How to Use Conditions in D&D for Better Story Telling

How to Be a Better DM: Dungeon Master Tips for the DM Newbie, the Hobbyist and the Forever DM

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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Justin Lewis (05:36.842)

Absolutely. Speaking of conditions, there are two conditions that I think in real life we've all, well, maybe three, we've all sort of dealt with. First of all, exhaustion, right? That's a condition we'll be talking about later. And in D &D, it's very severe. Magic Mind is great for exhaustion with a lot of really helpful ingredients, including ashwagandha, lion's mane mushrooms. And, you know, it's full of adaptogens and

Tanner Weyland (05:52.296)

Yep.

Justin Lewis (06:06.826)

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Justin Lewis (06:12.458)

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Tanner Weyland (06:51.998)

Mm -hmm.

Justin Lewis (07:10.058)

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Tanner Weyland (08:18.934)

Perfect. Thanks, Magic Mind. Now to continue with our talk about conditions, like I really want to dive into the ways that they could be utilized better. Because let's take exhaustion. When was the last time that you used exhaustion like against your party or or with any campaign that you've been in?

Justin Lewis (08:47.338)

Honestly, it's been a very long time. And I say very long time probably because I don't actually remember. I think I might have used it within the last six months, but they probably only gained one level of exhaustion, which is still something, but also in the context of what they were doing, not very much. And personally, I think my issue is,

I'm sort of afraid of the consequences myself, right? And this kind of goes back to what I was saying about needing to understand the mechanics because when you tell a player that they have a point of exhaustion and then you throw them into a combat encounter, that could seriously, they're at risk of dying, right? Just because their roles are gonna be so hampered.

Tanner Weyland (09:19.752)

Yes.

Tanner Weyland (09:39.988)

Yeah.

Tanner Weyland (09:44.758)

Yeah, and that's kind of what it, that's what keeps a lot of DMs from approaching or utilizing exhaustion. I think it's that, you know, just like, oh my goodness, this is kind of big. But then also it's the fact that I think most DMs think, oh, this is mostly going to happen if they stay awake longer than 24 hours. And how often does that happen? Like, frankly,

there's usually enough going on in the story that they're having multiple combats, like in a row or just like in a day. And so they're just begging to have a long rest by the end of it so that they can get, you know, there's, there's everything back. Right. And so if you think of it kind of within that box, it's exhaustion feels limiting. It feels like it's unlikely to happen, but think about it from, from the terms of.

like an adventure, right? When would you be exhausted? It would be when you're going through really extreme weather conditions or something that's physically or mentally, you know, hard on the players or taxing. So think about this. Your players are on kind of a more an expedition type like campaign where they're traveling, you know, through jungles, forests, things like that. Those are perfect times to

to have them get the exhausted condition. And if you don't know, exhaustion has six levels. At the first level, you get disadvantage on ability check. Second, speed halved. Third, disadvantage on attack rolls and saving throws. Fourth, hit point maximum halved. Fifth, speed reduced to zero. So they basically can't move. And then sixth, death. So that's where like...

It can get really serious very quickly because the first one's like, Oh, disadvantage on ability checks. That sucks to speed half. Okay. You can still make it work after that. That's it's kind of a lot. And, but it's kind of a really cool mechanic because think about it. You know, if your players are kind of going through this journey and you know, you're like, Oh, you're in a really cold, you're on a cold tundra and the winds, you know, biting at them and you know, roll, uh,

Tanner Weyland (12:00.01)

role constitution saving throw to see if you do okay. And, and basically it's like, Oh, it gets harder the longer they're out there and then they start failing. And some players are doing worse than others, you know, like the, uh, the mages who don't have much constitution, they're over there just, you know, they're walking a half speed. Whereas the, uh, the barbarian and everyone else is doing pretty good. That's a great storytelling opportunity and they haven't fought a single monster, right?

Then if you do throw in like a combat then that you know kind of ups everything You know the the stakes and I think that's just a great thing and it doesn't even have to be when they're on an expedition think about if they were in the city and They were you know They were supposed to go through the sewers and kind of wade through the sewer water to find you know Missing girl or something right wouldn't that be a great time to be like, okay?

real constitution saving throw because they're wading through like this stuff. They've got, you know, it's really dark kind of rough conditions and they didn't have to be out in the wilderness. It was right underneath their feet. You know what I'm saying?

Justin Lewis (13:11.594)

Yeah, absolutely. I love the picture you've painted. If you need a great example of this situation, you can think back. If you haven't had a chance, Critical Rules, second campaign, spoiler alert, there's a part where the Mighty Nein are basically, they find themselves in a tundra situation. So really, really cold. And they gain

levels of exhaustion because they're traveling through this cold situation. They're stepping through deep snow. That's a really great example. But I really love the picture Tanner painted. You if you need to think about this in simpler terms, maybe you can think of Oregon Trail, right? The video game that we all played in computer class when we were younger. Or, you know, the Donner Party. Like these people are real life examples of

Tanner Weyland (13:55.988)

Yep.

Justin Lewis (14:08.842)

having to essentially deal with levels of exhaustion, right? Even up to the point of death. Now, another alternative rule that you might be interested in using, and I sort of just came up with this, and I don't know if this would be a good idea, but allowing spell casters to cast two spells in one turn in exchange for receiving a point of exhaustion. And...

Tanner Weyland (14:35.092)

down.

Justin Lewis (14:35.69)

You know, you might play with that a little bit depending on the spell level or whatnot and obviously who they're fighting, but that might be an interesting way to basically be like, yeah, you can definitely cast another spell. It's going to cost you this much. And you know, you're actually going to feel the effects because now, you know, their roles are going to be at disadvantage and then soon their speeds are going to be halved.

and things like that, but that might be another interesting way to add more exhaustion into combat itself.

Tanner Weyland (15:02.846)

Yep.

Tanner Weyland (15:08.31)

Yeah, I love that, especially where, you know, if you want to homebrew a few things, then I mean, not only spell casters, but it's like, okay, let's have, you know, the the melee characters, they can make maybe, you know, two, maybe even three actions.

You know, in, in, uh, in a turn, but they're going to increase the thing of, uh, a level of exhaustion. And while that might feel like, Oh, that's broken. It's like, well, they need to have a long rest to get rid of that. So that means until they have that next long rest, they, they get disadvantaged on their ability checks. You know, that's, that's a rough time. Um, so play around with that. I don't want to spend all of our time on exhaust exhaustion, but I think it's a classic example of.

You know, of DMs feeling like it's just not practical when it could have so much story implications, you know, and I just love it. Um, but let's move on to some of the other ones like poison. Uh, if you're poisoned that that's common condition, right? You're fighting some spiders in the forest. Uh, they start singing and they take, and you take not only the normal damage, but also some point at poison damage. I think that this one, you could really stand to do a lot more homebrew.

with it, right? Where, where it's like, okay, yeah, they're poisoned, but it's not just adding points of damage, right? It's like, oh, it's poisoned, but the effect is every this many hours, you know, they take a temporary point of condition damage, right? Where like, there's a lot of different effects that poison can have in real life. And we should let that actually show, you know, when someone becomes poisoned.

So that that's kind of my two cents on that, where it's like, okay, make the what happens, play around with it. Don't always make it just straight damage that happens every, you know, every six seconds, but also make it have interesting effects and also interesting cures. Right. Cause if you have that kind of situation where it's like, Oh, this poison isn't going away, but also you don't have to solve it immediately. Cause it's not going to kill you in a minute.

Tanner Weyland (17:24.566)

then that gives your party a chance to you know, that it gives the chance for the ranger to have an Aragorn moment and be like, okay, I'm going to use roll nature and see if I can find these herbs that will heal it, right? Or something like that.

Justin Lewis (17:40.938)

Absolutely. One thing I will say around herbs is, well first of all with poisons as a whole, you need to kind of make the punishment fit the crime. And that's the weirdest way of saying, make sure the poison fits the level the characters are at. So if they're higher level, then if the poison is really going to like impact them at all, it should probably be kind of quest worthy. Whereas if they're lower level,

Tanner Weyland (18:08.342)

Yeah.

Justin Lewis (18:09.418)

it makes sense for them to get bit by, you know, just, you know, a lower level spider and have to find an herb in the same forest they're in to fix it, right? Because it's going to be a little bit harder for them. Also on that note, play around with the location of the antidote relative to the location of the poison or venom, I guess, technically speaking. In D &D it's the same thing, but, you know,

Tanner Weyland (18:20.66)

Yes.

Tanner Weyland (18:32.97)

Yes.

Justin Lewis (18:37.034)

you might put the antidote in the same forest, or you might put it somewhere else. If you put it somewhere else, have the presence of mind to make sure that the effects of the poison don't outright kill them before they have a chance to get the antidote, right? Like Tana was saying, make it pressing, but not pressing to the point that they die. Last thing I'd say is, in real life, poisons, they sort of...

Tanner Weyland (18:49.118)

Yeah.

Justin Lewis (19:04.906)

kind of overcome your body, right? And Lord of the Rings is a great example. Frodo descends more and more into becoming a wraith, right, because he was poisoned. At first, you know, his effects, his symptoms were not as severe. So if you're home brewing it, that might be something you could also play around with. You know, however long it takes, their symptoms start to become more severe because the poison is reaching different parts of the body.

Tanner Weyland (19:35.03)

Yeah. And I think there's just to speak also to the effects. There's some effects that's like, Hey, you could totally have so much fun with this. Like, think about it. Does a barbarian need, you know, uh, do they need charisma? Not really. But imagine if they got poisoned with something that kind of eats away at their flesh, or at least just models it like, like it makes it modeled where they just look bad. And so like over time, day by day, they're looks are looking worse.

And they need that kind of antidote and they don't know where it is. And that's a great story thing where, oh, they've got to do this whole thing. Like this is built into the character now where they're looking...