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View Full Version : How could I know if a fight will be intresting? (3.5)



akma
2010-12-28, 09:50 AM
When designing an encounter, specifically a combat one, how could I know if it would be an intresting fight?
Also, how could I know if it would be a challanging one?

Lateral
2010-12-28, 09:53 AM
Well, it depends on the party composition. If you're fighting, say, a fighter, a monk, a rogue, a healbot, and a blaster wizard, a challenging encounter is very different than for a DMM cleric, a druid, a STP erudite, an incantatrix, and an archivist.

Kol Korran
2010-12-28, 10:07 AM
hey Akma. you're asking two different questions, so i'll try and answer:
1) an interesting encounter: you can't really know, as some of the factors that affect it happen in game- lets say your players are too troubled by some other threat, or the encounter happens later in the night than you planned and they are allready drousy, and so on.

besides that, players will sometime surprise you by what they find interesting, and what not. many times the players conserve their resources in fight previous to big ones, and this might make them interesting, while in big fights they pour out all they got and so the battle end up quickly. you read my campaign, you know what i'm talking about.

to make a battle interesting i try to give it some of the following elements:
- mix up of opponents, with different powers, hopefully they synergize
- interesting and if possible interactive terrain and environment. don't do symmetric battlefields, try to have them varied.
- other effects on the battlefield- different illumination, partially submerged, in a fiery environment and so on.
- surprise/ hidden element: there is a trap in the battlefield, or one of the opponents have an interesting power, or reinforcement comes on the way.
- a more overarching element: such as time pressure, a need to save resources, avoiding harming the innocent (such as in a market square) and so on. things that change the ususal tactics.

hmmm, reading this list i see i use not quite as much of it as i would like. perhaps i should saddle up as well.

2) a challanging encounter: i'm not that good at this (obviously from my villains), but again this may highly depend how the party reacts. some encounters i found to fly by easily, while others were much harder than i though. if you have he time (i don't) try and run a demoe battle between the PCs and your encounter, relying on what THE PLAYERS are most likely to do (not you), and try and think of how some things (such as an often used spell or magical item) might change things, and maybe adapt accordingly.

i don't like the DM's assumption of "20% of the resources" as a challanging fight, i go more towards 30-50% at least in the manner of hit points, since these are usually easily recoverable with wands. spells? 25-30%...

i hope this answered your question Akma.

akma
2010-12-28, 10:29 AM
i hope this answered your question Akma.

Pretty much.
I think I`ll try to put a unique/very unusal combat ability in every monster I`ll make from now on, would make it easier to design intresting encounters in the future.

Anansi
2010-12-28, 10:32 AM
By the same token, as a DM, what balance am I looking for when engineering an encounter with respect to my players' abilities?

Do I add elements of whatever each person is best at so they have an opportunity to shine?

Do I find things that exploit their weaknesses and force them to adapt?

Bit by bit I've been varying the encounters from "big open space and bandits in the woods" to "ogre on the roof" to "troll in a cave," and I'm finding that while their effectiveness varies from scenario to scenario, their tactics generally do not. So do I keep throwing them the situations they struggle with until they adapt? Or do I create more of the scenarios in which they excel?

I had a good experience with the former recently. My group consists of a Scout/Swordsage (all feats devoted to ranged combat, +4 Dexterity bonus), a Wizard/Spellthief working towards Spellwarp Sniper (two ranged combat feats, +3 Dexterity bonus), and a funky shapeshifter Druid (melee-oriented, +0 Dexterity bonus).

Take a guess as to who won the carefully designed, geared towards the players' feats, three-section Archery Tournament.

akma
2010-12-28, 10:39 AM
Do I add elements of whatever each person is best at so they have an opportunity to shine?

Do I find things that exploit their weaknesses and force them to adapt?


What about the first for usual battles, and the second for battles against important villains?

Anansi
2010-12-28, 10:54 AM
What about the first for usual battles, and the second for battles against important villains?

I think yes, definitely, as a general rule; the BBEG should be a handcrafted, customized fight. I don't like the idea of them walking into the lair at the end of the dungeon and saying, "Room is 50' by 50', dude's a dragon, FIGHT!" I'm sure when they fight the next big bad it'll be all moving platforms and trap doors and chaos in the streets.

But similarly, since the "usual battles" comprise the bulk of the campaign, I also don't want them on auto-pilot for most of the combats. I do balance that out by changing it up a bit, changing the enemies, and making more objective-oriented encounters, but their inclination is still "Entangle, Incendiary Slime, Scorching Ray, Arrows."

So @akma and anyone else, what works for you? What's been successful as a DM to create engaging encounters? What elements made a particular encounter really memorable for you as a player? How much do you cater to their abilities and how much do you try to negate them?

gbprime
2010-12-28, 11:23 AM
The checklist is pretty basic. You need to make sure everyone has something useful to contribute, and you need to let people take turns at being the most important person in the fight. Everyone needs some limelight now and again, not just the massive damage dealers.

But more importantly, give each fight a twist, and don't assume a wide open battle mat. Use terrain and tricks. That helps keep it memorable. Nobody says "hey you remember that fight with the 6 orcs we did back in July?" But they WILL say "hey you remember that fight with the 6 orcs on the narrow cliff trail we did back in July? Your barbarian almost fell to his doom when that orc bull rushed him!"

By the time your players have fought goblins (or whatever) 3 or 4 times, a stand-up fight is boring. Un-borify it. :smalltongue: Give the goblins a prepared position behind some rocks where they fire shortbows, and make sure there are concealed punjii traps between them and the players. Or the aforementioned cliffside. When those orcs know they're dying, try to hurl someone over the edge with them.

Point is, a low CR fight can be made more interesting with tactics and terrain and still not be too high a CR for the party to manage. And they'll REMEMBER it.

obliged_salmon
2010-12-28, 11:52 AM
The major problem you'll face here is that combat in 3.5 is not designed to be interesting off the bat. The mechanic encourages and rewards the following tactic - stand perfectly still and hit him with your sword over and over (or keep out of reach and hit him with your spells).

Interesting is a battle which starts in one location and moves to another (the dragon just took off toward the town! crap!)

Interesting is a battle with chasms and ropes to swing from/climb.

Interesting is a battle in which the heroes can show off their awesome skills. (to this end, you might allow full attacks as a standard action instead of a full round).

Interesting is a battle which is challenging, because the enemy has surprise weapons, reinforcements, uses good tactics.

Interesting is a battle which does not have time to get boring. The enemies run when they're outnumbered and sure to be defeated. Less important enemies die when hit, even if the player rolls minimum damage.

Just some thoughts, hope they help.

gbprime
2010-12-28, 11:56 AM
Exactly. Swaashbuckling and cinemagraphic fights are interesting because they're fluid and they move. While some PC's could get bogged down in hand to hand with the grunts, some other PC or two has to STOP THAT STAGECOACH! (or hippogriff, zepplin, riverboat, etc)

akma
2010-12-28, 12:00 PM
So @akma and anyone else, what works for you? What's been successful as a DM to create engaging encounters? What elements made a particular encounter really memorable for you as a player? How much do you cater to their abilities and how much do you try to negate them?

I mainly DMed 1 on 1 games without rules, and from that games, I don`t remmember any battle especially memorable that I did.
In the last adventure I DMed, which was for 1st level characters, there are two battles I especially remmember.
The first was with a homebrewed intelligent skeleton who summoned a bunch of other skeletons. My plan was that there will be a battle involving a lot of competitive undead turning, but there were two clerics in the party and they both didn`t use turn undead. One of them was a first time player, and I forgot too.
What made the battle bad was the skeletons damage reduction. I didn`t count it in the playtest I did with characters I made myself before the game, and it made the battle very long.
The second was a battle against a homebrewed undead who lost his honour after his death, by the actions of a necrophile. It started funny, and in the end they ran away - I shouldn`t have given him max HP per hit dice, but I`m sure they remmember that encounter.

Last time I was a player, in an adventure that in my oppinion was horrible, there was one encounter that I realy liked (to be fair, by that point I had very low expectations from the DM). We were forced (railroading :smallmad:) to go to the basement of the ship to deal with rats the captain thought was suspicous. Turns out they were wererats, and I talked to them, found out about their infiltrations, and killed one or two.
That was the last time my character had a chance to do anything.