- What if I told you that
there was one specific thing that lots of DMs do that players hate that makes games less fun and that I almost never
see anyone talking about? What if I told you that by
correcting this one problem you could make your
games magnitudes more fun for everyone at the table? - I'd probably say that
sounds like clickbait. - I mean, yeah, that's fair, but I promise it's not clickbait. Keep watching and give me a
chance to prove it to you. (upbeat music) I spend a lot of time in communities where DMs ask for advice. And one of the things
that I often see asked is how to counter specific abilities that their players have. I've been in this
position myself actually, so let's have a little
story time to set the scene. Once upon a time, a big nerd named Ginny started DMing her very first campaign. One player was reusing a character from another game with
a homebrew subclass. This subclass allowed her to long rest more quickly under a certain kind of tree. Ginny was very worried. If this player could take
a long rest so easily, she might be too powerful, so she'd called up her friend, another DM, and asked for help. "Do you have any ideas for creative ways to keep her away from
those trees?" she asked. "Maybe the land had a terrible fire and all the trees burned down, or maybe the campaign starts on a boat in the middle of the ocean." Her friend answered her question
with a another question. "If you're going to stop her
from using this feature," they said, "why are you
letting her take it at all?" Looking back, this feels like
a really obvious thing now. If I'd rather literally
burn down all the oak trees than let her use a
feature of her subclass, then maybe I just shouldn't
allow the subclass, you know. In the end, the subclass wasn't a problem, but DM reactions like mine
are actually super common. I often see DMs asking what they can do to prevent their players from
using abilities or features that they're worried will give
their players too much power. Imagine that a player
creates a wizard character and then you drop them into
a world that is permanently under the effect of a
global anti-magic field. That would be a dick move,
right? You would never do that. That player wouldn't have
any fun and they might wonder why you let them roll up a caster at all. But so many DMs do basically
this on a smaller scale. A character takes some
cool poison abilities and suddenly every monster that you face is immune to poison. A character learns comprehend
languages and it turns out those strange ruins aren't
technically a language though. (jaunty music) Oh, a human! How curious. But
everything about your world is curious to a Dryathrall. It takes a momentous thing
to draw us from our forests, like the "Cyran's Magnificent
Walking Marketplace" Kickstarter from Unlimited Realms. If you're easily distracted or bored during shopping sessions... (fly buzzing) Hello! Oh, right. The book is designed to make shopping in tabletop games more fun. With ready-made shops and inns, rolling tables to create your own, and more than 200 original
magic items to stock them, shopping can be easy and exciting. Is that me? Mm. Oh yes! The book. It has four new subclasses, like the Oath of Profit or
the Black Market Dealer, and four new races like
the Gold Elemental, or my people, the Dryathralls. That's new. Anyway, it's all wrapped
up in a unique story full of NPCs, quests, and lore that can be dropped into any setting. (birdsong) Look, a bird. "Cyran's Magnificent Walking Marketplace" from Unlimited Realms. Pledge on Kickstarter today
at the link in the description if you wanna make shopping
the best part of your game. Think of your favorite
moments when playing D&D. Most likely those are times when you got to do something really cool. It feels good to play a
character with a cool skill and then get to use that
skill at the right moment. My patron Rhett told me that
this is sometimes called the shoot your monks principle, referencing the monk class
ability to deflect missiles. If you have the choice between never using ranged weapons against your monk, or using ranged weapons and
maybe adding a few more enemies, or increasing the projectile
damage to balance it, which one do you think the monk
will have more fun playing? Both encounters can be
equally challenging, the only difference is that
in the a latter example the monk gets to do a really cool thing that only monks can do. - Give us some examples! - What a great idea. Gosh, we're on the same
wavelength you and I. Here are a few examples. You've got a druid character and, man, she really wants
to talk to the squirrels. She really wants to ask
the shrubbery what's up. She's got questions and she knows that nature has the answers. So, let nature have some answers. I mean, that's pretty cool, right? The guy who assassinated the king probably wouldn't have worried too much if one of the castle cats saw it happen. The cat isn't gonna have the
murderer's name or anything, but why not drop a clue? Druids having a deep
connection with nature is one of the things that
makes that class special. You're dropping clues
for the party anyway, so go ahead and reward your
druid for being a druid and give that clue to the cat sometimes. If no animal or plant ever
has anything useful to say, then you might as well just strike those spells
off the druid list. Or let's say that you have
some elves in your party. You know that elves have
advantage against charm effects and immunity to magical sleep. Now, you could just avoid
ever trying to charm them or put them to sleep. But what if instead, an
elf gets to come in clutch in a circumstance where the
rest of the party gets charmed? What if instead, they have a
chance to pretend to be asleep and then save the day when
the whole crew gets kidnapped? Which one of those situations
sounds like more fun? Here's another example,
this time from a real game. In campaign one of "Critical Role," Vex'ahlia's favored enemy is dragons. That's a special ranger feature. Guess how many dragons
Vex'ahlia fights? Five. The core plot of campaign
one is a conclave of dragons. There are dragons everywhere. It's an oops, all dragons campaign, and anyone who has
watched campaign one knows that defeating those dragons
was really fucking hard. Letting Vex use her special
skill did not by any means stop Matt from challenging his players. What it did do is allow
one of his players to feel like she had something meaningful
to contribute to the hunt. I could go on and on. Give charismatic characters
opportunities to persuade, manipulate, and charm. Let rangers track. Let
rogues scout and spy. When your players try to do things that their characters are made for, that's not a threat to you. It's literally just
how the game is played. In short, let your players do
the things they're good at. - Ugh, millennials. You just want everyone to get everything they want all the time. Participation trophies. Avocado toast. You're killing the napkin industry! - Hang on, hang on. I didn't say players should
always get what they want. I'm just saying that you
can challenge your players while still letting them use the abilities they chose for themselves. And paper napkins are stupid. I'm fine with being blamed for that. I will concede that if
this advice is taken and then executed poorly, it can start to feel
scripted or even railroad-y. I think we can all agree
that it's way more satisfying to win a fight that was threatening than to win a fight that was easy. I'm definitely not saying
that you should only hand your players challenges
that they can easily beat. I'm just saying don't refuse
to present certain challenges just because they can beat them. Of course your players' abilities
make them more powerful, that's what they're there for. But you're the DM, you get to decide how
powerful the enemies are. You can match them. And forgive me, because this
might sound a little harsh, but if you can't challenge
your players without negating the basic features of
their character build, you're probably not a very good DM. - Ouch. - I know, I know, that's
uncharacteristically sharp for me, but I'm just keeping it real here. Class features, racial abilities, feats, they're part of the game and your role as the
DM is to run the game. You know, the same game that gives monks the ability to deflect missiles. If you're still feeling resistant, I wanna remind you that every character has a wide variety of
strengths and abilities. Putting the party into a
cave to let your deep gnome take that advantage on stealth
checks in rocky terrain doesn't mean that your deep gnome won't face other challenges. Letting them gain the benefits
of that particular strength in this particular instance, does not, by any means,
turn the tide of battle. I also wanna mention that
there's a huge difference between having a challenging encounter and not being able to do anything. When your barbarian has no ranged attacks and you bring in a monster that stays in the air the whole time, the barbarian isn't gonna be like, "Wow, what a challenging
fight. This is so compelling." They're probably just
gonna feel frustrated. But if you place some big
loose rocks on the ground that your barbarian can make
strength checks to throw, or if you give that flying
creature a trailing chain so the barbarian can try and ground it, or even if you have another party member who gets to shine by
using their special skill to bring the flying creature
down so that everybody including the barbarian
can get their hits in, then everyone gets a chance to have fun. And remember, it is a game.
Fun is the whole point. One of the best feelings as a
player is when you have that, "Oh my God, I have something
for this," kind of moment. A lot of DMs could really
improve their party's experience by just reframing their
goals around that feeling. Your players are choosing their character's skills and abilities, so let them reap the benefits. It's way too easy to fall into
a DM versus players mindset, and I think this particular
problem is a symptom of that. If this video taught you something, you're gonna wanna watch my video "The Dungeon Master is
Not Your Enemy" next. This one digs a little
deeper into the broader issue of adversarial DMs and where
to draw that all important line between filling the role
of the characters' enemy without falling into the trap of becoming the players' enemy. Check it out right here.
