heavily armored, low Dexterity characters is going to have more trouble facing foes that utilize breath weapons and area of effect spells/effects. You're going to need to be aware of what your party can do and how they fight to know how their strengths and weaknesses are going to impact the difficulty of an encounter you plant to have them go through.

Encounter building is tricky business, as I said. You want to challenge your players, but you also want to let them shine. You also want them to experience awesome moments. But if everything is an awesome moment where they are winning at combat all the time and doing amazeballs things, it's not challenging and it's boring. So that's the line you have to walk. You have to challenge them without resorting to negating their capabilities, while also keeping them engaged while making sure combat isn't a boring as fuck slog of trading blows until someone runs out of hit points. So that's what this post is about. We're going to talk about 1) keeping players engaged, 2) making encounters challenging without just negating everything about a group's strengths, 3) letting player's be cool, and 4) keeping things from being too boring. Keeping players engaged and keeping things from being boring are separate points here because players disengaging from the encounter isn't always because they're bored.

1) Keeping Players Engaged During Combat

The quickest and dirtiest way to keep players engaged is to hurt their characters. Nobody is as laser focused on what's going on as they are when their character is in the middle of combat and has three hit points left and is surrounded by foes. There is a caveat to that though. They need to give a shit about their character. So that's the real way you keep players engaged during combat: they need to be invested in the outcome of the combat. This can mean they really care about progressing the plot (assuming the combat is related to the plot) or that they really care about their character. I really really like Navere, but I give no fucks about defeating Strahd. So yeah, I'm invested when we're defeating Druids that serve Strahd, but not because we're taking apart a component of Strahd's regime, it's because I don't want Navere to die and because he hates those fucking dumbfuck Druids.

To keep players engaged during a combat encounter, you need to make them care about some aspect of the outcome of the combat. That will keep the minds of the players in the on position. We want their minds in the on position analyzing the combat and thinking about the outcome and what could happen and what the ramifications of success and failure are for their characters, the party, and the campaign. If the ramifications for those three things are "meh" in their minds, then they're going to play with their phone and not be prepared when their turn comes up and not care when anything happens. Our goal is to have them care, to have them be invested and care about all of the things.

Another way of keeping players engaged is describing things as they happen. As the DM, players tend to pay attention when you start talking at length. If you're describing things as they happen in combat, it is going to eat up time, but your players are going to naturally pay attention to you and what is going on a little bit more because despite all their many flaws, players in the middle of a session do tend to quiet down and listen a little bit more if the DM is talking and saying more than "he moves here" or "you hit" or "he misses."

Ultimately, keeping players engaged is something the DM has to figure out for himself. You have to know your group and what type of players they are and base it on that. Some people really like combat and will naturally pay attention more during it. Some people are going to be paying attention because the combat is related to a character or plot element they care about. Others are only really going to pay attention if their character is close to dropping. Some people are only going to be engaged during combat when they're doing well at it. Some people just aren't going to be engaged during combats because they don't care about them and it's not what interests them. Different players are going to be engaged by different elements of the game. You as the DM need to figure out how to draw them in and that's something you can only really do by paying attention to your players during sessions or by asking them directly. Which I recommend. If someone is perpetually not engaged during a combat, ask them why. 

2) Making Encounters Challenging Without Negating Everything About a Group's Strengths

Let me start this section out by saying that there are definitely times where it is ok to deliberately and with malice aforethought negate a party's strengths.

If a foe is a certain way and the plot/player choices force you to create an encounter where the PCs are facing that foe, you make the foe the way it is. If the party is composed of fire focused Sorcerers and they decide to seek out and slay a gold or red dragon because real good super awesome reasons, the dragon is what it is and it is immune to fire. Is it "fair" to the players? Is it "balanced" for the party? Not really. They have a narrowly focused group and the creature negates the majority of their combat ability. But so what? They chose to do a stupid thing. Sorry guys, you did this to yourself. I'm sorry your choices led you into an unfair fight, and I have no idea how you'll survive this fight, but consider not being fuckheads next time. That might help. In Orcunraytrel, the PCs ended up being pitted against the Nel, who have a host of immunities and resistances like immunity to critical hits, regeneration, elemental resistances, and immense supernatural might. They weren't fair and they weren't balanced and there were times when the players had a rough time dealing with them, but the progression of the plot dictated that the players needed to face them. So that's what happened. Despite the deck being stacked slightly against them, they overcame the Nel. Multiple times. These fuckhead deserter pirate lords fought and defeated multiple immortal supernatural creatures. They got their shit together, learned about their foes, and did awesome violent things to them. 

To continue, if a foe has seen the PCs fight before and knows they're coming for him or seeks their downfall, you are completely justified in negating some or all of the party's strengths. This also holds true for foes with access to divination spells and diviners and that sort of thing. As long as an enemy is aware the PCs are after them and has time and resources necessary to do so, they're justified in knowing at least some of the capabilities of the PCs and making an effort at protecting themselves from those capabilities. Unless they're are morons. Morons typically don't exhibit that sort of forethought. 

As a prime example of  NPCs/BBEGs working to negate a party's capabilities, let's look at Strahd. Strahd has directly encountered Navere and his friends twice now and has countless spies in Barovia. He knows at least some of our moves. Strahd is also a several centuries old lord of a region and is a lord who likely collects taxes of some kind (or collected them at one time) and also has likely faced many an adventurer. Basically what I'm saying is that Strahd has infinite time and resources and therefore has theoretical access to any and all magic items in the DMG. If he decides we pose a threat and we decide to go after him, he is perfectly justified in wandering down to his basement and finding magic items that negate some or all of our capabilities. Is this fair to us? Not really, because it gives an already tough encounter additional advantages beyond the scope of Strahd's CR, whatever that might be. But it makes sense because Strahd is an intelligent foe with a masterful command of tactics and has infinite resources and countless spies. He's not going to face off against our werebear Witcher and say, "Oh fiddlesticks! If only I had decided to wear gloves and use a silver sword today!" He's going to find a fancy set of gloves that allow him a good grip while creating a barrier between his hands and the hilt of the silver sword (which should be made of like wood and leather and not a problem in the first place, but whatever) and then find the sword carried by a dead adventurer and use it to give the werebear Witcher a hard time.

So those are two types of situations where we are allowed to negate some or all the strengths of a party. I'm sure there are plenty more. Let's move on though. How do we make combat challenging without resorting to straight up negating a party's abilities?

Don't fudge numbers in the party's favor. This is just an idea and I don't follow it because I'm very much in favor of fudging numbers on both sides for the sake of excitement and tension and making players feel cool. That said, it is a valid way of making combat a wee bit more challenging. Kind of.

Make fewer fights during sessions and make the fights that you do plan more difficult. This is something I do in most of my campaigns. This increases the likelihood that your players and their characters are at peak fighting power, and therefore they can face off against what the DMG classifies as hard or deadly encounters with less likelihood of PCs dying or wiping the party. If your plot related combats are continually just a hair more difficult than the party should really be facing, but aren't resulting in constant player death, the players are going to learn that combat is tough and brutal and is not something that they can really afford to just half ass it through. Over time it is going to sort of bake in a certain amount of tension. Ideally. If players start learning that every combat is a close one, they're going to realize that they have to stay engaged because every fight is challenging and runs the risk of player death if they phone it in. This is a risky game to play with combat though, because if you're not on your toes as the DM, you're going to TPK your players. If you're going to go with this route of manufacturing challenge and tension, you have to know the game to your bones and understand the way the math works. It also means that when the players face a boss, you have to make the bosses a step above what are already challenging encounters to ensure that the progression of fights makes sense in terms of escalating difficulty. So once again, you're walking the knife's edge. This route can manufacture tension and challenge, but it also has the added benefit of teaching players to be cautious. If your players evolve and adapt to this campaign of very close combats they're going to be more cautious about combats. They're going to seek advantages before closing in on bosses. If the players respond this way to a campaign containing such combats, then boss fights that are more deadly aren't going to be quite as risky to run. Maybe. It depends on your players and what the plot dictates that they fight.

Tactics. I say this a lot. Use tactics befitting a foe's intelligence and nature to impact the challenge of an encounter. Intelligent foes do intelligent things. Stupid foes do stupid things. Berserkers in a blood rage are going to keep fucking attacking even if their intestines are spooling out of their guts and tangling up their feet. Golems instructed to slug the closest thing are going to keep slugging the closest thing until it's not a close thing, even if that thing is immune to slugging. Hungry animals are going to attack until they're heavily wounded or until they die if they're defending a nest or their young. Honor bound veteran soldiers defending their borders are going to use choke points and their knowledge of the terrain to their advantage, and they're going to fight to the death to protect what they value. Green troops are probably going to be easily intimidated into laying down arms after a few of their companions fall, or they'll outright flee. Terrorists and zealots are going to take out as many foes as they can, however they can, regardless of the cost to themselves. Mercenaries and assassins are going to flee when they start to lose, and perhaps come back another day if their contract or their butthurt warrants it, and this time they'll know what the PCs are capable of. Politicians and nobility are going to use the full weight of their position in society to impede the PCs well before initiative checks, and after the fight there are likely to be legal consequences for the PCs regardless of the outcome of the combat. Wizards in their towers are going to protect their homes with glyphs of whatever, magical constructs, and spells like guards and wards. Commanders that see a group of foes surviving wave after wave of soldiers because of a healer in the back are going to direct archers to fire on that healer. That same commander is going to use mobile rapid attack units to kite slow moving heavily armored enemies. Goblins are going to use stealth and surprise and overwhelming numbers and are going to run away and come back with more stealth and surprise and larger numbers if they start to take heavy casualties. Intelligent supernatural creatures that are resistant to the non-magical weapons of Fighters are going to ignore the Fighters that are giving them papercuts and take out the magic users that can actually hurt them first. Foes that see a heavily wounded PC are going to concentrate fire just like players do when they see a heavily wounded enemy. If the PCs are in the home of whoever they're fighting, like a cave system of goblins or lizardmen, their foes aren't going to flee the place completely if they find that they're outmatched by the PCs. This is their home. They have family and friends here (if you're one of those people that believes "evil" can't have friends or strong emotional bonds, you do not understand the complexities of humanoid psychology and morality). They're going to flee one encounter, find more of their people, and rally to defend their home and increase the number of foes the PCs face in a later encounter and warn their friends and family about the fucking pointed hat wearing motherfucker in back that threw a ball of fire that incinerated Jimbo, Cooter, and Billy. Strahd knows we have weapons and that they don't really hurt him and he regenerates the damage anyways, but he also knows that we have a Monk with radiant damage laser fists and a smitey Paladin, and a radiant damage moonbeaming Druid. Strahd certainly does not think in game terms like radiant damage vs. non-magical weapon damage and regenerating 10 hit points a round. However, he definitely thinks steel is amusing because he heals quickly from its injuries and he knows the white flames of our laser fists and moonbeams really fucking hurts and keeps him from regenerating. So he's going to ignore the adorable Witcher and his itty bitty steel axe, and he's going to eat the faces off of the bright white holy fire users in the party. Because they're the threat and once they're gone he can toy with the lumberjack monster hunter to his heart's content.

Another way to create challenging encounters is to factor in the environment. There were actually rules for this in Pathfinder. If the terrain was particularly favorable to the enemies, you were supposed to increase the CR of the encounter by one. In general terms, this can be as easy as plopping down Gears of War style waist high cover between the PCs and their foes, assuming that sort of thing is sensible for the terrain to have. Or stretches of difficult terrain. If we're talking about ancient tombs and treasure rooms with guardians, throw down a few traps as well. This creates a good amount of tension because now the PCs have to fight their foes and worry about where they step next. It also potentially pulls a PC off of combat duty into finding and disarming traps duty. If we want to get real dramatic we can do things like I talked about in my dragons are boring in 5th Edition post from several weeks back. You can set up situations where fiery creatures have volcanic vents and lava flows in their lair. Are the players investigating the tomb of ancient necromancers? Well, maybe the area is so rife with necrotic energy that healing spells are impeded or the aura of energy is so strong it poisons the characters or deals direct damage every hour spent in the area. Intelligent foes are going to surround themselves with an environment that benefits them. It's why humans do things like build walls and bridges. A Wizard or Sorcerer that focuses on water magic is going to surround himself with water. If such a guy has magic or an item that grants him the ability to breathe underwater, why would he live out of the water? Well, spellbooks, but whatever. You get what I mean. Think about your creatures. Don't just look at the stats. Well, look at the stats and abilities yes, but don't get blinders. Where would this creature choose to live? Why? Why would a goblin live in a cave system with convenient 10 foot wide and 10 foot tall hallways when it is only three feet tall? Combat done single file while on your hands and knees is going to be significantly more difficult, even if you're just facing off against one goblin at a time in front of you, nevermind how bad things are going to get when more goblins come up behind you and you're defending yourself with your butt cheeks and boot soles.

Modifying existing monsters is another way you can challenge players. It works on two levels, it makes monsters more difficult to face off against (most of the time) and it destroys the preconceived notions of experienced players. For instance, you have an iron golem. Big bad iron bruisers that hit things and occasionally breathe poison clouds. They're fairly well known and understood and even if we don't know their exact stats, we can extrapolate some of them based on its description. What if the Wizard that created a particular iron golem used a wand of lightning bolts or some similar item in the creation of the golem and now every time the golem's fist connects with a player they get hit by big iron fists and a shocking grasp spell? Or maybe the Wizard animated the golem with a lightning elemental inside of it. That sounds like a lot of fun. What if a clan of goblins has taken lessons (or beatings) from their hobgoblin cousins and have become obsessed with order and martial might? Now they have the morale necessary to stand and fight and the tactical knowledge to understand things like shield walls and concentrating ranged fire. What if another clan of goblins practices the Way of Shadows monastic tradition because they understand that they are scrawny little fucks and stealth and trickery are the keys to their survival? What if Strahd trains and breeds rust monsters in his free time and has a herd of them that have been bred to go bugnuts crazy over silver? He's also obviously had his dumbfuck redneck druids cast barkskin on the rust monsters as well. What if owlbears were created from owls and cave bears instead of regular bears? What if the werewolf is a winter werewolf? What if the metallic looking blue dragon is the child of a gold and blue dragon and he breathes beams of fucking lightning fire?

This particular option is the easiest way to create challenging encounters and make them a little more interesting. If you can create a complex character with a variety of strengths and weaknesses from a combination of race, class, archetype, feat, and skill selection, you can create an interesting enemy for players to face that is a variation on a pre-existing one. That reminds me. Add class levels to pre-existing enemies. Why should the goblin king just be a regular goblin with max hit points? Leave his base stats as is, but give him two levels of Rogue and everything that entails. Are the players hunting a mythical wolf that lives in a mythical forest with strong links to the Feywild? Make it intelligent and give it levels of Ranger or even Druid. Are the players hunting a rabid beast that has been preying on townsfolk and livestock? Give it Barbarian levels. You don't even necessarily need to give full levels in these situations, just flavor the creatures with class abilities.

There's one thing you need to keep in mind when altering pre-existing creatures. How do these creatures affect the rest of your world? If we're talking about the child of a blue and gold dragon, can all dragons interbreed? Why? Because magic is an acceptable answer here. If all dragons can't interbreed, was this just a special case of Bahamut and Tiamat bestowing their favor on the pair? Why did they do so? Will they be pissed if this special child of dragonkind is murdered by greedy little monkeys? If the golem has a lightning wand used in its creation and has shocky powers because of it, are all golems modifiable in this sort of way? Or was the creator just that good at golem creation? Did he write his methods down? Are they valuable to other spellcasters? If the PCs possess this info, will others try to take it from them? If goblins can adhere to a monastic tradition, what other monstrous races can? Are there tribes of Wizard goblins too? There aren't. Goblins think written words are magic and are scared of them.

My point is, just be aware that when you make something exist in your world, you're making it exist in your world. Take a few minutes to think about how this affects the rest of the world. In most cases, it doesn't do too much. But in a case where you go on and on and on about how there are no additional planes in your universe beyond the prime material (or whatever you want to call it), but you have a clan of Way of Shadow/Shadowdancer goblins, it may raise some questions in the minds of your players. How can the goblins jump through shadows if there is no Plane of Shadow to jump through? How can these goblins do things with shadowstuff if the place shadowstuff comes from, the Plane of Shadows, doesn't exist?

4) Keeping Things From Getting Too Boring

Fights get boring. It happens. The DM cannot be expected to make every single moment of combat in a campaign be like an action sequence out of John Wick. That said, there are things you can do to minimize boredom during encounters.

The first step to keeping things from being boring is to remove boring shit. So, remove random encounters. Unless you're talking about special encounters where there is a small chance that important NPC/creature/item X will be at location Y. Don't waste your time and the time of your players on the party coming across six bandits in the woods. Hmm. Rather than calling this idea removing random encounters, let me change it up. How about we go with remove innately boring encounters from your game. Seasoned adventurers can be hot shit and it is assumed that even as rookies they are a least slightly competent at keeping their insides inside of them. Don't waste their time fighting bucktoothed back woods bandits or unarmored street thugs with metal pipes. If such a situation arises, don't waste half an hour or an hour on it. Either handwave the encounter and describe how the PCs cut through these faceless mooks or charge them hit points or a hit dice or something to indicate that they expended effort or something. This doesn't mean they walk through all bandits or thugs. Because sometimes NPCs can be hot shit too. If every time during a campaign you've handwaved the PCs cutting their way through random thugs and all of sudden they're rolling initiative when facing off against some supposedly random thugs, they're going to wonder what is up and they're going to be engaged and they're going to be interested. Maybe. However, that can work against you. The players may decide this break with tradition means that a scorched earth policy is best and blow a bunch of once per day abilities before they even know what they're really dealing with. So your extra special bandits led by Kazandor, The Black Smile of the Night all eat a fireball immediately followed by a flamestrike and you don't get to do anything with Kazandor and his shadowdancing bandits. There are pros and cons to doing things this way.

If you end up in a situation where a particular combat is taaaakkkkkiiiiiinnnnngggg forever. Call the fights that are already won. If the players have used a bunch of cool abilities and the foes are still kicking and the fight is turning into a slog with both sides spamming attacks and cantrips just wasting time till the NPCs run out of hit points, just call it. If you know the PCs are going to win and you don't have anything planned to upset the dynamic of the battle, just call it. Charge the players a few hit points or hit dice or a spell slot (or don't) and describe them slaying all their foes. This will cut down significantly on how much time the fight eats up and keep boredom levels from reaching critical mass. It will keep things moving and lead to less overall boredom during the session.

Don't call the fight if the enemy is a boss or BBEG. If the players and characters have been seeking this shmuck's downfall for a while, don't take that away from them with your magical DM words. Even if the fight is turning into a slog, it's my opinion that they need to strike that last blow in real time and not hear you describe it to them.

Make the environments of a combat interactive. Don't build your encounters in such a way that your players feel like their only options are to trade blows with enemies in a featureless grey room. If they feel that way, the combat is boring. Firstly, describe your environments thoroughly. What do they look like? Smell like? Feel like? ...Taste like? What's the temperature like? What's the lighting like? Make the players feel like their PCs are in an environment. Then make things for them to interact with (assuming that sort of thing fits with the environment). Are there braziers full of burning coals? Is there a table they can kick over for cover against a knife chucking thief in the corner? Is the support beam weak enough that a thunderwave or Monk's attack could bring down the room on the top of the heads of the player's foes? Are things flammable? There are two parts to this. The first is that the players have to be interested in interacting with the environment during a combat. The second part is that you as the DM have to have a history of making the environment offer things to interact with and your players need to know that doing so is not going to be a complete waste of their turn/time.

There has to be value in interacting with the environment. Otherwise there's no point in doing so and it's more valuable for the players to keep attacking. This doesn't mean that a kicked over brazier should be the equivalent of a fireball. But it should do something that makes it worth doing. You could make the case that if your players want to do something they think might be cool, they should do it without worrying about a cost/benefit analysis of the action vs. making a regular attack, but DnD is still a game so the actions you take instead of leveraging more conventional damage against your foes should have some degree of value to the ongoing combat. If you waste your turn kicking over a brazier of burning coals instead of doing an attack and the coals only do 1d4 fire damage once, you've wasted your turn and put yourself and your party members at risk by prolonging the fight. Which isn't cool in a cooperative game like this. Like I said, it doesn't need to be the equivalent of a fireball or something, but if the players are going to interact with the environment, it should have value. But only if the thing they do warrants it. You could make a case for a brazier of coals covering a wide area and doing 1d6 fire damage when anyone is in the area and lighting things on fire and even being considered difficult terrain. But a player that decided to throw a lit candle at someone probably shouldn't get the same effect. Because it's just a candle. Sometimes players are going to want to do cool things and think creatively about how to do so, so try and reward that. Other times they're going to want to do something stupid without thinking about it, don't reward that.

Don't make players fight the same enemies in the same situations over and over and over again. Yeah, you may be on a quest line that pits the players against goblins for several scenarios, but as previously said, you can make goblins interesting by changing them up a little. If the players fight the same enemies in the same types of situations over and over and over again, combat is going to start to bore them. As long as the situation allows it, you can change things up even if the quest line forces them to be fighting against the same type of foe for several scenarios. In a goblin cave complex that will take several sessions to get through, even in a situation where you're not making them unique Way of Shadows Monk goblins, you can vary things a bit. Throw in a hoblgoblin or bugbear or two. Throw in an otyugh or ooze or something in a midden heap. Make a few goblins acolytes of Maglubiyet and give them Cleric spells. Change up the types of encounters. Don't just put a set of foes on one side of a room and the PCs on the other. Pit the players against ambushers, archers, front line warriors. Put them in hostage situations where the goal of the combat is not to defeat the foes, but to save the hostages. One of the key things to keeping combat interesting is variety. Doing the same type of thing to the same type of NPCs for an entire campaign is almost the definition of boring. You want variety in the foes your players face and in the types of combat situations you put them in.

4.X) Challenging Specific Types of Players

This is something I forgot to mention at the beginning of the post. You may want to challenge specific types of players in some way. The thing to keep in mind is the difference between challenging the player and their character and negating their abilities. Negating is keeping them from using their most powerful abilities (cutting an archer's bowstring, forcing a Wizard into direct combat against an enemy that is immune to magic, forcing a Fighter into combat with a creature immune to weapon damage, etc). Challenging them is forcing them to use those abilities in a difficult situation or at a higher level of expertise than they are accustomed to.

So yeah, if you want to negate a PCs abilities, go ahead. Cut bowstrings. Wizard falls in lava, burn his spellbook. Fighting goblins (who fear words and love shiny things)? Have them steal holy symbols and spellbooks. Is your Fighter hacking apart a demon lord or vampire and is only able to do so because of the magic sword he wields? Have the demon lord or vampire use its superior Strength score to use some sort of opposed check to grab the sword and chuck it into a corner. Intelligent creatures understand when they are being injured and they would seek to avoid that. Is the Paladin basically invulnerable because of his plate mail and shield? Have an enemy bury a heavy spear in the shield and force him to drop it or reduce the shield's effective. There are lots of reasonable ways you can temporarily negate a PCs capabilities to challenge them. Just don't do it all the time or do it just because you're sick of the PCs kicking your NPCs all over the place. Because that's a dick move and it makes you a babby. I'm not gonna lie, we've all done it. We've all been there. Do your best to avoid it though. It leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth.

Also, remember, if you can have your regular old NPCs (not the special unique boss types with special abilities) do something, the players can have their character's do it too. Keep that in mind when you decide on what mechanic you use to determine if a spear sticks in a shield or an enemy is able to disarm a PC. Similar to what I said earlier about adding things to your world, when you add a mechanic to your world, you add it to your world and it becomes available for everyone to use. So make sure you've thought about the mechanics you want to add. Also, make sure you're not stepping on existing capabilities of classes and stuff. If a class has a specific ability that allows it to disarm foes (I think one of the Fighter archetypes does) make sure your disarming mechanic isn't as cool as that. 

Challenging specific types of players is different. Pathfinder had a broken condition for items that had specific effects on gear types. You can use a similar mechanic to make things harder for gear based characters. A fireball hits your archer and he fails his save? Scorch his bowstring. Until he replaces or repairs it, his bow attacks have disadvantage because of the damaged string. Your Fighter use his greatsword as a lever to move a rock because he didn't bring a crowbar to the dungeon (dumbass)? Ok, let him succeed, but until he can find a forge or use a smithing hammer to repair the greatsword, his attacks with the slightly bent and blunted weapon have disadvantage. Your Wizard fall into a lake? Now the ink on his spellbook is smudged and runny, so when he tries to cast rituals from it they take thirty minutes instead of ten because he has to decipher the smudges. Did your Cleric get covered in a slimy ooze creature? Ok, well creatures have advantage on saves against his spells because Sune, the Goddess of Beauty is upset that the Cleric and his holy symbol are dirty and covered in gross ooze bits.

These are inconveniences that make it difficult for characters and players to do what they like doing. Be careful though. Players like playing a certain way because they enjoy it. If the DM is constantly throwing up roadblocks that prevent them from doing those sorts of things, the game ceases to be fun because they can't play their character the way they want to. You probably don't want to do these sorts of things all the time in most campaigns. However, if you're going to run a campaign where leather armor and paper and bowstrings are constantly being damaged by area of effect fire spells or when the player is lit on fire, you need to make your players aware that that element of realism is a component of your campaign before the campaign begins, and you need to be consistent about doing so. Don't be the DM that decides on this sort of thing when you're in the middle of the campaign and the Wizard tries to cast a ritual that ruins a puzzle trap you've put into the scenario and you say "Oh, well, you were inside a gelatinous ooze for a while and its acidic body damaged all your clothing and your spell component pouch so you can't cast that ritual. Sorry." That's crap DMing. 

Like I said, broken weapons, lost spellbooks, ruined armor, etc, are all inconveniences to players that prevent them from doing what they're good at or make it harder to do what they're good at. The other way of challenging specific types of players is to require their level of expertise. They have to do things that only they are good at. If you have an archer character that is ridiculously good at ranged attacks, use that. Make a trap or monster that requires that level of expertise to get past. Give giant mechanical monsters weak points with an AC that only your badass archer could conceivably hit to damage the right gear and reduce the monster's mobility or break off a layer of its armor plating so the Fighter can start banging away on its sensitive internal components. Put PCs in a situation where only the fire focused Sorcerer has the ability to cast a fireball that deals enough fire damage to ignite The Shrine of the Fire Lord's Favor. Put in trapped hallways where only your Rogue has a high enough Dexterity save to reliably survive all the traps in the trapped tunnel to get to the lever they need to raise the portcullis in room A1. Put your party in a situation where they are mobbed by so many mindless undead that no matter how many the Ranger and Fighter kill, there are always more, so the only party member that can give them enough breathing room to advance is the Cleric with his turn undead ability. Basically, create environments and situations and monsters that require the level of expertise your players have developed in their playstyles and character design and then fold all that together into a scenario. This sort of thing can be tricky to do and has its flaws (what if they use the wrong ability at the wrong time in the scenario, what if the needed player isn't there that night, etc), but if done right it gives each of your players moments to shine where they are doing what they want to do and doing it well. It will also serve as a team building exercise where they're all learning to depend on one another's capabilities. 

3) Letting Players Be Cool

I wanted to end on this one rather than keeping things from getting too boring. I'm not sure why. It felt right. I went with it.

This first idea is kind of an odd idea I just came up with. You have a variety of players with a lot of different skills and some overlap between the PCs. You might have a Rogue proficient in Dexterity saving throws and a high Dexterity Monk that isn't (maybe, I forget what saving throws Monks are proficient in). They might both be called on to do Dexterity save related things. The idea I have is to describe the proficient character's high score successes as being skill based and intentional and deliberate and the non-proficient character's successes as being accidental or reactionary. I'll give an example. So you have this Rogue and Monk moving down this tunnel with a floor full of a bunch of trapped tiles. Both PCs trip pressure plates while moving in the tunnel. They both make Dexterity saves and roll super high. The Rogue is proficient in things like Dexterity saves and Stealth and thieves' tools and such and has a mediocre roll. The Monk just has a high Dexterity and a really high roll. They both succeed on the saving throw. Describe the Rogue as feeling the slight give of the pressure plate, balancing his weight carefully and sliding his boots to be half on one tile and half on an adjacent one. He avoids the trap by carefully distributing his weight across multiple tiles so none of them activate the trap. The Monk just goes "Oh fuck" and does flippy ninja shit to get out of the way of the trap's effect. The Rogue could do flippy ninja dodge shit too, but describing it this way shows he's good at what he does. He doesn't need to be lucky or do ridiculous looking flippy ninja shit to dodge a dart or firebolt, he just calmly and skillfully avoids tripping the trap in the first place while the amateur runs around making a spectacle. If your player thinks flippy ninja shit is way cooler than being really good at Rogueing, this option probably isn't going to go over well. So know your players and use that information to determine what they'll think is cool.

Second thing. Let your players surprise you. One of the super neat things about being a player is when you surprise the GM. You've seen the memes. That moment when you make the DM say fuuuuucccckkk. I've said things about knowing the capabilities of your players in this post. What I mean by that is know them in a general sense. How do they fight? Can they heal? Do they like fire? Those sorts of things. But don't know the nitty gritty details of their character sheets. What are their specific stats? Don't worry about it. Do they know fireball or firebolt? Don't worry about it. What archetype are they? Meh. Let them have that badass moment where they use an ability or spell you had no idea they had to negate six paragraphs of your scenario or campaign documentation because they have etherealwhatever and can just ghost through the walls of the dungeon instead of being forced to answer the riddles of Mokmhet the Stone Ancient of Broken Dreams and Weariness and the Aching Pangs of Loneliness. It's cool. Let them do that. 

Third thing. Try not to ask them "Are you sure?" too regularly because that is DM speak for "you're about to get fuuuuuucccckkked" and players know that. Unless you've deliberately sidestepped that expectation by always asking them if they're sure  about their next action even when it doesn't matter, so they have no idea what you mean when you ask them if they're sure. My point here is honor their choices. It may not be cool when they pick up the ancient iron rune encrusted battle axe that emits malevolent whispers and they get possessed by Garobgul, the Blade Whispering Against the Throat of Time. Well. That's not true. It's going to be super cool because I'm a pretty decent writer and I describe things pretty well.

Moving along. It may not be cool for the player that picks it up when he picks it up. However, a year later when the group is in the final session of the campaign and they've fought through the hordes of death and at least three of the layers of Hell to reach their former companion and have chained them to the Altar of Ambivalent Servitude and the possessed PC is allowed to make a Wisdom save to throw off the mental chains of Garobgul and succeeds by one and I describe a really awesome mental struggle and beams of light and darkness and a whisper of pain and rage that grinds like a knife against your eardrums, that's gonna be cool.

That was a helluva run on sentence. 

Ok, fine. I admit it. There are definitely some flaws with that situation that make it not cool. My point is, yeah, it sucks when players make bad choices, but don't warn them with words you speak as the DM and take away a sliver of their ability to make decisions. When you speak to them as a DM like that you're implying they're making the wrong choice and you're eating away at their commitment to a course of action. They've already decided to do something and you are gnawing away at that. Sure, throw up flags in the world like a crusty old war veteran that warns them about the fell darkness and horrible voices he heard when he fought against the vampire counts on The Fields of Red Ruin in the Westlands. That's completely different from you saying, "Are you sure?" with the tone and cadence you always do when you are warning them that bad shit is about to go down. Give them as much practical in world information and warning as you reasonably can, and then let them make their shitty choices and get knocked down, then let them get back up and hit back twice as hard. Because that's cool. They're PCs. They don't give up. They don't tap out. They drink as a Dogdamn move action, first produce their pistol, then produce their rapier, and they fucking stand and fucking deliver.

They fuck up and they fall, but much like Hercules Mulligan, they get the fuck back up again. ::wink:: Give them the chance to fail, so they know that they can. If they know that they can fail, their victories and successes are that much more valuable. I have seen many a PC wander around the game world not really cognizant of the fact that they can fail and lose and have their PC die with no restoration possible. The player knows he's playing a game and why would the main characters die forever? His victories don't matter because that's the expectation, that he'll be victorious. Let the players understand that they can fail and make the wrong choice, that it's possible for them to not save the world, but also let them know that if they get their shit together and act like fucking badasses, they can fix what they broke. Sometimes. Other times, you waste The Blades of Bone and Flame and you don't have them when you need them because you wanted to open doors like Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon did with their lightsabers and expended all their power.

Fourth thing. Ignore legendary actions. This is one I am struggling with. I like legendary actions, but I also don't like legendary actions. They make big deal foes like ancient dragons and Strahd more powerful and can keep them from being stunlocked in solo battles. But I also feel like that mechanic is too obviously a game mechanic. Like if you want Strahd to be resistant to stunlocking, instead of just letting him 3/day suddenly make saving throws he failed, just give him a magic item (see my earlier point about him reasonably having access to all magic items) that grants proficiency or advantage or something on his Wisdom saves. If a player throws a lightning bolt at a foe with legendary actions and they roll really good damage and the target fails the save, that's really fucking cool. When you then decide to use the legendary action because the full damage lightning bolt would kill the NPC and you say, "Uh, no, he doesn't fail his saving throw, because game." it feels way less cool and feels super game mechanicy. It's not some innate creature ability that grants this advantage, it's a very obvious game mechanic. So yeah, either be subtle about using legendary actions (don't tell the players the result of saves and then say but the enemy still saves), don't use them to negate player awesomeness (like when they roll almost max damage with a lightning bolt spell and would kill a foe), or don't use them period.

Fifth thing. This is a holdover from 4th Edition that I really like. Use minions. Add enemies to an encounter specifically for the purposes of having players one shot them. Stat them out normally, allow them to deal damage and wear armor and all that, but have them die if they get hit. This gives the players that sense of being badasses and wading through enemies and hacking them down. It can also be used to increase the challenge of an encounter because these enemies can still hit the players. Be careful that they're not too hard to hit though. Having only one hit point doesn't matter if you can't get hit. Also, make sure that it is somewhat obvious that these guys are minions. 

So there are a lot of words about building encounters. None of it is perfect. None of it is guaranteed to work. Some of it is random thoughts that occurred to me while writing it. Some of it may be of value to you. Some of it I've used before to great success (or failure). Some of it I don't even agree with. Some of it doesn't even make sense. The thing to remember is that it is your game. Do what works for you and your players. If they or you want a sense of realism, make weapons and armor break. If they find it irritating instead of challenging, maybe don't do that. If your players don't care when you are obvious about using a legendary action, use them and don't worry about how game mechanicy it feels. If your players don't care about the environment around their characters, don't worry about putting cool things in it for them to interact with it. If your players are bored by combat because combat is innately boring to them, make a campaign about politics and dialogue and whatever they are interested in playing. Find the right mix of nonsense that you can all agree on enough to sit down at the table regularly to chuck dice at one another while pretending to be elves. Not everything is going to work for every DM and every player. Talk with each other and find what does. Ask players after the session what they thought of the horde of undead only the Cleric could get them through. Ask them what they thought of the fireball scorching their bowstring. Test things out, get feedback, and move from there.

Fuck, that was a lot of words.

Alternate Rules: Dire-er Wolves

In our Curse of Strahd campaign one thing I have tried to show is Navere entering a more feral state. He has been driven to this by the dreary fucked weather patterns and day/night cycle, the malicious subversion of the natural impulses of wolves and other creatures, the widespread subversion of the natural cycle of life and death, as well as the redneck fuckhead Druids that worship the vampire Strahd because the weather changes when he's butthurt. To represent Navere's feral upbringing among wolves being closer to the surface, I've decided to begin taking levels of Barbarian and Kyle has allowed me to change from a Circle of the Land Druid to a Circle of the Moon Druid, which is more focused on wild shape and less on spells. Navere's savage feral nature is closer to the surface, but he is still intelligent and has experienced civilization and has an above average Intelligence and Wisdom. The way I represent this struggle between feral wolfiness and civilized intelligence is any time something that trips Navere's predator/prey instincts happens, I roll a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw. Navere has a pretty significant bonus on his Wisdom saving throws, but if he fails, he uses wild shape and becomes a dire wolf. Once he's in dire wolf shape, the same thing happens. If Navere's predator/prey instincts are tripped, he makes a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw. If he fails, he rages. The rage capabilities coupled with his ability to sacrifice spell slots as a bonus action to heal while in wild shape is a pretty good combo. I've also decided that when this happens, once he is in his dire wolf shape, he doesn't leave until the timer runs out on the use or he is forced out of it. In extreme situations I may decide to let him make a Wisdom saving throw to transform out of it. He can still willingly choose to transform into an animal with his wild shape ability, but I'm planning to describe the transformation differently. 

In our last session (which at the time this posts happened slightly over three weeks ago) we saw a saber toothed cat and Kyle mentioned to me that I was one Druid level short of being able to wild shape into a saber toothed cat. Navere is a 5th level Druid and Circle of the Moon Druids can transform into animals with a CR equal to their level divided by three, rounded down. This got me thinking though. Wild shape is somewhat limited because your attack bonus will always be limited by the stats of the form you take. So when I have a +5 proficiency bonus, I'll still be using the dire wolf's +2 proficiency bonus on attack rolls. I got to thinking, what if Kyle just let me upgrade the dire wolf (which has a CR of 1) to a dire-er wolf with a CR of 2? Kyle OKed it, so that's what I'm about to discuss doing here.

So the rules for modifying monsters in this edition are a little goofy. Like in Pathfinder or 3.5 I could just apply a template with a CR adjustment of +1 and boom, we have a CR 2 dire wolf. In 5th Edition, you basically take five categories of abilities from a chart of suggested CRs, add the CRs of the defensive traits together and divide by two and then do the same with the offensive traits and divide by three. Then you compare the results and figure out what CR you want your critter to be.

The categories are as follows: armor class, hit points, attack bonus, damage per round, and save DC. The first three are the defensive traits and the last three are offensive traits. The CR 1 dire wolf currently sits at AC 14 (CR 4), 37 hit points (CR 1/4), +5 attack bonus (CR 4),  one attack per round with an average of 10 damage per round (CR 1), and the DC for its trip special ability is 13 (CR 1/8 - 3). If we add our defensive CR totals of 4, and 0.25 together we get a net CR of 2.125 for defensive traits. If we add our offensive CR totals of 4, 1, and 0.125 together we get a net CR of 1.71 for offensive traits.

Ok. This is seriously confusing. The guidelines in the DMG that I'm looking at say to round up and down to compare the creature's offensive and defensive abilities. So we have CR 2 defensive traits and CR 2 offensive traits. Looking at all this somewhat confusing information, the dire wolf is a CR 2 creature in the first place. But they made it CR 1 in the Monster Manual. Why?

Looking at the rules for encounter building, a CR 1 creature is supposed to be a medium challenge for a group of 4 to 5 first level PCs. Looking at the dire wolf's low AC (14), and hit points (37), it's probably not going to survive more than a few rounds against a group of 1st level PCs. The average damage of the dire wolf (10) and its +5 attack bonus are definitely going to make it a threat, and it could conceivably drop a low hit point character like a Wizard. We also have to consider the fact that dire wolves are pack animals, so you're not really going to encounter them alone, so they're not really ideal for low level encounters. So yeah, a single dire wolf could do some damage to a 1st level party, but one probably won't TPK them and lone dire wolves are not an ideal monster to pit against 1st level characters. During testing they probably justified making them CR 1 by saying that dire wolves are pack animals and if we keep them at CR 1 DMs can use more of them against higher level characters that have more survivability.

Or they just winged it and came up with these monster creation guidelines way after the fact.

Looking at other large size CR 2 animals, they seem to have a slightly higher Strength and more hit points than our large size CR 1 dire wolf. So let's experiment with that for our CR 2 dire-er wolf.  The easiest way I can think of to tweak the dire wolf's stats to achieve slight increases to damage and hit points is fairly obvious. We tweak its Strength and its Constitution. It currently has a Strength of 17 and a Constitution of 15. With just a +1 to both of those ability scores we create minor tweaks to its current stats that make it more comparable to creatures like the saber toothed cat.

With the +1 to the dire wolf's Strength (making it 18) we end up with an attack bonus of +6, an average damage of 11, and we increase the DC for its trip attack to 14. With the +1 to Constitution we make its hit points 42 (it has 5 hit dice). This is comparable to the giant (dire) boar, the giant (dire) hyena, and rhinoceros.  These are all large size, CR 2 animals. I think I could make a case for giving it a sixth hit die as well, but I'm not sure. The giant boar has 5, the giant hyena and rhino have 6, and the saber toothed cat has 7. So I dunno.

Kyle suggested making the dire wolf huge or creating a variant of the winter wolf (a CR 3 monstrosity with 70ish hit points) that has a howl that dealt thunder damage. Huge size is kind of ridiculous. It makes Navere's wild shape ability completely impractical for adventuring. It also jumps the dire wolf's hit points from 37 (5d10+10) to 42 (5d12+10). Which does make its hit points more in line with the previously mentioned CR 2 large size creatures. I'll admit it, I really like the idea of a giant wolf with a thunder damage howl, but it is totally not in keeping with everything Navere is about. Monstrosities are just that. They are unnatural. Wild shape can't transform into them as far as I know. Plus, it doesn't fit with Navere. Navere was raised by wolves, a thunder howl wolf isn't natural and doesn't make sense for his background. It's definitely a cool thing I would totally be for in another situation, but it doesn't fit Navere. Navere's whole reason for going semi-feral is because of the unnatural shit going on in Barovia. He wouldn't go feral because of this bullshit and then embrace an unnatural wolf form. 

One special note about wild shape, you can't cast spells in a wild shape form (at least not until a higher Druid level that I am probably not going to achieve in this campaign), but you can concentrate on spells while in a wild shape form. So one of the cool things Navere can do is cast call lightning and transform into a dire wolf and then emit a deep as fuck howl to "call" down lightning from a storm of his creation onto the heads of his foes. That just sounds like a cool thing to describe. I'm also very excited by the idea of Navere casting haste on himself and then wild shaping. That's going to be a fun time. 

The only problem with these ideas is that if he does fail his Wisdom saving throw and rages, he can no longer concentrate on or cast spells. So that's not ideal, but oh well. I still have plenty of options to do cool things. 

After all this talking and going over monster creation  and wild shape rules and whatnot, my real wish is that you could replace the creature you transform into's proficiency bonus with your own. Period. End of sentence. That would make low CR forms more useful for magical wild shaping, but the rules as written say that you use the creature's attacks as listed and only replace its proficiency bonus on skills (and I think saving throws) if yours is higher. So it kind of clearly states that you use the critter's proficiency bonus for attacks made in that form. I can definitely see the logic for not allowing attacks to use the character's proficiency bonus. You're transforming into a dire wolf and attacking like a dire wolf and Druids, not having giant ass jaws, would not really be terribly proficient in attacking things with giant ass jaws and dragging creatures to the ground with them. I get it, but the special entitled snowflake inside of me wishes things could be different. 

Alas, I have become the thing I hate. So begin the End Times. 

Alternate Rules: Random and Non-Essential Encounter Resolution

Random encounters.

Ugh.

I hate random encounters. I see their main purpose, to add an element of random danger to cross country travel or dungeon delving, and it has merit. But they're nothing more than a time sink. Completely pointless. Yes, you can have random encounters have meaning by adding special encounters to them, like when you roll a 12 on the random encounter chart and end up stumbling across the Wanderer or the Hound and that having an unexpected effect on future sessions. Those can be interesting. Most random encounters are just randomly running into 12 goblins in the dungeon or stumbling across a shambling mound on its cross country shamble.

Ok, first of all, as the GM, you should fucking know how many goblins/soldiers/whatever are in your dungeon, and you should know their patrol routes, assuming they have patrol routes and patrolling regularly fits with the monster type. Ok? If you don't, you're being lazy. These are things that should not be randomly generated on the spot. Unless of course you're playing a sort of randomized sandbox campaign. There are either thirty goblins in the dungeon or there are not. They either patrol or they do not. They either respond to the loud sounds of battle that echo through the dungeon, or they do not. One of the things I despise is reinforcements appearing from nowhere, like they're miraculously summoned by magic, rather than coming from another part of the dungeon where they could reasonably hear the yells of their allies that are currently engaging the PCs.

Anyway. Random and non-essential encounter resolution. That's what we're here to discuss, right?

Non-essential fights are those fights designed purely to drain resources. These are the fights from scenarios where you're just trying to pad the run time or following the guidelines in a DMG for X amount of encounters. They serve no real narrative purposes and aren't terribly memorable because of mechanics, environment, or foes. Or they're fights that you hadn't planned on that the players pick with faceless NPCs like when the players walk down an alley or something and a gang of thugs greets them and the players botch their Charisma (Intimidation) check and are unwilling to pay the 5 gp toll. They're boring and don't feature compelling mechanics or environments or their only purpose is to drain resources so the PCs are unable to leverage their full power and abilities against the end boss or whatever.

Additionally, random and non-essential encounters both chew up an excessive amount of time, because combat eats up the most time in a gaming session and it's not because of rolling initiative or indecision on the part of players. It's because combat is time consuming because it involves everybody doing something. Fine, you can shave off seconds by being prepared and pre-rolling your initiative and attacks and not getting distracted, but four or more players and a GM that likely controls a similar amount of NPCs (if not more) each have to take actions and that eats up time. 

I don't include random encounters in my scenarios and I only include non-essential encounters if I have to. If a particular bandit keep has sixty bandits as members of the bandit group and the players wander in when all sixty are relaxing at the keep, I'm going to make the PCs slog through sixty fucking bandits. It will take time and be boring and they will hate it, but if there are sixty bandits in a bandit keep, they are going to have to deal with all of them whether it be via murder, intimidation, or just avoiding them. I do this because to me, even though they're non-essential encounters, they need to be there for the sake of continuity and perhaps a bit of realism. If a bandit group has sixty bandits, yes, the players are going to have to resolve dealing with all of those bandits because that's how many bandits there are. If they only deal with sixteen bandits out of sixty, what was the point? Ok, the lead bandit is deposed, dead, or brought to justice or whatever. There are still forty-four bandits out there and one of them is bound to be interested in leading the rest to raid local merchants and villages. What was the point? Nothing has changed. Why should the players consider it a success or the villagers consider the reward earned?

Ok, so random encounters are dumb and non-essential encounters waste time. So how do we expedite them if the GM feels the need to use them? This idea is going to be written for 5th Edition, but the general gist of it can apply to more than that. Since the goal here is to imply difficulty or complication or randomness, and not to kill the players, my thought is to resolve random and non-essential encounters as a skill check of sorts.

There are a few ways you can do this. You can treat it as a skill challenge and have every player participate. You could treat it as a pure skill check where a player rolls based on his skills for the group to resolve an encounter vs. a DC or relevant opposed roll from the adversaries, but that's an inelegant one and kind of steps on talky characters making talking skill checks to avoid encounters and steps on stealthy characters making stealthy skill checks to avoid encounter. Or you could just treat it as a group check with modifiers based on the advantages each side possesses. Blah blah blah blah.

The purpose is to negate the pointless slog of random and non-essential combat encounters, to resolve them quickly in a satisfying way for the players and the GM. I say this method is for combat encounters because if you're taking the route of non-combat to resolve another type of encounter, you're going to typically be using pre-existing mechanics to resolve that (dialogue and stealth skills and such).

My thought is to have the players make a d20 roll as a group with their proficiency bonus (for the sake of this discussion, assume that all players are the same level and that sort of thing and no one ever has to worry about varying proficiency levels between members) and give them advantage or disadvantage based on how they compare to the foe and how they want to resolve the encounter. The purpose is to resolve it quickly without getting into nitty gritty details, so it is abstract. If the players outnumber the foes, advantage. If the players are outnumbered by the foes, disadvantage. Maybe the Wizard says he'll use a third level spell slot to cast fireball against the enemies (make sure you deduct that from their character sheet) and that gets them advantage. Maybe the Fighter agrees to use action surge and that gets them advantage. Use the normal rules for advantage and disadvantage nullifying each other and only applying once to a roll. Once you figure out whether the PCs have advantage, disadvantage, or neither on the roll, make the d20 + proficiency bonus roll.

Since the goal is to resolve the encounter quickly and abstractly, rather than kill the players, the result is never that they lose the combat and die. The d20 roll is meant to represent the randomness of combat, obviously. Sometimes players get unlucky and have to use more of their resources to combat a not terribly tough foe. Sometimes foes get lucky and critical hit the Wizard in round one and drop them. So the way you resolve it is based on the success of the group's roll. Maybe on a natural 20 they wade through the combat like golden fucking gods untouchable by man or fell beast. Maybe on a natural one they all take 1d8 damage and one of the players is dropped to 0 hit points and must make a death save once. Then you vary the results, with high results being less costly and lower results using up more of their resources like hit dice and class abilities and that sort of thing.

My thought is to break it up into a range of results as follow:

• 20+          : Amazing success, player's succeed at no cost to themselves. 
• 11 - 19    : One player loses 1 hit die. Determine who loses the hit die randomly. Players may opt to expend one ability that is restored on a short rest instead of a losing a hit die.
• 2 - 10       : Players lose a total of 1d4 hit dice. Determine who loses a hit die randomly. Players may opt to expend one ability that is restored on a short rest instead of a losing a hit die.
• 1           : Each player loses one hit die and one player, randomly determined, must make a death save. Players may opt to expend one ability that is restored on a short rest instead of losing a hit die. If the character that makes the death saving throw fails, he is not at 0 hit points, it is merely noted that he has failed a death saving throw that day. 

So that is kind of what I'm thinking. I think it does what I want, but I'm not sure it's perfect. I like it more than randomly assigning damage or something. It burns player resources, just like actually going through a fight would, and that's the main purpose here. So that's a success. By opting to use hit dice instead of dealing hit point damage or something, and giving the players the option of expending short rest abilities, it kind of cuts down on the 15 minute adventuring day as well. I think. Maybe. Who the fuck knows? I do think resolving non-essential combat encounters this way will result in keeping the players fresher for longer in the adventure, which will allow a DM to keep the actual plot-related combats more interesting and dangerous. 

Regardless, I think it does what I want. A quick discussion about advantage vs. disadvantage when fighting a group of mooks and making a die roll is way fucking quicker than actually going through three or four rounds of relatively pointless combat. This is actually similar to something I'd occasionally do in 4th Edition where after a certain point everyone expended their encounter powers, but foes were still standing and I'd just call the fight and charge everyone a healing surge instead of going through an hour of everyone spamming their at will attacks for round after round. I think that was a popular way of resolving 4th Edition's long fights back then. 

The Why of Yofga and Hasta

So I know I mentioned rebooting Hekinoe to some degree, but that's on the back burner for a bit. For now, the main task is to get my 5th Edition campaign for Kyle's group put together. I've got a world and some house rules and so on and so forth. I even have what I think is a plot that will work.

Part of me keeps asking myself, why bother with a 5th Edition campaign on a world that exists in the same universe as Hekinoe, but isn't Hekinoe? Especially when I'm initiating some major changes to Hekinoe. Well, there are a couple reasons for this of varying degrees of merit. So let's talk about those today. I guess?

The first reason I want to run a 5th Edition campaign is to give Kyle and Kevin a break. They've been alternating campaigns basically since I joined their group like two years and some change ago. I just figure that it would be a nice break for both of them if another DM steps in for a bit to let them both play. I figure that I was always appreciative of those times Eric stepped in to try and DM something with our group, so Kevin and Kyle might feel the same way if I took up the mantle for a bit as well. I dunno. I very much get what it feels like to run an endless series of campaigns with little to no respite from it, so I guess I just want to show my appreciation for being accepted into the group and for having a chance to play a dozen or so characters.

The second reason is that I miss DMing. I am definitely something of a control freak when it comes to gaming and I struggle constantly (and not always successfully) with telling everyone what to do and reminding Kyle and Kevin of this or that. I'm sure it wears on Kevin and Kyle and the other players and resisting that urge to tell everyone what to do and why they should do it wears on me. In addition to wanting to be in control again, I miss crafting environments and NPCs and plots. I miss worldbuilding. I miss surprising and confusing and terrifying my players. I miss having secrets and knowing things. I miss playing the "I don't know. Does it?" game. I miss DMing.

The third reason, and this is a snarky and selfish one, is that I am fucking sick of "immersion." I have expressed a certain dislike for the immersive aspects of our current campaign. We've always experimented with dim lighting, and it has always given me a headache and I have been up front about that. With the fog machine and soundtrack and lack of maps and visual media, it's borderline unbearable. I'm just sick of being constantly distracted from the game and what everyone is saying by the hissing fog machine and the soundtrack, and never knowing what is happening or what our environment looks like or where anyone is due to lack of representation of those aspects that I can see, and going home after every session with a raging headache from squinting at a backlit tablet in a lightless basement and a scratchy throat and congested nose from the fog I'm constantly sucking in. So yeah, full disclosure, part of why I want to DM for this group is so that I can game in a well lit and comfortable environment.

Side note: Fred and I have recently discussed how when I run my desert world campaign I should make it immersive theater of the mind. By immersive theater of the mind, I mean we should have a space heater running constantly in Kevin's basement while we game, ban all beverages while gaming, and bring a powerful spotlight to blast people with periodically to represent the unrelenting gaze of Hasta's furious sun, and also periodically throw handfuls of sand into their faces. That would definitely be hilarious and immersive and maybe just a smidgen petty. Maybe more than a smidgen. Maybe a lot more than a smidgen. Hehe.

The fourth reason is that I want to challenge myself a little bit. My comfort zone is Hekinoe, Pathfinder, and a certain group of players. I feel like it is important to step outside that comfort zone and challenge myself a little. So instead of the somewhat environmentally stable technologically advanced fantasy world of Hekinoe, I'm trying a campaign on a dying fantasy desert world. Instead of using something I can quote rules and stats from memory from, like Pathfinder, I'm running 5th Edition (which yeah, I'm pretty familiar with at this point, but still). Instead of gaming with Eric and Jason and Lance and Jeremy, etc, etc, I'm running a campaign with this newer group. Instead of doing my politics and warfare plots, I'm doing a semi-tropeish save the world campaign. So yeah, I'm kind of challenging myself a little bit to step outside of my comfort zone a wee bit. Which is cool. It's important to try new things and grow as a GM. I guess.

So those are the reasons why I want to do a 5th Edition, non-Hekinoe campaign. So what am I trying to do with the campaign?

This ties in somewhat to challenging myself. My goal for this is to do a save the world campaign, which I don't do too often. If I have, it's been a while. Pre-Hekinoe at least. My goal is to try and make a save the world campaign, but put my spin on it. Keep my plot creation ideal of grey morality and NPCs with personalities and a world that responds to the actions of the PCs but doesn't pause while they're not directly interacting with a given portion of it. 

My goal is also to use this campaign as a means of focusing and disciplining my scenario creation. Back in the Orcunraytrel Arc we'd game maybe once every two months, sometimes with longer stretches between sessions. We'd augment this with constant RPs via email. Emailing to do RPs between sessions isn't really an option with this group. It's been tried before and kind of falls flat. This group does a game every two weeks, almost without fail, thing that I am very unused to. I'm not sure how my somewhat lackadaisical scenario creation is going to cope with that. I'm normally way more slackass about scenario creation than that. So I'm going to have to get into the practice of disciplining myself and focusing harder on getting scenarios done and that sort of thing. I'm not sure how I'll ultimately cope with this or if I'll be able to keep it up, but I'm going to challenge myself to try. 

Or I'm just going to say fuck it, play video games, and pull everything out of my ass. We'll see.

Another goal is to put 5th Edition and my house rules for it through their paces. I want to hack it up and twist and see how far I can push it before it breaks. Pathfinder tolerated Hekinoe and my house rules fairly well. I want to see what happens when I put 5th Edition under some stress and change how its rules work for magic and recovery and so on. I've tweaked things here and there in ways that tickle my fancy and fit with Hasta and the way it is, now I want to see how that impacts 5th Edition and how it works in a practical way and not a theoretical way. Like yeah, theoretically, I understand that combat is going to be made easier by the group having access to healing spells that are limited only by the fact that they can be used once per round, rather than by spell slots per day. But how is that going to interact with limited recovery of hit dice and being subjected to exhaustion levels more frequently? Six levels of exhaustion kills you, even if you're at full health, and you gain exhaustion levels in my house rules when you hit half hit points and 0 hit points. How are those going to work together? I'm excited to see how all my house rules interact with one another and I'm excited to see how they need to be tweaked. It'll be neat.

So there's some of my goals for my 5th Edition campaign and that sort of thing. Wee!

Hekinoe 2.0

Hekinoe 2.0, eh? We're doing this? Really?

Apparently.

So here's the thing. I keep stalling out on converting Hekinoe to GURPS. I'm not sure why. I go and go and go and I blog about it, I get hung up on races or sorcery or psionics or Nel or what the fuck ever. Then I stop blogging for a year and don't touch GURPS Hekinoe for a year. I've get an idea that I think might help me get back into working on Hekinoe and moving towards a point where I can run things in Hekinoe. 

So let's talk about Hekinoe for a bit.

Hekinoe is a little bit busy. We've got lots of continents. Myrecenar, Fendojon, The North, The South, The Known World, Ieangetniv, Grenaldeen, Orcunraytrel, Fresgulen, The Known World, Yarrom, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. The thing is, most of these continents (aside from Orcunraytrel, The Known World, Grenaldeen, Fresgulen, The North, and The South) are of very little importance and are very poorly fleshed out. Ieangetniv definitely has nostalgic value though.

So Hekinoe is a little busy, lots of places and names with only a very few fleshed out thoroughly. Let's talk about those fairly fleshed out areas. The Known World is super crammed with shit. Orcunraytrel is a little less so. So what we're dealing with here are a few highly concentrated regions of stuff and then a bunch of poorly fleshed out continents. It's kind of a poor way to have a campaign world set up. It would make sense if we were primarily focused on The Known World, which we kind of are, and they were exploring the rest of the world and learning about things, which they are currently not. The problem is that with the technology level of The Known World, they would be exploring the world around them and countries there would have colonies and that sort of thing. Trade and travel and exploration would be occurring. But they're not. We have eight or more fairly powerful nations crammed into a landmass only a little bit larger than The United States. It's not completely unbelievable (I think), but it does make for a very very busy continent with lots of bits and pieces moving and interacting.

I've had a thought, and it has gotten some positive reactions from some of my go to people. My thought is that I remove all the useless, vaguely defined bits of Hekinoe that don't interest anyone and then spread out all the nonsense of The Known World. So remove Myrecenar and Yarrom, and that one continent that I forgot the name of, and then turn most of the nations of The Known World into their own continents. So Kusseth, The Fallen Empire, The Fell Peaks, The Old Empire, etc all get their own continents and The Known World becomes a continent of colonies.

This has the benefit of spreading out the world more, so it at least seems more filled in. Additionally, turning The Known World into a place of colonies makes it more sensible for countries like Serethnem, Vyanthnem, and Steeltown to exist. So when the Rankethlek fled the Fallen, instead of moving like 25 miles west of their undead masters, they moved to another continent. Serethnem and Vyanthnem already work pretty well in The Known World because their rulers fled a different continent. By spreading out the main empires of Hekinoe we also make it much more reasonable for Haven to exist. If more sea travel and trade and exploration occur, the pirate nation has much more believable viability as a country. 

Additionally, I'd remove The Plains of Dust from The Known World because no one has ever been interested in the horsemen of that land and I literally have no background information on them. Like seriously. There's a flag Jeremy made for me and that's it. Clearly that region is not vital to the lore of Hekinoe. In the same sort of thought process, I'd remove the lizardfolk of Mawknell in Orcunraytrel and probably one or two of the Asosan But Not Asosan kingdoms as well.

So this isn't exactly a reboot or a new campaign world, it's more of a heavy modification of a pre-existing one. This change will unfortunately negate all of the super cool maps Jeremy has made. Sorry dude. The lore and everything will for the most part be unchanged. Keroen Skathos is a thing that exists, Kaleshmar fell, The Fallen are made of Elduman, etc, etc, etc. Just the physical shape of the world will be altered. Hopefully it will make Hekinoe feel more fleshed out and less like the only place anything remotely interesting is happening is in The Known World.

I dunno, I have really positive feelings about this idea. I might almost be described as being excited about this.

Dragons...Yeah...Let's Talk About Some Dogdamn Dragons

So there is this dude on YouTube named Matt Colville, he's got a lot of interesting and good ideas. I've recently completed watching his Running The Game series on his YouTube channel. He's got a lot of smart ideas overall, but one thing about his Running the Game #32 video is that he says, "I mean ultimately I think dragons in D&D are first and foremost large bags of hit points with  breath weapons." as well as "But I'm not the only person that thinks that dragons in 5th Edition are somewhat boring."

This section of the video (the first 5 minutes or so) explains how an ancient red dragon would be much more interesting and dangerous if it had an aura of fire damage with no save or attack roll associated with it, or if it had a focused breath weapon that did fire damage against one target that did more damage than normal (because 91 fire on a failed save isn't enough?) and lit it on fire, as well as removing fire resistance from targets that fail saving throws against its breath weapon attacks for the rest of the battle. He also says that it would be more interesting if the dragon's frightful presence had a lingering effect. He briefly discusses the idea of using the 5th Edition dragons as spellcasters variant, but kind of says that adds another mechanic to the encounter that forces more book keeping upon the DM.

The overall point of this video is the idea that 5th Edition DMs can draw a lot of inspiration and steal a lot of cool mechanics from 4th Edition. Which is true, to a certain extent. As I've said before, 4th Edition is hands down the worst edition of D&D, but it is a very solid and enjoyable tabletop tactics RPG. Its rules would be great for implementing something like Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre or something of that nature. But they're flat out awful for representing D&D. That said, there are definitely mechanics and concepts to be found in 4th Edition that can augment 5th Edition combat if you're finding it to be a bit stale and boring at higher levels. 

Before we go on, I want to mention that this guy has a really great understanding of aspects of 5th Edition. Part of the video talks about the math behind the mechanics of magic items, proficiency bonuses, and AC. This guy seems to have a pretty solid understanding of the underpinnings of the math of the game. Not enough DMs spend enough time understanding the why behind the action economy and math of the game. A lot of DMs make judgement calls and change rules on the fly with a very minimal understanding of the how and why of the game's underpinnings. I typically run things with a fair amount of house rules, and while I understand the underpinnings of the game, I typically don't give a fuck. I change things because I want them to fit with how my campaign world works or because I want to make the game fit my tastes. Is that any better than making random judgment calls and house rules at random times? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

I won't call this guy stupid, because he's definitely not. He's an experienced DM with a lot of great ideas and as the previous paragraph states, he has a strong understanding of the way 5th Edition works. But calling dragons nothing more than large sacks of hit points and implying they are at all boring is incredibly, adorably, preposterous. I am of the mindset that if you are running a dragon of any significant age and your players are bored by the fight and you're bored running the fight, you're doing it wrong.

Let's discuss a few things about ancient red dragons in 5th Edition.

First and foremost, they're a CR 24 creature with an AC of 22 and 546 hit points with an Intelligence of 18. So yeah, they could be referred to as a sack of hit points with a breath weapon. But using that as their main descriptor does them a disservice. If we go by challenge rating alone, an ancient red dragon is a hard or deadly encounter for any party of 4 - 6 players of like 16th level or lower. Obviously the lethality of the dragon increases the lower level the party is. The breath weapon deals 91 fire damage on a failed save. That's enough to chew through almost half the average hit points of a 16th level Barbarian with a 20 in Constitution (12 at 1st level, 15 levels x 7 HP a level, Con bonus of 5 HP x 16 levels = 197 hit points), assuming he fails the DC 24 Dexterity save. Barbarians of this level do have advantage on Dexterity saving throws, assuming they can see it coming, so there's that.

I'm going to get one thing out of the way at the start here. If you are running a dragon battle as a DM and your dragon has an Intelligence score greater than 2 (the Intelligence score of most animals) and it is not flying around, you've fucked up. If the dragon is sitting in its cave fighting the players in an enclosed space where it cannot dive bomb them and unleash its breath weapon and such from range, you've fucked up. Put away your DM screen and your dice, apologize to your players and Gygax's legacy and try again later. You're better than this. You know it, I know it, and the Gygax within us all knows it.

Moving on.

Now if you're doing this right, you've got this dragon making its lair in something like a an active or dormant volcano. For me, I'd make it somewhat active. Maybe not actively gushing lava, but it's a hot place and the dragon has made his home somewhere where the players have to navigate through hazardous terrain to get to it, but the dragon also has a way to exit the volcano rapidly. If it's a really active volcano, maybe he just swims through a lava tube to the exterior or claws his way up the interior walls (ancient reds have a climb speed) of the volcano and exits out of the spout (do volcanoes have spouts? is it called a spout? an orifice?). Or he just flies the fuck out. I'm not a volcano expert. Maybe he just bashes his way out. He's gargantuan size and has a Strength of 30. That's big enough to knock a hole in a rock formation, right?

Two great things 5th Edition added to powerful and iconic monsters are legendary actions and lair actions. On initiative 20, the dragon can make his lair do one of the following things: tremor (knocking creatures prone), cause a geyser of lava (doing some decent fire damage), or create a cloud of volcanic vapor (obscuring line of sight for most people that are not the dragon, it has blindsight). So when our YouTuber talks about focused breath weapon attacks and auras of fire, I feel like the lair actions of this creature already kind of cover those. Maybe not precisely, but enough that I feel like adding an additional damage effect to the dragon is a little bit much.

So what sorts of interesting things can this dragon do that don't involve adding unique abilities into its stats? Yeah, breathing fire, greatsword damage claws, and a couple legendary actions are cool, but let's do something interesting that is not specifically described in the creature's statblock.

Ok, so the dragon has a Strength of 30 and can fly at a rate of 80 feet per turn. Medium creatures with a Strength of 30 can carry 450 pounds and this doubles for every size category bigger than medium, so our gargantuan red dragon has a pretty significant carrying capacity, which means he has a pretty significant lift, carry, drag capacity. What's your average medium size player weigh? Two or three hundred pounds? Cool.

So the dragon starts out going toe to toe with the party's plate wearing Fighter. As its action, the dragon uses frightful presence. Because of multiattack, it then gets to make two claw attacks and a bite. The dragon makes a grapple checks with all three attacks. Grapple checks pit its +10 Strength roll vs the Fighter's Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. Given the fact that the dragon is three size categories larger than the medium size Fighter, I would be inclined to give it advantage on such a roll. But that's just me. So the dragon grabs our Fighter. Since the Fighter is three sizes smaller, the dragon's movement is not impeded by grappling and the dragon flies up at 80 feet per round. Let's say the dragon flies straight up for two rounds. We're now sitting at 160 feet up in the air and the dragon releases the Fighter. This fall, assuming it is not stopped in some way by something like feather falling, deals 16d6 bludgeoning damage (average of 56 damage, twice as much as 3rd level fireball or lightning bolt). Now, obviously your dragon is dropping the Fighter into a lava lake, so maybe 16d6 falling damage is excessive. I know hitting water from great heights can do some serious damage to the human body, but I'm not sure how lava compares in terms of density and whatnot to water. Anyway. Lava. 5th Edition doesn't appear to have rules for lava that I can find, but in Pathfinder (which has rules for falling into liquids as well as onto the ground), complete submersion deals 20d6 fire damage (average of 70 damage) each round. Assuming your Fighter is wearing a decent amount of metal armor, yeah, he's submerged. Alternatively, if you are kind to your players and they're foolishly not all packing resistance to fire, you can say that the countryside around the dragon's lair is just covered in spiky rock formations and treat the impact on the ground like activating a spiked pit trap.

So that's pretty cool and very in keeping with what an intelligent foe, like a dragon with an Intelligence of 18, might do to neutralize a foe. It keeps him at a distance from foes and is guaranteed to inconvenience someone. Even if the Fighter is immune or resistant to the fire damage from lava, he still has to escape from the lava, which is going to take some time, or require the intervention of other players. He also has to worry about drowning if he can't get out quickly. This is a cool deadly thing that causes tension that requires no additional mechanics to be added to the game. It also gives the players a chance to think quickly and potentially do something really cool and surprising to extricate the Fighter from his fall or get him out of the lava. So it gives your dragon a chance to fuck the players up and it gives them the chance to be awesome and creative as well.

This next idea isn't super cool, but I kind of like it. So let's say this dragon lives in a remote region within a fairly dormant volcano. There's still lava and the like, but this thing isn't going to vomit up rivers of burny death any time in the near future. Let's say two or three hundred years ago, the dragon (who is richer than Dog) hired a bunch of Druids (or we use the dragons as spellcasters variant) to create massive forests around its lair (maybe with the plant growth spell). Once it was all growing nicely, the dragon obviously killed all the Druids, because he's chaotic evil and there's no way he's parting with any part of his hoard willingly. So the players wander into this massive centuries old growth of forest and finally reach the dragon's dormant volcano lair. The dragon immediately flies out of the lair and ignites the forest with its breath weapon. Now the players have to deal with a dragon and a fairly hostile environment. This isn't merely a little plot of woods burning from an out of control campfire. This is a forest that has been magically augmented to be fairly large and extremely overgrown. It is now all on fire (or at least spreading rapidly), getting super hot, and is full of smoke. Pathfinder has rules for forest fires and players having to deal with them, but 5th Edition does not. I'd probably combine the effects of some low level spells that obscure visibility (like fog cloud) and heat (like bonfire) as well as making everything difficult terrain. Additionally, if the players are near the dragon but not actively in the fire in the forest, you can have the dragon use its wing buffet ability to knock the players down and blow sheets of fire at them.

Even if this all doesn't offer a shit ton of tactical advantage to the dragon, it certainly sets the scene for a fucking amazing set piece battle. Everyone is coughing, everything is obscured by thick smoke, trees are cracking and exploding from the intense heat. Somewhere there is a massive fucking dragon roaring like an angry fucking god. Alternatively, perhaps the dragon set up a dam of some kind and instead of using its breath weapon to ignite the surrounding forest, maybe it just knocks down the dam and now there is smoke and heat and difficult terrain and rivers of lava constricting where the players can go. 

Let's go another, less cinematic and burny route. So maybe this arrogant rich as fuck ancient red dragon has been in this region for a long ass time. Maybe this dragon seeks adulation and recognition for how awesome he is. Maybe this dragon is also a lazy shit and wants servants, but can't really stand the stench and incompetence of kobolds. So this dragon sets himself up as the lord of a region. He allows towns and such to flourish, as long as everyone pays him taxes for his horde. Maybe the townspeople see this dragon as their lord, or he masquerades as a mortal line of kings, and this dragon has armies or an order of knighthood serving him. These don't have to be evil soldiers either. They could be Lawful Neutral samurai types that serve their lord and only their lord and good and evil don't really matter to their terms of service.

So now instead of kobold mooks as hoard guards and servants, we have actual soldiers and knights that serve this dragon. Dudes with actual weapons and armor of quality and a competent understanding of tactics that goes beyond the "we outnumber them, attack!" or "they outnumber us, flee!" that you typically see from kobolds. We see kobolds serving dragons a lot, and kobolds are kind of joke to players (unless the kobolds have a belt of dragon might). If you change all those squealing kobolds to a group of mounted and experienced knights dedicated to the service of their liege, you now have a bit of a change to how the PCs may approach their foes and how their foes will respond to the PCs. Additionally, you can add issues like do the knights know they serve an evil dragon to the scenario. Do the knights care? Is the dragon in the castle, or is his lair far away in a nearby mountain? If the players significantly piss off the dragon, will it raze the countryside? Does it have hostages somewhere? Do the players care about these types of things?

Another way you can augment dealings with older dragons to make them more exciting is to apply the "I'm old, entertain me" descriptor to the dragon. Maybe this dragon is older than ancient and is bored out of his mind, kind of just going through his days napping atop a truly massive hoard. Maybe this dragon is easy to find and his lair is easy to enter. Maybe the dragon even encourages challengers to spice up his days of lounging. However, once the PCs enter the lair, instead of kobolds or lava rivers, they discover that this lair is actually a funhouse deathtrap dungeon.

So imagine for a moment, you've wandered through the Tomb of Horrors and all that entails. Instead of finding Acererak at the end, you find a tunnel that opens up into the interior of a volcano. You look up and you can see the mouth of the volcano above you and the sky through it, obscured by smoke and shimmering waves of heat. Before you sits a truly massive dragon flanked by suitably epic rivers of molten lava. It greets you. It tells you that it has been amused by your endeavors in its dungeon. You have earned the right to leave with your lives or face it directly (now that you have been run ragged by the deathtrap you just wandered through). Make your choice quickly, or it will be decided for you. Then the volcano dramatically rumbles and the earth tremors because ancient reds can do that too. It's a regional ability within 6 miles of their lairs. Another regional ability around their lairs are portals to The Elemental Plane of Fire popping open (which dragons should totally drop players into). But yeah bro, dragons in 5th Edition are totally boring. 

Anyway.

So you've got this bored dragon amused by the suffering of the players and the players need to quickly make a choice. Do they dare face off against the dragon now or do they return when they're stronger? Has the dragon been observing their efforts in the dungeon and familiarizing itself with their capabilities? How many gewgaws does it have in its horde that can negate what they can do? Will the dungeon remain the same for their next visit if they leave now? This concept doesn't necessarily make the dragon itself more difficult or interesting, but it does make dealings with the dragon more interesting than attacking it directly in its lair. The players have to think and make choices about how they proceed and weigh pros and cons. 

So there are a few ideas about dragons and playing them as the centerpiece to an adventure. It's not hard to see that you can do interesting things with dragons (if you decide to devote more effort to it than reading their statblock). You just have to think of them the right way and understand what you can do with the rules presented already. There's no need for new mechanics to be added to spice them up (unless you are doing this with the intent to create a legendary and unique dragon). They're dragons. They're fucking spicy enough. 

These are three ideas I came up with on a whim and we haven't even discussed innate spellcasting. Spellcasting with dragons in 5th Edition allows them to cast a number of spells 1/day. They get one spell per point of Charisma modifier and the level of the spells can be no more than 1/3 of the dragon's challenge rating. Which means the ancient red dragon gets six spells total.  You'd have to give them spells based on their age category because each age category has different ability scores.. Young reds have access to 3rd level or lower spells, adults have access to 5th level or lower spells, and ancient red dragons have access to 8th level or lower spells.

Dragons are boring? Folks, go and fuck yourselves. You give me an ancient red dragon in its own lair that gets to pick six spells to use once a day and I'll hand you a TPK. 

So as a final thought, let's go back to the fiery aura, laser beam breath weapon, removing fire resistance, lingering fear effect, and lighting on fire spoken of in the video. Yeah, let's talk about those. If we use the variant of dragons as spellcasters, guess what we can do? As one of the the 8th level or lower spells, we can take investiture of flame that the dragon can cast. Would you like to know what it does? Any creature that moves within 5 feet of you for the first time or starts its turn there takes 1d10 fire damage. No save, no attack roll. It also allows you to use your action to create a beam of fire. Which is not as impressive as a focused breath weapon because it only deals 4d8 fire damage. But you could also take spells like lightning bolt to simulate that. Yeah, it deals lightning damage. So the fuck what? That covers the ignore fire resistance thing and lightning is fucking hot. Just describe it as a white hot beam of fire. Or you could take spells that deal radiant damage. So it's already fiery as written, but the fire resistance of the players is useless. Which is what we're trying to achieve here. As far as a lingering fear effect, I'm not sure how to achieve that. The frightful presence ability already lasts for one minute on a failed save. But I think what he was getting at was a weaker version lingering for a bit on a successful save. My thought is that if your player saved against the frightful presence (which has a pretty high DC of 21) or outlasted its duration (which is 10 rounds of combat), it seems a bit dickish to subject them to it anyway. 

Oh. Starting things on fire. You know what? Fire ignites things. If you feel your players have taken enough fire damage to be lit on fire, light them the fuck on fire. If 91 fucking points of dragon related fire damage isn't enough to start a fucking player on fire, I don't know what is. As far as I'm concerned, every fire effect that actually deals damage should have a chance to ignite players, and even if they're not on fire, their gear should be because it takes way less heat for things like clothing and hair to begin burning than it does human flesh. Plus, metal gets hot, so after being subjected to 91 fire damage from a red dragon or being dumped in lava, your Fighter's plate mail is going to be glowing cherry red and melting their skin off or at least scorching and igniting all the padding beneath the plates of metal. So, in closing, fire is hot. So is lightning, but that's another issue. If you feel that a particular heat source is hot enough to start something on fire, start that thing on fire. Don't add a special unique ability tied to a CR 24 monster. You're an adult, make a judgment call.

Dragons are fucking awesome. They don't need special mechanics to make them awesome. The rules of the game and competent DMs already make them awesome. If you're bored running a dragon and your players are bored with a fight with a dragon, you should get better at DMing, because you're kind of fucking it up.

That got a bit ranty. It was fun. Hehe.