Monsters VS Meta-Gamers | D&D DM Tips

DM Tips How to Handle Meta Gaming Monsters! Homebrew your monsters to keep your players on their toes and thinking critically. Dungeon Masters in D&D have SO many tools to create homebrew monsters that are "outside the box"! ⏬ More Content ⏬

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=== 🔗 DC Links ===

=== 📍 Credits ===
🖱️ Video Editor: Zack Newman

#DC20

#DnD #DungeonsandDragons #D&D

[TheDungeonCoach]

Let me know what "Meta" Questions you all have! I'm here to help!

[zendikarisparkmage]

Nothing says "Wow, we COULD have defeated that dragon" like having that dragon defeated by nameless NPC guards.

[fanca]

Hands down the most underrated channel about dnd.

[scatterbug]

Coach: "I don't mess around!"
Also Coach: proceeds to mess around.
:D

[OneNationRestorations]

Players - Man, that owlbear wiped the floor with us. But I thought the book said...
Dungeon Coach- No!

[bakured]

Players: Oh please, goblins? This is gonna be easy!
Me, who homebrews literally everything to be lethal: n a h

[evanbosco]

Meta-gaming, HOT TOPIC!
Haha, Boxana called me again last night. She hopes you're happy with your new outside the box lifestyle. I told her I'd wish you well. :D

Keep on keeping on DC!

[schylerfontenot]

Love these little short videos! They’re always good tips. Gotta add though, my favs are still your long videos with lots of tips :)

[ArdisFoxxArt]

I'll never get tired of seeing you laugh at "describetion" lol

[edwardp]

A player pulling out the Monster Manual mid game to check monster stats is super not cool. I'd talk to that player about it and if it continued I'd cut them loose. Homebrewing is fun and awesome and I do it sometimes, but honestly it adds too much time to prep for me to do it a lot.

[chrisbarrett]

One of the things I did in a campaign I was running is I used base stats of monsters but I made them look like something else. Example I turned wyverns into giant wasps. Players didn't know what to do once it started using its breath weapon.

[williamozier]

Here's a trick I've used as a general meta-gaming, deviating, and railroading management. When as the DM I know they're using metagaming to make decisions, I ask them to make a WIS check. If they do then I break the 4th wall and just tell em metagame style 'no dudes this is where teh adventure is, just trust me as a DM this is going somewhere'. Now they still have agency and decision making, but I then give a nice little XP award to those who follow the advice, not as pay off to the player but representing teh adventurer is honing their instincts and judgeent on where the adventure is. I dont care what anyone says, murder hoboing and deviating doesnt deserve experience points because characetrs doing that are expressely NOT challenging themselves or honing their actual in experience and skills.

[dndsl]

One thing I've done is introduce a monster through unreliable NPCs. In the first campaign I ever DMed, the players were asked to help deal with a monster problem in a small village. Most of these villagers had never left their local area. They didn't know the difference between a goblin and an orc and troll. To them, each was just a bigger version of the other.

[loganreed]

Lovely advice. I remember using one of my favourite monsters the Frost Salamander (they just have awesome mechanics ... like their weakness is also a strength) and a player shouted out I FOUND IT! OMG DON'T DO THIS!!!

I didn't even have to say anything the other players jumped on him about it super fast and told him that was a no no.

[mitchelledwards]

After DMing for 3 years I find it hard not the grab the MM when my brother is DMing for our party now. This is AMAZING advice

[dondumitru]

As far as surprising your characters with encounters which are harder than they expect, be very careful: Any time that players are headed for any encounter which might result in a character death, the DM really needs to telegraph to their players that there is danger. If the level 10 characters just walk into the kobold lair, and it turns out that completely unknown to them the kobolds are radioactive mutant CR 18 kobolds, and the players TPK halfway thru round 2 due to no-save particle radiation damage, that is not fun for anybody. Clearly signal to players that there is danger, and then don't pull any punches if the players throw caution to the wind and rush in.

See, I like that characters ran from a dragon, even if it turns out that the dragon was scaled down to be a reasonable challenge for them. They don't know that the dragon was scaled down, they ran, so the DM should just go with it. If the characters encounter the dragon again later, leave the dragon scaled down, or scale the dragon back up, or whatever. Add the ran-away tale to the narrative and make it epic: An NPC bard singing in town about how they bravely ran away! Have the townsfolk be disappointed that the brave adventurers are not so brave, have tales told later of how an NPC party slew the dragon and got the reward from the King. Make it turn out that it wasn't really a dragon after all, it was an imp using a wand of illusion and it put one over on the party.

[michaeldaborn]

Very on brand to be homebrewing the Describe descriptions!

[philswiftdestroyerofworlds]

You know what's meta?

Buff Necromancers.

They certainly deadlift

Never skip leg day because they are constantly being chased out of towns

Have to have a crazy good diaphragm and lungs to breathe around those rotting corpses and not pass out every six minutes

They can raise a family, imagine carrying that responsibilty on your shoulders,
Gotta be good for the back

And you already know what kind of "power" such an attractive master of the dark arts has hidden away under all that physique...






























A big brain lmao.

[joshuabecklake]

I would add a simple loud screech to an owlbear, DC unknown yet but all that fail cover ears and curl in pain if failed losing actions until free from the pain. The foretelling would be a simple breeze around it sounds like a roaring gale

[RIVERSRPGChannel]

Good topic
I like to do the same thing to make the players think and stay in character