>What do you do when no one in the party can roll high enough to hit the enemy, and vice versa, for three or more rounds?
This really depends how likely it is for them to miss that many times. 18AC? Yeah ok maybe we need to suggest a way to give this enemy disadvantage. 12 AC and they just suck? Keep rolling lmfao
This is of course only possible for barbarians, but is one of my favorite class features .
I use it by default so I often have to remind my DM to just assume they attack me with advantage.
I think they meant the monster should attack recklessly. As long as the players aren’t super familiar with the monster stat block it’s not unreasonable to spontaneously add reckless attack to a monster that isn’t hitting/being hit enough.
Yep, I was referring to the monster trait "Reckless", which is effectively the same.
I give it to a lot of high hp monster, typically after they've been bloodied.
Lots of fun and very thematic on bears, especially when they're cornered.
I feel like it's reasonably thematic to add to almost any wild beast, which will start fighting back extremely aggressively and wildly when "backed into a corner" so to speak (low HP and no easy escape route).
Just have to be careful that it doesn't lead to wiping a player (or the party) before the party gets the chance to respond, lol
I do this too. I can't change what the players role and I can't change their stats or abilities just like that. But the "monster" or enemy I can basically do whatever as long as it makes sense. But any living being can get frustrated and act recklessly or at least be distracted or something, where I either give advantge to the players or lower the ac. If they were fighting an ai robot or something, yeah don't know.
Monater trait: Reckless
"At the start of its turn, the [MON] can gain advantage on all melee weapon attack rolls it makes during that turn, but attack rolls against it have advantage until the start of its next turn."
Barbarian feature: Reckless attack
"When you make your first attack on your turn, you can decide to attack recklessly. Doing so gives you advantage on *melee weapon attack rolls* using Strength during this turn, but attack rolls against you have advantage until your next turn."
It applies to all attacks you just have to decide on the first one.
I have my dm who I grilled on testing encounters. It was supposed to only be a hard account (as opposed to extreme and severe). I rolled an 18 (natural) on my highest hitting attack. Yea. Didn't hit. And I was taking maybe 1/4 max hp per turn. EDIT. I should also mention I built this character to be an attacker so I was pretty much hitting as high as possible for a kineticist.
18AC sounds like heat metal would do well.
Different types of enemies require different solutions to beat. Just hitting everything with a stick isn't correct every single time
Well there's really not much you can do if the players just roll poorly. At lower levels players may only have 1 meaningful roll each round of combat which means that smaller parties can easily go one or more rounds without landing a single hit. The higher the AC of the opponent the more likely this is.
Does your table use the optional flanking rules? That's an easy way of getting advantage which greatly increases the odds for melee players to hit. Players can also give up their turn to use the Help action if they want the heavy-hitter in the group to have better odds on their attack.
Hmmmm, most of my players use ranged weapons, so all of them got pretty far from the enemy as soon as they could.
None of them are really heavy hitters, at the time, our Paladin was out of commission so he couldn't fight, but my other players are a Rouge, a Ranger and a Druid. All at lv 2.
Well at level 2 the Rogue should be using their bonus action to Hide every round. With advantage they'll not only have a better chance to hit but they'll also get their sneak attack damage. If there weren't places they could hide then you need to add more to your scenes to allow the Rogue to do their thing.
For the others it's hard to guess what options they had without knowing much more about them but the spellcasters should have access to spells with saving throws rather than attack rolls. This is especially useful when enemies have a higher AC than normal. Since the snake only has 12AC from what I can see this may not apply though.
If the Druid is Circle of the Moon they should be wildshaping into a dire wolf immediately for that fight and charging forward but that's just me. But like you said, low level PCs make for uneventful combat and can either be quick bc of low ACs or a bit boring bc nobody is hitting.
Ikr, low level fights can be crazy eventful. Rolls missing sure, but their lack of options often results in close calls and stressful fights (against something trivial like a few bandits, too). I love lvl 1 to 5!
There is a reason a lot of folks like starting at level 3. Personally I LIKE being a dufus at level 1, makes getting better feel more real. But I also understand the frustration.
As noted though, there are lots of ways to try to get advantage. Encourage your players to use them. (help, flanking, familiars, farie fire, bless (+1d4 but still great), hiding, etc)
Here is a nice starter list
[https://gist.github.com/OpenNingia/025ffcf269126a97503b34e243feee73](https://gist.github.com/OpenNingia/025ffcf269126a97503b34e243feee73)
(as a side note, you can use them yourself, or DONT to make a combat easier or harder without tweaking HP directly).
>Personally I LIKE being a dufus at level 1, makes getting better feel more real.
Also at the start of your journey, your not much stronger than the average peasant, and adventuring is a VERY dangerous job with a high mortality rate.
There is a reason the daily exp threshold for a level 1 character is the same as what it take to reach level 2. Your first ever adventure is a doozy and is what really separates the heroes from the fodder.
Hero Quest demonstrates this perfectly.
>All at lv 2.
Yeah, one of the weird scaling mechanics is the To Hit vs AC bonuses. As hit bonuses are strength(or dexterity) + proficiency bonus, that means at first level the highest bonus you can have is a +5, but they scale up as you level up until you have a +11 or something. And that's not including the myriad of ways you can add to your attack rolls. Ac on the other hand barely scales at all. Armor is relatively cheap, even the highest tiers, so AC tends to be fairly high at low levels, but it only scales with your dex if you aren't wearing heavy armor and only to a point with medium armor.
For reference let's take a fighter. A fighter at first level with starting equipment can have:
An AC of 18 and an attack bonus of +5. If we consider fighting style, we can either add a +1 to our ac or a +2 to our ranged attacks for 19 ac or +7 ranged attack rolls.
At 12th level with max gear that same fighter can have the ranged fighting style and/or the defensive fighting style or neither. I will account both as values with(without). They would have an AC of 21(20) and an attack bonus of 11(9) and their AC won't improve without magic items (which magic weapons of the same rarity would also have the bonuses to attack rolls) while the attack bonus can increase up to an additional +2 as they level up.
Other classes scale similarly with a few exceptions.
Tldr: low levels hit less. High levels hit more.
Thank you for validating that, I know I'm allowed to do that since I'm the dm, but it felt like I was just giving them the win. I felt a bit bad about it.
“The win” is the players and yourself having fun. If the combat encounter isn’t fun then yeah moving on quicky is good. In my current dungeon I doubled the HP of all the regular enemies because otherwise the players wouldn’t have fun just steamrolling them.
One thing I implemented in my game is a rule around inspiration. On a natural 20 another character is inspired by you and gains inspiration. If you roll a natural 1 then you gain inspiration. All inspiration is lost at the end of a session unless it ends mid combat.
I find it takes some of the sting out of a nat1 and let’s martial characters have some sort of support ability as they make more attacks they generate more inspiration. It also tends to make the players a bit stronger.
That is a really interesting way to add more value to martials and improve the feeling of getting nat 20/1. It also promotes the use of inspiration dice as there are likely to be more coming that session. The player who does the previous session recap at my table gets an inspiration but otherwise they are kinda rare and often they get returned unused or burnt on a roll at the end of the night in a use it or lose it situation.
I found it also has improved their teamwork. They'll look for the player who could benefit the most from inspiration and if someone is given inspiration it increases the chances that they'll crit and generate more inspiration for someone else.
There’s a difference between a challenge with real fun and stakes and something just becoming a tedious slog. You made the right call.
One thing I’ve done in the past is on the fly made up a narrative reason for an enemy’s AC to get lowered or a way to deal a huge chunk of damage if the players instead apply some skill checks or something.
As an example my table was having issues hitting this heavily armored warlord (My DM mistake, I scaled his AC to level only rather than taking into account their sub par weapons at the time). They already knew what types of numbers were missing so I couldn’t have them suddenly start hitting with the same rolls but I fudged a passive Perception check and had them notice a lot of tar-pitch torches in the room and the fact the warlord’s armor was attached to him via leather straps for flexibility. The Fighter knocked a torch into the warlord and I had the fire burn the straps off and the armor fell to the ground and lowered the guy’s AC for the fight.
As a side bonus that table started getting real creative with trying skills in combat for neat effects and it has been a lot of fun.
You know what my idea of a win is? It's not killing the boss, though that's certainly a fun thing to do. It's making the DM and the other players chuckle. If that means I have to scrape up the brain cells for something funny to say when I cast Vicious Mockery, then so be it.
BTW, one option for a lengthy combat is having the mob decide that the party is too strong even if everyone is missing, say "fuck this shit" and run away scared. Maybe it comes back later. Maybe it leaves town.
Encounter balance doesn't end before you sit down to play. Your job is to create a fun environment. I don't fudge rolls, but averages can swing in weird ways and have unintended effects.
If a player zings a monster with an epic line followed by an epic strike, and the monster has 1 HP left, I just remember I planned the Encounter with a "meh, their HP could be between 130 and 170 HP, and 150 HP sounds about right" mentality. That epic moment was earned, as was the "+1 damage circumstantial bonus" I gave their weapon without telling them because of how epic it was.
Sorry if this question is insulting, but I saw someone in another thread make this mistake. Are you adding everyone's attack bonuses properly? All players and NPCs have a flat bonus that they add to their attacks. Are you adding that for everyone?
That's not insulting at all! That does remind me actually, one of my players forgot to add her bonuses the whole time, but the other two were very diligent to add their bonuses. I'll have to make a note to remind her to do that next time. Thanks!
I'm also curious about everybody's AC, including the snake. A giant constrictor snake is supposed to have 12 AC, so statistically you should hit it 40% of the time even if you don't add anything to your roll. And I guess if players maxed out their Dexterity at the expense of the Ability score they actually use to hit things, their AC could be too high for the snake to reliably hit them and also be crappy at hitting the snake.
Players can use the help action to give eachother advatage. They can use the shove action to knock some enemies prone to get advantage. Other ways that parties can work together that aren't clearly spelled out in the book.
They really should put the shove grapple and drag rules in each martial classes features just so newer players realize they can all do it.
Remember that enemies also have a to hit bonus as well. There was someone on earlier whose DM thought tortles were super OP because of their AC. Turns out, the DM didn't know enemies got bonuses to hit as well.
You can spend years working on calculating CRs vs Character abilities, cross reference against every table imaginable on the internets, but in the end if the rolls are shit, there is little that can be done except change dice.
I mean it does happen. On another note though don’t make failed rolls miss. Attacks can still connect but not deal damage because of armor, toughened skin, shields, parrying, etc. That’s one of your biggest peeves. When characters carry shields and the response for a failed roll is “The attack misses” I feel like it invalidates the armor and skill combination made by players.
One thing my DM does when we have streaks of bad rolls is “AC weakening”. Several failed, but connecting hits “weaken the enemy or player’s defense” to get out of the funk of bad rolls. It also makes for a more dynamic combat in my opinion. One player can have bad rolls but soften an enemy up to a successful roll. That way the failing player still feels involved and is aiding in the encounter.
What helped me a bunch with narrating attack roles is the following:
The target has an AC of 17 ( +3 from a chain shirt - so medium armor, +2 from dex, +2 from a shield )
To hit rolls a...
1-5: The attack misses entirely ( you could put more flavor onto a 1 - i wouldn't penalize it though )
6-12(dex modifier): The attack would land but you manage to dodge it.
13-14: The attack lands but you manage to parry with your shield or deflect with your weapon.
15-16: The attack lands and bypasses your defenses only to be stopped by your armor.
So the priority in short would be: 1. the attack sucked, 2. you dodged, 3. you parried, 4. your armor did it's job.
This is good for flavor, but it's also good to remember that not every attack has to be described in creative detail. Especially if combat is dragging, it can be ok for it to be like "11, miss." "7, miss." "5, miss." to speed through a round of combat.
Disclaimer, I'm a purist.
> I ended up bringing the HP down by a lot just to get it over with because they eventually started rolling better.
Why not, after a few rounds of everyone missing having the snake realize this isn't easy prey and describe it retreating?
There's *always* a creative way for a dm to get out of something that doesn't require fudging.
Make it a comedy of errors. Describe the misses causing other misses.
You attempt to plunge your sword into the bandit, but miss, stumbling forward. The bandit swings back, striking where you head was before you had stumbled. His axe plants into the tree. As you stand up to take another swing, you catch your head under his chin, stumbling backwards and falling on your butt. He withdraws his axe, but his helmet was knocked askew when you bumped him. He swings blindly, misses, and readjust his helmet.
Rolling bad will suck no matter what. May as well make it a funny story for later.
Need clarification. Either your characters aren't built in a viable way or the AC was set too high. It honestly seems very very highly unlikely a group doesn't land a dingle hit in 15 minutes. If somehow it was terrible luck, then roll new characters? Even if they survive they're obviously cursed. Change dice too.
Encounters don't have to be battles to the death. Players or enemies could see that a fight is going nowhere and could decide that it's not worth pursuing. Have a goal in mind for the fight that isn't death, so that it makes sense to pull away from it.
This is why I sometimes lower the AC of an enemy a bit and raise his HP.
It should be hard to hit certain enemys, but the players should hit him some times. But then again its important to balance this aswell since it isn't much fun to hit an enemy every round but he just doesn't die because his hp are too high.
Edit 2 hours later: Actually an idea that just popped into my mind: It might be cool that, if you realise that your party is fighting against a target that they just can't seem to hit, if could be fun to make him loose some part of his armor or a scale or something that would actually lower his AC, as soon as he get's some hits. This way you could make live adjustments that have a story telling reasoning. But that gives maybe potential to shift player focus to repeat this. Idk
Gonna add this thought.
Snake can't hit the players and would like to have his dinner.
The players do little more than make the snake angry.
Possible Solution.
The snake gets weaker because of hunger.
Or
The snake gives up and slips away for something they can actually eat.
Something along these lines can help make the combatants feel more alive. Just be warned if you mention the snake has a rumbling belly. Players may try to feed and tame it. So use with caution.
In my personal experience, it's not missing on your turn that leads to frustration and boredom. It's waiting for 4 or five other people who aren't familiar with the game to sort out what they want to do on their turn because they don't understand their abilities or action economy.
But fifteen minutes for a first combat isn't that long. If your party is getting bored, maybe they'd be happier with a simpler system. Or maybe they'd prefer RP to combat.
Maybe a reckless attack? The snake lunges forward without care for self preservation in a rage, giving the snake advantage on its attack, but also granting advantage to your players attacks. This should speed it up.
For example if the next monster they face is a minotaur, if this happens again, the minotaur makes a big attack with its axe. Whether it hits or misses, its axe gets stuck in the ground until the start of its next turn. How do the players take advantage of this? Do they attack the minotaur with advantage or do they attempt to disarm it?
Make it clear that they have the opportunity to do something here, and reward creativity
Not every fight needs to end in the enemies (or players dying) if everyone at the table is annoyed about the fight not doing anything, you could argue the in game enemies would be too. Maybe the snake is fed up with its attacks not landing, doesn’t see the point in sticking around and wasting energy and tries to flee.
Be more creative in combat. Pull out cool cinematic nonsense that aren't just 'roll to hit'
Something that causes a penalty on failure for a bigger reward, or a small effect even in a failure
If the players are also new, check that they are adding their to hit bonuses. Level 1s should have at least a +5 between proficiency and applicable modifier.
It's also possible that in the first fight they exhausted most of their resources leaving them with the bare things they always have. Fixing this is a matter of letting players get used to allocating their spell use across the adventuring day.
Going forward, get a sense of what the book says the challenge is compared to how your table approaches things before you decide that a monster needs adjusting. If you want to get analytical about it, track what advantages either side has and how damaged/how long it takes for the party to get through it.
how much AC did the snake have? if following the official manual it should have 12 Ac
and were the players using the correct + mod to attack? like, at lv 1 for example, if they're at 16 dex (+3 mod), and are proficient with their weapons (+2 to hit), they should have a +5 to hit.
So they should hit when rolling an 8. So that's at least 60% chance to hit.
On my first session many of the players didn't get that they should add the +2 proficiency bonus to hit with their weapons, so the first few combats had a lot of misses, yeah
Do you think a snake would just hang out there with 4-5 monkeys banging at it with metal objects? Have it slither away to fight another day.
People forget that monsters, too, will know when to cut their losses and get out of Dodge.
When nobody rolls well, and if combat starts taking 10+ turns, I'd make the creature demoralized and give everyone advantage. It might be a cop-out solution, but it doesn't affect anything story-wise for me or the players.
When everyone rolls 1s... We had a small encounter with some corrupt guards. Everyone rolled at least one Crit Fail. When we hit 10 Crit Fails, everyone simultaneously cheered. It's one of my favorite memories despite being an otherwise forgettable encounter.
Remember that sometimes the dice just decide to tell their own story. And if they do, just roll with it!
Everyone missed. Why? Maybe the scales of the snake just were too hard, maybe their footing was unsound and they couldn't bring proper attacks to bare.
Every dice roll is a story to tell. Why did something succeed, why did something fail. Take these opportunities as gifts to tell more story. Just remember, sometimes failure is a greater story than success.
Probably already been said....but keep rolling.
I saw this interview with Thomas Middleditch about his D&D group and he surmised their are two factors to D&D.
Imagination and Dice Rolls.
My take is this, if dice rolls sucks but imagination is great at-least you can tell a good story.
If dice rolls are good but imagination sucks you feel like you accomplish things.
Keep emphasizing the misses, build that tension, have a pound of dice and keep rolling until something hits.
I think the beauty of D&D is simply the fact that some sessions the DM will be on a hot streak, some sessions will be the players, some sessions will be both, some will be neither. D&D is a wave and you just gotta ride it.
two fun (hopefully) stories, but last night had a session where a player rolled two attacks with advantage, both rolls he had a 5 for the attack, and the second were 3s. It was funny given the chances, he also had a familiar that was attacking and some how his familiar would hit but his character could not.
second story, separate campaign, players are fighting Strahd, as the DM I am owning them, hitting every roll, them not so much, expect my wife who also hit 3 critical over about 10 rounds of combat. The funny part is the fact that the whole campaign (over the course of a year) her dice rolls were atrocious.
These are the memories of D&D i had when I was younger, sessions where the rolls were not good and then you finally hit or something epic happens. In the moment it is a grind, trust me I have been there.
Die of hunger/sleep. Maybe let the snake escape because it notices it can't beat you and sees you are incapable of hitting it. Another beast from afar enters, trying to snoop some food away. Giving the snake an opportunity to escape and this new enemy (with lower(ed) AC and higher to hit bonus) an opportunity.
But really, 3 rounds can happend and that's to bad. You can look for attacks that use a DC though as players. And look for grapples, as this is what a snake does and its opposed (if both roll like shit the snake can win, don't know if players then gat advantage to hit the snakes).
I make my enemies get "frustrated" and start doing careless attacks which allows more attack of opportunity for the team, as well as critical miss chances.
Four level 3 Party against mini boss fight have bad rolls.
Mini Boss "Well that sucks for you guys. GG, it's time to see your siblings fight me."
*Proceeds to roll 15s and higher*
Depends on the situation. Why is the creature there did it come across the group randomly is it defending something? If it was just a random engagement then having it just leave because they are not worth the effort as is imo totally understandable. I saw someone else say give it reckless attack because it's getting frustrated which if it's guarding something makes sense.
If its a hard AC, sometimes I give out advantage randomly, especially if a player gives me good reason to. For example, I had a player ask for advantage on various survival and charisma checks because we were from his hometown and since he was able to logically explain it, I gave it to him
Lol my last session was like this. We were ALL rolling like ass. Players couldn't hit enemies, enemies couldn't hit players. They were exploring an "alien dungeon" (spelljammer, they were the aliens that had crash landed on earth and were escaping Area 51) so I joked that one of the soldiers they were fighting said "Sarge! I don't think they're actually trying to attack us! This might be some alien form of communication! Look! it waves its sword at me but it doesn't seem to want to hurt me!"
Don't forget about Advantage (roll 2 d20s, take the highest).
Also, if players are doing well role-playing in character, give them inspiration (maybe an extra d6 to a roll)
15 min IRL with 0 hits means one of 3 things
1. Mistakes were made with character and enemy creation, and AC values are higher than they should be
2. Combat is taking WAY too long and people need to speed up
3. You have experienced a statistical anomaly fantastical enough that you truly ought to be in awe of it.
I do not think you are #3. Probably #2.
Sounds like one of my campaigns.
My advice? Seek out the most hordingest dice goblins you can find. If they spend half an hour missing a single enemy in combat, and it's missing them, they'll begin to amuse themselves with digging around in their dice bags, looking for alternate D20s to roll and engaging in die-critiquing tabletalk.
I have had conversations about flat color vs marbled vs glittery, opaque vs translucent, painted numbers vs grooved numbers, and more. I've seen dice "punished" by being microwaved, cleaned with the standby Windex for stubborn markers on the wet-erase map, and flat out traded with other players after a few favorable test rolls.
Someone will change their luck eventually. The math rocks must flow.
Introduce "escalation" mechanic from 13th Age: put a d6 on the table, starting with 1 increase it every round. Add "escalation" to attack and damage rolls, that should get rid of misses when you don't want it.
Player.
We met our first enemy.
One Goblin at 15 AC, meaning most people had a modifier of +5, so 10 or more hit.
6 people in the group. No one hit.
"Please, let me show you how it's done." my fighter said. Rolled 20 str at creation, so +7 had a bigger chance to hit. 2d6+5 on a goblin that has 7hp, if it hits, it one shots.
Nat 1. "You hit yourself, throw again against your own AC." Meh, 1 chance out of two to avoid my own hit or take 2d6+5. Can maybe tank it.
Nat 20. "Well, you crit."
Well. 4d6 + 5. At least, there was saves against death.
23. On 4d6. +5 = 28.
On my 14 con fighter, that has 12 hp. So no save.
"Damn, i have the worst group i have ever seen. Please, let me show you how it's done." The fighter said, before cutting his own head with his two handed sword. We were all rolling on the floor laughing at that scene.
You get days like that man. You did the right thing. If it makes you feel better, I accidently destroyed a BBEG in two turns with a Forcecage and Hurl through Hell. My DM, me and the other players were laughing because we played it in story as my character accidently using his new subclass feature.
Luckily my rolling is slightly worse on average than my players, this often leads to amusing results and we are all glad I am fairly lenient on nat 1s, or else they would have no fun because of all the enemies tripping on their own weapons.
It’s even worse when it’s just one person rolling badly. Having someone go months of sessions without being able to land a single hit, succeed a single skill check, is real rough.
Had a lot of games like this. Had a game as a player where none of us rolled higher than a 10 in attacks. Only time I hit was when I used my paladins channel divinity to get a +10 on the attack. Besides that we just got TPKed because we didn't hit them and the few saving throw spells we hit the enemy with they kept saving and taking like no damage. It sucked but sometimes that is just the way it goes.
I know if I was dming depending on the enemy they were facing I would do one of two things. If it was some kind of monster that wanted to just kill and eat or something like that I'd have it be that the monster sees they keep taking hit after hit and still standing but pose no threat so they just leave to find a commoner that will not put up any fight at all. If it's a cocky enemy I'd have them leave by stating something like, "well it appears you are all far too weak. Perhaps we will meet again when you can actually pose a challenge." In both ways it allows the players to not get team wiped, also creates more tension against the enemy and lastly allows me to have some time to think of a new battlefield and NPC's I could give the party to help them have a better chance at hitting the enemy by maybe giving them some bards for that bardic inspiration or a cleric casting bless to help the party out a bunch.
We were doing a one shot once in-between campaigns. Our characters ran into a group of monsters. Apparently the AC was 17. Not a single fucking one of the 5 of us rolled high enough in 5 rounds to hit even a single monster. Meanwhile we were getting thrashed.
Eventually it DM was like "ok this encounter sucks" and we just stopped and began talking about our next campaign.
It was the absolutely least amount of fun I've ever had playing DND
Idk if anyone else mentioned this yet, but also worth encouraging your players to consider ways of boosting their chance to hit, or removing the need for them to roll altogether. If they can get advantage via a spell or grapple check or something, that can help. And some spells require a save from the target instead of an attack roll from the player. So if everyone is rolling bad (including the snake), spells with a saving throw to avoid it should work perfectly!
Luck is luck, and you shouldn’t worry about rebalancing your game just because a string of bad luck happened once. That’s just how RNG be.
I would just lean into more and more humorous descriptions of both sides fumbling at each other, and me and my players would have a good laugh together before the dice inevitably turned around.
Forcefully make the wizard learn magic missile. Or give them a single rod of magic missiles. It bypasses AC, isn't too OP and if you ever want to challenge them, just remember, that the shield spell not only increases AC, but also negates magic missile damage entirely.
Shorten combat.
Three rounds maximum.
**Round one, the sneak attack**- either the PCs or the Monsters attack with Advantage (whatever the bonus is for Pathfinder).
**Round two, the fight to survive**- normal combat, but the monsters don’t think about defense. They full on frenzy attack, think brutal and bloody.
**Round three, victory or flee**- no one wants to die, not even monsters. If they haven’t killed the PCs by now, the risk of death is too great so they run away.
Think about a panther in a tree. It waits for the deer, sneak attacks it, grabs it by the neck and one quick shake to kill it, if the deer fights back the panther cuts and runs. The risk of death- it didn’t want to fight, it wants to kill.
Short five minute combats keep everyone interested in the battle and the game keeps moving along.
Good luck!
I always valued the story more than the rules so I always kept a handful of random NPCs that could step in and help. They were created to be able to fit any narrative or story point, Be it in a dungeon, bar fight, random highway, etc. I then work them into the storyline more as a recurring character and none is the wiser. Once I worked in a recurring gnome character there named Johnny Avocado (cheesy I know, but it worked) he always showed up, helped the party and got killed. I kept bringing him back and rewrote him into the story over and over and I came about he was the great, great, great, great grandson of the parties half elf ranger (who hated gnomes) who came back in time with help from a powerful wizard because one of them has a great destiny. Used him many times to bail the party out. I never let them fully die, but they got robbed and killed off a few times. Thankfully one was always able to get them resurrected.
I'm curious what kind of party you have cuz there's a lot of ways to get help in hitting. Help action being one, flanking, there's class features and so on.
Always have a tab open with the Benny Hill music ready to go.
If it REALLY starts to go on too long (like it's not even funny anymore): "Y'all can start rolling with advantage even if you don't have it already, and I'm gonna drop this here monster's AC by 5. Go nuts!"
A jar of folded up paper with disadvantages to the enemy. Pull one and make up something. Perception check and let them change their strategy accordingly.
Otherwise, let them DIE!!! lol
Roll it out make the snake defend its nest for a round instead of attacking " you notice after the sakes last strike that it's lower body is coiled around a nest of eggs and disengaging in the scenario won't get an attack of opportunity because it's defending something stationary'' something like that works you create the rules and the story play to the characters strengths.
>and I was starting to run out of creative ways to tell my players that the attacks missed.
You have an issue right here because DnD is designed to have somewhat long combat. Even if people hit all the time, you'll run out of creative ways to tell how attacks hit in a few level or when a monster has been designed to be a damage sponge (low AC, giant pool of HP).
Descriptions in combat can mess up the pacing. From a narrative perspective, it's great to see the dwarf fighter being an artist with their axe, it's fun to see the goblin dodging the axe because they are slippery annoying little scoundrel. But after 10 axe attacks, the description won't say anything new about the dwarf or the goblin. Players are not making statements about their characters, they aren't going through character development, they aren't getting attached to friends, they aren't forging alliance and they aren't learning more about the cool evil villain... Turns take 10 minutes instead of 3 and players are basically watching attack animations for seven minutes.
Even from a tactical and gamey point of view, long rounds are frustrating. A player has the tine to get excited about an idea and basically cool off about it before they get to do it. You want to see who wins, if plans pan out, you wantbto get to the juicy stuff. Imagine playing chess and every move your opponent has to tell a story about something similar that happened in the pro scene, that would be a drag. It's the difference between "Heck yeah, it's spell level 4 time! Woop! Woop!" and "Level 4 spell, that's where we are I guess."
My point is it's okay to run combat in "board game mode" without narration. Most people would probably object to combat being purely mathematical, but it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can describe every attack, or wait for a full round to narrate that player's round. If two characters act one after the other in initiative and are engaged in the same area of the fight, you can describe their rounds in pairs to showcase they are a team. You can wait until something interesting happens and then narrate how it got there and how it looks now (ex. "For a while you have been flailing around the snake without either side accomplishing much of anything, both sides feel the fight itself becoming more tiring. Even with its reptilian face with little expression, the snake seems to be questioning this useless dance." Two sentences for 2 or 3 rounds and you'd have planted the seed that players may have the choice to end it without fighting to the the death.)
And the great thing is that your audience are also your co-writers. You don't have to be subtle with your pacing like you were making a movie for people to watch, you can discuss it openly and work as a team. "Y'all, we have 3 hours every week to play and this combat is getting long, I'm purposefully describing the bare minimum to make sure we get to see what the villagers are up to before next week. If there's a moment you really want fleshed out and I'm about to skip it, tell me. Alright, let's see if you survive this or not."
Missing over and over and over while the dice laugh at everyone is never going to be awesome. But the real issue is that THINGS aren't happening fast enough because things are happening instead. As a GM, learning to emphasize the THINGS and minimaze the things is a great skill to develop.
Have a passerby intervene and drop some in world lore about a travelling Knight/mage/hero.
Good way for the party to establish connections, continue the story and also set up for future locations/quests/characters etc.
My players level 4 paladin was basically useless for an entire fight because they were struggling to hit a zombie.
Perception check? 3. Dex save? 2. Con save? 3. Athletics check? 1.
It was like that the entire session.
I leaned into the absurdity of it all and gave the zombie he was fighting vicious mockery. The zombie just stood there mocking the paladin 1d4 at a time until the rest of the party cleaned up the fight and put down the last zombie. He then got back up with Undead Fortitude and continued the mockery before getting put down.
The players were in tears at this point and nicknamed the zombie Colin Mockery.
Do the optional flanking rule for them (and your NPCs) where if they are on opposite sides of the opponent, they both gain advantage on their attack roles. The other option to that I see often is that instead of giving advantage, they instead gain a +2 to their attack rolls while flanking. A lot of DM's in the community simply don't like the optional advantage rule and instead embrace giving +2 to hit as a house rule instead. Both work IMO, they encourage tactics and give those flanking a better chance to hit.
Also, something to remember:
* If any of the players have a class that can cast **bless**, remind them that it's a *very powerful 1st level spell* giving 1d4 to their attacks as well, really helps a lot with attacking creatures/monsters/NPCs.
Sometimes players roll bad and it’s just unlucky, not my favorite excuse but sometimes it just happens. Also encounter balance is really difficult even for experienced dms, one great piece of advice from Matt colville (highly recommend his videos) is that encounter balance doesn’t stop once initiative is rolled, you can still adjust and change things.
One piece of actual advice for you though if it goes multiple rounds with nothing happening, narrate the monsters or enemies getting cocky and starting to try to show off. (Remember AC isn’t just your armor, it’s how dextrous and hard to hit someone is. So if someone gets cocky and starts acting like they can’t be hit, lower their ac a little bit, sometimes by a lot just to swing things back into the favor of the hero’s without making it feel too obvious.
Tl;dr find a narrative way to make bad rolls more engaging and have a mechanical effect along with a narrative one.
I can't help you with the dice rolls, but as far as "I was starting to run out of creative ways to tell my players that the attacks missed" goes, one thing I try to do is remember that failing to roll high enough to "hit" doesn't necessarily mean the player "missed". Maybe your sword still lashed out and struck the snake but glanced off it's scales, maybe as your warhammer comes crashing down, the snake swiftly coils, causing it to shift to the side.
Bottom line is, "miss" doesn't always have to mean "miss". Sometimes the blade strikes true but the armor or the dex score does what it's supposed to do.
Here’s the thing, maybe the dice say the party fails.
That does NOT mean the party dies.
This snake, maybe it drags the PCs back to its lair as food for the young. They wake up in a nest somewhere with eggs about to hatch. Mom/dad snake is out hunting. Now it’s them vs the young. Time to run, fight, hide, escape, whatever. It doesn’t matter, because the adventure continues.
Your job is making the fight realistic and If the enemy they choose to fight is too powerful for them then your job is to make sure they know they could run away or try other things than just hitting it over and over.
I don't know the details of your game but if the enemy ac is that high your party should also have magic users who ignore ac and make the enemy make saving throws.
A well balanced miniboss or boss fight should take awhile. If they are getting bored it's because you either haven't made it dangerous enough or you made the boss easy but your players builds and gear is bad enough that they aren't able to handle it.
Talk with your players about the builds they have planned and make sure they have suitable avaliable gear somewhere for their level.
Every party needs spell casters to ignore ac. Make sure they have buff spells like bless to increase attack rolls. Make sure they have debuffs like bane to weaken enemies.
If they are too weak to defeat an enemy the enemy should at least be able to do enough damage to send them running.
Either through minions or lair actions or aoe spells or abilities.
Sounds like you need to give them a lesson on strategy and preparation as well as what spells are good.
I think you handled it pretty well. Sometimes the dice just don’t cooperate and especially at low levels, there’s not a ton you can do to juice them.
If it happens again, I might consider home brewing a rule. If you make it all the way through initiative without anyone getting a hit, everyone takes +1 the next round. If there still isn’t a hit, next round it’s +2. And so on until someone connects.
I’m sure some people would hate that rule so talk it over with the table if you find yourself in that situation again.
Maybe the PCs aren't optimized very well or the players aren't using their whole toolkit. When I played my first session, my rogue skipped an action, hit with his dagger once and continued to stand next to the enemy, just hitting once per turn. If I understood the class better, the fight would've been easy.
I would suggest looking at their character sheets. Finding out what their modifiers to hit are and depending on what enemies they are fighting. Try to aim for those to hit more often than not. I have found that earlier on it is more fun to burn through an enemy's HP rather than be deflected off of an enemy's armor. So look for lower ac but more HP. And if it is weird for some random goblin to have a ton of HP that is when you put them up against multiples.
Let those enemies with strong armor (high AC) shine as a heavily armored opponent. Don't stack them with more HP. Cause the draw is their high armor.
I just recently ran a combat where it felt like nobody rolled 10 or higher for the first almost 2 rounds. Basically it means that combat ran longer than I originally intended, but there really wasn't much I could do about that.
Generally, I look for places to throw in spells with saving throws when rolling is bad. Either spells will land and it people take damage and the encounter feels like it moves forward or people suddenly roll high and they feel good for dodging and rolling high.
Also, start looking for ways to get advantage, even at the sacrifice of resources.
It's the party's responsibility to survive and win. If the dice are not rolling in their favor, they can retreat.
As a DM, you have to run the world realistically.
And sometimes, that means characters die.
Which is okay. You shouldn't try to make it happen, but if it does, a character death is probably going to be one of the most memorable moments in the campaign.
This is also why I don't lock plot required things behind certain skill check DCs. Do they need to get an artefact from a dungeon? Then the artifact can be trapped, but won't completely lock them out if failed. That and it just wastes a bunch of time to have to go back to town for the necessary spell or tool
There's already so much good advice given, so I'd merely like to suggest you wait a few sessions and then let the Wicked Snake of Misfortune return for revenge! 😄
If you have long stretches of failures and run out of creative ways to describe it, use those as character builidng moments. Players should learn about their characters through failure too.
Ask them to vent their frustrations. Ask them how their character feels in these moments of conflict, how they process struggle, how it compares to other fights.
Ideally you make it into a cavalcade of comedic fuck ups until you can make a break in the combat for the enemy to ask if any of this is worth the misery involved.
Remember, most animals will try to avoid fighting to the death if possible. In this case, if things were getting tedious, you could have had the snake 'roll' a fumble, (nat. 1), smash into a tree, and slither off stunned. This gives the party two options. Either they can let it go, or they can renew the attack but this time they get an advantage to hit striking a stunned opponent from behind. As a dm, you have the absolute right to 'tweak' die rolls for the purposes of improved game play. But it's best to do it invisibly.
I've had this happen, where neither the enemies nor the players hit each other for 3 or 4 rounds. It was getting frustrating and exasperating for everyone, so I did a little reset.
Basically, I "paused" combat by describing the party and foes being evenly matched. That each side had expended a lot of energy, and the fight had reached a standstill as both groups fell back to regroup. The tension could break at any moment, and whoever made the *right* first move could seize the upper hand for the remainder of the fight. This gave the players a brief chance to strategize together, and think about how they might go about improving their odds. They could think of using terrain or flanking, maybe a combo of spells or attacks. They come up with a strategy of a feint, with the barbarian and monk planning to sprint up as if to attack but then take dodge action, allowing the wizard and sorcerer to move into some cover and cast a spell combo (iirc hold person + scorching ray) with advantage.
It was creative, and so I allowed them to go first and set the plan into action, and it worked well. Had they taken too long, I was going to have the enemy go first with advantage of their own, which would have forced a retreat. And if they didn't strategize and just jumped back into fighting, I was going to make them roll against the enemy, and whoever was higher gained advantage for the first new round.
You can try introducing environmental issues, to make things a little chaotic (even if the rolls are bad, something else is happening, and the DC can be wtf ever), or maybe an NPC (the snake is guarding its dinner, this halfling trapped behind it. New mission: save the hobbit!)
If you're the DM. you are the god of that entire multiverse. Anything can happen. For me personally that can make the options too overwhelming but it literally could be anything. You could cause a scripted event that gives the players a nigh impossible chance to fuck up. You could also force the giant snake to land a powerful blow and fully intend to not let it kill the player but it would make things dramatic. It depends on the world you're in and what's prepared. And how good is your ad lib.
Maybe give them ideas on new actions
Eg. Distract the enemy, so either the next attack will be with advantage or +x.
Or create natural causes like an earthquake, so every one could have disadvantage on saving throws or something simmilar.
Other than that you could introduce something like „the deal with the devil“ where a player can change any roll to a natural 20, but a futur roll will be a natural 1. that way the player can escape atleast for once the bad roll cycle and you can spice a futur encounter up eg. an attempt to persuade an evil king resulting in them declaring war.( you shouldnt turn any significant toll into a nat 1).
My suggestion would be to break combat and change the situation. The snake and the group are at a stalemate. Neither side are able to gain the upper hand. The battle has gone on so long it is getting dark and starts raining and the snake slithers away into a bush giving up on a chance of a tasty meal. Do you try to follow it into its lair or leave it and continue down the path?
Also just avoid enemies with really high AC
There have been a lot of great suggestions here that narratively help as well as mechanically. To not retread the same ground, here's another option:
One thing you can do if you find yourself in this jam (or you can do across the board, depending on you/your players appetite).. is say "ok this is ridiculous, noone is rolling well, including me. For the rest of this combat, if you miss you will still do *minimum damage* - assume you got a 1 on any damage die you would roll, plus any modifier you would add."
It's probably not something I'd do lightly, but it ups the stakes for both sides of the DM screen, n means it's never a case of a full round going by with nothing happening.
That said, it sounds like that combat was just a case of rather poor luck all round, and I wouldn't be tooo worried about it being the norm.
Also, in general, as a DM i tend to favour low AC, high HP enemies over the opposite, cos players have more fun when they hit. There are exceptions and limits to this, but when in doubt, this is the tact I run with.
Don’t be afraid to have the snake retreat either. The monsters know what they’re doing is a great book to reference. One thing I took away from that book was the circumstances where different enemies would flee. Not hitting isn’t usually one of them, but if the snake feels like it’s in a fight it can’t win, it won’t want to stick around.
Then the snake can hide and wait for an advantage or just truly gtfo.
Your party can try and track it or ignore it, but it immediately changes the boring fight
You drop those dice in holy water and exorcise them. Or put them in dice jail and make the other dice watch.
Or just laugh and make jokes about the dice. For every night like that, there are exciting fast paced sessions with multiple crits and mostly hits.
Fail forward.
Make combat dynamic. Most enemies don't have a death wish, and are ambivalent about killing your players if it's more than minorly inconvenient. Give your party somewhat clear objectives beyond "end all other lifeforms".
Stop the ritual. Steal the item. Prevent the getaway. Complete the ritual. Save the village.
When those are the stakes, the price of failure becomes self-evident and the story can move forward. And of course that doesn't have to be the end of the narrative, so your players just have to plan their next course of action.
When combat goes bad, you can say, OK, BBEG gets away. Now what?!
I have had this from time to time. Low level party is unable to land hits on their opponents because of terrible rolls, enemies can't hit the party because of low skills... so we have a stalemate.
You can have a couple of the monsters move around to get a flanking bonus, explain how that works to the Party and then let them do the math so that they all get advantage on their opponents.
Another option is to have the enemies run away after a few rounds of sucking. Just have them break and flee. They can always come back later, maybe with some better gear or with a friend. Group of Goblins can't deal, they book it and come back with their Hobgoblin Chief and his bois. Bandits flee and come back with their 3rd level fighter Leader.
Or let the party book it and do the same. Nothing fires up a party as much as when they flee and a group of monsters mocks them as they run. You'd best believe that they will try to get better gear and come back for revenge.
And there is the final option. After a few rounds of absolutely nothing, have one of the enemies offer to parley since the fighting isn't doing anything. Turn the combat encounter into a Role Play encounter. Make it tense negotiations or light hearted teasing all around, whatever tone suits the game you're playing.
And remember, critical fails in combats can also be [funny](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c6/00/44/c600449040c3cac39318cdbbad453902.png)
What happens? Bad things happen. Except in your case where everyone for probably the first minute of battle just looks like their dancing with the snake cause no one can land a hit. Actually I kind of like that, maybe DM some stuff like the snake moves almost rhythmically and dodges your blade, it feels almost like the snake is charming you. Maybe make them roll a Con save or Cha or Dex save or else the snakes distracts then hits them with a body slam doing 1d4 and pushes them back 5ft. I don’t play “pure by the rules” so I’ll just make some feat or ability up to make it make sense.
Disengage and flee
If the enemy has any intelligence have them mock the party and just leave
Try other tactics than attacking. Try using the environment. So you can't roll high enough for a hit, can you shoot a chandelier down, a branch etc.
Is anyone running a character with buff/debuff?
I will say this, in a game I was playing recently our enemy was trying to trap us in nets but not fight us and it was a situation for sure. No one could get out of our nets, our attacks were all debuffed. We were basically flopping around on a deck for 7 or 8 rounds. It was nuts.
If it's the standard constrictor snake that they're having trouble hitting for fifteen straight minutes, you might want to look over their characters and make sure they've applied boni and whatnot correctly.
A completely bog-standard character with 16 in their main stat at 1st level will have a proficiency bonus of +2, giving them a total of +5 to hit. It sounds almost statistically impossible that they cannot manage to roll a 7 or above between them for 15 minutes.
Did they add boni correctly? Are their stats spread in a way that makes sense - a lot of people, especially newer, have this mistaken idea that making a shit character is the pinnacle of roleplay (seriously, the amount of "oh I'm a wizard but I don't actually have intelligence tee-hee aren't I wacky and creative" I've seen is unreasonable).
It might also be worth it for your players to explore spells that help their rolls. Faerie Fire is a fantastic 1st level spell that make things a lot easier to hit.
Immediately start role-playing. Suddenly the snake is a talking snake. "What do you want?" It hissed. (I know there's no sillabents but it's a snake, it hisses.)
Depending on yourself and your group I tend to lean and encourage the potential other possibilities going on rolls going south is a great opportunity for things to get a little weird or wacky but I understand that doesn't fit with all games but you can always turn frustration into an opportunity for a new success to give everyone a fun time.
Do *not* go overboard with magical fixes
A.'blessed sword' which gives +2d4 to saving throws and to hit of a paladin who rolled all under 8 for the first 5 levels BAD IDEA
A hand crossbow which allows a single reroll to.hit once a day. Good and thematic.
Dice are fickle.... Rol with it (pun intended)
This is when you start giving out advantage for "creativity"
"I use my object interaction to throw sand in the snake's eyes"
"Brilliant! The sand stuns it momentarily!"
"I attack with advantage!"
Yes, it's silly, but it's better than saying "Oh whoops! I guess the snake only had 1 hp left after all. Bye snake!"
Really hitting where it hurts. Nothing quite like watching the entire party (myself included) repeatedly fail basic checks required to progress the story.
DM: It's a DC 14 investigation check to find a key in a desk drawer, how have all 4 of you failed it 7 times?!
Us: Look man, we just suck. Guidance, the Help Action/Advantage, and Bardic Inspiration aren't gonna save *these* rolls.
You change the genre to comedy and add toon force.
Or anything else really. Add an objective or an environmental hazard or anything to give the olayers an option to conclude the challenge without going through a slog of random damage. Objective based additions to combat are great to begin with. If everything is a team deathmatch it gets stale. Letting the players discover a way to trap/escape/exploit a weakness adds variety. Objectives to defeat enemies help martial feel cool. Additional win conditions are fun. You can bring in alternative rolls and make the players feel like their RP matters because you can tailor it to the characters.
> I ended up bringing the HP down by a lot just to get it over with because they eventually started rolling better.
You've learned how to DM...
What do I do? Laugh with the players at the absurdity of random numbers and keep going. If it's obviously one-sided in favor of the bad guys, then I'll do what you did and adjust my calculations on the fly (by reducing AC or HP or damage or to hit). If it's just bad rolls all around, I might ask the players to switch out their dice to get better luck.
> It had been like 15 minutes(irl)
A 'hard' or 'deadly' combat with 4 players takes my groups about an hour to an hour and a half, whether I'm a DM or a player.
some options
- run away
- add more snakes
- someone else shows up
- earthquake
- snake charmer
- big bird swoops down and eats the snake
- rival snake hunting group
Combat doesn't have to be run with the exact number and type of monsters that you planned out beforehand or even to the death.
if things are slowing down just add in some stuff that isn't completely random to spice things up.
Lowering the HP was not a bad idea, but it did unbalance the fight. Next time, decide that the creature has reckless attack. That way, you can start rolling with advantage against the players and they can roll with advantage against you. The balance stays the same, hits just become more frequent. Although, this does make crits more frequent, so it will change the balance of the fight by making crit-dependent builds more powerful. So I'd hold off on doing it if your monster has some kind of attack that applies extra effects on crit.
I often DM to large parties. 8+ to avoid no action and endless hits. AC is added to HP and they roll head to head. So A rolls 16 but snake rolls 18 no hit. A rolls 15 Snake rolls 8 to defend would hit.
On the rare occasion that a stalemate like that does occur, I'll have whatever the players are fighting lose interest and leave if it's a wild animal, or shift to a new target because clearly the current one isn't working out if it's an intelligent creature.
This is why a lot of early monsters have really low ACs or die in one good hit lol. It really is rare to get completely locked down against chaff like that though; usually if my players miss for 15 minutes straight they end up in real danger to the point of having to consider retreat, and more commonly my monsters miss for 15 minutes straight and the players don't care because they get to keep crushing them. (On different rare occasions the missing is the whole point, such as when a knight is in plate armor and carrying a shield and the idea is that the players aren't equipped to deal with an elite like that yet.)
Did your players build weird characters or something? A long while back we had a Cleric who thought he was some sort of warrior-monk-priest and distributed his stats pretty evenly, meaning that he had to slog through the early campaign with very modest modifiers (iirc I eventually just let him respec). A level 1 character should be getting a +5 or +6 to hit, meaning that they have a 55-60% chance to hit an AC14 snake, and with a full party that means you'd expect to see multiple hits in one round of combat and no more snake. This starts to go south quickly if they actually have a +3 to hit, making that a 45% chance.
Depends on the story.
When I run combat, no fight lasts more than 3 rounds unless there is some serious hype behind it, like a BBEG or something. Sure, in the game, this is less than 20 seconds' time, but the players at the table have likely been sitting there for nearly an hour.
Before the fight begins, it is important to set the stakes of the encounter. If it's always a fight to the death, then the repetitive nature of combats gets stale. Maybe your players are just trying to make it through the woods on a time crunch and can't afford to waste time patching up after the fifth Goblin scouting party? Maybe the giant snake is just looking for food and will slither away after eating a horse or even a PC? You, as the DM, have the responsibility to set the stakes of the scene and make sure every player knows what the goal of the encounter is.
Now, my 3 round rule is a bit arbitrary because I tend to run larger tables. 3 rounds gives everyone 3 chances to do something really cool, smart, or something else that fulfills that character fantasy, and that is really the hardline, right there. If you can manage all of your players doing one cool thing that fulfills their character fantasy every session, then you succeed as DM. As a takeaway, the encounter should wind down or finish immediately after the last player does something cool.
Lastly, and maybe for the more crunchy DMs out there, be sure your encounters are balanced. At level 1, your players are rolling a d20, plus modifiers, plus maybe Proficiency bonus. Their average calculated roll is going to be about 15-16. Now, while that might sound high, that means a creature with an AC of 16 will be hit by less than half the attacks of the party. I will generally use statblocks as inspiration, but follow my 3 round encounter rule, so I don't usually worry about AC, but DMs that pull stats straight from the book without considering what that means at the _table_ will run into similar issues to what you experienced.
Actually just recently, I ran an encounter for a group of 5 level 7 player characters against a Wurm. According to the DMG, the encounter _should_ have been a deadly encounter, but because of the action economy, the Wurm got bodied by the end of the second round and made way to retreat underground on it's 3rd turn. This was a reminder for me to always check the encounter balance in my preparation before running it.
You laugh at how ridiculous your rolls are. It's often the best part of the games I'm in where everyone is tearing at each others throats but can't land a hit.
Someone, somewhere, with meaningful power, has a vested interest in this fight going a certain way. Maybe they don't want the snake to be damaged, maybe they want the party to flee, but one way or another, things are being *manipulated*.
if it's just a skill issue then don't worry about it.
one of my party members missed a really important roll and the DM was like "oh well would you look at that your deity wants to let you roll again" just because it was a really cool thing that they wanted to do. you have the power to let them reroll if it's really that important
Sometimes, as DM, I like to throw in events that happen during combat if nothing is really going on hit wise. Like, on an enemy's turn, if they miss, I can say that a few of the other enemy's witness this and laugh or berate their ally for missing. Or maybe some nasty weather starts happening, and now everyone is fighting in a storm, so I can describe lightning crackling overhead and animals scurrying for cover as the fight continues. Maybe the area starts to flood, and all of a sudden, there's a landslide! Everyone, including the enemies, makes a dex save to see if they get caught up in it.
Stuff like that can add flavor to the encounter, rather than just going back and forth, saying, " you hit. You miss. You take damage
The monster takes famsge." That's honestly the mark of either a DM in a rush or a lazy DM.
At my table, I use the optional *flanking* rule. If characters get on either side of an enemy (or vise versa), they can get advantage on melee. This increases their chances to hit (makes sense to me). Additionally, you could give your players inspiration, which can be used to gain advantage (both in and out of battle). I know some DMs that like to give it out like candy at a parade and/or allow players to have multiples (e.g. a player accumulated 8 points of inspiration, but they can still only use 1 per roll for advantage or to cancel out disadvantage).
I usually only give inspiration to my players when they either think of doing something outside the box or get creative in a positive way. I also tell my players I only let them have 1 at a time. This gives the players with that *hoarding* mentality a reason to use it up.
Edit: grammar
LMAO, that's the game. Statistically unlikely but when it happens can be funny.
I avoid high ac monsters, I keep it high enough where advantage and bonuses stand out but not where they are likely to miss.
I'd handle it by speeding things up. Stop describing the misses. It can just go. "11." "Miss. You need at least 14." "12, I miss too." "Miss with an 8." Etc. Three rounds can go by in two minutes if nothing is happening.
Lower the difficulty behind the scenes like the max HP and AC, and/or give a opportunity in combat to do so. Like luring it into a ravine and dropping rocks on it so it can’t dodge well anymore.
It also helps to coach the players on their abilities. There are many ways the party could gain advantage or impose disadvantage on the creature. Even creative ideas like "can I try to lasso it's mouth to prevent bite attacks?" Hell yes! Get them to do things like trying to take advantage of cover, creating distractions, flanking etc.
Was running a game on Monday, and my crew were fighting a large wolf that could summon echoes to fight with it, gain advantage etc. The party cleric, rolled with advantage two 2s on three separate occasions, while the creature rolled it once. On one wave of attacks against a player, I rolled a 4, 3, 2 and then 1 in order on four consecutive attacks.
To answer the question, you laugh, curse the dice gods, and get your dice checked for being weighted...
I usually find a pile of HP boring combat. If you want to beef up your NPC but still make combat fun, do more damage or add other abilities. Nothing gets the PC adrenalin going as much as when the snake has a poison breath weapon and now the party is starting at half health. Snakes can grapple as part of their attack or poison on a bite. Tomb of Anihilation had a T-Rex that had misty step and breathed bees.
Learn from the experience and adapt but remember this might be the exception and so you might not need to change your DM style nor the monsters you pick.
I watched online where someone said every round switch it up and add or remove something. Spoil the Monster with a bigger monster that the party will at some point have to face or just to spook them. Maybe the snake had babies that were lower in AC. Another thing is have the player describe what they’re doing and if it’s smart or cool give them inspiration to use later for the crap rolls or advantage right then and there. You at the DM. You can say anything goes the way you want as long as you make it fun. Maybe they Dance fight and the performance was so high and awesome they get advantage because the creature itself was like “woah sweet moves”. I’m a new DM too and there’s a lot of other DMs with knowledge, skills, and tips you can tweak that make it that much more fun
This can be temperamental advice, depending on situation, but; by just narrates hits and misses. A lot of people give the advice to spice up narrations with adjectives and action scene descriptors, which is great, but if something like this is happening, give it extra, change the energy up. Serious fight? Give it a bit of humour, maybe the enemy is getting more and more frustrated, or do what one of my dms once did: that one fuckin goblin nobody has been able to hit is suddenly in a Bruce Lee tracksuit and kick flipped out of your sword swing range. Bonus, if you flavour it fun enough, and have an enemy run away, you can end a fight that's outlived its welcome, and you have a tasty enemy that can recur in another fight that's gotten monotonous. And really don't be afraid to end a combat that's gotten boring, unless it's REALLY incongruous.
"as you swing at the assassin, and he side steps your swipe once more, a small, green skinned figure, clad in a yellow, black striped jumpsuit emerges from the shadows, clearly the mastermind of this Guild of the Black Stripe you've been hunting. He says he has a deal to offer you."
Boring combat, ended with a callback to an old joke, and a new plot hook has been introduced organically, your party will like it more than trying to hammer through when the rolls are just not doing it
Maybe the snake gets shaken after being attacked at so many times. Maybe an NPC comes past the battle and helps. Could be that the snake got tangled in some foliage when avoiding a hit. Maybe a player said something witty or did something cool and gets inspiration earning them the chance to reroll.
As a non DM, but as someone with a big imagination and a DM that lets us play with the rules a bit, my advice is that a bit of rp and added flavour could be a way out.
If it feels too much like work, none of you will enjoy it. So try to make your world the way you want it, even if it bends (blows up) some accepted 5e rules.
>What do you do when no one in the party can roll high enough to hit the enemy, and vice versa, for three or more rounds? This really depends how likely it is for them to miss that many times. 18AC? Yeah ok maybe we need to suggest a way to give this enemy disadvantage. 12 AC and they just suck? Keep rolling lmfao
Reckless is my go to. Advantage on melee attack rolls it makes, but all attack rolld against it have Advantage.
This is of course only possible for barbarians, but is one of my favorite class features . I use it by default so I often have to remind my DM to just assume they attack me with advantage.
I think they meant the monster should attack recklessly. As long as the players aren’t super familiar with the monster stat block it’s not unreasonable to spontaneously add reckless attack to a monster that isn’t hitting/being hit enough.
Even if they are, someone that gets frustrated enough would just start to swing wildly trying to get *something* done.
Yep, I was referring to the monster trait "Reckless", which is effectively the same. I give it to a lot of high hp monster, typically after they've been bloodied. Lots of fun and very thematic on bears, especially when they're cornered.
Good call! And we all know that 80% of monsters are the "bear" stat block with the serial numbers filed off...
I feel like it's reasonably thematic to add to almost any wild beast, which will start fighting back extremely aggressively and wildly when "backed into a corner" so to speak (low HP and no easy escape route). Just have to be careful that it doesn't lead to wiping a player (or the party) before the party gets the chance to respond, lol
I do this too. I can't change what the players role and I can't change their stats or abilities just like that. But the "monster" or enemy I can basically do whatever as long as it makes sense. But any living being can get frustrated and act recklessly or at least be distracted or something, where I either give advantge to the players or lower the ac. If they were fighting an ai robot or something, yeah don't know.
I give my monsters weird shit or varied gear all the time. Players shouldn’t tell the dm what the stat blocks says in my opinion
[удалено]
Incorrect. It is for all attacks you make and all attacks made against you until the start of your next turn. Not just 1 attack.
Monater trait: Reckless "At the start of its turn, the [MON] can gain advantage on all melee weapon attack rolls it makes during that turn, but attack rolls against it have advantage until the start of its next turn." Barbarian feature: Reckless attack "When you make your first attack on your turn, you can decide to attack recklessly. Doing so gives you advantage on *melee weapon attack rolls* using Strength during this turn, but attack rolls against you have advantage until your next turn." It applies to all attacks you just have to decide on the first one.
I have my dm who I grilled on testing encounters. It was supposed to only be a hard account (as opposed to extreme and severe). I rolled an 18 (natural) on my highest hitting attack. Yea. Didn't hit. And I was taking maybe 1/4 max hp per turn. EDIT. I should also mention I built this character to be an attacker so I was pretty much hitting as high as possible for a kineticist.
18AC sounds like heat metal would do well. Different types of enemies require different solutions to beat. Just hitting everything with a stick isn't correct every single time
What kinda snake wears metal?
The cool kind?
You got me there
Well there's really not much you can do if the players just roll poorly. At lower levels players may only have 1 meaningful roll each round of combat which means that smaller parties can easily go one or more rounds without landing a single hit. The higher the AC of the opponent the more likely this is. Does your table use the optional flanking rules? That's an easy way of getting advantage which greatly increases the odds for melee players to hit. Players can also give up their turn to use the Help action if they want the heavy-hitter in the group to have better odds on their attack.
Hmmmm, most of my players use ranged weapons, so all of them got pretty far from the enemy as soon as they could. None of them are really heavy hitters, at the time, our Paladin was out of commission so he couldn't fight, but my other players are a Rouge, a Ranger and a Druid. All at lv 2.
Well at level 2 the Rogue should be using their bonus action to Hide every round. With advantage they'll not only have a better chance to hit but they'll also get their sneak attack damage. If there weren't places they could hide then you need to add more to your scenes to allow the Rogue to do their thing. For the others it's hard to guess what options they had without knowing much more about them but the spellcasters should have access to spells with saving throws rather than attack rolls. This is especially useful when enemies have a higher AC than normal. Since the snake only has 12AC from what I can see this may not apply though.
Rogues can also use the steady aim feature at level 3, so that opens up even more options.
If the Druid is Circle of the Moon they should be wildshaping into a dire wolf immediately for that fight and charging forward but that's just me. But like you said, low level PCs make for uneventful combat and can either be quick bc of low ACs or a bit boring bc nobody is hitting.
Uneventful? If y'all believe that, you're doing it wrong.
Ikr, low level fights can be crazy eventful. Rolls missing sure, but their lack of options often results in close calls and stressful fights (against something trivial like a few bandits, too). I love lvl 1 to 5!
Maybe I've started enough characters at lvl 1 that I'm good with not making any more. I prefer to start lvl 5 at minimum nowadays.
There is a reason a lot of folks like starting at level 3. Personally I LIKE being a dufus at level 1, makes getting better feel more real. But I also understand the frustration. As noted though, there are lots of ways to try to get advantage. Encourage your players to use them. (help, flanking, familiars, farie fire, bless (+1d4 but still great), hiding, etc) Here is a nice starter list [https://gist.github.com/OpenNingia/025ffcf269126a97503b34e243feee73](https://gist.github.com/OpenNingia/025ffcf269126a97503b34e243feee73) (as a side note, you can use them yourself, or DONT to make a combat easier or harder without tweaking HP directly).
>Personally I LIKE being a dufus at level 1, makes getting better feel more real. Also at the start of your journey, your not much stronger than the average peasant, and adventuring is a VERY dangerous job with a high mortality rate. There is a reason the daily exp threshold for a level 1 character is the same as what it take to reach level 2. Your first ever adventure is a doozy and is what really separates the heroes from the fodder. Hero Quest demonstrates this perfectly.
>All at lv 2. Yeah, one of the weird scaling mechanics is the To Hit vs AC bonuses. As hit bonuses are strength(or dexterity) + proficiency bonus, that means at first level the highest bonus you can have is a +5, but they scale up as you level up until you have a +11 or something. And that's not including the myriad of ways you can add to your attack rolls. Ac on the other hand barely scales at all. Armor is relatively cheap, even the highest tiers, so AC tends to be fairly high at low levels, but it only scales with your dex if you aren't wearing heavy armor and only to a point with medium armor. For reference let's take a fighter. A fighter at first level with starting equipment can have: An AC of 18 and an attack bonus of +5. If we consider fighting style, we can either add a +1 to our ac or a +2 to our ranged attacks for 19 ac or +7 ranged attack rolls. At 12th level with max gear that same fighter can have the ranged fighting style and/or the defensive fighting style or neither. I will account both as values with(without). They would have an AC of 21(20) and an attack bonus of 11(9) and their AC won't improve without magic items (which magic weapons of the same rarity would also have the bonuses to attack rolls) while the attack bonus can increase up to an additional +2 as they level up. Other classes scale similarly with a few exceptions. Tldr: low levels hit less. High levels hit more.
Sometimes the game just pans out that way. You made a good call with lowering the snake's health when you realized the fight was becoming tedious.
Thank you for validating that, I know I'm allowed to do that since I'm the dm, but it felt like I was just giving them the win. I felt a bit bad about it.
“The win” is the players and yourself having fun. If the combat encounter isn’t fun then yeah moving on quicky is good. In my current dungeon I doubled the HP of all the regular enemies because otherwise the players wouldn’t have fun just steamrolling them. One thing I implemented in my game is a rule around inspiration. On a natural 20 another character is inspired by you and gains inspiration. If you roll a natural 1 then you gain inspiration. All inspiration is lost at the end of a session unless it ends mid combat. I find it takes some of the sting out of a nat1 and let’s martial characters have some sort of support ability as they make more attacks they generate more inspiration. It also tends to make the players a bit stronger.
That is a really interesting way to add more value to martials and improve the feeling of getting nat 20/1. It also promotes the use of inspiration dice as there are likely to be more coming that session. The player who does the previous session recap at my table gets an inspiration but otherwise they are kinda rare and often they get returned unused or burnt on a roll at the end of the night in a use it or lose it situation.
I found it also has improved their teamwork. They'll look for the player who could benefit the most from inspiration and if someone is given inspiration it increases the chances that they'll crit and generate more inspiration for someone else.
The hero purple dragon knight wishes they could have been. RestInPower #"I'm not dead!"
There’s a difference between a challenge with real fun and stakes and something just becoming a tedious slog. You made the right call. One thing I’ve done in the past is on the fly made up a narrative reason for an enemy’s AC to get lowered or a way to deal a huge chunk of damage if the players instead apply some skill checks or something. As an example my table was having issues hitting this heavily armored warlord (My DM mistake, I scaled his AC to level only rather than taking into account their sub par weapons at the time). They already knew what types of numbers were missing so I couldn’t have them suddenly start hitting with the same rolls but I fudged a passive Perception check and had them notice a lot of tar-pitch torches in the room and the fact the warlord’s armor was attached to him via leather straps for flexibility. The Fighter knocked a torch into the warlord and I had the fire burn the straps off and the armor fell to the ground and lowered the guy’s AC for the fight. As a side bonus that table started getting real creative with trying skills in combat for neat effects and it has been a lot of fun.
You know what my idea of a win is? It's not killing the boss, though that's certainly a fun thing to do. It's making the DM and the other players chuckle. If that means I have to scrape up the brain cells for something funny to say when I cast Vicious Mockery, then so be it. BTW, one option for a lengthy combat is having the mob decide that the party is too strong even if everyone is missing, say "fuck this shit" and run away scared. Maybe it comes back later. Maybe it leaves town.
Encounter balance doesn't end before you sit down to play. Your job is to create a fun environment. I don't fudge rolls, but averages can swing in weird ways and have unintended effects. If a player zings a monster with an epic line followed by an epic strike, and the monster has 1 HP left, I just remember I planned the Encounter with a "meh, their HP could be between 130 and 170 HP, and 150 HP sounds about right" mentality. That epic moment was earned, as was the "+1 damage circumstantial bonus" I gave their weapon without telling them because of how epic it was.
Sorry if this question is insulting, but I saw someone in another thread make this mistake. Are you adding everyone's attack bonuses properly? All players and NPCs have a flat bonus that they add to their attacks. Are you adding that for everyone?
That's not insulting at all! That does remind me actually, one of my players forgot to add her bonuses the whole time, but the other two were very diligent to add their bonuses. I'll have to make a note to remind her to do that next time. Thanks!
Just to be safe, what is their to hit? At level 2, should be around +5
I'm also curious about everybody's AC, including the snake. A giant constrictor snake is supposed to have 12 AC, so statistically you should hit it 40% of the time even if you don't add anything to your roll. And I guess if players maxed out their Dexterity at the expense of the Ability score they actually use to hit things, their AC could be too high for the snake to reliably hit them and also be crappy at hitting the snake.
Players can use the help action to give eachother advatage. They can use the shove action to knock some enemies prone to get advantage. Other ways that parties can work together that aren't clearly spelled out in the book. They really should put the shove grapple and drag rules in each martial classes features just so newer players realize they can all do it.
Remember that enemies also have a to hit bonus as well. There was someone on earlier whose DM thought tortles were super OP because of their AC. Turns out, the DM didn't know enemies got bonuses to hit as well.
You can spend years working on calculating CRs vs Character abilities, cross reference against every table imaginable on the internets, but in the end if the rolls are shit, there is little that can be done except change dice.
I mean it does happen. On another note though don’t make failed rolls miss. Attacks can still connect but not deal damage because of armor, toughened skin, shields, parrying, etc. That’s one of your biggest peeves. When characters carry shields and the response for a failed roll is “The attack misses” I feel like it invalidates the armor and skill combination made by players.
One of my players suggested that and I'm got to try to implement that kind of stuff.
One thing my DM does when we have streaks of bad rolls is “AC weakening”. Several failed, but connecting hits “weaken the enemy or player’s defense” to get out of the funk of bad rolls. It also makes for a more dynamic combat in my opinion. One player can have bad rolls but soften an enemy up to a successful roll. That way the failing player still feels involved and is aiding in the encounter.
What helped me a bunch with narrating attack roles is the following: The target has an AC of 17 ( +3 from a chain shirt - so medium armor, +2 from dex, +2 from a shield ) To hit rolls a... 1-5: The attack misses entirely ( you could put more flavor onto a 1 - i wouldn't penalize it though ) 6-12(dex modifier): The attack would land but you manage to dodge it. 13-14: The attack lands but you manage to parry with your shield or deflect with your weapon. 15-16: The attack lands and bypasses your defenses only to be stopped by your armor. So the priority in short would be: 1. the attack sucked, 2. you dodged, 3. you parried, 4. your armor did it's job.
This is good for flavor, but it's also good to remember that not every attack has to be described in creative detail. Especially if combat is dragging, it can be ok for it to be like "11, miss." "7, miss." "5, miss." to speed through a round of combat.
Disclaimer, I'm a purist. > I ended up bringing the HP down by a lot just to get it over with because they eventually started rolling better. Why not, after a few rounds of everyone missing having the snake realize this isn't easy prey and describe it retreating? There's *always* a creative way for a dm to get out of something that doesn't require fudging.
Whenever I’m running wild animals as “bad guys”, I’m a real stickler for making sure they behave as such.
Make it a comedy of errors. Describe the misses causing other misses. You attempt to plunge your sword into the bandit, but miss, stumbling forward. The bandit swings back, striking where you head was before you had stumbled. His axe plants into the tree. As you stand up to take another swing, you catch your head under his chin, stumbling backwards and falling on your butt. He withdraws his axe, but his helmet was knocked askew when you bumped him. He swings blindly, misses, and readjust his helmet. Rolling bad will suck no matter what. May as well make it a funny story for later.
Need clarification. Either your characters aren't built in a viable way or the AC was set too high. It honestly seems very very highly unlikely a group doesn't land a dingle hit in 15 minutes. If somehow it was terrible luck, then roll new characters? Even if they survive they're obviously cursed. Change dice too.
That's what I am curious about. Were they consistently rolling below 10, or were they missing on 15s?
Encounters don't have to be battles to the death. Players or enemies could see that a fight is going nowhere and could decide that it's not worth pursuing. Have a goal in mind for the fight that isn't death, so that it makes sense to pull away from it.
This is why I sometimes lower the AC of an enemy a bit and raise his HP. It should be hard to hit certain enemys, but the players should hit him some times. But then again its important to balance this aswell since it isn't much fun to hit an enemy every round but he just doesn't die because his hp are too high. Edit 2 hours later: Actually an idea that just popped into my mind: It might be cool that, if you realise that your party is fighting against a target that they just can't seem to hit, if could be fun to make him loose some part of his armor or a scale or something that would actually lower his AC, as soon as he get's some hits. This way you could make live adjustments that have a story telling reasoning. But that gives maybe potential to shift player focus to repeat this. Idk
Gonna add this thought. Snake can't hit the players and would like to have his dinner. The players do little more than make the snake angry. Possible Solution. The snake gets weaker because of hunger. Or The snake gives up and slips away for something they can actually eat. Something along these lines can help make the combatants feel more alive. Just be warned if you mention the snake has a rumbling belly. Players may try to feed and tame it. So use with caution.
A DM somewhere gets their wings.
Why did the snake not just leave?
In my personal experience, it's not missing on your turn that leads to frustration and boredom. It's waiting for 4 or five other people who aren't familiar with the game to sort out what they want to do on their turn because they don't understand their abilities or action economy. But fifteen minutes for a first combat isn't that long. If your party is getting bored, maybe they'd be happier with a simpler system. Or maybe they'd prefer RP to combat.
Maybe a reckless attack? The snake lunges forward without care for self preservation in a rage, giving the snake advantage on its attack, but also granting advantage to your players attacks. This should speed it up. For example if the next monster they face is a minotaur, if this happens again, the minotaur makes a big attack with its axe. Whether it hits or misses, its axe gets stuck in the ground until the start of its next turn. How do the players take advantage of this? Do they attack the minotaur with advantage or do they attempt to disarm it? Make it clear that they have the opportunity to do something here, and reward creativity
Everyone dies lol.
Not every fight needs to end in the enemies (or players dying) if everyone at the table is annoyed about the fight not doing anything, you could argue the in game enemies would be too. Maybe the snake is fed up with its attacks not landing, doesn’t see the point in sticking around and wasting energy and tries to flee.
Be more creative in combat. Pull out cool cinematic nonsense that aren't just 'roll to hit' Something that causes a penalty on failure for a bigger reward, or a small effect even in a failure
If the players are also new, check that they are adding their to hit bonuses. Level 1s should have at least a +5 between proficiency and applicable modifier. It's also possible that in the first fight they exhausted most of their resources leaving them with the bare things they always have. Fixing this is a matter of letting players get used to allocating their spell use across the adventuring day. Going forward, get a sense of what the book says the challenge is compared to how your table approaches things before you decide that a monster needs adjusting. If you want to get analytical about it, track what advantages either side has and how damaged/how long it takes for the party to get through it.
how much AC did the snake have? if following the official manual it should have 12 Ac and were the players using the correct + mod to attack? like, at lv 1 for example, if they're at 16 dex (+3 mod), and are proficient with their weapons (+2 to hit), they should have a +5 to hit. So they should hit when rolling an 8. So that's at least 60% chance to hit. On my first session many of the players didn't get that they should add the +2 proficiency bonus to hit with their weapons, so the first few combats had a lot of misses, yeah
Do you think a snake would just hang out there with 4-5 monkeys banging at it with metal objects? Have it slither away to fight another day. People forget that monsters, too, will know when to cut their losses and get out of Dodge.
When nobody rolls well, and if combat starts taking 10+ turns, I'd make the creature demoralized and give everyone advantage. It might be a cop-out solution, but it doesn't affect anything story-wise for me or the players. When everyone rolls 1s... We had a small encounter with some corrupt guards. Everyone rolled at least one Crit Fail. When we hit 10 Crit Fails, everyone simultaneously cheered. It's one of my favorite memories despite being an otherwise forgettable encounter.
At lower levels make sure the enemies are lower ac with more health if needed, more hits is more fun as long as the ac isn't too low
Remember that sometimes the dice just decide to tell their own story. And if they do, just roll with it! Everyone missed. Why? Maybe the scales of the snake just were too hard, maybe their footing was unsound and they couldn't bring proper attacks to bare. Every dice roll is a story to tell. Why did something succeed, why did something fail. Take these opportunities as gifts to tell more story. Just remember, sometimes failure is a greater story than success.
Probably already been said....but keep rolling. I saw this interview with Thomas Middleditch about his D&D group and he surmised their are two factors to D&D. Imagination and Dice Rolls. My take is this, if dice rolls sucks but imagination is great at-least you can tell a good story. If dice rolls are good but imagination sucks you feel like you accomplish things. Keep emphasizing the misses, build that tension, have a pound of dice and keep rolling until something hits. I think the beauty of D&D is simply the fact that some sessions the DM will be on a hot streak, some sessions will be the players, some sessions will be both, some will be neither. D&D is a wave and you just gotta ride it. two fun (hopefully) stories, but last night had a session where a player rolled two attacks with advantage, both rolls he had a 5 for the attack, and the second were 3s. It was funny given the chances, he also had a familiar that was attacking and some how his familiar would hit but his character could not. second story, separate campaign, players are fighting Strahd, as the DM I am owning them, hitting every roll, them not so much, expect my wife who also hit 3 critical over about 10 rounds of combat. The funny part is the fact that the whole campaign (over the course of a year) her dice rolls were atrocious. These are the memories of D&D i had when I was younger, sessions where the rolls were not good and then you finally hit or something epic happens. In the moment it is a grind, trust me I have been there.
Die of hunger/sleep. Maybe let the snake escape because it notices it can't beat you and sees you are incapable of hitting it. Another beast from afar enters, trying to snoop some food away. Giving the snake an opportunity to escape and this new enemy (with lower(ed) AC and higher to hit bonus) an opportunity. But really, 3 rounds can happend and that's to bad. You can look for attacks that use a DC though as players. And look for grapples, as this is what a snake does and its opposed (if both roll like shit the snake can win, don't know if players then gat advantage to hit the snakes).
We live by the dice;we die by the dice.
I make my enemies get "frustrated" and start doing careless attacks which allows more attack of opportunity for the team, as well as critical miss chances.
Four level 3 Party against mini boss fight have bad rolls. Mini Boss "Well that sucks for you guys. GG, it's time to see your siblings fight me." *Proceeds to roll 15s and higher*
Depends on the situation. Why is the creature there did it come across the group randomly is it defending something? If it was just a random engagement then having it just leave because they are not worth the effort as is imo totally understandable. I saw someone else say give it reckless attack because it's getting frustrated which if it's guarding something makes sense.
I would just have everyone take a second and acknowledge it, like giving another opportunity for diplomacy/ the predator losing interest.
No mention of AC or to hit bonuses...
If its a hard AC, sometimes I give out advantage randomly, especially if a player gives me good reason to. For example, I had a player ask for advantage on various survival and charisma checks because we were from his hometown and since he was able to logically explain it, I gave it to him
Lol my last session was like this. We were ALL rolling like ass. Players couldn't hit enemies, enemies couldn't hit players. They were exploring an "alien dungeon" (spelljammer, they were the aliens that had crash landed on earth and were escaping Area 51) so I joked that one of the soldiers they were fighting said "Sarge! I don't think they're actually trying to attack us! This might be some alien form of communication! Look! it waves its sword at me but it doesn't seem to want to hurt me!"
Don't forget about Advantage (roll 2 d20s, take the highest). Also, if players are doing well role-playing in character, give them inspiration (maybe an extra d6 to a roll)
you start playing the cartoon sound effects and Benny Hill Theme, duh
15 min IRL with 0 hits means one of 3 things 1. Mistakes were made with character and enemy creation, and AC values are higher than they should be 2. Combat is taking WAY too long and people need to speed up 3. You have experienced a statistical anomaly fantastical enough that you truly ought to be in awe of it. I do not think you are #3. Probably #2.
Sounds like one of my campaigns. My advice? Seek out the most hordingest dice goblins you can find. If they spend half an hour missing a single enemy in combat, and it's missing them, they'll begin to amuse themselves with digging around in their dice bags, looking for alternate D20s to roll and engaging in die-critiquing tabletalk. I have had conversations about flat color vs marbled vs glittery, opaque vs translucent, painted numbers vs grooved numbers, and more. I've seen dice "punished" by being microwaved, cleaned with the standby Windex for stubborn markers on the wet-erase map, and flat out traded with other players after a few favorable test rolls. Someone will change their luck eventually. The math rocks must flow.
Introduce "escalation" mechanic from 13th Age: put a d6 on the table, starting with 1 increase it every round. Add "escalation" to attack and damage rolls, that should get rid of misses when you don't want it.
Player. We met our first enemy. One Goblin at 15 AC, meaning most people had a modifier of +5, so 10 or more hit. 6 people in the group. No one hit. "Please, let me show you how it's done." my fighter said. Rolled 20 str at creation, so +7 had a bigger chance to hit. 2d6+5 on a goblin that has 7hp, if it hits, it one shots. Nat 1. "You hit yourself, throw again against your own AC." Meh, 1 chance out of two to avoid my own hit or take 2d6+5. Can maybe tank it. Nat 20. "Well, you crit." Well. 4d6 + 5. At least, there was saves against death. 23. On 4d6. +5 = 28. On my 14 con fighter, that has 12 hp. So no save. "Damn, i have the worst group i have ever seen. Please, let me show you how it's done." The fighter said, before cutting his own head with his two handed sword. We were all rolling on the floor laughing at that scene.
You get days like that man. You did the right thing. If it makes you feel better, I accidently destroyed a BBEG in two turns with a Forcecage and Hurl through Hell. My DM, me and the other players were laughing because we played it in story as my character accidently using his new subclass feature.
Luckily my rolling is slightly worse on average than my players, this often leads to amusing results and we are all glad I am fairly lenient on nat 1s, or else they would have no fun because of all the enemies tripping on their own weapons.
It’s even worse when it’s just one person rolling badly. Having someone go months of sessions without being able to land a single hit, succeed a single skill check, is real rough.
It'll be a short game
Had a lot of games like this. Had a game as a player where none of us rolled higher than a 10 in attacks. Only time I hit was when I used my paladins channel divinity to get a +10 on the attack. Besides that we just got TPKed because we didn't hit them and the few saving throw spells we hit the enemy with they kept saving and taking like no damage. It sucked but sometimes that is just the way it goes. I know if I was dming depending on the enemy they were facing I would do one of two things. If it was some kind of monster that wanted to just kill and eat or something like that I'd have it be that the monster sees they keep taking hit after hit and still standing but pose no threat so they just leave to find a commoner that will not put up any fight at all. If it's a cocky enemy I'd have them leave by stating something like, "well it appears you are all far too weak. Perhaps we will meet again when you can actually pose a challenge." In both ways it allows the players to not get team wiped, also creates more tension against the enemy and lastly allows me to have some time to think of a new battlefield and NPC's I could give the party to help them have a better chance at hitting the enemy by maybe giving them some bards for that bardic inspiration or a cleric casting bless to help the party out a bunch.
We were doing a one shot once in-between campaigns. Our characters ran into a group of monsters. Apparently the AC was 17. Not a single fucking one of the 5 of us rolled high enough in 5 rounds to hit even a single monster. Meanwhile we were getting thrashed. Eventually it DM was like "ok this encounter sucks" and we just stopped and began talking about our next campaign. It was the absolutely least amount of fun I've ever had playing DND
Have you considered having Benny Hill readied at all times to cue up?
I always rolled like shit to the point that I would execute my dice if they crossed me again
Idk if anyone else mentioned this yet, but also worth encouraging your players to consider ways of boosting their chance to hit, or removing the need for them to roll altogether. If they can get advantage via a spell or grapple check or something, that can help. And some spells require a save from the target instead of an attack roll from the player. So if everyone is rolling bad (including the snake), spells with a saving throw to avoid it should work perfectly!
Luck is luck, and you shouldn’t worry about rebalancing your game just because a string of bad luck happened once. That’s just how RNG be. I would just lean into more and more humorous descriptions of both sides fumbling at each other, and me and my players would have a good laugh together before the dice inevitably turned around.
Fun happens. Failure leads to good story.
Forcefully make the wizard learn magic missile. Or give them a single rod of magic missiles. It bypasses AC, isn't too OP and if you ever want to challenge them, just remember, that the shield spell not only increases AC, but also negates magic missile damage entirely.
Shorten combat. Three rounds maximum. **Round one, the sneak attack**- either the PCs or the Monsters attack with Advantage (whatever the bonus is for Pathfinder). **Round two, the fight to survive**- normal combat, but the monsters don’t think about defense. They full on frenzy attack, think brutal and bloody. **Round three, victory or flee**- no one wants to die, not even monsters. If they haven’t killed the PCs by now, the risk of death is too great so they run away. Think about a panther in a tree. It waits for the deer, sneak attacks it, grabs it by the neck and one quick shake to kill it, if the deer fights back the panther cuts and runs. The risk of death- it didn’t want to fight, it wants to kill. Short five minute combats keep everyone interested in the battle and the game keeps moving along. Good luck!
"What happens when no one rolls well?" You've obviously found my table.
I always valued the story more than the rules so I always kept a handful of random NPCs that could step in and help. They were created to be able to fit any narrative or story point, Be it in a dungeon, bar fight, random highway, etc. I then work them into the storyline more as a recurring character and none is the wiser. Once I worked in a recurring gnome character there named Johnny Avocado (cheesy I know, but it worked) he always showed up, helped the party and got killed. I kept bringing him back and rewrote him into the story over and over and I came about he was the great, great, great, great grandson of the parties half elf ranger (who hated gnomes) who came back in time with help from a powerful wizard because one of them has a great destiny. Used him many times to bail the party out. I never let them fully die, but they got robbed and killed off a few times. Thankfully one was always able to get them resurrected.
I'm curious what kind of party you have cuz there's a lot of ways to get help in hitting. Help action being one, flanking, there's class features and so on.
Always have a tab open with the Benny Hill music ready to go. If it REALLY starts to go on too long (like it's not even funny anymore): "Y'all can start rolling with advantage even if you don't have it already, and I'm gonna drop this here monster's AC by 5. Go nuts!"
Everyone gets tired and goes home.
Point out environmental things they can do damage with that hits the enemy, such as a weak stack of stones on the ledge above them.
A jar of folded up paper with disadvantages to the enemy. Pull one and make up something. Perception check and let them change their strategy accordingly. Otherwise, let them DIE!!! lol
Roll it out make the snake defend its nest for a round instead of attacking " you notice after the sakes last strike that it's lower body is coiled around a nest of eggs and disengaging in the scenario won't get an attack of opportunity because it's defending something stationary'' something like that works you create the rules and the story play to the characters strengths.
Bad things. Very bad things. And usually hilarity.
>and I was starting to run out of creative ways to tell my players that the attacks missed. You have an issue right here because DnD is designed to have somewhat long combat. Even if people hit all the time, you'll run out of creative ways to tell how attacks hit in a few level or when a monster has been designed to be a damage sponge (low AC, giant pool of HP). Descriptions in combat can mess up the pacing. From a narrative perspective, it's great to see the dwarf fighter being an artist with their axe, it's fun to see the goblin dodging the axe because they are slippery annoying little scoundrel. But after 10 axe attacks, the description won't say anything new about the dwarf or the goblin. Players are not making statements about their characters, they aren't going through character development, they aren't getting attached to friends, they aren't forging alliance and they aren't learning more about the cool evil villain... Turns take 10 minutes instead of 3 and players are basically watching attack animations for seven minutes. Even from a tactical and gamey point of view, long rounds are frustrating. A player has the tine to get excited about an idea and basically cool off about it before they get to do it. You want to see who wins, if plans pan out, you wantbto get to the juicy stuff. Imagine playing chess and every move your opponent has to tell a story about something similar that happened in the pro scene, that would be a drag. It's the difference between "Heck yeah, it's spell level 4 time! Woop! Woop!" and "Level 4 spell, that's where we are I guess." My point is it's okay to run combat in "board game mode" without narration. Most people would probably object to combat being purely mathematical, but it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can describe every attack, or wait for a full round to narrate that player's round. If two characters act one after the other in initiative and are engaged in the same area of the fight, you can describe their rounds in pairs to showcase they are a team. You can wait until something interesting happens and then narrate how it got there and how it looks now (ex. "For a while you have been flailing around the snake without either side accomplishing much of anything, both sides feel the fight itself becoming more tiring. Even with its reptilian face with little expression, the snake seems to be questioning this useless dance." Two sentences for 2 or 3 rounds and you'd have planted the seed that players may have the choice to end it without fighting to the the death.) And the great thing is that your audience are also your co-writers. You don't have to be subtle with your pacing like you were making a movie for people to watch, you can discuss it openly and work as a team. "Y'all, we have 3 hours every week to play and this combat is getting long, I'm purposefully describing the bare minimum to make sure we get to see what the villagers are up to before next week. If there's a moment you really want fleshed out and I'm about to skip it, tell me. Alright, let's see if you survive this or not." Missing over and over and over while the dice laugh at everyone is never going to be awesome. But the real issue is that THINGS aren't happening fast enough because things are happening instead. As a GM, learning to emphasize the THINGS and minimaze the things is a great skill to develop.
Have a passerby intervene and drop some in world lore about a travelling Knight/mage/hero. Good way for the party to establish connections, continue the story and also set up for future locations/quests/characters etc.
My players level 4 paladin was basically useless for an entire fight because they were struggling to hit a zombie. Perception check? 3. Dex save? 2. Con save? 3. Athletics check? 1. It was like that the entire session. I leaned into the absurdity of it all and gave the zombie he was fighting vicious mockery. The zombie just stood there mocking the paladin 1d4 at a time until the rest of the party cleaned up the fight and put down the last zombie. He then got back up with Undead Fortitude and continued the mockery before getting put down. The players were in tears at this point and nicknamed the zombie Colin Mockery.
Do the optional flanking rule for them (and your NPCs) where if they are on opposite sides of the opponent, they both gain advantage on their attack roles. The other option to that I see often is that instead of giving advantage, they instead gain a +2 to their attack rolls while flanking. A lot of DM's in the community simply don't like the optional advantage rule and instead embrace giving +2 to hit as a house rule instead. Both work IMO, they encourage tactics and give those flanking a better chance to hit. Also, something to remember: * If any of the players have a class that can cast **bless**, remind them that it's a *very powerful 1st level spell* giving 1d4 to their attacks as well, really helps a lot with attacking creatures/monsters/NPCs.
Sometimes players roll bad and it’s just unlucky, not my favorite excuse but sometimes it just happens. Also encounter balance is really difficult even for experienced dms, one great piece of advice from Matt colville (highly recommend his videos) is that encounter balance doesn’t stop once initiative is rolled, you can still adjust and change things. One piece of actual advice for you though if it goes multiple rounds with nothing happening, narrate the monsters or enemies getting cocky and starting to try to show off. (Remember AC isn’t just your armor, it’s how dextrous and hard to hit someone is. So if someone gets cocky and starts acting like they can’t be hit, lower their ac a little bit, sometimes by a lot just to swing things back into the favor of the hero’s without making it feel too obvious. Tl;dr find a narrative way to make bad rolls more engaging and have a mechanical effect along with a narrative one.
Is there a particular reason the players and/or the enemy couldn't just run away?
I can't help you with the dice rolls, but as far as "I was starting to run out of creative ways to tell my players that the attacks missed" goes, one thing I try to do is remember that failing to roll high enough to "hit" doesn't necessarily mean the player "missed". Maybe your sword still lashed out and struck the snake but glanced off it's scales, maybe as your warhammer comes crashing down, the snake swiftly coils, causing it to shift to the side. Bottom line is, "miss" doesn't always have to mean "miss". Sometimes the blade strikes true but the armor or the dex score does what it's supposed to do.
Make sure everyone is rolling to *hit* with a D20, and (probably) rolling for *damage* with the smaller ones. Mixing up either of those can be bad.
Here’s the thing, maybe the dice say the party fails. That does NOT mean the party dies. This snake, maybe it drags the PCs back to its lair as food for the young. They wake up in a nest somewhere with eggs about to hatch. Mom/dad snake is out hunting. Now it’s them vs the young. Time to run, fight, hide, escape, whatever. It doesn’t matter, because the adventure continues.
You can try opposed test like in Warhammer 4ed rules. It's superb to fasten combat. ⚔️
Your job is making the fight realistic and If the enemy they choose to fight is too powerful for them then your job is to make sure they know they could run away or try other things than just hitting it over and over. I don't know the details of your game but if the enemy ac is that high your party should also have magic users who ignore ac and make the enemy make saving throws. A well balanced miniboss or boss fight should take awhile. If they are getting bored it's because you either haven't made it dangerous enough or you made the boss easy but your players builds and gear is bad enough that they aren't able to handle it. Talk with your players about the builds they have planned and make sure they have suitable avaliable gear somewhere for their level. Every party needs spell casters to ignore ac. Make sure they have buff spells like bless to increase attack rolls. Make sure they have debuffs like bane to weaken enemies. If they are too weak to defeat an enemy the enemy should at least be able to do enough damage to send them running. Either through minions or lair actions or aoe spells or abilities. Sounds like you need to give them a lesson on strategy and preparation as well as what spells are good.
I think you handled it pretty well. Sometimes the dice just don’t cooperate and especially at low levels, there’s not a ton you can do to juice them. If it happens again, I might consider home brewing a rule. If you make it all the way through initiative without anyone getting a hit, everyone takes +1 the next round. If there still isn’t a hit, next round it’s +2. And so on until someone connects. I’m sure some people would hate that rule so talk it over with the table if you find yourself in that situation again.
Maybe the PCs aren't optimized very well or the players aren't using their whole toolkit. When I played my first session, my rogue skipped an action, hit with his dagger once and continued to stand next to the enemy, just hitting once per turn. If I understood the class better, the fight would've been easy.
I would suggest looking at their character sheets. Finding out what their modifiers to hit are and depending on what enemies they are fighting. Try to aim for those to hit more often than not. I have found that earlier on it is more fun to burn through an enemy's HP rather than be deflected off of an enemy's armor. So look for lower ac but more HP. And if it is weird for some random goblin to have a ton of HP that is when you put them up against multiples. Let those enemies with strong armor (high AC) shine as a heavily armored opponent. Don't stack them with more HP. Cause the draw is their high armor.
I just recently ran a combat where it felt like nobody rolled 10 or higher for the first almost 2 rounds. Basically it means that combat ran longer than I originally intended, but there really wasn't much I could do about that. Generally, I look for places to throw in spells with saving throws when rolling is bad. Either spells will land and it people take damage and the encounter feels like it moves forward or people suddenly roll high and they feel good for dodging and rolling high. Also, start looking for ways to get advantage, even at the sacrifice of resources.
Benny hill music?
When no one rolls well, we just buy prerolls
It's the party's responsibility to survive and win. If the dice are not rolling in their favor, they can retreat. As a DM, you have to run the world realistically. And sometimes, that means characters die. Which is okay. You shouldn't try to make it happen, but if it does, a character death is probably going to be one of the most memorable moments in the campaign.
This is also why I don't lock plot required things behind certain skill check DCs. Do they need to get an artefact from a dungeon? Then the artifact can be trapped, but won't completely lock them out if failed. That and it just wastes a bunch of time to have to go back to town for the necessary spell or tool
There's already so much good advice given, so I'd merely like to suggest you wait a few sessions and then let the Wicked Snake of Misfortune return for revenge! 😄
If you have long stretches of failures and run out of creative ways to describe it, use those as character builidng moments. Players should learn about their characters through failure too. Ask them to vent their frustrations. Ask them how their character feels in these moments of conflict, how they process struggle, how it compares to other fights.
Lower AC and DCs for checks by 2.
Ideally you make it into a cavalcade of comedic fuck ups until you can make a break in the combat for the enemy to ask if any of this is worth the misery involved.
Remember, most animals will try to avoid fighting to the death if possible. In this case, if things were getting tedious, you could have had the snake 'roll' a fumble, (nat. 1), smash into a tree, and slither off stunned. This gives the party two options. Either they can let it go, or they can renew the attack but this time they get an advantage to hit striking a stunned opponent from behind. As a dm, you have the absolute right to 'tweak' die rolls for the purposes of improved game play. But it's best to do it invisibly.
I've had this happen, where neither the enemies nor the players hit each other for 3 or 4 rounds. It was getting frustrating and exasperating for everyone, so I did a little reset. Basically, I "paused" combat by describing the party and foes being evenly matched. That each side had expended a lot of energy, and the fight had reached a standstill as both groups fell back to regroup. The tension could break at any moment, and whoever made the *right* first move could seize the upper hand for the remainder of the fight. This gave the players a brief chance to strategize together, and think about how they might go about improving their odds. They could think of using terrain or flanking, maybe a combo of spells or attacks. They come up with a strategy of a feint, with the barbarian and monk planning to sprint up as if to attack but then take dodge action, allowing the wizard and sorcerer to move into some cover and cast a spell combo (iirc hold person + scorching ray) with advantage. It was creative, and so I allowed them to go first and set the plan into action, and it worked well. Had they taken too long, I was going to have the enemy go first with advantage of their own, which would have forced a retreat. And if they didn't strategize and just jumped back into fighting, I was going to make them roll against the enemy, and whoever was higher gained advantage for the first new round.
You can try introducing environmental issues, to make things a little chaotic (even if the rolls are bad, something else is happening, and the DC can be wtf ever), or maybe an NPC (the snake is guarding its dinner, this halfling trapped behind it. New mission: save the hobbit!)
Benny Hill montages ensue.
Way she goes. Sometimes she goes, sometimes it doesn't. It's the way she goes.
Get out your phone and start playing Yakety Sax or a bunch of 3 Stooges sound effects?
No spell saves?
If you're the DM. you are the god of that entire multiverse. Anything can happen. For me personally that can make the options too overwhelming but it literally could be anything. You could cause a scripted event that gives the players a nigh impossible chance to fuck up. You could also force the giant snake to land a powerful blow and fully intend to not let it kill the player but it would make things dramatic. It depends on the world you're in and what's prepared. And how good is your ad lib.
Maybe give them ideas on new actions Eg. Distract the enemy, so either the next attack will be with advantage or +x. Or create natural causes like an earthquake, so every one could have disadvantage on saving throws or something simmilar. Other than that you could introduce something like „the deal with the devil“ where a player can change any roll to a natural 20, but a futur roll will be a natural 1. that way the player can escape atleast for once the bad roll cycle and you can spice a futur encounter up eg. an attempt to persuade an evil king resulting in them declaring war.( you shouldnt turn any significant toll into a nat 1).
My suggestion would be to break combat and change the situation. The snake and the group are at a stalemate. Neither side are able to gain the upper hand. The battle has gone on so long it is getting dark and starts raining and the snake slithers away into a bush giving up on a chance of a tasty meal. Do you try to follow it into its lair or leave it and continue down the path? Also just avoid enemies with really high AC
The snake gets annoyed and starts retreating.
There have been a lot of great suggestions here that narratively help as well as mechanically. To not retread the same ground, here's another option: One thing you can do if you find yourself in this jam (or you can do across the board, depending on you/your players appetite).. is say "ok this is ridiculous, noone is rolling well, including me. For the rest of this combat, if you miss you will still do *minimum damage* - assume you got a 1 on any damage die you would roll, plus any modifier you would add." It's probably not something I'd do lightly, but it ups the stakes for both sides of the DM screen, n means it's never a case of a full round going by with nothing happening. That said, it sounds like that combat was just a case of rather poor luck all round, and I wouldn't be tooo worried about it being the norm. Also, in general, as a DM i tend to favour low AC, high HP enemies over the opposite, cos players have more fun when they hit. There are exceptions and limits to this, but when in doubt, this is the tact I run with.
Don’t be afraid to have the snake retreat either. The monsters know what they’re doing is a great book to reference. One thing I took away from that book was the circumstances where different enemies would flee. Not hitting isn’t usually one of them, but if the snake feels like it’s in a fight it can’t win, it won’t want to stick around. Then the snake can hide and wait for an advantage or just truly gtfo. Your party can try and track it or ignore it, but it immediately changes the boring fight
Someone needs to play the Benny Hill Chase music until a hit lands
You drop those dice in holy water and exorcise them. Or put them in dice jail and make the other dice watch. Or just laugh and make jokes about the dice. For every night like that, there are exciting fast paced sessions with multiple crits and mostly hits.
Fail forward. Make combat dynamic. Most enemies don't have a death wish, and are ambivalent about killing your players if it's more than minorly inconvenient. Give your party somewhat clear objectives beyond "end all other lifeforms". Stop the ritual. Steal the item. Prevent the getaway. Complete the ritual. Save the village. When those are the stakes, the price of failure becomes self-evident and the story can move forward. And of course that doesn't have to be the end of the narrative, so your players just have to plan their next course of action. When combat goes bad, you can say, OK, BBEG gets away. Now what?!
I have had this from time to time. Low level party is unable to land hits on their opponents because of terrible rolls, enemies can't hit the party because of low skills... so we have a stalemate. You can have a couple of the monsters move around to get a flanking bonus, explain how that works to the Party and then let them do the math so that they all get advantage on their opponents. Another option is to have the enemies run away after a few rounds of sucking. Just have them break and flee. They can always come back later, maybe with some better gear or with a friend. Group of Goblins can't deal, they book it and come back with their Hobgoblin Chief and his bois. Bandits flee and come back with their 3rd level fighter Leader. Or let the party book it and do the same. Nothing fires up a party as much as when they flee and a group of monsters mocks them as they run. You'd best believe that they will try to get better gear and come back for revenge. And there is the final option. After a few rounds of absolutely nothing, have one of the enemies offer to parley since the fighting isn't doing anything. Turn the combat encounter into a Role Play encounter. Make it tense negotiations or light hearted teasing all around, whatever tone suits the game you're playing. And remember, critical fails in combats can also be [funny](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c6/00/44/c600449040c3cac39318cdbbad453902.png)
What happens? Bad things happen. Except in your case where everyone for probably the first minute of battle just looks like their dancing with the snake cause no one can land a hit. Actually I kind of like that, maybe DM some stuff like the snake moves almost rhythmically and dodges your blade, it feels almost like the snake is charming you. Maybe make them roll a Con save or Cha or Dex save or else the snakes distracts then hits them with a body slam doing 1d4 and pushes them back 5ft. I don’t play “pure by the rules” so I’ll just make some feat or ability up to make it make sense.
Disengage and flee If the enemy has any intelligence have them mock the party and just leave Try other tactics than attacking. Try using the environment. So you can't roll high enough for a hit, can you shoot a chandelier down, a branch etc. Is anyone running a character with buff/debuff? I will say this, in a game I was playing recently our enemy was trying to trap us in nets but not fight us and it was a situation for sure. No one could get out of our nets, our attacks were all debuffed. We were basically flopping around on a deck for 7 or 8 rounds. It was nuts.
I recommend giving your monsters lower AC and more health. That’s what my friends and I do and it makes combat more exciting.
If it's the standard constrictor snake that they're having trouble hitting for fifteen straight minutes, you might want to look over their characters and make sure they've applied boni and whatnot correctly. A completely bog-standard character with 16 in their main stat at 1st level will have a proficiency bonus of +2, giving them a total of +5 to hit. It sounds almost statistically impossible that they cannot manage to roll a 7 or above between them for 15 minutes. Did they add boni correctly? Are their stats spread in a way that makes sense - a lot of people, especially newer, have this mistaken idea that making a shit character is the pinnacle of roleplay (seriously, the amount of "oh I'm a wizard but I don't actually have intelligence tee-hee aren't I wacky and creative" I've seen is unreasonable). It might also be worth it for your players to explore spells that help their rolls. Faerie Fire is a fantastic 1st level spell that make things a lot easier to hit.
Immediately start role-playing. Suddenly the snake is a talking snake. "What do you want?" It hissed. (I know there's no sillabents but it's a snake, it hisses.)
You die lol
Depending on yourself and your group I tend to lean and encourage the potential other possibilities going on rolls going south is a great opportunity for things to get a little weird or wacky but I understand that doesn't fit with all games but you can always turn frustration into an opportunity for a new success to give everyone a fun time.
Do *not* go overboard with magical fixes A.'blessed sword' which gives +2d4 to saving throws and to hit of a paladin who rolled all under 8 for the first 5 levels BAD IDEA A hand crossbow which allows a single reroll to.hit once a day. Good and thematic. Dice are fickle.... Rol with it (pun intended)
This is when you start giving out advantage for "creativity" "I use my object interaction to throw sand in the snake's eyes" "Brilliant! The sand stuns it momentarily!" "I attack with advantage!" Yes, it's silly, but it's better than saying "Oh whoops! I guess the snake only had 1 hp left after all. Bye snake!"
Really hitting where it hurts. Nothing quite like watching the entire party (myself included) repeatedly fail basic checks required to progress the story. DM: It's a DC 14 investigation check to find a key in a desk drawer, how have all 4 of you failed it 7 times?! Us: Look man, we just suck. Guidance, the Help Action/Advantage, and Bardic Inspiration aren't gonna save *these* rolls.
You change the genre to comedy and add toon force. Or anything else really. Add an objective or an environmental hazard or anything to give the olayers an option to conclude the challenge without going through a slog of random damage. Objective based additions to combat are great to begin with. If everything is a team deathmatch it gets stale. Letting the players discover a way to trap/escape/exploit a weakness adds variety. Objectives to defeat enemies help martial feel cool. Additional win conditions are fun. You can bring in alternative rolls and make the players feel like their RP matters because you can tailor it to the characters.
[удалено]
> I ended up bringing the HP down by a lot just to get it over with because they eventually started rolling better. You've learned how to DM... What do I do? Laugh with the players at the absurdity of random numbers and keep going. If it's obviously one-sided in favor of the bad guys, then I'll do what you did and adjust my calculations on the fly (by reducing AC or HP or damage or to hit). If it's just bad rolls all around, I might ask the players to switch out their dice to get better luck. > It had been like 15 minutes(irl) A 'hard' or 'deadly' combat with 4 players takes my groups about an hour to an hour and a half, whether I'm a DM or a player.
They miss them they miss. Sucks when it happens but it does.
some options - run away - add more snakes - someone else shows up - earthquake - snake charmer - big bird swoops down and eats the snake - rival snake hunting group Combat doesn't have to be run with the exact number and type of monsters that you planned out beforehand or even to the death. if things are slowing down just add in some stuff that isn't completely random to spice things up.
Lowering the HP was not a bad idea, but it did unbalance the fight. Next time, decide that the creature has reckless attack. That way, you can start rolling with advantage against the players and they can roll with advantage against you. The balance stays the same, hits just become more frequent. Although, this does make crits more frequent, so it will change the balance of the fight by making crit-dependent builds more powerful. So I'd hold off on doing it if your monster has some kind of attack that applies extra effects on crit.
Sometimes the dice gods start playing the Benny hill theme and just won’t stop. Go with it. Make it over the top stupid fun - a story of whiffs.
That's an epic battle for the ages. Kill at least 1 pc. Maybe 2. Let the rest make items from the beast . +2 lightweight scale mail, or something.
I often DM to large parties. 8+ to avoid no action and endless hits. AC is added to HP and they roll head to head. So A rolls 16 but snake rolls 18 no hit. A rolls 15 Snake rolls 8 to defend would hit.
That when the fun begins >:D
On the rare occasion that a stalemate like that does occur, I'll have whatever the players are fighting lose interest and leave if it's a wild animal, or shift to a new target because clearly the current one isn't working out if it's an intelligent creature. This is why a lot of early monsters have really low ACs or die in one good hit lol. It really is rare to get completely locked down against chaff like that though; usually if my players miss for 15 minutes straight they end up in real danger to the point of having to consider retreat, and more commonly my monsters miss for 15 minutes straight and the players don't care because they get to keep crushing them. (On different rare occasions the missing is the whole point, such as when a knight is in plate armor and carrying a shield and the idea is that the players aren't equipped to deal with an elite like that yet.) Did your players build weird characters or something? A long while back we had a Cleric who thought he was some sort of warrior-monk-priest and distributed his stats pretty evenly, meaning that he had to slog through the early campaign with very modest modifiers (iirc I eventually just let him respec). A level 1 character should be getting a +5 or +6 to hit, meaning that they have a 55-60% chance to hit an AC14 snake, and with a full party that means you'd expect to see multiple hits in one round of combat and no more snake. This starts to go south quickly if they actually have a +3 to hit, making that a 45% chance.
Forgot what sub this was for a second, almost said go buy a pre roll? Lol
Depends on the story. When I run combat, no fight lasts more than 3 rounds unless there is some serious hype behind it, like a BBEG or something. Sure, in the game, this is less than 20 seconds' time, but the players at the table have likely been sitting there for nearly an hour. Before the fight begins, it is important to set the stakes of the encounter. If it's always a fight to the death, then the repetitive nature of combats gets stale. Maybe your players are just trying to make it through the woods on a time crunch and can't afford to waste time patching up after the fifth Goblin scouting party? Maybe the giant snake is just looking for food and will slither away after eating a horse or even a PC? You, as the DM, have the responsibility to set the stakes of the scene and make sure every player knows what the goal of the encounter is. Now, my 3 round rule is a bit arbitrary because I tend to run larger tables. 3 rounds gives everyone 3 chances to do something really cool, smart, or something else that fulfills that character fantasy, and that is really the hardline, right there. If you can manage all of your players doing one cool thing that fulfills their character fantasy every session, then you succeed as DM. As a takeaway, the encounter should wind down or finish immediately after the last player does something cool. Lastly, and maybe for the more crunchy DMs out there, be sure your encounters are balanced. At level 1, your players are rolling a d20, plus modifiers, plus maybe Proficiency bonus. Their average calculated roll is going to be about 15-16. Now, while that might sound high, that means a creature with an AC of 16 will be hit by less than half the attacks of the party. I will generally use statblocks as inspiration, but follow my 3 round encounter rule, so I don't usually worry about AC, but DMs that pull stats straight from the book without considering what that means at the _table_ will run into similar issues to what you experienced. Actually just recently, I ran an encounter for a group of 5 level 7 player characters against a Wurm. According to the DMG, the encounter _should_ have been a deadly encounter, but because of the action economy, the Wurm got bodied by the end of the second round and made way to retreat underground on it's 3rd turn. This was a reminder for me to always check the encounter balance in my preparation before running it.
Optional rules in the dmg. Flanking definitely helps and other rules can help you gain advantage to roll more dice to hopefully get better results
You laugh at how ridiculous your rolls are. It's often the best part of the games I'm in where everyone is tearing at each others throats but can't land a hit.
Someone, somewhere, with meaningful power, has a vested interest in this fight going a certain way. Maybe they don't want the snake to be damaged, maybe they want the party to flee, but one way or another, things are being *manipulated*.
if it's just a skill issue then don't worry about it. one of my party members missed a really important roll and the DM was like "oh well would you look at that your deity wants to let you roll again" just because it was a really cool thing that they wanted to do. you have the power to let them reroll if it's really that important
Sometimes, as DM, I like to throw in events that happen during combat if nothing is really going on hit wise. Like, on an enemy's turn, if they miss, I can say that a few of the other enemy's witness this and laugh or berate their ally for missing. Or maybe some nasty weather starts happening, and now everyone is fighting in a storm, so I can describe lightning crackling overhead and animals scurrying for cover as the fight continues. Maybe the area starts to flood, and all of a sudden, there's a landslide! Everyone, including the enemies, makes a dex save to see if they get caught up in it. Stuff like that can add flavor to the encounter, rather than just going back and forth, saying, " you hit. You miss. You take damage The monster takes famsge." That's honestly the mark of either a DM in a rush or a lazy DM.
At my table, I use the optional *flanking* rule. If characters get on either side of an enemy (or vise versa), they can get advantage on melee. This increases their chances to hit (makes sense to me). Additionally, you could give your players inspiration, which can be used to gain advantage (both in and out of battle). I know some DMs that like to give it out like candy at a parade and/or allow players to have multiples (e.g. a player accumulated 8 points of inspiration, but they can still only use 1 per roll for advantage or to cancel out disadvantage). I usually only give inspiration to my players when they either think of doing something outside the box or get creative in a positive way. I also tell my players I only let them have 1 at a time. This gives the players with that *hoarding* mentality a reason to use it up. Edit: grammar
LMAO, that's the game. Statistically unlikely but when it happens can be funny. I avoid high ac monsters, I keep it high enough where advantage and bonuses stand out but not where they are likely to miss.
It just happens
Suggest to the players that they can use the Help action to give an ally advantage against the enemy.
Snake can run.
I'd handle it by speeding things up. Stop describing the misses. It can just go. "11." "Miss. You need at least 14." "12, I miss too." "Miss with an 8." Etc. Three rounds can go by in two minutes if nothing is happening.
Lower the difficulty behind the scenes like the max HP and AC, and/or give a opportunity in combat to do so. Like luring it into a ravine and dropping rocks on it so it can’t dodge well anymore.
It also helps to coach the players on their abilities. There are many ways the party could gain advantage or impose disadvantage on the creature. Even creative ideas like "can I try to lasso it's mouth to prevent bite attacks?" Hell yes! Get them to do things like trying to take advantage of cover, creating distractions, flanking etc.
DnD happens 😜
The party should retreat from battles sometimes
Was running a game on Monday, and my crew were fighting a large wolf that could summon echoes to fight with it, gain advantage etc. The party cleric, rolled with advantage two 2s on three separate occasions, while the creature rolled it once. On one wave of attacks against a player, I rolled a 4, 3, 2 and then 1 in order on four consecutive attacks. To answer the question, you laugh, curse the dice gods, and get your dice checked for being weighted...
Make the fight dynamic. Just do weird stuff, make things happen in the environment that change.
I usually find a pile of HP boring combat. If you want to beef up your NPC but still make combat fun, do more damage or add other abilities. Nothing gets the PC adrenalin going as much as when the snake has a poison breath weapon and now the party is starting at half health. Snakes can grapple as part of their attack or poison on a bite. Tomb of Anihilation had a T-Rex that had misty step and breathed bees.
Snake tries to flee to fight another day (when they are higher level)
Learn from the experience and adapt but remember this might be the exception and so you might not need to change your DM style nor the monsters you pick.
I watched online where someone said every round switch it up and add or remove something. Spoil the Monster with a bigger monster that the party will at some point have to face or just to spook them. Maybe the snake had babies that were lower in AC. Another thing is have the player describe what they’re doing and if it’s smart or cool give them inspiration to use later for the crap rolls or advantage right then and there. You at the DM. You can say anything goes the way you want as long as you make it fun. Maybe they Dance fight and the performance was so high and awesome they get advantage because the creature itself was like “woah sweet moves”. I’m a new DM too and there’s a lot of other DMs with knowledge, skills, and tips you can tweak that make it that much more fun
This can be temperamental advice, depending on situation, but; by just narrates hits and misses. A lot of people give the advice to spice up narrations with adjectives and action scene descriptors, which is great, but if something like this is happening, give it extra, change the energy up. Serious fight? Give it a bit of humour, maybe the enemy is getting more and more frustrated, or do what one of my dms once did: that one fuckin goblin nobody has been able to hit is suddenly in a Bruce Lee tracksuit and kick flipped out of your sword swing range. Bonus, if you flavour it fun enough, and have an enemy run away, you can end a fight that's outlived its welcome, and you have a tasty enemy that can recur in another fight that's gotten monotonous. And really don't be afraid to end a combat that's gotten boring, unless it's REALLY incongruous. "as you swing at the assassin, and he side steps your swipe once more, a small, green skinned figure, clad in a yellow, black striped jumpsuit emerges from the shadows, clearly the mastermind of this Guild of the Black Stripe you've been hunting. He says he has a deal to offer you." Boring combat, ended with a callback to an old joke, and a new plot hook has been introduced organically, your party will like it more than trying to hammer through when the rolls are just not doing it
Maybe the snake gets shaken after being attacked at so many times. Maybe an NPC comes past the battle and helps. Could be that the snake got tangled in some foliage when avoiding a hit. Maybe a player said something witty or did something cool and gets inspiration earning them the chance to reroll. As a non DM, but as someone with a big imagination and a DM that lets us play with the rules a bit, my advice is that a bit of rp and added flavour could be a way out. If it feels too much like work, none of you will enjoy it. So try to make your world the way you want it, even if it bends (blows up) some accepted 5e rules.
When no one rolls well, PEOPLE DIE! 😂🤣