First Time DM'ing! Woohoo! Help me...

[ILostMyLute]

So obviously given the title, I want to DM a campaign, but I'm gonna need some help planning encounters, balancing combat with narrative, etc. For now though, I kinda wanna just get an understanding of how to plan fair encounters. I'm sure I could look for another forum with answers already, but I'd like to get my own feedback!

Note: I don't have much experience with Dungeons and Dragons, but I'm open to learning and criticism. I've participated in one campaign (sans experience, which is something I'd like to have in my campaign.), and I'm in one more. I'm really lenient, but probably won't let the players use completely homebrew classes.

Another Note: I'd like to start the players at level two, and at max, I'll have four players in my campaign. I'm not trying to keep the campaign alive for months and months and months, espcecially since my D&D group meets twice a week for 3 hour sessions.

[Legendairy]

So what specifically is your question? Use the CR in the book as a good point CR 2. Without knowing the classes and stats and whatnot it’s hard for us to help too much. Some homebrew is strong, some core options are stronger. High stats from rolling can change things a bit and so will party make up. Still, use the CR in the book and adjust from there. Remember that more often then not a fully rested/ready party will win a Cr appropriate encounter. Adding in attrition and mooks during a “boss” fight can help but at level 2 EVERYTHING is swingy, a crit can kill a pc and the like.

Edit: if it helps I’ve been doing for about 10-12 years and playing a total of 24ish years. Feel free to message me if ya want. However, it is nice to get a ton of multiple opinions like say from these forums, a bunch of great people with amazing brains to pick.

[Greywander]

Are you new to DMing, or to D&D as a whole, or to pen-and-paper RPGs in general? I don't have much experience, but if possible, I'd recommend finding one of your players who is experienced and getting help from them any time you're in trouble. If you set up an encounter and the players steamroll it, don't sweat it, let them savor their victory. If you have to, move back the next plot point or treasure horde behind a different boss encounter, adding another room to the dungeon if you have to (just make sure you never admit to fudging things like this, let them believe this was the plan all along). If it's the players that get steamrolled, check with the more experienced player to see if maybe you should dial it back or restart the encounter from the beginning to give them a second chance. Alternatively, roll with it and work it into the story. Maybe a random encounter with goblins leads to waking up stripped and bound inside a jail cell in a dank cave.

Perhaps the hardest thing for a new DM is figuring out where to draw the line between giving in to your players and standing firm with what you've decided. If you're too yielding, they'll walk all over you, if you're too stern, they'll leave because they're not having fun. This is where it can be helpful to have someone you can trust who has more experience and can tell you when you're being reasonable and when you're not.

Anyway, I don't know if that's at all helpful to you. Like I said, I don't have much experience, but hopefully there's something there you can use.

[LeonBH]

Dos and Donts:

1. Don't let them use homebrew or UA. If you're not familiar with feats or multiclassing, ban those as well. Promise the players that as soon as you get the hang of things, you'll let them rebuild. But you need to reduce complexity as much as possible so you don't spend a lot of time looking up or worrying about the rules you might have forgotten.

2. Don't throw more monsters at the party than there are players.

3. Start them at a tavern. There's nothing wrong with that.

4. Don't be afraid to railroad the players. You're a new DM and your players should understand that.

5. Never look at a book in the middle of the session, and tell your players they're not allowed to, either. If you get a rule wrong, you get a rule wrong. You're a new DM and your players should understand that.

What you need experience on:

1. Adjudicating actions. This is a core DM skill and it is the most important one. When a player wants to do X, you need to use your common sense to say Y happens. If you don't know the rule to the action, make one up. If the players know the correct rule, you may follow their advice at your discretion, if the rule makes sense to you.

2. Saying No. You are the source of conflict in the campaign. The players want to achieve X (like save a princess in a tower), and you're the only one that stands in their way. Exercise this power, but don't abuse it.

3. Trying Again. Your first session has a 99% chance to not follow any rulebook and you will flounder somewhere. That's OK. Ask your players if they had fun and if they want to play again next time. As long as they had fun, you did a good job.

[Chugger]

Watch a good DnD game on youtube - I kind of like High Rollers - Mark is a very good DM, his descriptions are epic and very detailed and full of mood - and he's got a couple of sensible players (the women) and a couple of loony players (the males - particularly Cam Buckland). It's not a "perfect fit" because it's made more to be entertaining on youtube than a functional dnd campaign, but it is functional dnd in spite of that. If not him try others.

[opaopajr]

If you are going to be generous, go ahead and mostly ignore CR calculations. You are better off eyeballing your intended threat level for a region and using the Random Encounter Table to juggle greater CR threats through rarity. As long as you use context, such as indirect encounter context (local area knowledge of threats, rumors, etc.) -- even direct encounter context randomizers like distance, reaction to party posture, morale, etc. -- you should leave things fluid enough for PCs to make their own life-preserving judgments.

Which is an exciting choice!

And if they decide to take everything head on without consideration, well c'est la vie! How fun it is to be free to make fictional risky decisions with only fictional consequences? Wanna make a new PC and play again?

[nickl_2000]

Let me throw something else into the ring. After you DM your first sessions ask your player for honest feedback. What did they enjoy, what went well, what could you do better? This feedback will really help you as a DM and will really help you tailor your players experience into what they enjoy. Also as a note on that, if you do ask, you have to set aside all ego and not take offense at their responses.

[Afrodactyl]

4. Don't be afraid to railroad the players. You're a new DM and your players should understand that.

5. Never look at a book in the middle of the session, and tell your players they're not allowed to, either. If you get a rule wrong, you get a rule wrong. You're a new DM and your players should understand that.

This.

Railroading is often seen as bad, but make sure you have an ace up your sleeve in case you need to force the party to get back on track, or if they're struggling to solve a puzzle or something. I like to have a DM-controlled NPC with the party to tag along for these instances. I recently used a halfling scholar that my party needed to escort through a ruined temple. At one point the party were completely stumped by a puzzle I was using because they failed to notice a clue. After I noticed the players starting to get frustrated, I had the NPC accidentally knock over a skeleton, which the party then realised had a bag with a note with a clue inside. (The party looked at the intact and upright skeleton sitting amongst the other piles of bones and said "huh, that's weird", and then proceeded to not investigate).

I also made a mistake regarding barbarians and their frenzied rage. I was convinced that frenzying had to be activated separately from rage, and we were to engrossed with combat to check. The player checked after combat and of course I was mistaken, and I apologised and the rule was dealt with correctly for the rest of the session. I also gave the player back the hit points he had lost as a result of that one turn of missed bonus action attack.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Some more general pointers:

The golden rule is to have fun. If your players aren't having fun, you either need to do some things differently or find different players (some people just don't mesh at the end of the day).

Get familiar with pages 82 and 274 of the DMG. They are vital for building monsters and encounters; I find myself referring to them more than any other pages from that book.

Read as much guidance as you can - the Angry DM is very good - and watch videos of people playing. Acquisitions Incorporated is pretty good.

Don't be afraid to improvise. 5e is very flexible and more or less expects DMs to make rulings on the fly.

Remember that DMing can be a hard, thankless task. You will go through peaks and troughs; try not to get discouraged. Take a break if you need to. Sometimes even a 20 minute break for drinks and snacks can be enough time to clear your head and get back into the game.

[Throne12]

Go pick up the lost mines of phandelver. It's a great beginner Module. Some tips from a new DM that's been running for a year now.

Tips

1. Have a session 0. In this session 0 talk about character's and build characters all together. Also talk about the can and Cannots. Talk about the setting. What's in the setting and what's not. Let them know that your a new DM your not going to have all the rules down yet.

2. Use point buy for stats. I let my players roll for stats and I swear they are using loaded dice. Standard array is find but I don't like using it.

3. Don't allow Multi classing. It brings to much trouble for a DM. Or homebrew and UA.

4.dont be Afraid of saying no to things. I have a big problem with this one right now it's throwing off the game for me.

5. Don't think you need to save your players if they put themself it a bad Situation. It will lead to have to pull out Des X Marchena BS all the time.

6. Spells read up on how spell casting works the reread it 3 more times.

7. For encounters start small you can always have more show up as back up if it need to be more challenging. Don't do solo boss they are going to go down quick and not do much.

8. Encounters aren't all about monsters. Use traps Environment challenges. Like a fighting on ice (DC 10 dex save or fall prone) fighting in a tavern push over a table get half cover ( it adds +2 to AC and advantage on Dec saves) fighting in a blizzard= Difficult terrain and heavily obscured ( movement half and all attacks have disadvantage)

9. Don't over prep. Know what the main bad guy wants. How he's going about getting what he wants.

10. Let the players do cool things. If the player want to jump off the second floor onto a bad guy. Trying to Stab him. Let the player do but have him make a attack roll then a Agrobotics role to see if he takes any damage from the fall (DC 5).

[ILostMyLute]

Wow! I didn't think I'd get so many replies. You guys are awesome! So, totally forgot that I didn't give you guys too many details about the campaign, which would probably help. So, to start, I'm putting them in a dungeon where I'll have a few encounters already for them. They'll fight a few giant rats at first, some zombies, and finally, a minotaur skeleton whose health I'll cut in half.

For the railroading, I'm forcing them to choose between a Drow Bard named Sorn or an Elven Druid named Elénaril. They'll be guiding the players to the end game objective, and they'll give them tasks that they need to complete (for some XP gain). I've already told the players that it's my first-time DM'ing, and I specifically asked them to take it easy on me.

I realize now that in the tags I said no homebrew, but I'm trying to be really lenient with the players about their characters so that we can all have fun. I'm familiar with UA and SCAG, and I'm really wanting my players to branch out and try new things. If something will be too difficult for me to incorporate into the campaign, I'll tell the player to change their character a bit. I've got two friends in real life that DM and they've got friends that DM as well. If ever I need help on the spot, I'll go to them.

With watching other campaigns as an outside third party, I've been watching a lot of Critical Role with Matt Mercer. I'll also check out High Rollers and try to glean some tips and tricks from watching them. Again, thank you guys so much for helping me! Continued tips will be much appreciated!!

Edit: If you guys want, I'm sort of planning the first session or two on Google Docs! I'm going to try to have Session 0, where the main thing that we'll do is plan characters and I'll make lore for Session 0 that I'll tell them about. I'd like to make Session 0 actually Session 0.5? (If that makes sense...) We'll start the campaign, I'll introduce the characters to each other, and start the very narrative based first little bit of the first session. Thanks!

If you'd like the viewable link for the 'planning' for the first few sessions/first session from Google Docs, pm me!

Another Edit: When I say I don't have much experience with Dungeons and Dragons, I mean that I've only ever been in two different campaigns. I've made dozens of characters that I'll probably never use, so I'm not opposed to having to write up a dozen different character sheets for NPC's. What I am unfamiliar with is the technical aspect of things; that would include things like CR, Experience Points, Experience Thresholds, etc. Most anything that has to do with numbers in Dungeons and Dragons 5e is completely foreign to me. I did find a site that compares party XP thresholds with monster XP thresholds, so I've got that going for me.

The BBEG will depend on the length of the campaign. Right now, I'm starting people at level two and I'd like them to reach level ten for the BBEG, but if we can get higher than that it would be phenomenal. If my small party of three reaches level ten,
I want them to fight One Wraith, Two Wights, and Two Specters. The two specters will be NPC's that I'll make sure they bond with. For Example, if the NPC they choose to guide them through the campaign is Sorn the Drow Bard, I'll have Sorn and his Warforged companion Pious be the specters that the two Wights resurrect. I have no idea what I'll do if they get beyond level ten each haha. A lot of my campaign will be improvised.

[Afrodactyl]

In terms of your overall campaign, go to DMsGuild, and look through their free and pay-what-you-want adventure modules (you can pay 0.00), and either piece them together for your campaign, use them for inspiration for your own homebrew, or keep a handful saved for when you run out of ideas of what to do for next session or don't manage to fully get things ready to go. A lot of them are designed as one-shots, but there are also "side quest" length ones on there that just add a little padding to an adventure. I do this, and it takes a lot of the stress out of running a homebrew campaign for me. I prefer to use them as an initial springboard for the campaign; a one-shot adventure that I could potentially turn into a wider world if I sat down and put some real effort in.


For your current game, if you're running a party of 4 at level 2 a minotaur skeleton is potentially a very deadly encounter, even with reduced HP. In terms of raw statistics, a minotaur skeleton will be doing an average of 17 damage on a hit (which with a +6 to hit is a very real possibility) which is potentially dropping a player a turn, outside of a barbarian or moon druid. Take a peek through the monster manual and find something that you like stat-wise, probably about CR 1 or 1/2. It doesn't need to thematically fit the rest of the encounters straight out of the book, because when you describe it it's a big bad evil undead knight with a sword and it's doing all this cool stuff.

It doesn't matter that on paper its actually an animated armour, because the players don't know that. You've gotten rid of the "false appearance", changed its type to "undead" and it's slam from bludgeoning to slashing for the sword, and now it's a skeleton in a badass suit of armour that's come to make your players go "oh s***, its the big bad boss, this is gonna be awesome" before they tango. Then if you feel like it won't be enough, or mid-combat it's dying really fast, then have a skeleton or two claw it's way out of the dirt a few feet from the party to defend their master. Or the opposite; the skeleton boss and his minions are too much, but the party kill the boss, and then the skeletons crumble because their master isn't around any more.

Don't be afraid to use seemingly random monsters or chop and change monsters slightly, as long as you can describe it in a way that it makes sense and you can justify everything it can do, then go for it.


As far as NPCs go, I like just looking at the NPC section of the MM and just changing a spell or ability or whathaveyou, maybe giving them a player class feature or two if I feel fancy. For example, an NPC in one of my games recently was just a "Bandit" from the monster manual that I added the "Fighting Style" and "Second Wind" features from the first level of Fighter, and the racial abilities from a Halfling.


Good luck and happy gaming!


:EDIT:

Also, as a DM don't be afraid to fudge a roll or two in the party's favour. Roll behind a screen, and then you can bend the numbers a little, as long as the party is having fun and it makes for cool story telling, and it makes sense. When the party is down to just the badly wounded cleric fighting off the wounded dragon, and the rest of the party is on the edge of their seats, the dragon missing a crucial claw attack because you lowered your dice roll by one point so it didn't hit the cleric's AC (with some good narration) could lead to the cleric chipping off the dragons last hit point in the next round, and then your group will be talking about when Johnny Cleric saved the party and the city from the dragon at the last minute and how cool it was.


As far as improv goes just jot down some numbers for DCs and just pull out one based on how challenging you think the check should be;
Very Easy - 5
Easy - 8/10
Normal - 12
Medium - 14
Tough - 16
Hard - 20
Crazy hard - 25
Almost impossible - 30

And remember that you can always declare that something is impossible, as long as you can give a vaguely plausible excuse as to why, like the impossible strength check to flip a house (it's just too dang heavy).

[impia]

Another Edit: When I say I don't have much experience with Dungeons and Dragons, I mean that I've only ever been in two different campaigns. I've made dozens of characters that I'll probably never use, so I'm not opposed to having to write up a dozen different character sheets for NPC's. What I am unfamiliar with is the technical aspect of things; that would include things like CR, Experience Points, Experience Thresholds, etc. Most anything that has to do with numbers in Dungeons and Dragons 5e is completely foreign to me. I did find a site that compares party XP thresholds with monster XP thresholds, so I've got that going for me.

One thing that might be useful - not tracking experience points at all. Instead you can level them when it feels appropriate. The DMG has a couple of suggestions here - see eg "Session-based advancement," page 261. (I know that doesn't help with balancing combat encounters, though)

[Ninja_Prawn]

What I am unfamiliar with is the technical aspect of things; that would include things like CR, Experience Points, Experience Thresholds, etc. Most anything that has to do with numbers in Dungeons and Dragons 5e is completely foreign to me. I did find a site that compares party XP thresholds with monster XP thresholds, so I've got that going for me.

You want to be careful with some of those sites. I noticed at least one (granted this was a while ago) that didn't properly account for numbers of monsters or PCs.

As for maths, you don't actually have to worry about most of it. CR is only something you have to calculate if you're homebrewing your own monsters. Awarding XP is easy; you just add up the XP in the monsters' stat blocks and divide it by the number of players. For non-combat encounters, I'd just rate them according to how hard they were supposed to be and then award XP equal to the relevant threshold.

For building combat encounters, it's a bit harder, but you'll get used to it.

Spoiler: A step by step guide

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There's a table on DMG 82 that lists XP by PC level. The first thing you need to do is establish the thresholds: this means four sums.

Each party member contributes to the threshold according to their level. So add up the 'easy' numbers for all your PCs, then the 'medium', etc. You'll get four thresholds.

Next, choose how hard you want the encounter to be. Easy is something they should breeze through without breaking a sweat. Medium might cost them some resources, hard should cost them a good amount of resources and deadly encounters mean there's a chance one of them might get KO'd. Even with 'deadly' encounters, the party is expected to win. They should be able to take on a few of those per day, in theory. This means it's usually wise to use harder encounters most of the time.

Once you've chosen the difficulty, you know what amount of XP your monsters have to play with. Your monsters' total XP needs to be more than the threshold but lower than the next one up BUT at this point you have to account for how many monsters you want to use.

If it's one monster, you can use all the XP. For two, you can use up to 2/3 of the threshold. For three to six, you can use 1/2 the threshold. For seven to ten, 2/5. For eleven to fourteen, 1/3. For fifteen or more, 1/4. This accounts for the fact that outnumbering the enemy gives you a big advantage in what we call the 'action economy'.

For parties of two or less - or six or more - you have to do some extra fiddling, but you've got 4 players so you're okay there.

Spoiler: Worked example

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You have 4no players, all level 2.

Therefore, your thresholds are: Easy 200, Medium 400, Hard 600, Deadly 800.

Let's say we want to start off with a hard encounter. That means monsters worth 600 - 800 XP.

But we want, say... 3no monsters. So halve the thresholds... now we're looking between 300 and 400 XP.

A CR 1/2 monster, such as an orc warrior, is worth 100 XP, so we could use three of those and call it good. Equally, a CR 1 monster (like a half-ogre) is worth 200 XP, so you could have one of those and two orcs, which comes to 400 in total (still hard).

[Easy_Lee]

My advice: keep it simple. Worry about the bare minimum number of things you need to worry about, and use published and playtested material whenever possible. You can add complexity and homebrew later.

[Potato_Priest]

I would like to thoroughly disagree with the “never look at a book during play” mentality.

You’re a new DM, and the best way to learn the rules is to practice with using them. For this you need to actually be able to read the books so that you can get the hang of what they say.

While sometimes resolving a rules issue after a session can be a good idea, when you’re new there are going to be enough rules questions that answering them after the session would require a dedicated system of bookkeeping for cataloguing all the questions that come up. It’s best to just accept a slower game for the sake of learning.

[Demonslayer666]

Properly challenging my players is a skill I am still honing after many years of DMing. Fights that should be very hard are easy, and easy fights end up being very hard. I'll never get it right.

For basics, I use http://donjon.bin.sh/5e/calc/enc_size.html to generate random encounters, but I have found that this underestimates the challenge for my group, so I have to bump it up. I also use the treasure generator on there. It's pretty handy.

One piece of advice: when the party can focus fire on one target, they will take it down very fast. Make sure to have enough targets so they can't always focus fire.

[Easy_Lee]

One piece of advice: when the party can focus fire on one target, they will take it down very fast. Make sure to have enough targets so they can't always focus fire.

Same goes for creatures. If everything hits the same player at once, that player is most likely going down. And it's no fun to sit around unconscious during a fight.

[Bahamut7]

I would also suggest checking out Tales from the Yawning Portal. it has 7 classic dungeons upgraded for 5th and provides nicely written details on the behaviors of creatures and the dungeons. Also, the dungeons start at level 1 and go beyond 12.

Now then, one thing you need to watch out for is multi attack. Unless, a creature is fighting by itself, do NOT give a bunch of soldiers multi-attack (with mulit-attack you have effectively doubled the enemies forces). After they level to 3 or 4, start allowing the enemies that is small doses.

Don't be afraid to use minion rules from 4th edition where the creature has to be hit once to die but still has their full attack and stats from the Monster Manual. This well help the players feel epic and make the environment more realistic.

You may be pass the point of needing this, but my favorite starting session is an area with many NPCs in the background and multiple fights going on. A boat is attacked by pirates, fighting competition, giant tavern brawl, etc. This allows new players to try their chosen class in combat. If they don't like them, they can still change their choice to a "NPC" that was fighting in the background who happen to be the Monk instead of the Fighter class.

Also, with dungeon crawls sprinkle in health potions to help the players deal with attrition. Dungeon crawls are about resource management in a confined space and in some cases time limits.

[LeonBH]

You’re a new DM, and the best way to learn the rules is to practice with using them. For this you need to actually be able to read the books so that you can get the hang of what they say.

The point of the exercise is not to learn the rules, but to learn to improvise rulings. You can learn the rules out of the game by preparing. You will also learn the rules after the game, when your players correct you.