I'm a relatively new DM, looking for some advice on how to make combat and related things harder.
I had sat down with my group and asked them what they had thought about the first campaign I had ran, the most frequent response was "the combat seemed mild."
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The players also want more unique NPC's to interact with, romantically adventure with ect. I've used the book in my first campaign for making character, but that bust, so once again any advice is appreciated
I offered some encounter advice in the other topic so will try and look at the NPC part.
NPCs can be a little bit of pot luck as to whether or not the players gain an interest in them and want to go back to them or begin a romantic relationship. All you can do is make sure they've got some sort of personality and certain traits that appeal to the players. Not every NPC needs to have a full biography necessarily at introduction but if there's a character they're drawn to then that works nicely and then you can expand it with time. As an example based on Lost Mines of Phandelver from playing through. You've got certain NPCs that will have an interest to the party such as Sildar who is a major conflict but a lot of other characters that can be relatively flat depending on how you play them or ones that with a simple trait or habit come to life and become the main contacts for the party. For example, the townmaster can be portrayed as a simpering ineffective fool, the ex-adventurer can be a cynical jaded individual full of sarcasm and so on.
To show examples of this in practice from two different groups I've played with. As this is the DM section I won't put spoilers in tags, if anyone has an issue I will edit and add later although they are very minor early plot points. I had one party who after retrieving some goods for Linene, a fairly bland shopkeeper on paper. She took a dislike to a dragonborn noble who started lording it over her and offered a bit of sarcasm but she developed a soft spot for the shy drow who hadn't really seen the world. His shy, over the top politeness led to her mood swings between the sharp tongued wit and spite to the noble and her softness towards the drow made her the go to person for selling any loot to. After recovering some signet rings from a tomb the party wanted to sell them off and they were in the drows possesion, originally the player had forgotten about it and after some prompting he was reminded he "has a something else you'd like to give her as well" and in case the rings caused a scene he nervously and shyly pushed just one ring over the counter... Which she then interpreted as a nervous wedding proposal. She's become a travelling romantic companion for the party since the wedding, leading to the drow trying to keep his abilities as a warlock secret from her. A couple of interactions and little things and the party loved having her around and a little bit of rolling with their RP spiralled into a whole host of shenanigans and plot hooks.
Alternatively on a non-romantic angle and from another play through, the adventure opens with a straight forward goblin cave crawl which has a side option of having two leaders squabbling over control of the group, one of whom tasks the party with killing the other. The party went through and killed the one in charge and were shocked that the other went back on the agreement and tried to double cross them. A couple of focused turns and the boss was dead and there were a group of goblins there. One member of the party, a half orc barbarian tries to intimidate the rest of the goblins, passes with a natural 20 plus modifiers into stopping the fight. I ended up role playing a little bit of bickering between the goblins while they tried to figure out what they're going to do about this situation. Some silly voices and cute little arguing with myself and the assimar druid with a love and fondness for all living things decided they were cute and they should adopt them. What should have happened is the goblins run off into the mountains and maybe pop up as a random encounter but they were last seen desperately trying to impress their new chief and "new mummy" by doing any odd jobs around the town that they are asked to with predictable goblin incompetence and mischief.
Neither of them really had a lot of growth to go through as a starting point but a couple of interactions, maybe a silly voice and something that stands out can make the players want to find out more about them and can work with them from there. I've had NPCs who become adopted party members, recruited for favours or just created moments of tension/enjoyment whether they're friend or foe. Some don't go down as well but it can be hard to plan for how a party will react to them, you might have planned for something to happen but they have no interest in them. In essence, think of a way a certain trait they may have. A character could be sarcastic, nice but dim, flirtatious, irritatingly cheerful or anything else you can think of and not require too much more from that mark at first. Tailor them to how the party go in, if someone bluntly goes up to the cheerful person they would probably take exaggerated offence to that, perhaps over emotionally start to break down with the party having to try to comfort them before they can do whatever it was that they were after, if it's the only potion shop for many miles they're going to interact with them. PCs hopefully will follow on and find out the cheerful disposition is them putting on a public face because of *reasons* that they will want to try and resolve.
I'm a relatively new DM, looking for some advice on how to make combat and related things harder.
I had sat down with my group and asked them what they had thought about the first campaign I had ran, the most frequent response was "the combat seemed mild."
any advice at all would be much appreciated!
I think you're looking for more interesting and more memorable- which isn't always the same as more difficult.
Here's a whole list of things that I think can be used for making combat more interesting, in a recent thread.
Best of luck,
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
The players also want more unique NPC's to interact with, romantically adventure with ect. I've used the book in my first campaign for making character, but that bust, so once again any advice is appreciated
This will help a ton, thanks!
I offered some encounter advice in the other topic so will try and look at the NPC part.
NPCs can be a little bit of pot luck as to whether or not the players gain an interest in them and want to go back to them or begin a romantic relationship. All you can do is make sure they've got some sort of personality and certain traits that appeal to the players. Not every NPC needs to have a full biography necessarily at introduction but if there's a character they're drawn to then that works nicely and then you can expand it with time. As an example based on Lost Mines of Phandelver from playing through. You've got certain NPCs that will have an interest to the party such as Sildar who is a major conflict but a lot of other characters that can be relatively flat depending on how you play them or ones that with a simple trait or habit come to life and become the main contacts for the party. For example, the townmaster can be portrayed as a simpering ineffective fool, the ex-adventurer can be a cynical jaded individual full of sarcasm and so on.
To show examples of this in practice from two different groups I've played with. As this is the DM section I won't put spoilers in tags, if anyone has an issue I will edit and add later although they are very minor early plot points. I had one party who after retrieving some goods for Linene, a fairly bland shopkeeper on paper. She took a dislike to a dragonborn noble who started lording it over her and offered a bit of sarcasm but she developed a soft spot for the shy drow who hadn't really seen the world. His shy, over the top politeness led to her mood swings between the sharp tongued wit and spite to the noble and her softness towards the drow made her the go to person for selling any loot to. After recovering some signet rings from a tomb the party wanted to sell them off and they were in the drows possesion, originally the player had forgotten about it and after some prompting he was reminded he "has a something else you'd like to give her as well" and in case the rings caused a scene he nervously and shyly pushed just one ring over the counter... Which she then interpreted as a nervous wedding proposal. She's become a travelling romantic companion for the party since the wedding, leading to the drow trying to keep his abilities as a warlock secret from her. A couple of interactions and little things and the party loved having her around and a little bit of rolling with their RP spiralled into a whole host of shenanigans and plot hooks.
Alternatively on a non-romantic angle and from another play through, the adventure opens with a straight forward goblin cave crawl which has a side option of having two leaders squabbling over control of the group, one of whom tasks the party with killing the other. The party went through and killed the one in charge and were shocked that the other went back on the agreement and tried to double cross them. A couple of focused turns and the boss was dead and there were a group of goblins there. One member of the party, a half orc barbarian tries to intimidate the rest of the goblins, passes with a natural 20 plus modifiers into stopping the fight. I ended up role playing a little bit of bickering between the goblins while they tried to figure out what they're going to do about this situation. Some silly voices and cute little arguing with myself and the assimar druid with a love and fondness for all living things decided they were cute and they should adopt them. What should have happened is the goblins run off into the mountains and maybe pop up as a random encounter but they were last seen desperately trying to impress their new chief and "new mummy" by doing any odd jobs around the town that they are asked to with predictable goblin incompetence and mischief.
Neither of them really had a lot of growth to go through as a starting point but a couple of interactions, maybe a silly voice and something that stands out can make the players want to find out more about them and can work with them from there. I've had NPCs who become adopted party members, recruited for favours or just created moments of tension/enjoyment whether they're friend or foe. Some don't go down as well but it can be hard to plan for how a party will react to them, you might have planned for something to happen but they have no interest in them. In essence, think of a way a certain trait they may have. A character could be sarcastic, nice but dim, flirtatious, irritatingly cheerful or anything else you can think of and not require too much more from that mark at first. Tailor them to how the party go in, if someone bluntly goes up to the cheerful person they would probably take exaggerated offence to that, perhaps over emotionally start to break down with the party having to try to comfort them before they can do whatever it was that they were after, if it's the only potion shop for many miles they're going to interact with them. PCs hopefully will follow on and find out the cheerful disposition is them putting on a public face because of *reasons* that they will want to try and resolve.
Thanks!