Interesting encounters help

[Mirkul]

Hello giants,

I am currently DMing party of 4 people and struggling a little bit with encounters. We have like one or two during session and for now I am not able to put more in one session mostly because RP reasons (lot of talking in character and sometimes OOC). The players like fighting and want to enjoy it (that's why they play D&D and not something else). So what are your advices to make encounters interesting? Even if it is as plain encounter as some creatures just attacked you on your way. This will probably happen more and more in this campaign because monsters are getting crazier each day the party is not trying to solve one of the big problems.

The party consists of Land druid, Champion fighter, Way of Shadow monk and Assassin. I am already trying to throw at them not so known monsters like Bullywugs, Drells, Blights and Dopplegangers so they don't really know what to expect from them. I don't want to make the encounters deadly, just more challenging and not just easy hack&slash type where the one with the biggest bonus automatically wins.

So what do you do to spice up your encounters? What are your most memorable encounters?

[DMThac0]

There are 3 things I like to do to make encounters more exciting and memorable:

1: Create the anticipation through proper flow. I'm a martial artist, those 6 second rounds that D&D talks about are crazy even in real life. The DMs I've had the chance to be under have a habit of letting people take all the time they need to make a decision. In a tournament if I take 6 seconds to think I'll be kicked no less than 3 times. Give your players no time to think, there's 4 players and an average of 4 enemies, that's about 30-35 seconds between each initiative if you give them only enough time to give you an explanation of their actions and you describe the results. I promise you'll be able to feel that tension.

2: Treat the enemies as if they were your characters. There's a ton of jokes in movies, cartoons, and tv shows about how the protagonist is approached by a hoard of enemies and they attack one at a time. Don't make the same mistake. Your encounter has enemies trying to win, use strategy, use the terrain, use every ability at their disposal. The more "real" the enemies react to the encounter, the more the players will feel the threat and be able to enjoy the combat.

3: Mold the encounters for a purpose. There's a OotS strip about some displacer beasts in the wrong environment and they recognize they're just a random encounter. Don't fall into that pit, each encounter should have a reason and fit the theme/environment/story. This will help you make better strategies, help you sell the plot, help you with continuity. From what I understand you have the monsters going crazy due to some plot element, use that, take the local creatures from where the players are and make encounters that showcase the plot. The encounters will sell themselves if they are integral to furthering the story.

Difficulty doesn't always mean a good encounter. A good encounter almost always has a reason, creates tension, and makes the players feel like they're fighting more than just some xp nuggets dropped from the sky. I hope this helps.

[CursedRhubarb]

One that drove my group batty was when the DM tossed in 4 aberration guys that had 10' reach and they liked to grapple. They had about 40-50hp each but didn't hit very hard. The trouble was when we dropped one it would come back to life a turn later, or if two went down one would rise. So we had to find a way to drop all 4 at pretty much the same time (we were lvl 4 at the time so no lvl 3 spells for AoE help.)

Other things have been fights where killing everything isn't really an option so it wound up a gauntlet to escape a tunnel system with Dex and Str checks along the way to avoid falling rocks, escape if we got squished, jump pits, all while dealing with a never ending supply of goods behind us and one here and there in front.

Environmental effects can also make it very interesting. Fighting in a muddy mountainside area it started to rain and we wound up with the lock (me) going for a ride and getting crippled for a week as I rode the mud over a cliff (yaaaay 5' movement for a bloody week)

Add things like fog in the morning, rain, winds, snow, hail (ouch), or sandstorms to add some twists to combat. Even an easy fight can become interesting and more difficult when the weather and environment just don't want to play nice.

[Eladain]

There are two things that have helped me greatly as a DM keeping players involved and engaged during combat. Therverian already covered one of those which is to use the terrain around where your battles happen.

The second one is to just be more descriptive with your combats. Don't relegate all of your monsters to a list of numbers. You hit creature A for x damage will get boring rather quickly. Instead describe the combat more. If a hobgoblin has 7 life and the player deals fatal damage, maybe instead of just saying they killed the hobgoblin and removing a mini from the map you paint a bit of a scene. "You run the hobgoblin through the chest with your rapier. His battle cries are replaced with the sound of gurgling blood as his body falls limply at your feet."

I've found that after a round or two the players actually pickup on it and start describing their actions in more depth as well and it adds an entirely new dimension to the combat encounter.

[Specter]

Three things differentiate the terrain nicely:

- Levels: an encounter where players have to shift between high and low ground (like an outpost or around walls) creates nice choices of movement for players. Should the melee guys attempt a check to grab the tougher guys or stay on the down low?
- Barriers: fighting archers on a plain field is something, fighting them behind a locked gate is something else. These can be bushes for cover, walls for circling around or even some whackamole game with a burrower.
- Hazards: lava, acid, geysers and even honeybee hives create nice restrictions and choices for players. Suddenly something no one ever does like shoving becomes good, and suddey getting close to the bad guy is a very bad idea.

[Mirkul]

Thank you all for your hints and advices :smallsmile:

Responses:

1. Tried that already. As I did some martial arts and historical fencing I know a lot can happen in 6 seconds. But not everybody has that experience and I find it more as a hindrance than plus to limit players like that. But that doesn't mean they all their sweet time to plan and once they tell me what they want to do, there is no step back.
2.I am trying to do that. True that not always, but as much as I can and am able. True is that it feels more realistic if enemies are trying to back away and don't fight to death. And use the terrain. Yeah there is maybe a problem that we don't have miniatures and fights are just on plain square paper, so have to do something about that to be able to show the terrain. Thank you.
3.That is one of the reasons why I don't have so much encounters. I don't like encounters that are there just for the sake of encounter. It is better to have some meaning to it. Even if the players don't see that at the first time.

The aberrations fight is interesting. This is something I would like to be able to put against my players, but it is also something that needs experimenting at the beginning to really be memorable.

Killing is an option is for now no option to me. I must confess that I am totally unable to make fights like that. Or even if I create it like that in the end it always ends up that the party kill all the monsters anyway somehow :smallfrown:

Enviromental effects are something I never used, but I try to use them. The fog, rain and other whims of weather :smallsmile:

I started to do this for last two seasons. This really makes difference. Even if the players are not yet so creative I try to describe their actions too so the numbers are just background but the description is the main thing about the fight. Sometimes it is hard to describe everything again and again (oh it is your 5th miss, hmm how did it happen this time) but I believe if I keep with that, it will get better and better.

Here I am back at how to put the terrain on our battle map. I would like to do that, tried it with battle maps that you can put together from little or bigger parts of tiles (it is called map tiles I think). But I find it too much repeating after few fights in same environment. But I really would to move my battles this way.

So what I get from all the answer I should put my attention to terrain and various environment hazards. So how you as DM or your DM works with that. Do you have new map printed for every encounter or do you use the D&D tiles or do you draw it somehow?

[Specter]

So what I get from all the answer I should put my attention to terrain and various environment hazards. So how you as DM or your DM works with that. Do you have new map printed for every encounter or do you use the D&D tiles or do you draw it somehow?

I personally printed my own custom map out of tarp (like the one people use for advertising) and I print only the details for each encounter on paper, or draw them if it's too complicated to print. For instance, if I'm running the geyser encounter, I may print it out of paper with a 2x2squares little geyser on it, or use the blue magic marker to show for it, dependng on how much time I have to prepare.

[CursedRhubarb]

So what I get from all the answer I should put my attention to terrain and various environment hazards. So how you as DM or your DM works with that. Do you have new map printed for every encounter or do you use the D&D tiles or do you draw it somehow?

My group has a mat with a 1in. Square grid over it. The DM plans things out on graph paper when there is something specific and uses dry-earase markers to draw it on the mat. When something isn't required to be specific, like when we accidentally cause a fight in a camp or town, the buildings or tents get drawn on to be in a ballpark range.

Obstacles like trees and whatnot get to be extra dice, coins, or other small nicknacks.

"I'll hide behind the Cheeto, I mean the wagon, here and take a shot at the guy over by the blue d6, er...the tree."