Hello there.
The one weak point I have in being a DM is combat. If it’s anything non-magical, I’m alright at it. But the moment magic is thrown in, with non magic combat, and you have a party of 6 players with multiple enemies, and players with character abilities that are all over the place, it gets overwhelming to the point where I’m intimidated.
I’ve read guides, watched videos, read the official 5e DM book, and it’s still not clicking for me.
Please give me your tips on how to tackle this!
I got stuck on the same spot every single time I tried to make dnd work for my group. What finally worked for us was tokens. You dont have to go out and buy expensive miniatures - we use pennies, parts from other boardgames, coasters to represent area effects like guardian of faith, extra dice etc etc. The one other thing you need is a grid board. Someone in my group had one so we lucked out but I see them online for $20 to $30. Knowing where everyone is, how far you can move, who is gonna be hit by that cone of cold etc etc took off so much of the mental load and let us go back to having fun. You may already be doing this or it might not be right for your group but it helped us immensely.
The grid we use is dry erasable so we draw the battle map on there. We also use the markers on the pennies so we know the red marked one is the fire guy and so on. If you have any questions about this style of play lmk.