Turn Slogs into Showdowns: Making Memorable and Epic Finales for Your D&D Campaign

Some listener questions come in and just HAVE to be answered. This was the case with a question that came in from longtime friend of the show, Dr. DM himself, Jason. His son’s school D&D club was planning a seriously epic finale to multiple campaign tables in a stupendous one-shot. Everything was gong well until the head DM brought their BBEG… we’ll let Jason tell you the rest.In this episode, Tony, Chris, and Dave sit down to discuss what makes a good finale, a good BBEG, and best practices for collaborating with multiple DMs. Not surprisingly, it always comes down to communication. 1:50 Dr. DM’s question about an insane BBEG for his son’s school D&D Club Finale.7:00 The concept of the finale game sounds AWESOME! But if you’re doing a collaboration, you have to collaborate.8:45 Benchmarking when creating homebrewed monsters.10:00 The BBEG should matter in each of the separate campaigns storylines.11:05 In our Curse of Strahd finale, the players mowed through 2000 hit points in a session… that’s still 128,000 to go.14:25 Monsters aren’t just bags of hit points to soak up damage.20:30 With collaborative storytelling, keep lines of communication open. 22:15 Encounters and finales are meant to be challenging and epic… not impossible. Make it so that they have to really think their way through the encounter, not just swing their biggest attack every time.30:05 In the end, it’s always about communication around the table and behind the screen.31:55 What is the theme and story for the finale?34:15 “Appropriately-Sized Encounters.” If there is no win condition, then you’re just whipping on your players.37:35 A finale, even if it spans different worlds, should matter to the players in each of their individual campaigns as well.40:15 A campaign that wipes in a TPK isn’t necessarily as cool as you think it might be.43:00 Final Thoughts.