Master THIS skill to be a better DM

This is incredibly helpful. Remembering your legendary actions, lair actions, legendary resistances, minor minions, etc is very important

Small tip, if you get to a situation where a single enemy is left with no chance leaving the following fight to be a pointless slog, just have them surrender. If they're an intelligent creature they probaly want to live and understand they can't win. It can be a good source of RP and info for the party (also a really good way to help your players understand what's happening).

"The tension is gone" That is always a good time for the DM to consider the bad guys running away or surrendering. They often die anyway trying to get away but its more satisfying for the PCs if they get to ace the last monster in free shots rather than waiting for their turns. Takes less time too.

This is probably one of the better pieces of DM advice I’ve seen - built in with excellent examples of problem and good encounters.

Our DM utilized these tips last weekend, before this video came out. I can vouch these tips work. We were one attack away from a TPK.

Love the inclusion of environmental effects and the region essentially getting a turn. I’m a huge fan of dynamic fields of combat, since players and GMs can use the effects to advantage their side (a fire can spread and cause damage to structures, smoke can cause blindness or stunned effects, and the whole place can be used to intentionally cause characters or monsters harm).

I recently found out just how effective burrow speeds can be, Because it's effectively a flying speed with cover You can infiltrate the backlines quite easily Making the party freak out as they have to deal with this enemy before it disappears again.

Mild take: Players should be responsible for hosting and scheduling, not GMs. This promotes session engagement and delegates responsibility in a reasonable way. As a GM, it is extremely rare for me to host a game at my place. I’d much rather go to someone else’s place instead.

Overall, solid advice. Never allow a party to focus their fire. That's always a cakewalk recipe

"Say it louder for the folks in the back!" This is such a useful video, great stuff! Also, I need that shirt!

I'm fond of spicing up a combat by adding motion. it provides the need for the players to spend actions on things other than just multiple attacks and flanking the bad guy. A chase scene across two speeding carriages has challenges and even "lair actions" of a sort. Likewise ye olde rooftop chase. The trick to both of these is to make sure a player doesn't get left behind or steal the scene (if they can fly, for example).

Like for an appropriate shirt for a wednesday, my dudes.

The same is true for players honestly in my opinion. If you want to make a character who turns up to fights and gets stuff done then all you really need to do is think about how you are going to use your Action, Bonus Action and Reaction on every turn if you can. It matters way more than trying to milk the max damage out of any specific thing, is a lot less gimmicky and generally just feels more fun imo. I play the game to interact with the world. If I get 3 ways to interact with the world every turn, best believe I'm gonna try to do all 3.

One of my favorite tricks for dealing with the players focusing fire is sacrificing an underling as a meat shield. This can be a devout kobold cultist throwing itself in front of a hit for its dragon master, or the orc warlord shoving his goblin underling into the path of a coming arrow. Can't use it all the time, but it's a fun one when it works, and can seriously screw with a parties established combat rhythm

I've totally fallen in the hole of just "add more monsters l" and still struggling to be a threat. Love this! Defd going to try these ideas. Helps a ton! Thank you?

Something that I love doing if my players are cool with it, is letting the enemies fill in the places between player turns. My players roll there initiative stack and my monsters roll their's then we alternate between stacks. It's not super realistic, but my players loved it. They call it "hard mode"

Once in a while you do have to have smart enemies focus on the squishy characters. Mainly to keep them honest. Unusually large parties might be able to afford to assign a bodyguard, but I've only had that happen to my Wizard once in decades of playing. Wizards have defensive spells, and they should be scared into using those precious spell slots (and Actions) to cast them. The hardest combats are going to be the ones where the monsters get the party on the back foot. In a Boss+minions fight having the Boss engage the Fighter and the minions harass the other characters works well, as does having the minions mob the Fighter while the boss lobs stuff from the rear.

To add to the lair action idea, one of my old dms had legendary actions for important boss fights. These legendary actions usually manifested in a sort of special attack or buff that activated when the boss hit a certain hp threshold. It changed the flow of battle and made winning actually very dangerous sometimes. One of my characters nearly lost her construct pet just because it got caught in an ice explosion. Her pet nearly dying also got her angry enough to use her abilities to shift her rapier into a greatsword that split the boss in half.

Being a Critter i've seen Matt Mercer do this to masterful effect for the players. In my opinion anyway.

That's a thumbnail straight out of Avatar :D Sokka got the shrooms!