For DMs: How do you make combat encounters tactically interesting?

[Pauly]

One of the issues DMs have to overcome is when players come up with SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) and use that SOP to make encounters predictable and dull. For example always sending the party face to do the talking.

For combat, the SOP is meat shields in front, casters at back, rogues in the shadows.

To shake this up I often run 3D multilevel dungeons, with many options to go up or down and entry points for monsters that allow the monsters to come at the party from any direction (up, down, left, right, front or back). I also use hidden movement counters that show where possible enemies are. Some the counters are blanks or ‘false alarms’. This is heavily influenced by the GW games Space Hulk and Mordheim.

As a DM I find this much more interesting than the players kicking a door down, deal with a room full of monsters then rinse and repeat.

[Telok]

The two things I use when DMing are "no blank slates" and "the opFor is doing something".

No blank slates.
My maps are cluttered. Conveyer belts, side rooms, bottomless pits, elevators, platforms, explosive barrels, piles of junk, self destruct buttons, mysterious stasis cubes, oil slicks, acid vats, escape capsules, rope bridges, etc., etc. Because I've played on maps that were just a treeline for difficult terrain & partial cover on one side and perfectly flat open field on the other, or "a road through a forest" that was just half speed & +1 cover ac when off the path. Boring places make for boring slug fests, and just some walls & doors don't make it interesting. Sailing ships are amazingly cluttered & complex terrain, but every time I see a rpg map laid out its just a railing at the edge, some circles for masts, a stair & door or two if there are raised decks, and maybe a cargo hatch thats inevitably closed. The bloody thing should be festooned with rigging & ropes & booms, spare sail being mended, barrels of stuff piled in corners & spilling out on to the decks.

The other side is there for a reason.
No matter how mindless the actual opposition is they aren't there to be a cr appropriate resource drain time waster. Zombie hordes want brains. Chaos spawn hate order. The necromancer who stocked the room with 200 skeletons had a reason. Even the insanely unreasonable light absorbing gibberling horde wasn't there to be 'just a fight'. This gives you something to hang a noncombat solution on & a major shift if it comes to fighting. The players don't always need to find the reason & options, but they have to be there first before I put an encounter in.

[Saintheart]

One that's not already covered: the enemy present at the start of the fight is not all of the enemy. This is particularly useful if the party has gotten used to nova'ing at the start of each fight and then mopping up.

Also useful against parties that have limited per-day powers: hit-and-run. The monsters don't have to stand and fight, they can come in, take one of the barbarian's rages for the day, then retreat and come at them again.

Adding to the 'clutter up your terrain' option above: add traps to the battlefield. The enemy knows where the traps are, the players don't, and it's a lot tougher to search for traps while also trying to close with the enemy. The other option is also the visible trap on the battlefield, which also has another name: the choke point generator, or 'how to define the path the players have to come down to come to grips with you.' Combine visible traps and invisible traps on the path the players have to come to, and it gets much more interesting.

Change the battlefield mid-fight; the enemy retreats and hits a button collapsing the tunnel the players are in while opening up one behind them, or dropping them into water. Or acid. Or lava. Or whatever.

Tucker's Kobolds might not be as viable with higher level environments and options, but it's a good object exercise in how to use the environment against the players.

[Vahnavoi]

For the most part? I don't. That's because my focus is on the strategic level, on setting over-arching goals, with combat happening relatively infrequently. Combat scenarios are hence not pre-planned to great extent and tactics are not a major focus.

Yet, sometimes they end up tactically interesting anyway. A chief reason for that is because strategic objectives vary, so necessarily do tactics used to pursue them. There isn't a standard operating procedure that would apply in a way that makes scenarios play identically to each other.

Some of this starts from the level of game mechanics. Characters are not mechanically pigeonholed to being "the meatshield" or "the face". Which character is best suited for which tactical role is not constant because specialization isn't allowed to the degree that would make the answer a no-brainer.

[Cheesegear]

Terrain is the main one, as well as environmental effects:

'You can't see more than 30 ft. in front of you.' increases the threat to 'squishies' significantly.
In thick fog, everyone counts as Blind. Which significantly neuters many abilities that rely on any line of sight at all.
Poison air or fire. Everyone takes damage every round. You can't draw this out, or you'll be taking more damage, all the time.

Multi-phase fights:
Having a group of hostiles come in at the end of Round 2 can significantly change things. Especially if the party has burned all their good resources in the first rounds.

Several different kinds of enemies:
It's well and good to have 10 Goblins;
But why not 8 Goblins and 2 Wolves?
Why not 6 Goblins, two Wolves and Bugbear?

If you do have mobs of enemies, they should be doing different things. Most hostiles have two attacks; One for Melee, and one for Ranged.
Ranged attacks are really good for bypassing tanks. 'Slightly less' than half the monsters in any combat should probably be using their ranged attacks if they have one.


The only thing I'm really bad at, is having monsters surrender, or run away. I've just never found a good baseline for it.

[False God]

I run less of them and they're more dangerous.

Players will be more engaged when the encounter when it presents itself as a real threat, and when it punctuates the rest of the game more sharply, rather than just being clean-up.

Combats have a mix of monsters (or a mix of skilled humanoids). I tend to mirror the "party" setup in enemy groups. 1-2 Brutes/Tanks, 3-4 damage dealers (like, don't let them hit you, it's gonna hurt) and 1-3 support; depending on the general size of the enemy group. More if necessary, with a generous helping of minions (low damage, low HP, generally to impede the party from easily getting to the important baddies).
Combats will include variable terrain(both hazardous and multi-level), phased entry of enemies, and enemies who will "play smart".

Combats will generally include some form of countdown mechanic. "Beat this or the guy you're after gets away." or "Beat this before a whole truckload more baddies show up." or "The ritual happens in 5 minutes."

Combats will generally include some necessity of interacting with the environment, levers to stop traps/closing doors, cutting bridges to cut off reinforcements.

Combats will generally include some degree of opportunity cost. IE: if you cut the rope bridge to stop the incoming Baddies, it reduces your routes of escape of things go south.

I try to make my combats fairly grand and meaningful.

[Eldan]

Terrain has been mentioned and that's the number one big one and I don't think I need to add much on that.

Let me instead mention goals. Telok has mentioned it, but I Think it bears repeating: don't have fights so there's a fight. Go into it thinking about what the other side actually wants, and what the players want. Why are these groups fighting? THen consider if they would actually try to kill each other, if they would retreat, etc.

The simplest example is of course "the players need to get to the other side of the dungeon room and the monster is in the way". But even that one can be solved by sneaking past the monster or bribing it.

Let me throw out a few examples:

A monster is rampaging through the village. It doesn't want to fight the players. It wants to eat as many villagers and lifestock, if it can.
That gives you above mentioned environment: six cottages, a dozen panicked bystanders, the local village hero with his grandfather's spear, who is going to get utterly stomped, five stampeding cows and some thirty foot monstrosity who is going after those cows first. Some fences, ponds, muddy fields, for diversity of environment.
our players now have several tactical priorities: get villagers out of the way. Get cows out. Stop cows from trampling people. Try not to set all the cottages on fire with your fireball. Maybe feed cows to monster, until monster leaves.
What will this monster do, if the players fight back? Get angry and try to fight them? Decide to get an easier meal? You have options there.
Higher level version: tarrasque attacking a fortified city.

Second idea: thief. A fast and stealthy opponent of some kind (as level appropriate: particularly dextrous orphan, local thieves' guild member, mistform vampire, invisible stalker, etc.) enters the building the players are in, grabs something valuable and runs. You now have a chase, that is also a combat. Your players can give chase, create obstacles, try to shoot at them.

By having opponents who run away, or have to be prevented from attacking something other than the players, or maybe are just here to teach a lesson, but not kill anyone, you open up tactical options.

[Telok]

Something else that probably bears mentioning is that the system you're playing matters a lot. Traveller, Paranoia, Champions, CoC, Pendragon, DtD40k7e, WHFRP, etc., are not predicated on a resource management dungeon crawl game structure. In fact, the typical D&D "dungeon crawl" setup isn't a story form any more than Warhammer Fantasy Battle with low point values and one side limited to 4-6 models is a story form.

Once you have a system that builds more towards having an adventure (or horror story, or comic book story, or sci-fi story, or trading & exploring game, or pulp fantasy, or...) than a series of fights, then a lot of the "make fights interesting" problem starts to fall away because the party is fighting for something other than just having a combat encounter because the game mechanics say you should.

[Pauly]

The only thing I'm really bad at, is having monsters surrender, or run away. I've just never found a good baseline for it.

Using historical baselines.
One side obviously outmatched: Start running/surrender immediately.
One side obviously is winning the fight: Start running/surrender at around 10% casualties. it unusual to keep fighting past 25% casualties.
Evenly matched sides. Unusual one either side not to have run/surrendered by 50% casualties.

Casualties generally refers to “unable to keep fighting” not necessarily “dead’.

[Jay R]

The only thing I'm really bad at, is having monsters surrender, or run away. I've just never found a good baseline for it.

When the party’s victory is assured, the encounter has lost all suspense. Mop-up combat is boring, so end it.

In most encounters, there should be a few rounds in which it is not clear to the players that they will win. When that time is over, stop fighting.

This goes back to the original question – you keep it tactically interesting by stopping when it no longer is.

Another approach is to pick a single enemy – the youngest pirate, the weakest ogre – and identify with him. He's scared, and he just saw his companion die. Does he still want to fight, or does he run away (or surrender, or negotiate, or ...)?

[NichG]

These are things I keep in mind or have noticed across various systems as contributed to the feeling of interestingness. Whether they're successful or not, whether any given player will find them enjoyable, that may vary - these should be tuned to the needs of the situation.

1. Have things which can get worse if left unattended, and require some deflection from the main obvious agenda of the encounter to deal with. A building is progressively collapsing, a weak minion goes running to hit an alarm, there's some kind of self-replicating/spreading effect on the field, the boss monster has an ability that lets them place a free debuff on anyone who doesn't move towards them/away from them/... during the round, etc.

2. Spend some time thinking about possible time constraints and in general think about the opposing side of an encounter as trying to get something done or prevent something from getting done within X amount of time, rather than acting strictly as a block against progression or an aggressor trying to kill the party outright or a target where killing the target is the goal. So e.g. the party needs to get an item and get out within X number of rounds - there are enemies harrying them, but victory doesn't require clearing the field and X is small enough that clearing the field before going for the item is probably a bad idea. Or the party only needs to hold out for X number of rounds, by which time reinforcements/effects/etc will change the situation strongly in their favor and end the fight. Allow things to modify that counter in explicitly communicated ways - if you sound the alarm, that's -2 rounds the party needs to hold out; if you can hold on to this checkpoint, the counter goes twice as quickly; etc. If you're consistent about doing this and willing to customize the system you're running, you can even have character abilities built around it - change when in a round the 'environment' acts, change the timer status to speed it up or slow it down, etc.

3. Have side objectives and in general use objectives other than 'kill all the opposing side'. So this might be 'kill the opposing side, but minimize the number of non-combatants they kill/abduct/etc' or 'get as much loot as you can and escape the effectively infinite waves of reinforcements' or 'the opponent is a talker, and every round you keep their attention you can get a question answered' or things like that.

4. Favor abilities that proactively change the field or progress the encounter towards a conclusion over abilities which maintain or restore a status quo. Aim for a feeling of encounters as 'sliding down a slope/rushing down a river and trying to end up in the right place' rather than something where either side could just systematically and step by step approach their goal.

5. For any kind of ability or build, ask how it will make the other side think 'do I still want to do what I had planned to do?'. From a GM standpoint, the feeling of pressure isn't so much about 'the enemy did a ton of damage' or 'the enemy killed a PC', but rather its the things which the players think twice about before they even have any kind of impact or effect on the situation. Broadcasting information in advance rather than relying on after-the-fact surprises can maximize this effect. So e.g. better to have an ability that is 'you know that if you walk into this cone, you will have to make a save vs death' rather than 'because you walked into this cone you didn't know about, now make a save vs death'.

6. For effects which are expected to actually land on PCs (rather than shaping behavior through avoidance), its better for them to tug a player's attention in multiple directions and increase the number of options, rather than just removing options. So something that e.g. puts a party member to sleep can make someone think 'do I snap them out of it, or do I just keep doing what I was doing?', whereas something that debuffs someone's to-hit into the ground either means the character doesn't care because they don't use to-hit, or the main thing they use is now just worse without giving other options. For things which PCs put on enemies, its generally going to be better the other way around - create a benefit for figuring out what the worst thing an enemy can do is, and then countering it; whereas enemies having more decisions is more impactful to the GM's experience than to the players'.

7. If the only way things advance to conclusion is through damage, make sure that enemies have a way to reliably keep up a background pressure of damage even as they're doing things that are more about manipulating the tides of battle. If its a boss, maybe they get a major action each round which can be used to change battlefield conditions or apply spike damage, and a couple minor actions/minions/etc which apply smaller accumulating damage more consistently.

8. The ability to have information in advance can help keep things interesting, but that may switch the focus from tactics to strategy and planning. In that case, don't try to force it to be tactically interesting, but don't run it in detail either. Basically, recognize which encounters are about/have become about the planning, which are about dealing with a chaotic situation, and which are both. Party plans an ambush with a squad of hirelings with cannot-miss wands enough to take out the major players on the other side in the surprise round? If it makes sense that it would work, just narrate that it worked.

[Pauly]

Make sure the players are engaging with the dungeon, not the room.

Basically the longer and louder the players are in a location, the more likely it is that reinforcement arrive, or traps in the next area are primed, or the BBEG knows the game is up so he grabs his moveables and skedaddles.
It also helps to have the dungeon laid out like a real location, not some contrived game location that forces players down set paths.

[King of Nowhere]

This goes back to the original question – you keep it tactically interesting by stopping when it no longer is.


that's an excellent answer.
my approach, on that angle, was to move away from the 5-encounter-day. actually i moved away from that for plot reasons, but when later i tried to apply that model again, it resulted in boring encounters. I still have that happen for plot reasons, but i try to cut those fights short.
also, my main enemies are high level npcs, each one with their own build, and that ensures that fights will be interesting. Sometimes the players discuss for hours on how to approach an incoming fight - some of you will find that boring, but we like the tactical play. In particular, most enemies have a strong move, and the party will learn to counter that.
Last main opponent party was based on a supporting wizard. he would teleport his party to surround one pc, that the two melee could full attack. and then he would raise a prismatic wall as immediate action to protect his party. and the first time it worked great, two party members got killed like that before the enemies had to retreat. Both sides raised their fallen, and they knew they'd fight again, so they went down planning. The second time they fought, the party was ready to counter that, they split and avoided taking too much damage, they managed to slip inside the wizard's defences and petrify him, they totally trashed the opponents.
It was a very interesting fight. It made the players feel good, because "the first time we underestimated their stuff and it was a bloody business, but this time we figured out how to counter their moves and we destroied them". It made me feel good, because my villains managed to look really cool and to hold their own against the party before being defeated.
Only downside, it takes hours to build such villains properly. and it takes practice and skill to adjudicate the complex fight resulting - one where disjunctions and chained greater dispels are spammed and it takes some complex math to keep track of the martials bonuses.
interesting fights also require real stakes. in my case, there are resurrection spells for a reason, and it's assumed that everyone may need one of those sometimes. it's no tragedy, i keep the party full of money.but it means that they have to take their opponents seriously

As a rule of thumb, varying the kind of enemies and their tactics keeps things interesting. against dumb brutes, you want to keep the party meat shields in front, keep the party together to protect the squishies. against opponents with area effects you want to split apart. against opponents with powerful full attacks you want to keep moving, keep the distance. Once I even had them fight against a small army - an army equipped with rifles, granades, low level casters for support; an army that was fully capable of dealing hard damage to high level pcs - and in that case they wanted to keep cover, deny their enemies the chance to pile up on them from all directions.

[Xervous]

It’s either fast and all the details are on the table to start, or aspects of the battlefield are subject to change.

Taking the encounter I have prepped for tomorrow, the players need to hold their ground for 10 rounds while an NPC completes a ritual. They are set up in a multi level warehouse and will end up dealing with multiple waves of enemies from unexpected angles beyond the obvious bridge approaches. The opposition will be steadily destroying the warehouse, removing cover, introducing rubble and providing falling object hazards.

The follow up encounter will see them defending three locations from enemy delivery attempts, with all manner of distractions to help the runners get through.

When the encounter objective is Team Deathmatch it’s fine for the resolution to be swift. With other objectives you can afford to draw it out longer than a forgettable 3min pop song that has three unique lines.

[Kurt Kurageous]

This goes back to the original question – you keep it tactically interesting by stopping when it no longer is.

The trick is knowing when that point has been reached. What is missing here is a discussion of a concept unrealized/unknown/ignored by most GMs. It's 'the dramatic question' or DQ.

A DQ is the point of the scene. "Will the adventurers make it to the other side of the rope bridge" is an example.

What is the DQ in a combat you are about to run?

If it is only, "Will the adventurers defeat/survive the foes?", that gets dull once the outcome is obvious. Other posts in this thread suggest we 'improve' the DQ by adding complexity.

"Will the adventurers defeat the foes before they use their ultimate defensive act?"
"Will the adventurers defeat the first wave before the second one arrives?"

My point is, you need to identify the DQ in every encounter/scene. If you know your DQ, you know where the scene's interest will end. If you don't have a DQ, it gets dull and you are left with a sense of dissatisfaction.

[Pauly]

What is the DQ in a combat you are about to run?

If it is only, "Will the adventurers defeat/survive the foes?", that gets dull once the outcome is obvious. Other posts in this thread suggest we 'improve' the DQ by adding complexity.

"Will the adventurers defeat the foes before they use their ultimate defensive act?"
"Will the adventurers defeat the first wave before the second one arrives?"
.

I disagree about the advice adding complexity. Most of the advice here is about changing the question from “how do I defeat the foes” to “how do I achieve my objective(/thwart the enemy from achieving their objective)”.

I’ve run plenty of encounters where the players had objective [X] and the enemy had objective [Y] and both parties avoided each other and achieved their own objective.

[Jay R]

I like the term "Dramatic Question". I've never used it before, because it seems obvious. Nonetheless, I think that's the point behind the first sentence of this rule from my Rules for DMs:


33. When the party’s victory is assured, the encounter has lost all suspense. Mop-up combat is boring, so end it.

a. Remember, the NPCs don’t want to die; they would usually rather flee, negotiate, or surrender.
b. One round earlier, when you know the PCs have won and they don’t yet, is a great time for the NPCs to offer to negotiate.
c. This is your opportunity to force-feed them that obvious fact they’ve been missing, and let them believe they earned it.

[Easy e]

Jay R and Kurt have the way of it.

A scenario is interesting not because of the obstacles or challenges within the combat, but the tension that comes from outside the combat. The consequences of losing have to be important to the players.

Once there are no more stakes, then the combat should end with enemies fleeing, dissolving, etc. Narrate out of combat and move on with the game.

Combat as a tactical challenge is boring. Combat as friction to the drama/melodrama is not boring.

[King of Nowhere]

Combat as a tactical challenge is boring.

gonna disagree with that. a lot of players like tactical challenges. i already mentioned my players spending hours discussing strategy.
also, if there is no tactical challenge, then either the players are winning so hard it's not even fun, or they have no idea what's going on.
and just like players when roleplaying want to make decisions that matters for the plot, and to deny that is to railroad in the most negative meaning, so players when fighting want to make decisions that matter for the fight, and that's what a tactical challenge is. you decide how to fight, and it affects your outcome. if the fight is not a tactical challenge, then it is a non-interacting cutscene.
unless we have a very different idea of what constitutes a tactical challenge.

combat as a tactical challenge becomes boring if it's not really a challenge after all, or if it gets stale, or if there are no stakes.

[Gnoman]

One simple thing I've been doing in my dungeon crawl is taking the randomly treasure, distributing it among the enemy group, and having them use it (altering skills to match if needed). This ensures that you're never going to have just generic enemies with predictable capabilities.

[Telok]

Ending combat when you know the general outcome is fine, in general. But I feel there's a problem applying it to the games with "encounters drain resources to keep further encounters interesting" model. Using d&d, if the party with 75-125 hp characters fights giants that 3x multiattack and can crit for 50+ damage then even if you know at the end of round 2 that the party will grind through the last 2 giant's comboned 300 hp in two more rounds there is still about a 40% chance of a crit coming down on one player and close to 10% of two crits.

Even just cutting out at round 3 with one giant left there is about a 1/6 crit chance. This isn't trivial in the "use up resources" paradigm. So just tossing off "stop when you know the pqrty will win" you'll still get DMs fighting it out to the last because those resources matter and the crits do happen. A caveat about the purpose of the encounter is important for those systems. Today many many d&d combats aren't about if the party will win, but how many resources they'll use doing it.

Because I've been in d&d mid level combats with 1300+hp of monsters to chew through and of course it was the buggers with three attacks & 60-70 damage crits that were the last to go down. Obviously it doesn't matter if you aren't running a resource drain game, and you can totally run d&d on one fight a day. But d&d tells DMs its about multi-fight days & running down resources.

Ya know what... I'm leaving the typo in. It fits.

[RandomPeasant]

Combat as a tactical challenge is boring.

There are multiple genres of videogames that would disagree with that assertion quite strongly. Particularly in D&D, it is reasonable (even expected) for people to find tactical challenges interesting. That's why there are multiple hundred-page books that are filled with monsters, and why many classes are over 90% combat-relevant abilities by page count. Even outside of D&D, it is not uncommon for combat to make up a larger percentage of the rules by pagecount than anything else does.


also, if there is no tactical challenge, then either the players are winning so hard it's not even fun, or they have no idea what's going on.

Or you're spending all your time on Social or Exploration challenges, I suppose. But I've never seen a system where I looked at the rules for non-combat challenges and said "this seems super compelling" but looked at the rules for combat challenges and said "this seems like miserable nonsense". If using the rules for anything at all is interesting, it's hard to see how using them for combat wouldn't me.

[Pauly]

Ending combat when you know the general outcome is fine, in general. But I feel there's a problem applying it to the games with "encounters drain resources to keep further encounters interesting" model. Using d&d, if the party with 75-125 hp characters fights giants that 3x multiattack and can crit for 50+ damage then even if you know at the end of round 2 that the party will grind through the last 2 giant's comboned 300 hp in two more rounds there is still about a 40% chance of a crit coming down on one player and close to 10% of two crits.

Even just cutting out at round 3 with one giant left there is about a 1/6 crit chance. This isn't trivial in the "use up resources" paradigm. So just tossing off "stop when you know the pqrty will win" you'll still get DMs fighting it out to the last because those resources matter and the crits do happen. A caveat about the purpose of the encounter is important for those systems. Today many many d&d combats aren't about if the party will win, but how many resources they'll use doing it.

Because I've been in d&d mid level combats with 1300+hp of monsters to chew through and of course it was the buggers with three attacks & 60-70 damage crits that were the last to go down. Obviously it doesn't matter if you aren't running a resource drain game, and you can totally run d&d on one fight a day. But d&d tells DMs its about multi-fight days & running down resources.

Ya know what... I'm leaving the typo in. It fits.

Combat as a meatgrinder resource drain, while a feature of many D&D games, contributes to unengaging combats. The focus for the GM changes from “what is the dramatic question?” to “how many resources do I expect the party to expend?”. To answer the latter question you need the combat engagement to proceed in a predictable manner. How many HP, how much DPR, how many rounds of ranged, how many rounds of melee, what spells/abilities/scrolls/potions are likely to be used.

It is very difficult to balance “tactically interesting” and “resource management” because one is chaotic by nature and the other is formulaic by nature.

[Kurt Kurageous]

Combat as a meatgrinder resource drain, while a feature of many D&D games, contributes to unengaging combats. The focus for the GM changes from “what is the dramatic question?” to “how many resources do I expect the party to expend?”

I find the statement, “how many resources do I expect the party to expend?” troubling.

IMO the role of the DM in creating encounters is to create problems and conflicts, NOT figure out how to solve them or limit the solutions to so few options that player agency is reduced/eliminated. It is almost apocryphal that a DM will be frustrated by how the players/PCs shortcut their elaborate and oh-so-finely crafted encounter/setting/scene. It's a meme, I'm sure. Don't be a meme.

I have no expectations about resources expended in combat or any other scene, I just need to know if resources COULD be expended as part of the player's attempted solution to the conflict presented in the scene. If no chance of failure, no resources possibly expended, then no XP. Otherwise, the scene/encounter earns the party XP.

At least, this is fun I try to create.

[skyth]

I like making encounters to have a large variety of opponents. Leader, grunts, wizard, pet, etc. I like using humanoids as opponents - And I'll give them 'class levels', which in 5E means I give them abilities from PC classes.

[Xervous]

Variable resource depletion scenarios (D&D) benefit from having conditional cases at both ends of the spectrum. It’s easy to say XYZ doesn’t happen and ABC does happen because the party came up short. The tricky part is including meaningful stretch goals to tempt players with that will serve as rewards if they get through things efficiently.

[Vahnavoi]

Related to the "dramatic question" bit, I don't usually do that for tabletop games. That purpose is served by questions of strategic and tactical objectives, namely:

"What are my objectives in this fight?"

and

"When can I say my tactics have succeeded or failed at securing those objectives?"

Once objectives are known to be secured or lost, it's time to zoom out of the tactical level, move the game clock ahead and resume plotting the next strategic objective.

[Fable Wright]

Simple: Figure out how intelligent monsters would deal with the issue of barbarian raiders.

If they're having lunch when the adventurers unexpectedly kick down the door? Run for their lives, warn the others in the dungeon.

Scouts now monitor the party's progress ready to full sprint away the moment they're detected. Behind some trapped doors are now far-above-survivable ambushes from multiple rooms' worth of monsters that the party needs to unpick. Maybe starve them out, or loot everything except that room. Kill enough scouts and they need to bleed warriors to know when you're gone.

The difficulty of dealing with retreating foes is very different than the ones you use in a stand-up fight. Especially if you use bait-and-switch tactics like retreating enemies going towards encircling forces, so when the party overextends to deal with it, they're flanked and in a nonstrategic position.

Or, have the party need to deal with fortifications. A tower that only some party members can (fly into/teleport into) that some enemies can shoot out of and is held by a garrison. That's something that's tricky to unpick but strategically interesting. Or let the players need to hold a tower when they're understaffed.

The standard adventurer shield wall is applicable to receiving enemy charges, but it's pretty suboptimal in all these other scenarios! :smallsmile:

[Easy e]

gonna disagree with that. a lot of players like tactical challenges. i

<snip>

combat as a tactical challenge becomes boring if it's not really a challenge after all, or if it gets stale, or if there are no stakes.

Which is exactly what I said when I said Tactical combat is boring. So, I guess we agree?


Besides, if you really want tactical combat go play a wargame (board, tabletop, or computer) as D&D is a poor fit if you really want a tactical challenge.

[Xervous]

Which is exactly what I said when I said Tactical combat is boring. So, I guess we agree?


Besides, if you really want tactical combat go play a wargame (board, tabletop, or computer) as D&D is a poor fit if you really want a tactical challenge.

The poor fit when it comes to D&D is in finding players who are either far removed from your competency level or just not interested, as well as GMs who are either incapable of or unwilling to provide said challenges. The fridge is adequately stocked, but it’s not a venue of universal appeal and the options certainly won’t cook themselves.

[Pauly]

After a certain level, I assume the bad guys are just as genre savvy as the players.

In particular this means the bad guys have prepared defenses against magic users. Lots of dispel magics to get rid of daily buffs. Anti-magic fields to prevent scrying or teleportation. Several methods to detect invisibility. So many stories of D&D encounters start with “we cast our daily buffs, then mass invisibility and mass flight …”, well in my campaigns that’s what the BBEG expected and he’s prepared for it.

Now depending on the level of the characters and society in which the game is set the preparations will vary, but the basic rule is that the players can’t assume that they can cast the usual spells in the usual manner and expect it to surprise the enemy.