The underused GM tip that will make players obsessed with your game

The elf example is funny to me. I've never in my 20+ years of gaming actually seen the DM use sleep or charm, and the players themselves almost never use it either. The racial ability is pretty much pointless and honestly most those spells are as well.

Alternatively, you can go full furry / Larian, and give ALL animals meaningful clues, side info, and subplots. :D

My friend played a cleric specifically to see how good the aoe bomb he could do was. So.... I doubled the amount of undead in several encounters and really helped him stress test it.

Another bit of advice, don't plan for how your players are going to overcome a problem. Create the problems and let your characters overcome them however they like (as long as the answers make sense for their character). Embrace creative solutions to problems and roll with your player's creative plans. But again, don't just give them the win for a creative solution that their character could not pull off because they don't have the correct powers, spell, or skills. It feels way better to solve a problem using character skills and abilities rather than just win all the time due to creative answers and "rule of cool." At that point, why bother having characters and builds?

Agreed, I hate it when I see discussions about GMs who disallow "Teleportation" or "Scrying" in their games because they haven't bothered to sit down and consider how a world with that magic has dealt with it until the PC appeared. Something tells me Kings and other important people would have found defenses in the thousand years before they were born.

On the other side of that, if the players come up with a cool idea that defeats your villain in one round, let them have it, they did something cool.

that's some peak advice their. it looks easy to make, but thinking about the characters ability instead of your world is a challenging tasks.

I made a dungeon once where basically everyone that can be charmed get suggestion on them. the only way to move through it was de facto the paladin of devotion, immuzing people to charm.

The big part that it was a mystery, and that the spells was stop once they knew how to deactivate it.

No, you can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometime you'll find
You get what you need
- Jagger the Bard

Player's shouldn't always get what they want, but if they try, sometimes they should get what they need...

reward players for thinking outside the box, reward them for having strengths, punish them for forgetting about their strengths, and don't go further than pressuring them for having weaknesses.
i remember i had once planned a combat in 3 waves of enemies for the party. the first two waves were just meant to tire them a bit, while the last one was really balanced (so a serious challenge once they are tired). my goal was to make this wave by wave fight seem a bit unnatural so that maybe they start having doubts about other things in the plot, and to pose this as a challenge that reward or punish their ressource management. i had no clue if they would win or loose in the end, i was just 100% sure they would clear the first two waves, and had plan for whichever outcome happened at the third wave.
they were camping with a caravan of merchant that they were employed to protect, one of them was keeping watch and made an amazing roll to notice a bunch of goblins, some mounted on wolves, creeping on the camp, so when they decided to prepare and wait for the goblins, i told them they can ready all the weapons they want and they'll have a guaranteed round of surprise and advantage on their initiative roll. there was about one and a half goblin per player, and they didn't have a real health tracker, a strong hit would oneshot them and bad/weak attacks would two shot them, so those goblins were easy to kill, but sometimes needed more than one attack. they only took a couple of weak attacks from the goblins, just as planned. next thing they noticed some heavy noises and trees moving, and behold a big troll appearing. now that's a harder fight, the tank of the party could withstand the hits without loosing too much health, but he was getting thrown around. the fight was intense, but action economy doing its thing, it wasn't too long, and when they were done... they just went back to the camp immediately, one stayed because he wanted to check the troll for alchemy materials, nobody really keeping watch, i asked each player what he was doing to make sure, and nobody said anything that would suggest staying alert. so i was left with that last round of real challenge, and a bunch of careless pc. that last fight was supposed to be straightforward tribal orcs with decent fighter skills skewed a bit towards a hunter/warrior archetype, so i decided they would sneak on them if nobody is paying attention. i asked the rogue who was gutting the troll for a fairly hard perception check, and since he failed, i told him what interesting materials he found, then gave him a slip of paper saying he got knocked out from behind. progressively did similar things with the other players, and they either got taken down stealthily or violently pulled out from their tent by surprise and knocked out. that's how everyone woke up in a cage underground, and a bit confused.
they all had everything within the group to take on that fight and to spot them coming, but for some reason they got distracted and stopped keeping watch (which should be a basic of camping in dangerous area). so i spun the events in a way that makes fun of them for not using their strengths without punishing them too harshly.

In my campaign, every player gets an otherworldly boon during their special, background-driven personal questline. I had a talk with the monk of the party who complained that he doesn't really see much of a point in the Stillness of Mind feature, since few charmed effects actually can be stopped by this, since many effects that charm you take either control from you, or take away your action. I did 2 things: I added monsters that can frighten the players, so they got a benefit from the feature that way, and for their personal quest, I gave them a boon that allows them to open their third eye which is a mode that lasts for up to 10 minutes. While the monk is in that state, any charmed effect on them is suspended, so they can freely take that action to un-charm themself. The party is going to fight an archmage of enchantment soon, so this came just in time for them.
I have a player playing a dragonborn, leaning heavily into the dragon theme, so I made their personal quest go towards becoming a dragon. A complaint with dragonborns is that their breath weapon sucks... so I made them turn into a half dragon that can use their breath weapon 3 times, regaining one use per short rest. As a result they felt confident enough to take the dragonborn racial feat that allows them to roar instead of using their breath weapon in order to frighten others.

Give players a challenge, but also let them feel their strengths, and (let them) emphasize the themes they are going for. Their abilities are what makes them special, and those should be the very reason why THEY are the heroes of the story instead of anyone else.

It is so sad that these theories are being presented as advanced DM skills. This is Dm'ing 101. Then again, 4 out of 5 games are rubbish, so I guess this makes perfect sense.

I saw these kinds questions on Reddit a lot...and I thought it was obvious that you should not do these things...?

Characters can often learn to do things that would be considered next to impossible, so I just make the challenges next to impossible. Not only does it encourage players to play to their strengths, but they feel like epic heroes when they figure it out.
Clues to how this can be done make excellent rewards for imaginative or innovative play.

Ginny Di is hug bait!

The problem with this kind of clickbait is that the video lacks a subject header and intro that tells us what its about. If all videos were labelled like this it would be pointless to enter your video history and look for useful content. Clickbait ia good for baiting new people but is very poor longterm for subscribers and even worse dor someone new like me who found your channel and wanted to look through and see your other videos. I'm not going to click them all to see if something is up my alley. I want see what the video is about quickly at a glance.

it was gen Z that gave medals to everyone and there were / are no winners and no losers in spots not millennials .. lol

its funny one of my players asked me if it would be ok for their character to have an ability to talk with nature but not with literal words but more like senses and emotions and i started laughing because i had an NPC who had that exact ability who was going to help the players and i told him that and he was like oh really? i got so excited with the player on talking about what this ability should do for him, so i took the NPC completely out and allowed the player to own every opportunity where he would be the one best suited for finding clues or the where abouts of something/someone and even when danger was lurking by.

Now as I see this I realized I have made an encounter with a wooden witch which charmes the party when they are able to see her. But one of them is an elf. I guess he doesn't get charmed lol.

I made the encounter as a scripted event, so before it was clear that one of them would be elf. Good for him tough 😊.

let characters be broken. let them do broken thing. but show them their weaknesses too so they realize their characters aren't good at everything. but maybe someone else in the party is and now its their turn to do their thing

I had this once. I discussed with him to sacrifice my subclass to gain a strong snow leopard pet that i carefully integrated into my character. Then he made the leopard extremely frail and everything attacked it, the only way not to lose it was to cure wounds every turn. For nothing. It was very frustrating.

I love your cosplay characters

INVISIBILITY drives me NUTS, in every system I've played. That ONE POWER (spell, etc...) can be GAMEBREAKING. Because in MOVIES and TV SHOWS the characters are always becoming visible again, for like... NO REASON (other than to see the actor's face)... sometimes right in the middle of combat. Welp... NOT MY PLAYERS. These mf'ers would stay invisible for WEEKS AT AT TIME, mowing down every hapless foe in their path.

Before watching fully: Any time any DM asks "how I stop ability X?", my instant reaction is "don't". Often it's more nuanced than that. And there will be exceptions. But by&large DMs should work with their players to exercise better judgement and find solutions instead of reasons why X can't/won't/shouldn't happen

I especially like the "give the answer to the cat" principle haha. Divinity original sin 2 has the "pet pal" feature, which lets you talk to animals, and it turns out that animals have a TON of useful stuff to say. Some quests literally don't exist if you can't talk to the animals. Also even when they don't have utility, they're usually really funny, which also has value too!

I had a really fun time were I got blinded and I cast arcane eye. My DM allowed to me to use this eye to aim future spells, later allowing me to cast fireball to deal significant damage to the dragon we were fighting.

Meanwhile I gave all of my players on my very first campaign nearly game breaking items as part of the very first session.


A pair of gauntlets that could apply up to 20 different effects, from instantly killing any one enemy under 100 hp to bringing the pc to 1 hp instantly.

I sent my players on a quest in a dream city place to gain cool powers, (still haven't decided what to give them yet) the first thing they did was try to buy donuts, I saw the opportunity to send them on a side quest, the donut shop was sold out, so they went to the edge of the city to another donut shop, now 1 session later they are kidnapping the prime minister of the city

This reminds me of a moment (which admittedly hadn't yet happened when this came out) from Fantasy High.
So, Gorgug, the Barbarian, had somehow ended up in a situation where he was simultaneously charmed by one foe and frightened of another.
He, in character, asked "Should I go into a Rage, and really f**k them up?"
To which the NPC replied "Yes... Go into a Rage... Really f**k them up."
And then we got the greatest line in any Actual Play ever: "I use Mindless Rage, which gives me immunity to being charmed and frightened."

I think the easiest way to mix challenge with rewarding abilities is my encounter formula:
1/5 of all encounters are Easy- the game math says the players should win, regardless of ability.
2/5 of encounters should Feel Easy- game math says the players could lose, but it plays to the parties strengths, like a negotiation with a charisma character or a melee fight for the melee fighters.
1/5 of encounters should Feel Hard- the game math says the odds are even, but the encounter is not suited to the party at all, like a melee party facing flying enemies or casters facing magic immune enemies.
1/5 of encounters should be Hard- the game math says the party should lose, but the encounter plays to the party enough that loss is not 100% certain, like a well designed dragon about 3-4 levels above the party that is weak to their favorite damage types.

A little late to the discussion, but definitely do this. Recently played a paladin in a Pathfinder game that based around diplomacy. Never got to use any of my diplomacy skills and feats while only fighting something evil once in a blue moon. I did not have a good time and ended up making a different character.

The fact that elves are immune to magical sleep reminds me of an episode of Star Trek TNG where the whole crew gets knocked out by an alien gas, but Data is able to very quickly get back up, revive the crew, and face the threat. Giving your elf players the ability to save the whole party by not falling asleep because an unobservant enemy missed the fact the party had an elf could make them feel super important. Or, if the enemy does notice the elf, maybe they take them to a prison cell away from the sleeping party, and now theyre given the chance to escape the cell or use a spell to wake the party, or persuade a guard to help them out.

Sometimes, letting each player get their main character moment can make them feel amazing. Just make sure to let everyone have that kind of moment if they want or else favoritism will ve a problem.

In a campaign I recently played in, all of our characters had ties to different towns in the area, so we each got to interact with NPCs that had previous acquaintance/were family with just one player character, giving us the chance to lead the conversation and flash backstory to the table, as well as give tons of character development

I love this content as a long time dm but I still to this day after over a year watching, I think you're just too general, alot of the videos feel like fluff for views and maybe aren't specific enough. I'm sure I'll get a bit of hate for this but it's true.

Yeah, I had no bad initial reactions to the tree thing. It's very niche and it only applies to them, the rest of the party still has to rest. It's not like they can go out by themselves in a dangerous area.

As much as i agree if a player knows the dm is a beginner then they should be respectful and not show up with a character that needs the dm to run extra circles in story or encounter balancing and so on. That is rude and if you don't shut that down you might allow a problem player to flurish.

I played a goliath rouge in a campaign. My cold resistance was used 0 times in that campaign. Also I basically never got hit so I used Stones Endurance approximately twice the whole campaign.

One thing I found rather disappointing as a player was that I constantly told my DM that I wanted to use my Barbarian's Animal Handling ability (he had a +5)
We were doing Call Of The Netherdeep and I wish he'd given me the chance to do it with a fish or something. In the end I made my character retire to the mountains and get a pet Displacer Beast so he could constantly run after it but never actually use the ability.

I did get a rush of adrenaline when I had my new character use Animal Handling and catch a random horse. I ended up setting it free within the next minute, but it was the fact that I got to use the skill at all that gave me a rush.

I was in a 36 player death game (there were 8 pregenerated characters and once you died, you chose a new one) and it turned out we had completely bypassed the key to the big bad. Our DM just magically transported us to the room so we would've have to try and remember how to get back. It was one of the most thoughtful things a GM could have done for players. Rather than make us all frustrated, we were able to defeat the boss vampire.
In the end, one of my teammates died 8 times, so he had to double up on characters.

Your Dryathrall gave me peace <3

Re rewards, doesn't mean giving them everything they want. To quote the Rolling Stones ....... "You can't always get what you want; But if you try, try, try; You might just find, you get what you need."

the delivery of 'hello' in the ad was just top-tier. most interesting ad EVER. amazing acting too; so good!

Who brings a character from another game! Mad behaviour

OMG your ads are amazing! I can't believe I just said that, good job

Your player has a specific tree? What about a Dryad who tells that PC of a threat to those trees, and needs PCs help? The more long rests she gets the more help she can give.

There is absolutely nothing wrong in countering a player. It all depends on how often you do it. A world with a permanent Anti Magic Field, sure, that sucks. But having a room in a dungeon, or an area in a forest, with Anti Magic Field, that is not bad. I strongly believe that countering your players sometimes actually makes the game more fun for everyone. Why? Because I run by a principle "There are always someone stronger than you". If players feel too secure, like they have found the perfect combo, then you have to show then "Nope, nothing is perfect. There is always someone who can beat you". There are also sometimes where you have to counter your players in order to have a fun game.

Best example is Arcane Eye. You have to take that spell into account and shut it down if you don't want your players to know the entire layout of your dungeon.

Another great example. Fighters they are sublime in melee. If you keep on sending one big guy, with loads of health, right into the face of the fighter. Then that fighter will ALWAYS outshine all other players. So you have to counter that fighter, maybe by using flying foes, so the fighter can't just hit the enemy in the heads with its big greatsword, or maybe you have degraded the fighters sword with an ooze, or maybe you have used magic to shrink your fighters sword like 3.5 Shrink Item.

I feel bad for doing this, one of my sorcerers became level 5, wich means she is going to fireball everything.
Well, when this happened they went to hell and there, everyone is inmunne/resistant to fire
But also, if no monster is resistant to fire, that sorcerer is gonna kill every enemy before the other players

Why didn’t the barbarian buy some more javelins after “starting items button clicked”

I've always been happy to let player characters have their strengths. I counter by giving the enemies greater strengths, not by undermining the strengths of the PCs. ...usually.