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Submit Your Questions for the July Q&A Livestream! (Patreon)

Published:
2020-07-15 16:32:43
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Our July 2020 Livestream will be an Encounter Building Workshop! Join us stream on Thursday, July 30th from 6 PM to 8 PM ET at twitch.tv/dungeon_dudes!

Please submit any questions you may have about building combat, exploration, and roleplaying encounters for D&D 5e by replaying to this thread. Possible sub-topics might include:

Balancing combat encounters

Building skill challenges, exploration encounters, and roleplaying encounters

Choosing, tweaking, or home brewing monsters

Creating evocative and interesting environments and set-pieces

Designing interesting objectives, narratives, and roleplaying within a combat encounter

Please leave your questions in the comments below by Wednesday July 29th at 11:59 PM. To begin, we’d ask that you submit no more than one question for consideration. 

We hope we can answer most submissions, but we may need to narrow our selections occasionally depending on the quantity of the submissions. We’ll curate the questions to avoid duplicates, and we encourage you to LIKE questions submitted by other patrons which are of interest to you so we can prioritize if necessary. We’ll read out your questions out during the stream, and hopefully take a few extra questions from the live chat as well.

If you miss the live stream, don’t worry — the full recording will be available on YouTube a few days later.

Cheers

Kelly & Monty

Comments

Daniel Chausse

What do you do when you realize that an encounter is terribly unbalanced, one way or the other, mid-combat? Do you fudge dice, or introduce an NPC or monster that will sway the battle, or just let things play out as they are?

Thunder Hawke

How do you build an encounter that is challenging, but also not to easy or alternatively to hard?

SoraNC

Do you have any tips/advice for large groups? I'm currently DMing for a group of 7 and I would really prefer not splitting into smaller groups. Even my other group is a 5 person party (not including DM in either count)

Hardy LeBel

Is building encounters for tabletop terrain (like your Dwarven Forge sets) different than building encounters for other formats, like virtual tabletop, or theatre of the mind?

VeeBee27

What are your tips for getting players to bite on aspects of information you keep presenting to them but they keep ignoring?

VeeBee27

Sorry - pressed enter too soon. To clarify- how would you repackage themes and/or clues that are important to the game play/plot/adventure that the players just refuse to address or willfully ignore or can’t seem to piece together?

VeeBee27

Or...maybe it’s a matter or reworking the story when the players send a clear message of “we don’t want to do that?” - so how do we cleverly do that, without losing the feel of a game, especially with those modules that may be prewritten? (One is the smaller cons of the prefab modules)

Caiden

When creating puzzles for your players what is the best way to make them feel accomplished in solving the puzzle? Have you ever had a player solve a puzzle in a way you didn't intend, if so how did you deal with that?

ThexJackal

When building an encounter do you prioritize pc strengths and weaknesses first or prioritize the setting/ how well it fits your world as your main concern?

Brendan

My players frequently demolish deadly encounters. I am not trying to kill them off, but I don't want them to play the game on easy mode. How do I balance some encounters that are supposed to make the players think twice about going Leeroy-Jenkins without consequence?

Dwindle

How would you find the appropriate balance for a coven of hags, and what sort of power level would you expect the party to have in order to defeat the coven?

Omar

How do you keep tougher encounters from turning into a slog?

Joseph Richardson

Background: Playing a Lvl 1 Warlock in a gritty variant rule campaign. 10 day long rest. Variant encumbrance. (Of course dumped strength) Question: How do I, as a Warlock/Wizard/Squishy, prepare to handle multiple encounters throughout a long rest cycle, using the variant encumbrance rules...? It's possible I should have chosen an easier campaign setting for my maiden voyage into D&D.

Samuel Cavender

I'm planning a horror-themed one shot. Don't wanna spoil the monster in case my players are watching, but I would like to know how I can design this session to make all encounters (social, exploration, and combat) as scary as possible. P.S. I'm planning to start my players either at lv2-lv-3, monster I'm looking at is CR9

SoraNC

Sort of an add on to your question: do you have any tips for DMs on giving players constructive feedback in response to puzzle solving?

Tom Swanason

I am the secondary DM in our group that has been together for about 2 years. I run mini campaigns to give the primary a break every now and then. We both use music a lot to add to the feeling of immersion in battle, RP and exploration. We’ve been using a YouTube tool to pipe music in with our zoom/google meet sessions. 1) How do you guys feel about music in-game and 2) how do you go about using it in-person and through remote gaming?

Gossamer Chains

How to build encounters with city officials when the PCs break the law? For example, what's important to always have prepped in your back pocket (since this usually happens unexpectedly) and how do you keep it fun and not make it seems like the players are losing all their agency if they get arrested?

Diana L

Any tips on building the "sensory" experience of a particular scene/encounter without it becoming overwhelming or scene-killing by being too long/drawn out? I'm personally happiest when someone describes the scents, smells, tastes...the feel of the air and sounds that set a scene (or create anticipation) from the rustling of rodents in a dark corner to the muted metallic sound of swords being drawn from their scabbards. I love having a sensory picture painted for me as a player, but when I've tried to paint this for players...sometimes they interrupt or just want to get to combat or the social scene and I am trying to find a happy balance. Would love to hear your thoughts on how to balance this so it still feels satisfyingly descriptive but moves a bit faster.

Seth V

What are your tips on foreshadowing future encounters? Is it needed, how far in advanced should it be done, how often should you do it, and how can you avoid making it seem out of place or waaay too obvious?

Morgan V

I want to make some encounters that are more ambiguous as to who the enemy is. For example, running into a caravan fighting a bear in the woods. But also the caravan is a circus trying to capture this bear who just wants to get away. How would I best signal that there's a battle already here and they need to pick sides or get out of the way while not having them turn into "kill first, ask questions later" murderhobos that the phrase, "roll for initiative" often causes.

John Owens

I like your Stealth and Gloomstalker videos... I have a gloomstalker in my game. There have been arguments around being stealthy, hide, shoot, hide, with advantage every round. I know I have the final say, but I wanted to ask if I am being to harsh "nerfing the whole purpose of his character" by saying that works great round one, but after that you cannot really hide after that. The character is a UA Revised Ranger Gloomstalker 16th level, stealthy and sharpshooter feat. Most arguments are over Vanish and Hide in plain site.

Rachel Phimphivong

What are some tips for making the environment have a larger role in a combat scenario? My NPCs and sometimes my PCs utilize cover, but, especially at low levels when the environment is more "simplistic" (like a forest, road, town, cave, etc) I struggle to include other fun or challenging aspects for the environment.

chris

The difficulty I have is that if I make the combat "too complex" I typically lose the interest of 1 or 2 of my players. Eg. If I have an encounter in a thick wooded area (lots of cover). The barbarian rages and just keeps running in a straight line killing all the trees. Please note: I am volunteering for a youth group so it can't be too in-depth, just lots of fun for everyone. The group ranges from 9-13 years of age. Right now we are on hold, but when we are able to play again, I would like to have a larger tool box to keep them more interested.

Rachel Phimphivong

I'd also love to hear any advice on crafting skill challenges. I try to use them for exploration in my games, but it can be tough to think of something original each time

Rich McCann

How can you prevent dungeons from becoming just a slog?

Rich McCann

What are tips to speed up combat?

Rich McCann

for my past questions please use my handle C1ock like in the discord.

Natalia Angel Menking

I went from 3.5 to about 9 years of not playing D and D, so I missed out any and all of 4th edition. I keep hearing about how there were good and bad things about it. Is there any way to incorporate the good into 5e without having to go through all of the 4th ed content? What would be some fun ways to do this?

Michael Epp

I would love to hear your thoughts on how to craft and play encounters collaboratively - on how to adapt to situations with multiple DMs. For instance, I am in Westmarches-style campaign with seven other players that meets weekly. Usually, someone crafts a one or two night encounter (we find they always take one more night than planned). We came up with a fun way to build this into the narrative - we all own a bar called the Red Flagon, and whoever is DMing that night has his character run the pub while everyone else is adventuring. But! Me and another player are planning a climactic encounter to get us all to level 5, defending the Red Flagon from attack, and don't know what to do with our two characters, who need to be there for the whole climax-of-these-adventures to take place. So, I guess I'm asking, in terms of encounter building, how might we play our own characters in an encounter? And, any tips for building a narrative and encounter collaboratively?

Kathleen Schlagel

Long time RPG'er (1983) and first time DM. We are doing homebrew based upon 5e. NPC's and venue are set. We will be rolling initiative/attack/damage simultaneously to keep the pace quick. We have newbies that are used to video games more than story telling. What other advice do you have about making the game exciting and put some tension in for first time players? I am planning on having kobolds attack them on their first night.

Christian Bierhaus

What can I do in a campaign or scenario whithout a real time preasure, when the group decides to take long rests after almost any combat encounter? What kind of consequences can I create in that case for the group? I don‘t want to punish them for being cautious, but it slows the pace of the game and makes it less of a challenge.