okay at 1:39 I meant to have all the timestamps on screen and just... forgot. They're in the description! I hope ya'll can forgive me because it's 4am and I don't want to stay up for 2 more hours rendering the video... THANKS GUYS APPRECIATE YA

My top tip: if you need an emergency one-shot, make it goblin related. It’ll write itself.

For speeding up combat: *X, it's your turn, Y, you're up next, get ready*. It really helps, even if a bit

In my home games I like to buff enemy damage and decrease their HP. Makes combat more fast paced and high stakes. 🦀

Breaking away from combat that was just "hit, do damage, kill enemy" was the best decision I made. The most fun combat encounters I've made for my players have had multiple ways of winning or losing, making it more than just "kill to win". This last fight they just had, a sorcerer was planning to call upon a moon goddess to create an entire new moon in the sky, bringing out the werewolves from hiding, as the light from two moons would be as strong as a full moon (a lot more to the logic behind it and the motivations for stopping it, but that's it simplified). The players were swarmed by various hunters paid to stop them, while the one calling upon the goddess had 5 turns to complete a prayer that would summon her. Every hit the players made extended the prayer by a turn, but it came down to my tankiest player being the last one left to stop the prayer. With three attacks, he missed every single one, allowing the prayer to finish. This summoned the moon goddess and after presenting his case, the villain won. The session ended with a second moon appearing in the sky and our lycan player transforming into a werewolf, which forces him to attack his party. No one important died, no one fled, but the fight stayed interesting and intense because there were so many ways it could've ended.

so about the giving an unthought out item... my DM gave our party some wine when we asked for some in the feywild. naturally, it was mushroom crazy wine, which made us float into the air like balloons. (we christened it floaty wine). we then had to go find some satyrs, and they said they would give us some more floaty wine if we investigated a growing swamp. we did so, and we got 3 barrels of floaty wine, plus the recipe for it. cut to the next session... we went back to the material plane, and had to help a town get rid of a fire giant. we evacuated the town, and lay in wait with our wine. when the giant came along, our barbarian challenged him to a drinking contest, calling him a coward. the giant drank a huge tankard, and shot into orbit. he never came back down. (the barbarian survived by tying his feet to the table.) it was supposed to be a boss battle, but we beat it in 2 rounds.

Making someone do their actual turn in 6 seconds is insane. A minute tho imo is actually plenty of time and really helps with keeping things going.

Honestly, for combat, look for Matt Colville's action oriented monsters. Not every monster needs that applied, but I feel for bosses, even those that aren't legendary in nature, giving them villain actions really showcases their personality in combat and helps them be more memorable and interesting. Also, it helps to have an extra win condition for your boss other than just killing the players. Tomorrow, I myself am going to have the boss generating a portal for a Neogi invasion fleet bent on world domination. The party has to simultaneously beat the bad guy AND keep the portal destabilized so that the fleet can't come through.

More of a minor "decision", but once I created 2 different available boats and captains that the party could potentially use to sail the ocean into the upcoming arc. These 2 boats had strengths and weaknesses: The goliath woman running one would charge less, but the players would be constantly working, at the risk of exhaustion as they travel. The tiefling running the other didn't have them work, but charged way more. As they were deciding which boat to go on, I made sure to explicitly tell them the stakes. Still glad I did that, they made an informed decision off of it.

Best solution for the Cassalanters: "Asmodeus, I have come to bargain." Azmo-deuce loves a courtroom drama and a cunning party could explain that the souls of the children were not the Cassalanters' to sell, since those souls belong to the children rather than the Cassalanters themselves and the children never entered into an agreement with him. Render the original bargain moot because Asmodeus agreed to a bum contract, save everyone and send that old devil back to hell with no more than a "Next time, think about the fine print!"

My players recently fought a Nuckelevee, one was an undine. He jumped into the water to try and save a drowning person. He rolled perception and I gave the description something like, "you feel danger. The last time you felt this was when you were in murky water alone with a shark."

One of my favorite things to do as a DM is give my players magic items that seem to be completely useless as it tends to bring out creative ideas from them

A DM limiting someone to how many times can go to the bathroom and just the equivalent of having to ask for a hall pass

1:53 The BBEG doesn't have to personally connected to every character. The BBEG could have underlings that work for them, and its these various underlings (Or the underlings' underlings) who messed with the PCs for whatever reason. While not personally attached to each PC, this connects the PCs to the villain and after they deal with the underlings and discover the BBEG's identity, they might feel more motivated to deal with them because the BBEG is the root of the problems.

Re: Making fun Combat. Matt Colville has a really good vid on this. In that, he recommends looking at the 4e Monster Manual for inspiration. 4e added a ton of weird thematic monster abilities.

One of my big thing I always get frustrated by is the fact that most creatures should be trying to use stealth. A dragon might not be all that tanky against 4 pc's, but if they stealth up on the party grab the wizard and take them off to be brutalized suddenly it is way scarier.

I found that in combat, having all players share a turn helps them get involved and communicate so that they move in cohesion. It spiced up some encounters and made it feel new and fresh.

For PC backstories, I add in the loose threads into my list of loose threads, which also gets added to by anything that happens in game. When writing their next adventure, I'll generally grab two or three threads from my list of loose threads and use them as the core inspiration for it, tying those threads together in the process. I also don't use prewritten modules though, so I can have the next adventure be whatever.

I have just started DMing but I have played a lot, and I have a hard time both keeping each player feeling important. On top of that, I don't know if it's right, but I ask and talk with the players to make sure events happen to fit how they see their character. Like... There aren't any surprises in the game, I come up with something, get approval from my players, and then run it in the game. Idk, if this is right or not.

The main thing that I've found, as a player, makes me enjoy combat the most is when the goal is not just to kill the enemy. Recently, my party was trying to steal an automaton, and the combat ended up being not about killing the enemy; if we could get it out of the gate and cover our tracks, we won. Plus, if we tried to kill them all, reinforcements would come. It became about concealing our cover when we could, finding how to open the gate and keep it open, defend the automaton and the cart it was pulling, and not using up every resource so we could get away cleanly. It was probably the most fun combat I've ever had, and the stakes felt real because the threat was never death; we could get away if we needed. But we needed the payment from this heist to get information, so it became a battle that wasn't about killing the enemy on either side

When you said "15 goblins", I thought "Do not play 15 individual goblins". Play 5 groups of 3 goblins or any other combination. Maybe two frontline groups of 5 each and a caster/cleric duo, a ranged duo and a (hidden) sneaky solo guy. Adjust stats accordingly. Goblins are small critters, they should know they only have a chance against humans or larger when they do formation fighting. And yes, that frontline group gets 5 attacks (just deduct attacks as HP get lower, ie individual goblins would be dead), don't try to solo it. They should be able (and do at the GM's disgression) to split up their attacks to multiple targets in range. Still, you don't need 15 minis, 15 initiatives and think about 15 different actions.

Veteran Player/DM here, playing in a campaign with new players and DM. I find biting my tongue instead of hitting them with ACCCTTTUUUAAALLLLYYYY.... is way more fun and it's refreshing to see the wonder they have for the game. There's my two cents, If you don't need it, pass it on to someone who does.

The anti-reflective glasses and the screen glow make it look like you're wearing purple eye shadow. Honestly looks good

"There are people limiting their players going to the bathroom!" At that point I'd bring a bottle and a bag, then piss in the bottle while holding it underneath the table/shit in the bag instead of using the coins while looking the DM dead in the eye.

15:50 that actually reminds me of an optional rule for counterspell I thought up. Basically when a creature casts counterspell they make opposed checks with their spell casting mod. Honestly spices up the feel and makes the spell a risk reward scenario.

A huge thank you for answering my question! It's a huge relief to hear about your experience starting out and all the great resources you've referred to! I adore this community and the kindness and overall willingness to show now people the way (And you didnt sound dismissive at all to me!)

To your point about managing 15 goblins: Swarm HP? And mainly denote archers or a shaman or something and then you could have 3-5 goblins in a group with 1 Health pool. I know that kinda sounds warhammer 40k but its worked for me before

I painted some old Checker pieces into about 4 different colours, and put dots on the side (e.g green with 1 dot, green with 2 dots, etc). We use those for generic mobs.

Thank you so much Jacob! Love your content

Whenever my players start trouncing the enemies, I just double the enemies damage. Every goblin is a hit and run nightmare. I figure if 5e has so many death-saves and options for bringing back characters, I might as well use them.

The comment about dogging on the dms bosses hits real close to home, my group has been absolutely destroying everything he's thrown at us, each time being "harder than the last" and "a fight to take seriously" (which has become a running joke at this point). Last boss lasted 3 rounds and did under 20 damage total to a lvl4 party of 7. I tried explaining action economy to help the dm out with this and he just keeps telling me not to worry because the next one will be a real threat. He's gonna tpk us, I can feel it.

more of these kind of videos please. maybe it's the stress of being a new DM, i love this. so many helpful tips! thank yoU!

One sense that I feel gets left out of descriptions too often: thermoception (i.e., our ability to sense temperature/heat). It can go a long way to setting a mood to describe not only how elements of it might feel, but the overall climate of the area. Plus, thermoception is a really fun word 'cause it sounds kind of like a super power.

That whole thing about the goblins might be the best advice I've ever gotten for making encounters!

This might be some of my favorite content you make. It is so helpful and funny.

This was genuinely such an sightful video, I've loved watching it (and the rest of your stuff)

Loving the new colorgrade! It's nice to see someone pay attention to that in this website, makes me enjoy watching this channel even more

Any backstory should have one of these three: rival/enemy, friend/family, or a mystery. A rival/enemy can easily be either affiliated with the BBEG or has been manipulated by them to do what they did to the character. Either way, they should act as a stepping stone to hating the BBEG. A friend/family should offer a character that either needs to be rescued, is trying to do what you're trying to do(but is failing because they have a flaw that the player doesn't) or likewise has been corrupted/manipulated by the BBEG. Whatever happens to them, by the time the player has resolved their backstory with that character, it should make them want to take out the BBEG for what they did to them. A mystery should simply tie into either the BBEG or their plot, such that the answer to the mystery connects to why that character is where they are when the final confrontation begins. Chosen by a god or born with a mysterious power? A being guided them in hopes they could defeat this evil. Tainted by a dark power/curse/evil? The BBEG hoped that leaving a fraction of their power in that character would make them a powerful ally when the time came. Did a mysterious plague/murder/event cause the character to be an adventurer that doesn't seem to connect to the main plot at all? The gods/planar beings/BBEG did it to either create heroes out of strife or to test their powers in an early stage.

Thanks a lot for this video, it has helped me A LOT for running my wild beyond the witchilght module and since it was my first time dming it probably wouldnt go so well without you!

To the last question adding something exciting like Jacob said is amazing you can have a whole session of players lazing around town and shopping and still throw something mind blowing at the very end to keep them thinking "what happens next?"

A question I have is how to do the “next step”? What I mean is when you’ve gotten through the certain moments or plot threads what’s a good way to tie the things planned with what isn’t.

As for a starter DM the Series by Matt Colville would be my go to if I could only Pick one. They are short, interesting and relatable enough to get into DMing and when you get specific problems or questions at that point go search KZfaq.

I just want to say thank you. I love Grim Hollow, and some of the options you wrote are some of my favorite, like the Bulwark Fighter

I can't really explain how much i love this channel and Jacob's work and enthusiasm that puts on every single video he makes. I've lost count of how many times I had a bad experience, or a difficulty running a session in DnD, but each time, there's always a video that cheers me up or helps me to improve. For the first time, me and my party reached a year from playing the same campaign, and we are still so excited as the first day. And it's all thanks to you all guys 💕 Don't stop, and keep going! A humble message from a fellow DM~

This was helpful. I am a new DM, been at it less than a year, and breaking up combat is something I am most worried about. I have 2 veteran players playing martial classes who assure me that everything is going fine, but I can't help but be concerned about challenging them. I have had a few combats recently that I felt better about, but it's a WIP so I try to take in as much advice about combat as possible.

I want to add something to the description part. Don't tell characters how they feel, tell them how the room feels. This dark, blood stained altar, might not scare them. That doesn't mean there isn't a prevailing sense of dread hanging around it, like stuff went down. A tavern can feel warm and homely or worn down and sketchy. That gives people a jumping off point. The rogue might prefer the sketchy tavern because he visits places like it all the time and the high end hoity toity noble tavern makes him uncomfortable because he can't stop looking at the people's coin pouches. While the paladin might hate it because it's a hive of scum and villainy, how is he supposed to get some rest? I'm using stereotypes here for the sake of easy descriptions, but this can go all sorts of ways. A weird quirk I have found, if you describe a place as too nice, most players will instantly think something is up. So keep that in mind.

I am excited to use these inspirational creation ideas for my Solo 5e Death Knight’s Squire run. It’s been great to get back into D&D after 6 years 😍

when you mentioned the goblin encounter i remembered when i too felt the slog of combat and decided to do something similar. i had group of goblins dug in with 3/4s cover and dire wolves that ran out and slowed the party down while the hunkered goblin archers and mages peppered them.

Hot take, I use my monsters a complete immune little dudes that chip damage until one of my players attacks in a cool way for good dmg. I found eyeballing when they die much more satisfactory for players.

I wanna thank you for basically answering all my questions in the ways I wanted them answered... gonna save my game, lol

Holy crap, thank you for so many great ideas. I appreciate you so much.

My favorite way to make combat more engaging is to manipulate terrain. Destroy it, restrict it, Abuse it

Man, look at how Jacob has evolved. Jacob when doing his first video : Wisdom Score of 8 Jacob now : Wisdom Score 9 You can really see how far he's come... (jk in case anyone takes this literally, I love Jacob, his friends, and his videos)

Love watching your content - great stuff. Minor Criticism: I miss Jacob videos where he did them while laying on the floor. I'd like to see more of that content. :) Keep up the great work!

Thanks mate, I picked up a couple of tips that will definitely help make the campaign I'm running play smoother!

I love these videos! If you end up doing another one, I can only hope you would consider answering this question: When do you think a good time to introduce the party to the BBEG? How much would it vary depending on the campaign vibes?

I want to second Jacob on the Easy Description part. A lot of English teachers I had in high school and college gave us assignments to write a descriptive essay with at least three senses. When you start thinking about adding the senses in writing, you naturally start expanding on the descriptions and fleshing out even the simplistic actions. Instead of “The peasants push a broken cart out of the way so the party can get by” you can go about it like “The group of three peasants who look worn from a long day of work, sweat rolling off their brow from the heat of the mid day sun rolling off their faces, stand up and move to the cart. The biggest of the three squats down to put a shoulder near the axle of the broken wheel, while the other two take positions to his sides. You hear them begin to count, and upon three, they flex and push against the cart. The wood scrapes across the ground and emits a screech as it slowly moves out of the way. The pained look on the peasant’s face show strain as if they are giving everything they have left. It takes all their effort, but the cart moves out of the way enough that the party can pass.” Yes, that was long. I do this so that at ANY TIME during that, the players could interject and ask to help them out. Being extra descriptive can awaken emotions in the party and possibly change how they would react to a situation. It can be satisfying to know that, just by the way you describe something, can influence change in any given situations. I got off on a tangent at the end. I wanted to try to emphasize that it’s easy to describe even the most mundane task by adding senses.

If you're worried about telling your players how their characters feel, you can use rephrase it to be non-personal. Personal "The gnolls eating the still-living pig fill YOU with fear and nausea. The animal's squeals bring tears of sadness to YOUR eyes." Non-Personal "The gnolls eating the still-living pig is a frightful and nauseating tableau. The animal's squeals are piecing and sadly close to a human's."

Your advice and experience on learning D&D mimics my own learning AD&D back in the before times. Learning to play "wrong" is a great way to learn because it teaches the deepest secret of RPG Game Design. Many know it, but few truly understand.

Just thank you, these answers helped me a lot.

My best advice for combat: 1. Play monsters as thinking creatures, not stat blocks with teeth. They often can talk to the pcs, They might flee, they might plead for mercy, they might offer mercy, they might go after specific people regardless of strategic advantage. 2. Never let the combat go more than 3 or 4 rounds without something changing. This could be new enemies arriving, a continually evolving environmental threat, a really big spell being cast, etc. 3. Interesting terrain. Turn that big square room into an L shape w/ pillars, a staircase to a balcony, and more than 2 exits. Better yet, add an acid pit/pool, or a chasm, or ye olde dangly rope bridge. Basically, every map should have some kind of unique bit, even if it’s just a mud pit or a big rock. A general principle is to never give pcs a terrain advantage at the start of the combat. 4. Secondary objectives/ ways for the players to interact w/ the combat. If they destroy the crystal in the back of the room, it does nothing to the boss, but all the skeleton warriors drop. If they pull the lever, a drawbridge comes down and makes the map easier to move around. Put loot in the actual boss chamber, so that pcs can find and use it in the combat. 5. If you want the pcs to feel badass, give them one really big monster to Stunlock and dunk on. If you want to make them almost die, throw a whole bunch of weaker stuff at them. 6. Don’t have more than like 5 distinct non pc things in initiative. I’m not saying I actually follow this piece of advice, but it’s still good. I know Jacob said a lot of this, but I felt like going into detail about what has worked for me.

Jacob was feeling spicy when recording this lol

Excellent content my man. Back in 1e & 2e there was none of this out there. Keep up the great work!

My characters were fighting a giant alagator-esque monstrocity, and one of them tied a rope around its neck and rolled a nat 20 for strength. No attacking for you!

ANYONE WHO HAS NEVER DM'D BEFORE In my first game of DnD, I was DM to a group of 5 others. If you have a Players Handbook/internet connection you have everything you need. If you have watched anyone on YT or Twitch play the game for a few sessions you already know how to DM. It's much easier than it looks, don't get caught up in the rules just use your best judgement and look up the actual rule post-session . You will get used to it all before long. It's a game, treat it like one.

My friends and I are starting a 12 person campain where our stats are based of of us as normal people (we can still choose any race we want). My 2 best friends are being the Bard-Baric Trio. The Trio goes like this: 2 Twin Tefling Bards (COLore & COSwords) that were saved by a Goliath Barbarian(Totem :: Bear). We should be starting our campain next week so I'll keep yall posted.

Best spell combo: Flesh to stone, rock to mud. Then you can wait for however long you want and do them in the reverse order! Oh such fun :D

For the first time dm with no experience, I too dm’d after playing one session. My advice is to just invite everyone over for a one shot, express that it’s a trial for everyone, and then try out some of the stuff you’re not sure about. It’ll help you feel more confident, and it is real experience

I'm pretty new so I also struggle with getting my players invested so I kinda did something that some might see as dickish. After my players were coming back from saving a random npc, I had there be an assassination attempt on him. One of the PCs obvi jumped in the way of the arrow but it was poisoned with a poison that was entirely home brewed (it was fun, when the poison is made, it at the same time also synthesizes the cure that's in the exact proportions needed to cure the poison. Kinda BS, I admit but it made them invested). They were given 40 hours to solve a mystery and if they weren't able to, I had the big bad give them a choice where he would heal the PC who got shot but for a price. Then bam, they are invested in solving the mystery of who shot their friend, they have consequences, if they can't solve it, but they also have a way out if they want to take it. I felt like it worked and my players seemed to have a good time with it

Jacob: "Ask your players what they want to do." Me: "Alright..." I ask them, of course. Players: "I don't know..." "Uhhhhhh..." What do I do now, Jacob? COMMUNICATION ISN'T WORKING JACOB- HELP-

I recently started Dming and had the luck of playing with 3 DM's and it helped me so much. They were all super chill and a great source when I needed to figure out a ruling for out of the box situations. The nice thing is they gave advice and were fine with me making my own decisions.

Thanks for recommending the numbered mini's markers. One of the biggest pains I've had to deal with was when I place multiple of the same enemy type with separate initiatives (when I'm not grouping) and I can't remember which is which. These make it pretty much effortless.

Ok the backstory question what I did is I helped make the characters with my players and Im doing more of a broad villain so the way I bring in there backstorys into the main story was I from the very beginning would ask hey you mentioned this random character in your backstory he doesn't seem to have a name can I name him? And stuff like that or during session 0.5 I would incorporate the villain in either a blatantly obvious ways like him straight up murdering one of them or more subtle one of my characters ate his lunch in the communal fridge and later died of poison. (The players dying is a long story it's apart of my campaign they all needed to die to get where they needed to be for the story.) You do you most of the time players are fine if you don't incorporate there backstorys sometimes they really want to just vibe check with everyone on it and imagination is key

To speed up combat, incorporate the "Rocks of Damocles." There are invisible rocks hanging over the players and if one of them takes too long on their turn, the rocks fall and they all die. Totally won't ruin the group, I swear! 🙃

Good advice on the Cassalanters. That is the road I am running for this adventure having only played a different route myself.

Once my players used a survival blanket and arrows to pin down my boss.

When it comes to description, be it in combat or not, there are a few things that inform a dungeon master’s ability. I say it in a lot of my comments on these dnd channels, dming is an art and like any art it is something that you can be good at in many different ways and that you can be bad at in many different ways, and you can be both simultaneously or neither. When it comes to description, here’s the advice which is the equivalent of telling an aspiring archer to get more accurate: 1. Seek mastery of the language you run your game with. Dnd is a game and dungeon mastering is a role which is played by talking. If you can, play with the language with which you are most proficient. Why this helps comes up in the following points: 2. Imagine vividly. Some people imagine in plain words or concepts instead of images. If you can, try to visualize these fantastic things very clearly and vividly in ways which take from all of your senses. Imagine what you see from a bird’s eye view, the shape of a city, it’s layout, the shape of the houses within, the sound of the cart being dragged through the crowded gravel road, imagine the people, the density of crowds, the average height, species, or complexion throughout. If you get to a place where the first thing that comes to your mind is detailed and cinematic then, with mastery of your language, you can try to describe what you see to your players in a way which delivers on the richness and detail and which they can understand and compartmentalize. Describing what you see of your settings in this way can serve to immerse a player in their living environment, and describing what you see of your combats in this way is a school of magic, I swear. It gives you some command of tension, engagement, and investment in the creatures involved. 3. Practice the related arts. Film is an intersection of many arts, the composition of music, sound engineering and design, cinematography, acting, editing, and much more. Something which elaborates on film is video games, video games sometimes include everything which film includes and then on top of it add the interaction of a player or players and their exploration of a digital world. Much like these, D&D lays at the intersection of worldbuilding, writing, acting, storytelling, game design, and the improvised iteration of them all. If you want to improve as a Dungeon Master seek to improve as a writer, a world builder, a storyteller, an actor, a game designer, and familiarize yourself with the living improvisation. These tips regard D&D as the art that it is, a beautifully accessible albeit complicated art, but one which appeals to many people, both artists and not. If you decide to become a Dungeon Master, you are trying to become an artist. I think it’s important to remember at this time that many artists are great in very different ways, because for every Leonardo De Vinci painting in glorious realism there is a Picasso aspiring to paint like a child, but both are remembered for what they created.

6 seconds? That's insane! I've heard of the 1 : 10 rule. Which give them a SOFT 60 seconds on their turn. Which can work well when done right. But 6 seconds, that just... dumb.

You crack me up. I feel like I'm watching you grow up, getting more sophisticated and empathetic all the time. Go you.

Jacob, I greatly appreciate that most of your ads are community projects, especially Kickstarters. As someone who has run a kickstarter, putting the word out there is really the most crucial aspect of a successful project, and successful projects means more fun stuff in the hobby, which means more inspiration for individuals to make their own content, have fun in their own games, and create their own community projects. Your ads (or ads like them) are the only kinds of ads I actually take the time to watch or listen to anymore, even when they're kind of long, because they're actually relevant to my interests. I'm not saying there's anything shameful about advertising underwear or compressed beds or mail-in food kits, but it says a lot that you often choose to promote D&D related things.

For some reason I’m watching this and thinking, “Wow, Jacob’s going to be a great dad.”

To be honest, I skip my player’s turn if they try to have a 5+ minute powwow strategy session in the middle of an active battle. It’s fine if a player asks what spells somebody else has prepped, asks what effects are in play, if they can do something but not commit to doing it, or quick suggestions. Though, when somebody stops to huddle everybody up and run down the strategy for the next three turns of combat, I warn them with something like “the enemy is encroaching on your position”, and if they continue to deliberate, then they’re forced to take the dodge action. It has made my players plan things out beforehand and embrace the spontaneity of combat a little bit more. Edit: I’m also not a fan of the character monologue during battle, especially when another player tries to engage in long conversation during somebody else’s turn. I will sometimes tell players to keep it short or wait their turn if I sense that they’re spilling a bit too many words.

crazy ideal try making a mood board together that way everyone involved can share what vibes the want the campaign to have

One of the best ways to speed up combat is to ask players to be thinking about what they want to do on their next turn while everyone else and the monsters are taking theirs. In my experience, what slows combat down the most is that a lot of people wait until it's their turn to even start looking at/analyzing what is going on to decide what they want to do which can take a while in more complicated combats. If you can get your players to pay attention and be thinking about it before hand you can cut the time of people's turn in half. It is still a little bit of a pet peeve of mine when I can either finish my characters turn in like less than 30 seconds, or run through like 20 monsters' turns in less time than it takes some people to even think about what is going on in the combat.

"Describes op creatures that would be not fun for the players most of the time" whos gonna question that? Everyone. Everyone who's played the game before and will call the bs.

Omg I'm first 🥇🥇🥇

Im literally watching this video while balancing my combat encounters for a bunch of new players (by taking some premades and experimenting, running the combat over and over). I have one in a cafeteria where there are tables everywhere which are difficult terrain and they that they can flip to get cover and multiple types of enemy’s (dagger welding guys, club welding guys, a captain and a berserker)I have another in a kobold den with a pit of centipedes and a net trap. But its funny that he uploads a vid, mostly about balancing combat while im balancing combat. Haha just watched the part where he said to run a mock combat. Makes me feel like know what im doing. Thanks jacob.

Idea for helping new players remember things: even if you're using D&D Beyond, have the players keep a printed version of their character sheets handy. Find yourself an array of highlighters, and highlight the various sections in distinct and consistent colors. "Where is my Initiative bonus?" "It's the bit outlined in green." "Where are my combat actions?" "The section bordered in red." A while back I saw someone had made character sheets in a similar style for people with certain disabilities and my thought at the time was, "that just looks like a damn handy character sheet there." Should be findable with Google if you're interested.

The 'level up' items that improve I've just given the first of which basically a standard club that counts as magical. Called them exalted weapons, feels cool, thankyou

11:28 easy description. Thank you so much for this, it really helped me a lot! English is not my first language but I have players that only speak English so that helps a lot :D

One way I've spiced up combat is by having a pitfall trap that armored chad kobolds would pick up and throw party members into, in order to pick people off one at a time. Then they kicked the stick holding the boulder at the top of the hill, making turns in combat turn into "How do we get out of here and save the caravan we're guarding before we're crushed to death?". They ended up sacrificing their Immovable Rod and, while it was sad, got them all through the combat encounter.

Funnily enough, I actually have some experience with that situation at 13:05. The Curse of Strahd game I'm running currently was originally conceived by another DM, but after running a session 0, he got sick for a while and agreed to let me run the first session. My initial approach, since I didn't know I'd be taking over the game at that point, was to run as close to the module as written as possible since I figured that was the approach that DM would have taken. After ending this first session with the players' first introduction to Strahd on the Svalich Road, the DM would come to drop out and give me the reins, giving me more freedom to run the module as I wished while also leaving me with some minor constraints (namely, sticking with the whole Ireena/Tatyana backstory: if I'd run it from the start, I would've scrapped all that and made Strahd's lost love Patrina to make Strahd more of an evil widow instead of an evil incel, lol). Ultimately, I think something that helped me solidify a few things about taking over was talking with the previous DM, so definitely do that if you're caught in a similar situation, since it might help to know where they were planning on taking things before you had to step in.

My favourite way of tracking monster tactics is to have a little mood notification next to their HP. "cautious" or "angry" or "frightened" or "sneaky" or "clever" etc etc as a reminder to myself that this enemy would prefer to hide and attack if they're sneaky. Or if they're clever they'll try to use their environment more. If they're angry they'll just attack the nearest person.

Called shots an chances to delimb after multiple criticals on enemies has been fun at my table. Loving the tips keep it up.

When Jacob take about telling players “how they feel” I think he’s more talking about “sensing”. Like what kind of stuff do they sense in the place. You’re not telling them how they personally feel, but what feelings they sense around them. What do they sense about the bustling town, or the dank cave?

you are my hero! love you man!

Loved this advice, thank you

Thanks for many great tips! I really need to work on creating challanging combat encounters 😅 Running my first campaign (in MörkBorg ^^), and I found it very rewarding and fun to answer "how" and "why" regarding things in my world with events or characters from the players backstories - (Say you have a PC with a tragic "royal family that was killed" backstory, and a campaign with an organization with a lot of funds) How did that organization end up with such a large fortune? Well, they swooped in and grabbed it from whoever robbed and murdered the PCs family.

in my game the "Big Bad Guy" is the king who "hired" the party to explore this a island that was believed to be myth from the age of Dragons, they are one of the few groups hired.

For player agency, it gets easier the more you play with a group. Overtime, you will start to know your players and their characters, and can more or less guess whats going to happen. I had my current events planned WAAAY up in advance. Because I knew my players, and they themselves told me their plans. So I knew what would be impactful, alongside what they were going to do. Asking your players "hey, what do you want to do" is a really good advice. It gives you all the prep benefits of railroading without the un-guidedness of sandbox.