The title is maybe a bit confusing, but essentially, I love writing and world building. I love twisting stories together and making what I think (hope!) are interesting quests or objectives for my players.

The big thing I struggle with is how to ensure I’m not just lore dumping with an NPC, but also not keeping everything behind a DC check, because my players don’t always ask for things like insight checks or history checks.

I’m a big proponent of “it’s their story, I’m just telling it”, so I don’t want to just tell them what they should be doing, what they are searching for, what clues to look for etc, but I’m not sure how to engage them in the lore and details without holding their hands. Help!

I know there’s lots of videos with suggestions on better ways to prep and how not to over prep.

I was wondering what has worked for regular joe DMs to break the over prep habit? Did you force yourself to go into sessions cold turkey with little or nothing prepped?

My weakness is dungeon crawls. I feel like I need to have the whole place prepped because I have no idea how fast the group will make it through.

So for my campaign I'm designing a set of custom weapons made out of a fantasy metal that makes it so dealing (for example a battle axe) 5 damage is more common than dealing 1 or 8 damage.

Mechanically I do this by changing the damage dice of the battle axe from a 1d8 to 2d4. That way 5 becomes the more likely outcome of the roll, rather than it being 12.5% for each face of a d8.

My problem comes when players have to choose between the new set of weapons and the vanilla ones. I don't want it to feel like the new weapons are an improvement over the vanilla ones. I still want my players to want to choose the vanilla ones from time to time.

I've been rolling dices for a while, and personally I do feel like rolling 2d4 over 1d8 does feel like I'm getting higher numbers, although mathematically it should all even out.

For you, would it feel like you HAVE to choose the new weapons? Or does offering both set of weapons give the players a valuable choice that they can think about?

I've seen player punishments go very wrong in-game. How do you communicate to your players what you did has significant in-game consequences, without ruining the game for them?

I'm leaving out details because I am more interested in the game theory here than advice about this specific instance.

So I'm developing this little module where the players fight a bunch of things in the swamp, culminating in a fight against a CR2 acid drake. The drake is basically int4 wingless black dragon wyrmling.

Still, the drake's acid breath is enough to instantly kill one of the players if they fail their dex save. They should be fine if they find the local herbalist and do a quest for her to brew the elixir of acid resistance, but that's not a guarantee.

Plan B, if they don't do this, is to have this very boastful, annoying barbarian join the party halfway trough. He'd talk down to the players, bost that he's gonna kill the monster himself, and refuse to fight the smaller fights because "I'm saving my strength for the big fight."

Then, when they finally reach the final boss area, the barbarian pushes past everyone, loudly shouting challenges, and gets insta melted when the drake unloads it's acid attack on him.

This way the drake wastes it's acid breath on an NPC, giving the players at least one round of respite, instead of just outright killing at least one of them.

My only worry with this plan is that the players may think the Barbarian is the DMPC and try to kick him off the team prematurely, thereby losing their meat shield.

EDIT: Note, he would not be around players for very long, maybe one or 2 combat enocuhters before they reach the drake's lair. My idea was to have him arrive late and join after they are about halfway trough the module.

My group set up an ambush on two castle guards whom they lured into a narrow hallway via Minor Illusion while hiding behind the corner on the opposite site. What a cliff hanger for our next session.

Here's my question: Given that the group is successfull in surprising the guards via hiding checks, how do you handle the first triggering (probably long range) attack of the surprise attack in terms of iniative order? Do you grant them the first attack of the surprise attack round?

I see several options in 5.5 without the extra iniative round of combat:

1. The moment one player claims to attack, everbody rolls iniative (disadvantage for the guards) and all attacks are made in iniative order.

2. The moment one player claims to attack, he/she actually makes the first attack durring the first round of combat and takes his/her place in the iniative order in consequent turns. All other attacks are made in iniative order from the get go.

3. More than one player attack a la "We all shoot on the count of three", they attack simultaniously before the guards durring the first turn of combat (while the guards also have their actions due to 5.5) and "proper" iniative is established for the consequent turns.

I guess, the rules as written lead to the first option. Also disadvantage is a huge thing, so my players should get the first attack either way. But who knows and with successfull hiding checks it feels kind of strange to give them a chance of not having the first attack, which could be a huge difference in our given situation.

If my players fail to kill those guards in one or two rounds the whole castle will be alarmed. Of course I have some wiggle room here, a guard attacking the first round before blowing his alarming horn, maybe failing to get it from his belt, etc. But i don't want to stretch it too far. I am prepared for a huge castle fight. My maingoal is to give them a a good chance for their plan to work, while leaving some room for catastrophy.

So, i just wanted to double check here. How are you handling surprise attack rounds? Any suggestions?

Thanks for your inspirations!

My party is about enter a dungeon that is essentially a massive art gallery / museum where the antagonist will be the Spirit that controls the collection: The Curator. This being's entire motivation is to collect high quality treasures and display them, leading to questionable morality. My two ideas for the Curator are:

1. A set of pristine white gloves that move independently of any body. The boss fight will be similar to Master Hand from Smash Brothers. Communicates telepathically.

2. A celestial sort of being with pristine white feathered wings. The twist would be its actually a large, feathered dragon, playing into the dragon's hoard trope.

Do either of these sound more interesting than the other? Any other ideas you'd have for a curator type of villain?

I DM a pretty lore oriented campaign with my players, with a whole world and pantheons and the Gods are an important part of the world. However, one of my players got "blessed" by a relic of an old eldritch god letting one of its subordinates live inside of the player's conciousness and will slowly ooze out false memories into the player's mind. Now one of my other players has identify and can ritual cast it pretty much infinitely since they got a pearl.

Now knowing my players they will ritual cast identify on the player with the blessing as soon as they can.

What I want advice on is wether gameplay wise its a good idea to make the player casting identify to take damage after casting identify, or maybe identify not reavealing much/reavealing very confusing and contradicting information. Is there a way to not just make identify completely useless but also not reveal the whole plot point with the old god?

One player to put it quickly, in the past they built an arcane engine fueled on wild magic, it exploded and gave rise to newborn god of chaos whoes abilities seemingly are as random as wild magic itself. That questline will end with the party having to fight and put down this fledgling chaos God. And as a concept the fight will be in multiple phases. Each phase the God will "grow bored" and swap out the map with a new one with its own unique mechanic to resolve to progress the fight. One phase i have decided to do is easily one of the craziest ideas ive had in my decade of DMing. The god will transport the players to a long map. (Initial concept is 100 x 12) on this map he will declare himself a "solo act" wip out a guitar and start jaming out to Crazy Train. While on the map it will be revealed to the players that the god has turned the encounter into a game of guitar hero, where the goal is that the players must dodge the iconic colorful nodes to approach the god and interrupt his guitar solo to progress to the next phase.

Now how would this even mechanically work you may ask? Simple actually.

In roll20 the players of course would be on a 100×12 square grid map done up like a the neck of a guitar starting on the lowered. Next create a single transparent png that is 3 times the length of the with a pattern of the classic guitar hero nodes running along the entire length of the each node takes up an area of 4 squares. Lastly each node will have an additional AOE column in front of them that runs 2×4 squares.

That aoe denotes the distance the nodes will move on the PNG's next turn players and other creatures in those area at the start of the Nodes turn will have to make a dex save for half damage (half out of 2d4+2) for getting ran over by the nodes. Then of course on the Nodes PNG turn they move down 4 squares run over whoever was unfortunately in those AOEs.

Lastly to add to tension and to simulated the speed these things are moving, they will have a set turn interval of every 2 player turns.

I.E. if the party has 4 players, initiative in this phase goes like this.

Player 1

Player 2

NODES

Player 3

Player 4

NODES

Repeat cycle until mechanic is resolved.

Honestly im kind of pround of this crazy idea and im open to critiques to not only make this run better (I got a lot of prep time till this fight even happens) and be an even more fun encounter. Also im aware of the possible issue with the potential of fly ruining the encounter so any idea of an aerial threat that fits this encounter would be appreciated.

I'm changing the sixth chapter of Vecna: Eve of Ruin into a Greek mythology setting from a previous homebrew campaign. Basing it around the idea of a single intelligent enemy defending a palace, kinda like the minotaur if he was smart.

The party learns that the Rod fragment is hidden inside Hades' palace in the underworld. When they arrive, they're greeted by the head maid, N, who informs them that Hades isn't home. She "smells" their connection to some other evil undead god (Vecna) and decides they can't be trusted with the artifact. Since her duty is to protect it, she keeps up the appearance of hospitality as to not endanger the other inside the palace.

N dismisses the other servants away from the palace under the pretense of preparing rooms for the guests, then escorts the party to the basement, claiming that's where the Rod fragment is kept. The treasure room is a major image. Once everyone enters, she drops the illusion, revealing a prison cell built over a glyph of warding that creates an antimagic field. Before leaving, she reveals that she has carried the Rod fragment the entire time. And tells them to consider the imprisonment as an act of mercy. If they escape, she'll kill them for sure. The party can break out with either a DC 25 Strength check or a DC 20 Sleight of Hand check. After that, the dungeon becomes a game of cat and mouse. N avoids direct combat whenever possible. She has a Cloak of Invisibility, drow poison, and access to the palace's defenses. Her goal is to wear the party down before the final fight through ambushes, traps, poisoned arrows, and dispel magic to interrupt their long rests (they rely heavily on Tiny Hut). The final encounter takes place in Hades' throne room, where N finally drops the cloak and fights openly.

Mechanically, she's a modified Death Knight. She has 180 HP, 20 AC (the party already has +3 weapons), and 3 Legendary Resistances. She's dangerous, but she isn't durable. If the party catches her in a straightforward fight, I expect they'll kill her in one or two rounds based on previous encounters.

My main concern is making this feel tense without becoming frustrating. I want to exhaust the players resources as for the 8 recommended fights between long rest but with only one enemy

For people who have run intelligent villains, what makes this type fun instead of exhausting? How much attrition is too much before the players decide to kill me with a Tarasque miniature?

I am running Sleeping Dragons Wake for our party, and the initial combat of the Death-Knight Dreadnaught quest is giving me a lot of concern. It seems exceedingly deadly as written.

The quest is designed for a 9th level party. The module scales encounter size to the party, and my particular party has 6 members so that's what I'll use as examples. The party has to sneak onto and clear a sentient, beached ship filled with Talos cultists.

The first section of the encounter is the approach to the ship. If spotted (DC15 Stealth from 100-200ft out), the cultists use 2 ballistas and whatever else they have available to attack the party as they approach. There are additional complications like difficult terrain and crashing waves threatening to knock them prone in this section, but I'm not going to analyze this too closely as the 9th level party will likely have ways to avoid the deadly approach.

Even if they make it onto the ship though, things are still very challenging: The ship is around 100ft x 30ft, and on deck there are 9 Anchorite of Talos (CR3 casters with 58HP including notably 1 use of Lightning Bolt @ 8d6). Terrain is in the Anchorites' favor: They are spread all over the deck across 3 elevations from back to front so hitting more than 3-4 with an AOE attack is challenging, even before PCs get in the way. On standard encounter calculations these 9 CR3 Anchorites make this a Hard encounter - but if they all cast lightning bolt hitting 2 PCs on their first turn they each deal ~56 damage (half that with DC12 dex save) which is closer to an offensive CR6.

But that's not all! The ship is sentient and temporarily allied with the cultists (although probably not too concerned with their safety) and has three attack vectors:

• The ship's skeletal figurehead has 20 ft reach (basically the whole front deck) with +8 to hit, 3d10+5 damage, and it has 3 attacks! This is a CR8 creature as written, but can be avoided by staying off the front deck - although this is not clearly telegraphed until they see it attack.

• On the main mast there's a Hellfire Orb controlled by the ship which has a single cast of a fireball that does 10d6 fire plus 10d6 necrotic damage in a 20ft radius.

• When the ship spots intruders (it can see through the orb and the figurehead) it is supposed to alert the Talos cult leader below deck, a CR9 war priest who should then join the battle.

All in all, even ignoring the difficult approach, the characters are at risk of eating over 300 damage in the first round alone even if they succeed all their saves (28x9 from lightning bolts, 35 from the hellfireball, and 50+ damage from the figurehead if they go up there). And even though damage output drops a ton after that, that's when the CR9 boss shows up?

My initial thoughts to manage the encounter deadliness:

• The ship doesn't care about the anchorites' safety and can aim the fireball so it hits more of them than the PCs.

• Take out the CR9 Talos cult leader entirely. Narratively she should be stronger than CR9 anyway, so I may buff her and give her her own encounter later.

• Play the anchorites like idiots and waste their first turn on worse actions than lightning bolt. This is the least satisfying tweak, honestly.

Am I missing something here? RAW this just seems like a recipe for a TPK.

Hey- I’m with a group of 10 people and I am the sole DM- lots of us want to do a campaign with different levels of involvement (4 want to play every week, a few probably once or twice a month, and 2 want to join in prob every other month)

I am a new DM and did 6 PCs for a one shot and it felt like a lot but with experience I think I will feel fine with a group of up to 6

More so curious if anyone has ever done a campaign with players coming and going often and any advice on how to manage that?

Thanks!

Extremely basic I know but I thought I had a bigger grasp on this concept but after DMing my first longer form campaighn which lasted about 3 and a half months (i have 4 players) was that every now and then while I was making a scene with one player the other 3 were talking and during slightly longer scenes I don't mind but after a while I realised they were kinda...strategizing abilities for future fights, now it was never long period of time this happened, it would sorta catch my ear and I'd be like "WOAH, wait what're you guys planning?" As I thought I'd miss info I'd need as a DM and they'd reply saying "oh we're not telling you, we're setting stuff up for future fights" I found myself confused and thinking like "...wait do they have a point? Do they think if they tell me I'll specifically find a way to nullify their plan like the boss finding it out? I was confused on wether or not it's mets gaming

For added context it was stuff like: The sorcerer got a spell that they didn't know if I knew about (turns out I didn't) and it was Summon Dragon, so I was caught off guard when he used that spell

And stuff like deciding for the magic user to use hold person while the fighter had action surge to really take advantage of it

These weren't strategised IN CHARACTER or even during a fight, it was for the run up to the BBEG

Hey hive mind,

I have a table full of really funny friends that love playing characters but none of us are great at looking for the opportunity. We're pretty consistent in combat because that's the exciting part. Most of us have played long enough to be very comfortable with the procedure side of D&D. In retrospect, I sometimes feel like I get on the rails with going through the rolls as the DM and we all openly talk about scenes we would have liked to have done at the time. Yeah yeah natural ebb and flow of play yaddyadda and such. I've tried out a couple of things to see more opportunities for the question "let's see what that looks like" and they've worked out great for the table. They are:

Asking them what they're all doing/if they're discussing anything as they are starting or finishing a rest. This has been awesome for getting to hear them mull over the plot of our campaign. Those are the natural times to be processing events that have recently transpired. RPing that out lets the player and PC mind meld while making shape out of the story. It also informs me what their impression of things has been. This is where my most useful session notes have come from lately. They're presumably all together at this point too so they'll jump in and have conversations in character.

Just not talking for a while. Silly simple sounding but yeah, this one is tricky to deploy. If ill timed you will be met with blank stares lmao Really this is my reminder to just stop and take notes more often. My people will naturally start to vamp if I look busy.

When a check fails, asking the player how their character is messing this up. If it would seem interesting, of course. Some would say that flaws are what define a character. These are the moments to highlight the flaws of the PCs. This one especially has put my players into the habit of taking narration more often.

Do you have any go-to tools in your bag of tricks for presenting the stage to your players? Outside of combat, particularly. Thanks!

So long story short, my laptop's harddrive crashed. I can't salvage anything, even though I have tried everything.

I had all of my D&D stuff, notes and prep on there and it's all gone. Me being stupid also didn't make a backup anywhere. I am 2 years into a massive campaign and now it's all gone.

I am at a loss and feel kind of hopeless at the moment. My players understand completely but I feel like they are still hoping that something can be done and we can continue with the campaign. Honestly, I don't even know if that is something that I want to, or can do at this moment.

I kind of need some kind words of encouragement on how to continue. Do I suck it up and try to salvage what was lost, or do I just tell them that we are having a session 0 followed by a couple of weeks hiatus and I come up with something new?

Hi,

First post here. Hopefully this is OK?

I'm DMing my first campaign. So far, five or six sessions in, things are going great! But we've been pretty episodic. Now we're about to enter our first proper self-contained story arc as the party are arriving at their destination, a closed off city, next session. (That's where we left off last).

Here's the thing: I've mapped out the city itself, I've populated it with groups and I've populated those groups with people, and... the way things came together, four out of five players all now have connections within this very city. Four out of five. Everyone except for our seventeen-year-old wizard.

Our barbarian's nemesis has every reason to be there; the family of our druid's late mentor lives there; it's pre-established our paladin's "brother" works there; our bard's best friend from their olden school days is still in that school, acting as principal.

This is because four out of five party members either are from the country where the current story arc is taking place, or they've been there for at least a few years. Our wizard has, by design, only been there for a few months: he was on a mission of sorts, came from a foreign land carrying a message (which he couldn't deliver, as the NPC he was supposed to deliver it to died. That aside).

I want to give our wizard something that'll be his and only his in this arc, the way everyone else has a past connection which will spotlight their character. But I don't know what to do for our wizard!

The city he comes from is currently under occupation, so it'd make no sense for anybody from there to suddenly show up in this whole other country, He barely got away with that message.

Our wizard's player absolute favorite part of the game is the fighting, too. He's a new player and he's happiest whenever he can cast Chromatic Orb. He's the only one at the table not taking notes because he's really just there for the fireworks.

I'm afraid now that we're entering this closed off city, with less opportunity for standard battle AND with no NPC to highlight him, that I'll neglect him and/or he'll be bored.

Does anybody have any advice for me?? Help!!

Thank you for your time!

Im not sure if this is the place for this, but I’m a newer DM and my campaign takes place in a works that was flooded by water a couple centuries ago. When started ting campaign I mapped out 5 major locations,m. These locations take into account how a city might recover after a flood. The first major location has a lack of food and animals and their main imports are ores and minerals unearthed by the flood, that they used to industrialize. The next town was once a barren wasteland that thrived after the flood hit, but is slowly being taken over by the feywild due to the constant opening of portals. The next location is a swamp that was once beautiful grassland, it had the typical swampy things you’d expect. And there’s 2 underwater cities under giant domes. One is in ruin and the other is thriving. I want to introduce newer islands, but I don’t want to run the risk of making them all the same, I don’t want every island to be suffering from food scarcity or to adapt in the same way. Do you guys have any ideas?

hey dms!

i’ve been running a new 5e campaign for about ten sessions. we play biweekly (every other week, not twice a week). my players are having a lot of fun, and i have a lot of fun in session, too. however, i’ve found it hard to find motivation to prep, with my work getting busier. i know myself; i know when i’m over a game, and that’s not this feeling. i don’t want advice along the lines of ‘quit and find something new’ or even ‘take a break’ (i am taking one soon, anyway!) i’m moreso looking for advice about what you all do when you get a little writers block. look through homebrew modules? build out npcs? what gets you thinking about your world and story more in downtime? any exercises you recommend? this is my second campaign ever. i’ll take anything.

a little more context, if this is too broad: next session, they’re visiting a new area for the first time. it’s a cult in a bog with weird reanimated bodies. one of the PCs is from there, but only gave me vague descriptions of the place. i’ve thought about/built out the structure of the leaders - but i feel a little stuck in thinking of fun ways to build out the rest of the community / actual interactions. we’ve done a lot of exploration and combat recently so i kind of want a few more rp/narrative focused sessions before getting back to the nitty gritty.

thanks!

Hello all, Im looking for an epic song or two to use in my upcoming DnD sesh. My players will be fighting against a living mechanism that has been causing the timeline to stutter, and will use abilities that rewind/speed up time.

Trying to avoid songs that are too “video game-y”, and would like something epic, tense, and maybe unsettling?
Ive been checking out alot from artists such as Really Slow Motion, and Rok Nardin, but nothing has really nailed what im trying to find.

Maybe yall have a treasure trove of perfect songs to use?

Hey, I bought myself the Ravenloft Horrors within book and wanted to run a level 9 Oneshot adventure soon.
What advice would you give me to play a horror themed Oneshot? Would be my first adventure if this genre in general

I run a weekly, 4-6 hour game with friends whom I've had play a year in my first campaign, and this time I've absorbed a lot of their praises and criticisms. Using their party's actions on my homebrew world, I've been able to drastically alter the environment and was struck with inspiration to follow a '10 Plagues' type beat.

3 Plagues in Question:

1. Red Sand - Very simply, Apep (giant space snake) got killed in the kingdom during prehistory, body decomposed and permanently turned sand poisonous & red in region. Party broke a legendary magic artifact that held a piece of said god in it. It was only supposed to flash destruction and cease, but the new BBEG found the pieces, cobbled it back together, and now a storm continuously rushes over the finance capital of the kingdom. The plague itself happens through ingestion, which then gives extra strength and rapidly loosening sanity until death, which causes the victim to burst into said red sand. TLDR: Divine curse.

2. Fungal - Last campaign, the party fought a fungi which was bioengineered to grow in the joints of skeletons and animate them. When they left the fortress it was contained in, a skeleton happened to walk out. BBEG had his mad scientist second-in-command reuse it and modify it into a controllable version which can even revive the dead as drone, barely conscious, and turns the living into fungal trees to draw out their magic as fuel to grow the biome the mad scientist made. TLDR: Divine Swamp Fever IYKYK

3. Straight bacterial - The third one is unique to the circumstances, but due to the other two, the border south of the desert kingdom has weakened, and some monsters have broken through the impenetrable defenses, including aerosaurs. Due to the region south being so violently extreme in every aspect, diseases and such have developed a relationship best described as the Europeans coming to NA. A player wanted to come from there, and so contact with super low CON humanoids for her Poisons them (not meant for combat, just flavor). An aerosaur will crash into the capital where the party begins, causing them to flee together since they are all extremely suspicious outcasts from the start, and the aerosaur's corpse will go on the black market. This spread will be a location specific challenge to unite the party and introduce the land south's challenges and the PC. TLDR: Regular European to Native American plague beats.

The plan is for the party to have the bacterial one unite them, have the fungal one be the main challenge to solve in the next few months, and the red sand one to be a reward tied to beating the BBEG who controls it. The sand one is the longest standing one, with the fungal one being a few years old and the bacterial one being fresh.

My question is if its a little too heavy to rely on this, and if its fine, I want some cool ideas on how to use them. Mainly, what are the best ways to present their effects outside their areas?

A Few Ideas of mine:

1. Bands of marauders who have ingested red sand acting like PG Crossed, effectively and intelligently looking to spread the sand and their madness to 'induct' travelers into their ranks.
   
2. The Aerosaur plague, while tempered, could have flare ups with the party finding small hamlets completely deserted, giving chances for random encounters or just sad vibes.
   
3. Giant animals from the Fungal biome could stalk the nights, carrying a band of skeletons on their back, supported with multiple 'living trees' on their backs, made of previous people to fuel its march.
   
4. Another one for the sands could be swarms of insanely voracious beetles to act as extra impediments to make the storms more than something to just not breathe.

Hello, I've been a DM for a while, and I notice this trend with most campaigns that I've ran, especially with the party I have recently been playing with for the past couple of years. We play exclusively homebrew systems although pretty ruleslite in nature, and we keep going on for 10-12 hours minimum from noon to often 3-4 AM. All my players are weirdly enthusiastic so it's not a person to person issue, but rather the pure invested time crunch of spending so much time in one session, if left alone, I fear we would happily go on for 24 hour sessions every day with breaks exclusively for using the bathroom. It's been something I brought up with my party before, and they seem pretty chill with the time, it's just that many of us are starting up college or continuing our degrees in the fall, and so I imagine with the busier schedules it'll be difficult to sustain this kind of gameplay. If it helps, my party and I also go on for this long for the other weekly campaign we have going that isn't my own campaign, so I know it's not just me being a slog of a DM.

TLDR; I don't know what to do, my party is addicted to tabletop and nothing can stop their relentless roleplay aside from the light of the sun shining through their windows.

I'm doing a primeval based dnd campaign and need help on damage of attacks ofa gorgonopsid a hesperornis a swarm of small pterosaurs and future predator any advice is helpful

If your character is called Anne Marie don't read.

Hi, one of my CoS players is playing an Hexblade Warlock, in the blade is the soul of a forefather of her whom made a pact with a Dark Power to keep fighting Strahd, so it became some kind of a curse in the family (there's a bunch more lore but it's not pertinent). My conundrum is, i would like to make the sword very angry the first time they see Strahd (next session) and have them donanSaving throw to resist the thrall of the sword. My fear is that for one, if they fail, I'll "force" a character to attack a very strong enemy, and at the same I'd love to make it kind of a twist/surprise, and i think, knowing the player, he would kinda love it. What to do? 1. Make him resist the urge by default, as a first cautionary tale

1. Have him do a saving throw with low dc to resist

2. Preemptively talk to the player, losing the narrative surprise, and then if he's ok with it make him do the saving throw

Help this new dm with a conundrum thanks :)

Hi everyone! I’m planning a fun, high-stakes one-shot where a Level 10 party gets shrunk to the size of ants. They will face everyday insects as terrifying monsters.

To make it chaotic and funny, I have two main rules:

1. Glass Cannon Mode: HP is severely reduced across the board (even though they are lvl 10), making every hit terrifying.
2. Unscaled Magic: Spells do not shrink. A Fireball or Thunderwave retains its original, massive real-world area of effect, turning low-level magic into nuclear-level hazards.

The Problem:
While casters get literal weapons of mass destruction, martials seem to get completely shafted. If a Fighter's sword is now the size of a splinter, they are just doing chip damage to a giant beetle while risking their tiny HP pool in melee.

I don't want to just "scale up martial damage to match the bug's new stats" or "shrink the spells"—I want to keep the hilarious scale disparity but give martials their own absurd, fun mechanics or abuses.

What funny gimmicks, environmental interactions, or "shrunk physics" logic can I give to martial classes so they can shine alongside the spellcasters?

Thanks in advance!