How to Use Conditions in D&D for Better Story Telling
Tanner Weyland (00:01.046)
Hello and welcome to How to be a Better DM, the official podcast of, wait, I should probably not say that anymore, shouldn't I?
Justin Lewis (00:09.162)
So as of this recording, you should still say, well.
See, that's part of the logistics that I wanted to talk about tomorrow, but I'd say just say it until we decide on anything specific tomorrow with Kayden.
Tanner Weyland (00:27.446)
Okay, cool. Sorry, you'll have to cut this all out. Okay. Hello and welcome. Oh, sorry. You're good.
Justin Lewis (00:33.352)
No, it's fine.
Justin Lewis (00:37.354)
.
Tanner Weyland (00:40.534)
Hello and welcome to How to be a Better DM, the official podcast of Monsters .Rent. My name is Tanner Weyland and I'm here with Justin. Say hi, Justin.
Justin Lewis (00:52.042)
Hey, how's it going?
Tanner Weyland (00:54.644)
Oh man, so good. So good. How are you?
Justin Lewis (00:58.79)
I am recovering from moving, which is the worst. So I'm actually doing pretty good, though. What about you?
Tanner Weyland (01:09.366)
Good, yeah, you know, it's, my wife and I are trying to get back to the gym, which of course is its own bag of stuff. You know, you go, you're like, oh, there's so many people. I feel so self -conscious, but it's been good. So we got back from that today, but yeah, excited for that, because we used to be really into it, and then we moved last year, and we just haven't been, you know, for a whole year.
Uh, but yeah, we're doing better now with that. So excited about that. And I'm more excited to talk about our topic today, which is conditions. Now, specifically, I'm thinking like, uh, conditions that affect the status of the player, like exhausted, petrification, prone, poisoned, things like that. Uh, Justin, tell me, uh, what has your experience been either as a DM or a player in regards to conditions? Like, have they been a positive, a negative or
or something not even worth mentioning for you.
Justin Lewis (02:12.554)
I think they've been sort of both. Naturally, when you're a player, if a condition is foisted upon you, it's generally a bad thing, right? There are few good conditions. As a DM, my experience with conditions has really mostly been in combat. So I'm really excited today to talk about possibly ways that conditions can be.
Tanner Weyland (02:31.358)
Mm -hmm.
Justin Lewis (02:42.458)
expanded upon in combat and possibly outside of combat.
Tanner Weyland (02:49.414)
Agreed because I think that's a real issue, right? Where, uh, when a condition is done for the DM, it's just another, you know, plate to spin. And for the players, it's usually like against them because frankly, I think we can agree on this. A lot of time players have seen that it's not worth specking in, in the ability to cause conditions. That's not always true, but I do find that a lot of players are like, Oh,
If it's an enemy we can kill pretty quickly, it's not worth, you know, blinding them or something. And if it's a big boss, chances are their resistances are too high or something. You know what I mean?
Justin Lewis (03:31.176)
Absolutely, you definitely, this is really going into the mechanics of gameplay and this is probably, I would say as DMs, you're probably either good with the story aspect or the mechanical aspect.
Justin Lewis (03:52.042)
Or if you're a lucky DM, sorry, I just had to yawn there for a second. Or if you're a lucky DM, you're good with both. And this is definitely more commonly used with the mechanical aspects of D &D where you have to, you know, I saw on a TikTok the other day where you look at your player character sheets and understand what they're going to use. And then you create monsters that would...
Tanner Weyland (03:57.366)
You get.
Justin Lewis (04:21.21)
Challenge them, but also be excellent opportunities for them to use certain things. So for example, you know, like in the case that you just said, someone who needs to be blinded, it would be a good idea if you have a character who can use spells to blind to maybe put something in there that blinding them would be a really, really good idea, right?
Tanner Weyland (04:37.588)
Mm -hmm.
Tanner Weyland (04:42.902)
Yeah, exactly. Right. Because there's going to be, you know, I think if you open yourself up to, you know, using these more and more creatively, then you're and we'll get to this later, then you're going to find that combats are more interesting and role playing and the consequences from combat are going to be a lot more interesting too. But before we get into that, I'd like to just quickly mention the sponsor of this episode, Magic Mind.
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