How to Make Your D&D Combat Better: 10 Secondary Object… — Transcript

Hey everybody.

Oh, I bonked the mic. God damn it.

Hey everybody, welcome to Roll with Advantage and and come here.

Come closer.

Closer.

Oh, too close, too close. Back up just a little bit.

I know what it's like, all right? I've been there too, okay?

Sometimes we design a combat encounter as a DM and we think that it's good, it's going to be fun, but

30 minutes in, maybe an hour in, we kind of realize that maybe we made some mistakes along the way. Maybe we could have done things differently.

But at the end of the day, how many times can your players fight monsters to the death and it's still be interesting?

Sometimes the stakes of the plot can add to it, but I mean, think about it.

When was the last time you had an encounter in your campaign that was something aside from kill the monster?

Think about it. Tell me in the comments.

Tell me when the last time you had that was. And if it was last session, last week, that's great. That's awesome. But if you're thinking about it and you're like, oh my God, I can't even remember, well, then I think this is the video for you.

In this video, we're going to talk about secondary objectives, a way to make your combat encounters spicy, delicious, fantastic.

Secondary objectives enhance combat in D&D to an exponential degree.

And I'm going to give you a lot of examples in this video, 10 specifically, 10 different types of secondary objectives you can incorporate into your encounters to have more compelling, more engaging, and just down right better, brother, uh, combat.

So, without any further delay, let's go ahead and dive into number 10.

Rescue Missions.

Task your players with rescuing an NPC or retrieving an item during combat. It will help add layers of urgency and potentially even a moral dilemma. My favorite example of this is instead of sending the players to kill the goblin camp that may raid the village, right, that's a consequence, sometimes that's good enough, the goblins abducted the blacksmith, and now they need to save the blacksmith and kill the goblins.

It's a secondary objective that spices things up. You can take this even further and you can make it, it's not just kill the goblins, then rescue them, it's the goblins plan to sacrifice the blacksmith.

So now there's this added dilemma, there's this time frame, there's this this fire that you light under the players and now they need to go.

Number nine.

Protective Actions.

So, what you're going to do is you're going to assign an area or object that the players need to protect against some enemy forces. This could be a magical artifact, it could be a gate or like a besieged city.

So what you do is you almost make your combat encounter like a tower defense game, because here's the thing, right? We all joke that D&D players will spend three quarters of a session planning, only for the last quarter of the session when they go to execute the plan, something goes wrong in the first step and then the plan out the window. It doesn't matter anymore.

Now they need to think on their feet and that's great, right? We love improvisation, I know I do, but in this scenario, let the players set up some defenses. Let those defenses be effective and do good things.

Because when you let the players succeed, not only do they feel good, but they feel heroic, right? If they defend the city, if they established defenses, they set up traps. And they work and it makes the encounter easier for them, as the DM, you might be tempted to say, oh, well, that kind of sucks. But no, no, no. That's good. You want them to succeed. Feel like the combat encounter was easier because of what they did.

Right? It's different than when the sorcerer cast chain lightning and vaporizes four enemies instantaneously, that's different, right? This is the player set a plan and they execute it well.

Number eight, this is one of my favorites, environmental challenges.

So use the environment to add complexity to the combat encounter. This could be like fighting on unstable ground. I mean, it's a world filled with magic. There are earthquakes that alter this one area in particular, so there are constantly these shifting plateaus and platforms that change. Enemies can fall through the cracks and if the players don't move, so can they.

Or maybe it's something like they are in a dungeon and they try to solve a puzzle. They fail the puzzle on the first attempt. The room begins to fill with water and undead begin to grow, right? They begin to form around the puzzle room. So now they either need to try and solve the puzzle or they need to try and swim away while having to fight the undead, right? It's something that just adds some spice to the combat encounter.

Because instead of just being, all right, you failed the puzzle, you got to kill the undead and then whack, whack, whack, whack, right? It adds complexity and layers to it, right?

You want your combat encounters be like Tiramisu.

Some bean dip, right?

You want there to be some thick ass layers, because that's what makes them feel good.

You want your players to feel under pressure, because then when they overcome it, oh my goodness, that feeling is fantastic.

Number seven.

Time Sensitive Goals.

This is something that I desperately love and I've used it before in my campaigns with varying degrees of effectiveness, time sensitive goals.

And I don't just mean, you have to do this before the week is out.

But set a timer, right? 30 minutes.

They have 30 minutes IRL time to solve this issue. To get out of this combat encounter, right?

You have people that are just like firing on all cylinders. You will see your players move at a speed that you've never seen before.

That you didn't realize they could operate at that high level when you put that pressure on them.

So introduce some type of countdown element where the players have to complete that objective within either a set number of rounds or within a set number of IRL minutes.

Either one of them are incredibly effective. You see the former that I talked about in a number of rounds used quite a lot in Baldur's Gate 3.

There are a lot of encounters that are made incredibly spicy by the introduction of finish it by a number of rounds.

Uh, the Iron Throne is a great example of that, right?

Four rounds to save as many people as possible.

That's crazy.

That is such good design and I mean, if you haven't played Baldur's Gate 3 already, do it.

Okay, thanks, bye.

Number six.

Non-Combat Objectives.

But you're probably saying, but Joe, it's supposed to be a second objective in combat.

What do you mean it's not combat encounter?

What are you talking about?

Just that.

Listen, okay?

I'll get to I'll explain, okay?

Just relax, okay?

The professor will explain, okay?

So, what I mean by that is introducing some other objective like solving a puzzle or negotiating with a potential ally during a combat encounter.

Let me give you an example here.

So, they are your party is delving into a, uh, we'll say a null camp, okay?

And in this null camp, there are a lot of prisoners here. Some of the prisoners they recognize, they're bandits from the various areas and they could be allies.

So, in order to outnumber the nulls, they parley with who they think is the bandit leader. They start talking to them and lo and behold, the nulls attack. They discover the party.

What can they do now? The nulls outnumber them.

They either fight insurmountable deadly odds.

Or they try their best on their turns to speak, to parley, to debate and have some type of negotiation with this bandit leader.

Fight on our side, fight with us now against the nulls, we'll make it worth your while.

We'll let you out, we'll let you live.

They're not going to.

What do you say?

They agree.

Boom.

The tides have turned. The combat has shifted in their favor because of a secondary objective.

Then after that, it's just combat as normal.

But the thing is, it adds that layer and that layer doesn't end when combat ends. That's the beautiful part.

By introducing a non-combat objective, like negotiating with potential allies to that combat encounter, you open up this broad, beautiful path that, well, hey, now you have an NPC that the party has allied with that is morally bad.

They are a neutral, chaotic, lawful, evil person.

They're a bandit leader.

After they escape the null camp, they're going to go back to to pillaging and destroying and robbing.

But the party's made an ally of them.

Where can that go?

I don't know.

You tell me.

It's your game.

Number five.

Sabotage.

The goal with sabotage is to have your players need to discreetly sabotage enemy equipment or disrupt a ritual without being detected.

Here's what you're going to do.

Make the map for the camp where they need to sabotage the device, where they need to disrupt the ritual.

Have the party roll initiative.

Not the enemies.

Have the party roll initiative.

Never an enemy that is near the party, but every once in a while an enemy that is away from the party, have them move.

After your turn, John, um, the bandit over here on the opposite of the map is going to move here.

Right? It adds a layer of change to it.

And let the entire party move as a group on initiative. Let them swap actions back and forth.

Let them move together.

Let them have the feeling of tactically taking down this camp and sabotaging the ritual stealthily.

However, when it goes wrong, because it will, right?

You got your fighter, barbarian, Paladin friend, who's wearing plate armor and two tower shields and is carrying 500 pounds of equipment.

Eventually, they're going to step on a twig and the entire bandit camp is going to be alerted to them.

That's okay.

Because now it's not about killing the bandits, it never was.

It was about clearing a path to sabotage the ritual, to destroy the artifact, whatever it is.

It was always about that.

It was the secondary objective, right?

It was the other thing they had to worry about.

The recommendation on the mechanics there is to give your party a fun way to go about sabotaging it.

It's still combat.

But it gives the power to them to succeed in the stealth encounter.

So, sabotage.

Great secondary objective.

Number four.

Escort Missions.

I know, if you've ever played a Bethesda game, if you've ever played an Assassin's Creed game, or I mean, really just any RPG out there, escort missions can be the worst.

Because there is nothing worse in any type of RPG than feeling like you need to protect something that cannot defend itself.

That's not very fun, right?

Because you feel like you need to change your entire play style to accommodate this thing with bad AI, bad pathing and is just way dumber than what it should be.

Luckily for you, um, you know, my, my good DM friend.

Luckily for you, I'd hope you're smarter than Bethesda's AI or Ubisoft's AI.

I really, really hope so.

Or maybe you should, maybe you shouldn't DM anymore.

I'm just being honest.

I love Bethesda.

I love.

Assassin's Creed games are fun, I guess, but maybe you shouldn't do this anymore, okay?

Me to you, but you know.

Anyway.

So like I said, you are smarter than an AI in this scenario.

You can play the NPC much smarter.

My biggest caveat for this though, is make the NPC comparable to the party in some way, shape or form, right?

The party's level 10.

The NPC's level seven.

They're strong, they're good.

They can handle themselves.

But this particular area, they can't travel alone, or the party needs this cleric to cast a type of, um, shield, a type of spirit guardians, you know, mobile shield that will protect them moving through something like the Shadow Cursed Lands from Baldur's Gate 3.

They need to protect the cleric. The cleric will keep them alive and keep them safe, but they're still a level seven cleric.

They still have spells they can use.

Maybe they just can't use concentration.

And it's up to the party to protect them because they need them.

But as a very, very, very small caveat to this, if the cleric does die, if the escort mission fails, make sure that your party's always failing forward. Make sure that if the cleric dies, it's not like, well, screw you guys, figure something else out, stupid. Make sure it's you kill the or not you kill the cleric.

Well, maybe they do kill the cleric.

I don't know.

But it's the cleric dies, sadly, they were struck by an arrow. There was a bolt of chaos energy that that struck them down.

However, you can still grab their staff. They can still channel the magic.

It's just a lot more difficult for say the sorcerer to do that than, um, than the cleric who originally had the staff.

Number three.

Gathering Intel.

Make gathering information from the enemy a key objective during the combat.

What I mean by this is, is imagine this scenario, right?

The party finds the den of cultists within the city. They bust down the door and they start killing cultists left and right.

Eldrich blast, action surge, slash, slash.

However, as soon as the first cultist goes, there is valuable information here that cannot be lost.

Fireball into the wall, hits a couple of the players. The building starts to burn, crumble, fall to the ground.

Valuable information torn to shreds and burned to a crisp.

Information that cannot be salvaged.

The cultists, not only do some of them start just slashing their own throats because the information is too valuable to to be given out.

Not only that.

But now the party has to decide, okay, the building is burning down.

We still have some of these cultists that are going to fight to the last breath, but we also need to get the information.

What do we do?

I mean, some of us have to prioritize gathering information and the others have to prioritize stopping the cultists.

Dual prong, a secondary objective.

It's just something that adds a little bit of spice, a little bit of intensity to your combat encounters.

Number two, the recovery of secret artifacts.

Design a scenario where players must retrieve a hidden artifact during combat.

They were instructed to go to a crypt, not necessarily to try and slay all of the undead that's there, but that the item that they need is within that crypt.

As soon as they grab the item, the undead come alive and they start coming after them.

And until they get out of the crypt, they will continue.

This undead fortitude will continue to pursue them until they reach the exit.

Because then it's not about killing the monster.

It's about fighting them back, carving a path with the item that you need to open the door, to save your companion who perished in the last fight, or an item to help destroy the big bad evil guy.

Right? His weakness was placed within the crypt and that's where you can go to find it.

It is such a strong secondary objective.

Because at the end of the day, do you know what it is?

It's a heist.

It is a heist.

That's all it is.

You take a heist and re-flavor it.

Don't call it a heist, your players might.

But don't call it a heist.

Think about what makes heists good in movies, TV shows, video games, whatever.

And start to incorporate some of those into this type of secondary objective.

There's going to be a video that I'm doing coming out next month about what you as a DM should steal from the Uncharted series.

And if you've never played them, oh my God.

Go buy a PS4 and go play Uncharted 1 through 4.

It is a fantastic experience that will make you a better DM because of the sheer action packed storytelling that's in those games.

And most of the encounters, uh, specifically in Uncharted 4, I believe, it starts out strong with a heist.

One of the first things that you do in the game is a heist.

And it is such a good encounter and so many twists and turns.

That type of secondary objective to the combat encounters, right?

Steal an artifact and get out.

Oh, it's so spicy.

It's like, it's like just fat droplets of Sriracha all over your D&D campaign.

So, it's a good one.

I promise.

And then finally, number one.

Magical or non-magical disruption.

Specifically, right? Imagine this scenario.

The players enter the layer of a of a technomancer, right? An individual that knows how to melt magic and constructs to make their own, uh, horrifying creations.

They're fighting through the different areas of this place and eventually,

they get to the end.

They get to one of the final encounters.

The thing is, there is this endless stream of constructs.

And on top of that, there are these glyphs that spontaneously appear on the floor.

And they can tell, maybe the wizard, somebody with high Arcana, can tell that those glyphs are being created by these modrons, these, uh, tiny constructs that are sort of floating up in the air.

They're creating these glyphs.

Or maybe it's just mechanical servants that are doing that.

And then it's up to the party.

Well, this adds a dangerous element, but it's something that we can disarm.

It's different from the one I talked about before.

Because that's just an elemental issue, right?

The earthquakes shattering the ground.

This is something the party can address.

So when you run an encounter like that that has either magical or non-magical, it could just be a continuation of mechanical traps that continue to go off.

firing arrows or darts or the like.

Right, those things continue to happen when you give the players the agency to stop the secondary objective or to stop this environmental hazard.

That is such a positive impact on their psychological state during the game.

Because what they hear and what they see is the DM put a really hard encounter in front of us.

But then when they make it easier because of the actions they took, that feels so good as a player.

So give your players opportunities, especially with this type of secondary objective, disable it and let them disable it.

Don't be like, oh, well, I designed so many cool things.

No, stop.

Okay?

You'll get you you have an entire campaign, okay?

You'll get to design so many cool things in the future.

So for me to you, I'm giving you permission to let your let your baby die.

Okay?

Put it on the altar, sacrifice it to the player's enjoyment.

Because the thing is, I guarantee you two sessions from now, you're going to have me a better idea, brother.

And you're going to be like, hot diggity dog, damn, that's fantastic.

I love that.

Maybe if you're from the South, you'll South US, you'll think that way.

But the point is, let the players succeed.

Let them destroy the traps. Let them get away with it.

Let them negate the point of there being a secondary objective.

Because it feels good when they succeed.

We've gone through our 10 different things. We've gone through the 10 different secondary objectives.

There is a lot of good stuff in here.

If you have any questions about any of this, please, in the description down below, we have a Discord server.

We'd love for you to join.

Uh, and we'd love to hear your thoughts on secondary objectives.

So, please, go ahead and join that.

Make sure to subscribe if you enjoyed this.

There's going to be more coming down the pipeline for sure.

In February, we're going to be, uh, well, we're going to be introducing something that I'm very excited to introduce, which is Kingdoms and Castles.

It is a card game that I designed from the ground up, currently only playable in Tabletop Simulator, but it's got art, it's got all this cool stuff.

Love it.

It is so much fun.

And we're going to be hosting a tournament for the players of the RWA campaigns for $200 cash prize.

So please, subscribe to see that.

Go to Twitch.

Follow us on Twitch.

Join the Discord because I'd love to hear, uh, what you have to say about secondary objectives and how you use them in your games.

So, with that.

Thank you so much for watching.

Thank you so much for playing D&D.

And honestly, if you're a DM watching this video because you want to improve your games, thank you.

Your players, they might not say it, but they appreciate you.

Any DM that's willing to take those extra steps, regardless of their experience level, to make the game better for their players.

They're a good DM.

Regardless of how new they are.

So thank you.

So with that, don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, all that good stuff.

Excited to see you in the next one.

And, uh, with that, thanks for watching.

And we'll see you next time.

I didn't do my vocal warm-ups.

Red leather, yellow leather.

I didn't do those.

Oops.