Encounter Inspiration: How do you build encounters?

[Clone]

Hey all,

I've been constructing some One-Shots and future campaign encounters lately, both taking from past campaigns and researching new sources to help construct battles, puzzles and interesting scenarios using all three pillars.
During this process it had me thinking, how do you all make encounters? Are there any rules/ habits you follow or features you like to include?

Personally I take a concept, mechanic, theme etc and see how I can turn it into a room for focal point, such as a boss battle, puzzle etc.
Depending on what I need or how creative I am with the original concept, I'll expand that into two rooms or add floors/ vertical features into the first room, then expand or complicate accordingly.
From there I'll always include 3 main interactable features of the room which can be used along with the intent of the room. Maybe there are large but weakened pipes linked to the Organ in a Church encounter or a beautiful but heavy chandelier, within jumping distance from the second floor hanging over some BBEG's minions in a ballroom undercover mission.

I usually have one obvious feature, one which if found could give the party a boon in the encounter, and one which I don't know what to do with but is more for the players to show me how it can be used.

In regards to maps or "mission structure" I take a lot of inspiration from Tumblr blogs/ Instagram which share maps and temples, either literal map layouts or just pictures which I use as a base concept.
I also look towards video games' mission structures, both RPGs such as Divinity or level-based games like Halo or Jak & Daxter. Anything which has environmental obstacles apart from "kill all the things to progress" I think are great.


What do you all do? Do you have as long-winded a process as mine or do you bother with all of those? Let me know, I'm keen to learn new ways to expand my DM repertoire!

[Unoriginal]

I just imagine a situation that is interesting and which makes sense for the place/the time it happens and the character involved, then let the players take decisions to see where it goes.

[Man_Over_Game]

I do something very similar. Each "medium" encounter should reduce the resources of the party by about 20-30%. Sometimes, that's damage. Sometimes, that's a high level spell slot. Each encounter should have about 1-2 things that, if left unattended, should guarantee the players to "lose" the encounter (whether that means death, or just that they spent way too many resources dealing with a normally easy encounter), and each one of those obstacles should have a few ways to deal with them.

For example, in an illusory dungeon I made, I did one such encounter:

Gargoyle statues face every which way in this tunnel. Stepping on a piece of stone causes several gargoyles to breathe fire on that location. However, not every flame is real, and many are illusory. After stepping on the first plate that activates the gargoyles, the stone door on the far side will visibly start to close. You estimate you have about 1 minute before it's sealed off (creating a combat encounter using fire-immune imps in the same room if the time runs out). The gargoyles are mostly identical, except if you can get close enough to one, you can see whether the inside has scorch marks or not with an investigation check, but getting close to one may trigger a trap. In reality, the clue is actually the plates on the ground, which are illusioned to appear flat, but actually show the true path marked into the stones. Either not wearing footwear, examining the plates, or having some method of seeing through illusions identifies which gargoyles burst out fire. The "loss" is the inability to reach the end before the door closes, or getting burned too much through the traps. The door can still be opened, but the combat with the imps is annoying, if not deadly. Victory can be obtained by proper uses of Investigation, by creating some kind of fire resistance/immunity, or by just suffering through the flames (which deal 1d10 fire damage each, 15 Dex save to halve) to figure out which floor plates are rigged.

Combat encounters are similar. There should be 1-2 major mechanics that are obvious and will lead to the players' peril if they don't address them. Sometimes, that's a mage "overcasting" a higher level spell while having a large minion act as Half-Cover. Other times, that's a hobgoblin stabbing a "woman" on the ground (actually a corpse), goading players into approaching so that his friends hiding in the trees can surround you. Severity of the obstacle scales directly with how much the players could have prevented it. With the Hobgoblin event, his friends should actually be quite weak and easy to dispatch, since there's a decent chance the players could not have done anything or known about it. With the Wizard, that may be a CR 1 Wizard about to cast Fireball, powerful enough to wreck a low level party, due to how obvious it is.

[Son of A Lich!]

I like breaking things down into smaller pieces from the grand scale down to the small again.

So campaigns are broken into arcs, arcs are broken into minor villains, Minor villains have 'dungeons', and dungeons are broken into encounters.

If I know the campaign is largely focused on a alchemical goblin hovel making "Super Soldiers" with aberrants by modifying their underlings, I just gotta know who is the big names contenders are and what makes each of them unique in the structure (So, Gizbank has a mad scientist, a Dragon providing the magical know-how, a secret project that is pulling strings from it's containment cell, and a black market dealer who runs a thieves guild in a major metropolitan area). If any one of these minor villains is discovered or killed, its no skin off of my nose; these things happen.

Then, I focus in on signifying themes between the minor villains. The Dragon has sorcerers under his employment, and half dragons are frequent if the players are facing against him. The containment breach likely has a lot of wall-themed traps and nullification things. All have masses of goblins with alchemical fire at the ready.

A specific dungeon regarding the Minor villain, I try to challenge the players with new vectors that they should understand and be ready for, but maybe not prepared for specifically.

The party may be a little low level to fight a dragon head on, but they need to learn how to avoid breath weapons; so Brute Goblins that are prototypes of the experiments will have breath weapons (Probably just dragonborn refluffed), and I make sure to design the rooms in the dungeons as to have multiple levels, barriers for walking (but not enough for cover) and something special in the room to just spice up the flow (like a bat with a lightning breath weapon, just to keep them engaged in preparing for a dragon fight later down the line).

Then I wait for my players to ask to do something cool and let'm have it. "If the lightning hits the chemicals, will it explode?" "You don't know, make a knowledge Arcana check, with advantage since you are proficient in alchemical kits" "18?" "Yeah, Bruin isn't familiar with these exact chemicals, but he knows the beakers they are being kept in are designed to keep unstable compounds" "COOL! I chuck one at the Lighting Bat's face!" "Roll to hit"

Players feel cool, get to do cool things, understand generally what is going on and everything runs pretty smoothly overall.

[Mr.Spastic]

Sometimes I do the things that you guys have mentioned. Sometimes I just slap some stuff together because my players do whatever they want I'd rather by flying by the seat of my pants than railroading them.

[Malifice]

I'll have a theme for the entire dungeon/ adventure to begin with (eg: Orcs - led by demon - conquer town and take prisoners).

From there, I design around half a dozen or so encounters (usually; sometimes more and sometimes less) in the medium-hard range (usually; with the odd deadly or easy encounter thrown in) around that theme, all bracketed by a doom clock (usually; or some other bar against the 5MWD) that link to that theme.

Eg (adventure for 9th level PCs):

Theme: Ancient undead threaten to rise and destroy town.

Hook: Town PCs are in was built over ancient necropolis, and a construction team building a new sewer under the town has inadvertantly broken into the necropolis and awoken the undead therein. Several construction workers have vanished and the PCs are hired to recover/ rescue them.

Doom clock: Once the necropoliis is infiltrated the PCs discover the construction workers were captured by a crazed undead spellcaster who failed in his effort to become a Lich an instead became a Boneclaw. He's captured the workers and plans destroy thsir souls in a foul necromatic ritual to turn himself into a full blown Lich... scheduled to happen at midnight that night, just 5 hours from now!

Encounter 1: Medium-Hard undead. Trash mob and brute boss. (half a dozen Sword wraith warriors and a Sword Wraith commander?)
Encounter 2: Linked to the first encounter (4 x Wraiths)
Encounter 3: Death trap of some nature.
Encounter 4: Boneclaws former apprentice (Deathlock mastermind and 4 x Bodaks)
Encounter 5: Solo encounter - Eiodilon, add a few legendary actions and resistance.
Encounter 6: 4 x Helmed horrors, add +20 HP each, add +1d8 flame damage to weapon attacks, increase proficiency by +1, increase CR to 5. Tomb guardians.
Encounter 7: Boneclaw (add legendary resistances and actions) and 6 x Shadows, in an area of magical dim light. Maybe have the prisoners hooked up to some kind of infernal machine on sacrifical altars, with a skill check (or spell or both) as an action able to free them, 1/ time. For each prisoner freed the Boneclaw loses 1 x Legendary resistance and 1 x Legendary action, and takes 5d6 force damage from magical backlash.

If the PCs fail to stop the Deathclaw, it comes back as a Lich and unleashes a horde of incorporeal undead on the town.

Next I just sketch out a map, placing the encounters in appropriate areas, and providing a safe place or two for short rests (maybe a chapel in the ruin, built by clerics of Good, who were trying to keep the Boneclaw sealed inside forever?).

[jdolch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_-JDmlnFiU

[Spriteless]

I mostly buy modules, but when I feel they lack, I will change things. Mostly I will figure out what sort of minions will fit the theme of the module's story, and stick them between the cool characters the module comes with and the players' characters.

Undeads get zombies, because zombies can take a alot of punishment, and make the paladin feel special. SciFi ship gets Tau Tactical Drones, because the party can fly at this point so I've got to figure out how to make roll20 do flying at all anyways so yay!