@toddfooshee
“Welcome to Mystic Arts where we completely ignore the rules until we need to win an argument.” I feel so attacked.
@eshelsh1905
Your thumbnails are getting more unhinged with every video and we're all here for it
@CalculusDaddy
An interesting note: This problem exists in real military doctrine! A handful of infantry can take down a tank simply because of action economy. The tank can obliterate any individual, but collectively the infantry can outmaneuver and disable the tank, therefore armor requires infantry escort.
@brilobox2
The thing most people get wrong about Action Economy is that its not primarily about optimizing your own actions, but minimizing the actions of the opponents. Doing 20% more damage is infinitely less useful than preventing an opponent from doing anything, even for a single turn, while your team keeps doing damage.
@Koshak87
Homage to Matt Colville’s videos is a sign of good taste in my book.
@kev_whatev
This is why I love Nimble’s Solo Monsters. They get a turn after each hero turn, and often have other reactions on top of that
@blacklodgegames
You are correct that the game is a skirmish game. It is unfortunate that it is not advertised that way as I think most people come into it with the wrong expectations.
@lawsonpritchard1456
Legendary actions are important but I think there are a couple other ways to even the fight. Using lair actions that can affect multiple players can be really fun, also giving other objectives to distract them.
@MossyAntler
I think about the 5 brains vs 1 brain thing all the time. Players can outsmart me so I made it hard to make up the difference. Also, best thumbnail EVER
@notyours807
6:10 Unless your partial consists of 3+ melee users, enemies actually benefit more off flanking since so many monsters are melee-oriented (even if they have range they are usually weaker attacks). Ironically enough, that's why I also choose NOT to use flanking, since it unfairly punishes melee characters while ranged have enough benefits.
@itisamberw
not a catch all solution but i’ve decided in every battle that isn’t just mopping the floor, i should make one enemy action at initiative 20/15/10/5/0 and maybe 25 depending on the baddie. it’s been easier to systematize things like this for me
@ChromaJune
My fav quick-prep boss fight strategy is structuring the encounter as a group of enemies, but flavored as a single creature. You're fighting a venerated hobgoblin commander? Put a handful of hobgoblins on the initiative order, and the captain acts on each of those turns. It's just one enemy with multiple turns and HP pools that the party needs to take down a piece at a time. "Killing" one of the "creatures" is narrated as the captain taking on injuries, losing limbs, being disarmed of a specific weapon, etc. It's a fast and pretty cool way to storytell fights that should be gritty and exhausting.
@BjornvirEldrusson
The simple detail of framing the eyeballs behind "TOO" makes me so happy
@TakeoTV23
As I said in an earlier video. I'm amazed at the topics you choose for your videos. It's like they address exactly the next roadblock I stumble upon as a new DM, as does this video! After two boss battles, I realized that It's not very fun if my players just dog pile the boss, and he can only act once a turn. So I have implemented more "video-gamey" mechanics and phases to my bosses, which helped a ton! But... legendary actions... that sounds very promising adds legendary actions to the young red dragon they'll fight tomorrow Thank you Dadi, as always :)
@Mymsey
Your videos have been fuleling me all through my massive D&D 5e rebalance.
@dynestis2875
My personal gripe with combat in d&d is that every turn just comes down to moving and attacking. I don't think players appreciate other actions like dodging, helping, disengaging.
@autokymatic
Great breakdown of the action economy and ways to balance it! I also suggest creating dynamic combat where players want and need to move around the battlefield more instead of standing in place while they beat on an enemy. 1) Get rid of opportunity attacks for everything except specific enemies and maybe as a feature for one or two martial classes. Players will move more if they don't fear getting dinged every time they step away from an enemy. 2) Encourage players to move by splitting their movement around their attack action by having the initial distance to at least a single enemy start at less than 30ft. If a player has to move 30ft to reach an enemy and attack it, they can't move after they attack. If a player only has to move 15ft to attack a creature, they can move another 15ft to attack. 3) Make the enemies an actual threat with a combination of the action economy, high power attacks (and try to telegraph higher power attacks!). Players will need to move to decrease risk. 4) Create interesting environments with cover and interactive elements for the players to want to move around in order to seek cover and utilize elements. And, have the enemies engage with the environment as well!
@sirhamalot8651
Dadi's comments made me think of, and I cannot help but recommend, the books "The Monsters Know What They're Doing" and "MOAR! The Monsters Know What They're Doing". They are packed with refined tactics for monsters that make sense with their stat block and description.
@legomacinnisinc
Something I started doing to speed up combat is use squads (or units, whatever you want to call them). A squad is normally 5 creatures with the exact same stat block, with each model/creature having a number of hit points that is easily divisible, like 5, 10, or 20. You then treat that squad as a single huge creature, but with the action economy of five creatures (five attacks, multiple reactions if necessary). As the squad takes damage, reduce its action economy based on how much missing health they have, simulating creatures in the squad being taken out. The squad only takes one hit from AoEs but I do give them vulnerability to the damage. If you want you can also give the squad a sergeant that gives the squad a special ability that the party has to do something special to target, which adds some fun tactical depth. This makes running a lot of enemies really easy at scale, as you only have to track one set of hit points per squad instead of 5 pools for the individual creatures. It also buffs martial classes as they start getting spill over damage by default. I ran an eleven player one shot where they fought probably close to a 100 creatures this way and it worked like a charm.
@Mystic-Arts-DM