Keeping Combat Fun and Exciting

[Tormsskull]

Hi all,

As everyone knows, combat CAN become boring and tiresome if it is the same type of encounters over and over. So what does your group do that keeps combat fun and exciting?

I try to:
-Vary the types of enemies so that while their appearance in the adventure still makes sense, it provides the characters with different challenges.

-Add in situational modifiers like poor terrain, bad weather, destructible environment, objects that can be used, etc. I try to dress the battlegird up as much as possible so it is more of a real place with actual scenery and objects rather than just a grid.

-Be descriptive with my words so that I give a good visual to the players.

Can you think of other things that you can/should do to keep combat fun and exciting?

[Indon]

I try to think of innovative opponents, or encountering opponents in an innovative way. A big thing I gun for is 'wow factor', in which players react to the start of an encounter with more than just 'oh, man, more dire bears'.

[TempusCCK]

I recently did a solo campaign for a friend of mine who's shipping off to boot camp in about a week and has played with me on a regular basis for as long as I've been playing.

I set up an huge staircase leading that I let him know through the Cleric NPC is part of an old pathway from the current Dwarven City to an old Kingdom down further in the Mountain. ANd I let him know that a huge force of Goblins and Ogres were coming to try and take the ground. There were two stairs that were barricaded, each on the way up, and told him to station his troops how he pleased.

So he had a huge force of people down in the main floor before the openings that the Goblins are coming out of, and eventually the Goblins come, just masses and masses of them. And he's whacking them down, and the dwarves are whacking them down, and it's a jolly good time, but it starts getting a little boring. So I throw in about 4 Ogres, and that excites things quite a bit.

But a few of the Ogres are carrying big rocks... and they're running right for the wall up a few of the stairs. He tries to break off and engage them, but he's got another few right at his neck, and takes an attack of opportunity for trying to get out of combat too quick. The ogres set the rocks down in front of the wall and proceede to try and scale it using the rocks as a step, one of them dies on the attempt because of the defenders behind the wall, the other gets over and is killed shortly thereafter.

A few more rounds of combat go by, and it's back to slashing up goblins when something roars out of the tunnels, a pair of battle trained minotaurs in chain mail armor charge out, knock him onto his ass (along with dealing 4d6+6 points of damage), and quickly bound up the rocks and over the walls, proceeding to create massive chaos and slaughter where ever they may wander.

[ZeroNumerous]

Your long fought battle against this small patrol is finally over, and as the large fighter yanks his blood-soaked sword out of one of your enemies he turns to look at you. Before he can speak, however, a rumble begins to shake the small room you're in. It's not enough to off balance you, or even disturb any of the shelves in the room, but it is rather audible.

With a shrug, you begin to move toward the exit of the room, going in the direction you didn't come from. The rumbling is quickly growing much louder, and before long the wooden shelves that line the small reading room fall straight over. Moments before you fall down, the west wall bursts open in a spray of stone shards and shrapnel.

Before you even get a chance to get your bearings, a massive adamantine Warforged stands amid the rubble of what used to be the west wall. He's body is covered in razor-sharp spikes, and it's deep-red eyes fixate on you. It begins to walk forward, it's heavy boot crushing a fallen soldier's skull like an overripe watermelon. It speaks, and the hollow, empty voice that echoes from it's metal shell sends shivers up your spine.

"TERMINATE MEATBAGS"

Roll initiative gentlemen.

[TempusCCK]

That's awesome, I just started playing that game again yesterday.

[ZeroNumerous]

The proper response is: "Holy F@#%! He broke through the wall!"

And it works for a lead in for a larger dungeon complex, since you did just give them a rather large opening to go through if they beat the Juggernaut.

[elliott20]

The tricks I've learned over the years:

- just because an attack is an attack doesn't mean it needs to be described as "you slash, you hit". A ho-hum, run of the mill slash will probably not have too much you can work with, but things like power attack or cleave, or combat expertise are just begging to be use descriptively. It's no longer, "he power attacks and misses", but rather it becomes "he lunges at you with more raw fury than accuracy, forgoing any subtlety or technical accuracy over pure, unadulterated carnage. As he raises his axe above his head, you read the path of his strike and side stepping him as his axe shatters the table beside you". speaking of which:

- combat DOES destroy and effect the environment. Fit it into your description or even mix it into the gameplay mechanics if you can. You can tell a lot about two combatants by observing their battlefield. Hell, why end there? if your NPC misses the player by a mere 1 point on the roll, you could describe it as his weapon puncturing his armor, denting it in to the point that it nearly chokes him, but does not make contact with his flesh.

- encourage your players to be creative with his actions. You can do this by texture, which Rich has written extensively about in his excellent gaming articles.

[Green Bean]

Like you said, innovation is the key.

We had one particularily memorable battle recently. The party was split into rogue/wizard, and cleric/fighter. The wizard group ran into the BBEG in the centre of the dungeon, and the fighter and cleric were fighting off waves of the BBEG's troops. The awesome part was, at the centre of the dungeon was a magical control panel which allowed the user to access the dungeon's defences (traps, golems, etc.). So the wizard and rogue were desperately fending off the BBEG while trying to activate the defences to help their companions, and the cleric and fighter were fighting a losing battle, while magical defences and golems attacked both sides, depending on who was winning at the centre.

[Everyman]

There's a few tricks that I have figured out that helps keep combat fun in my games...

1) Terrain: While a dungeon or city is likely to have large areas of flat terrain in which to fight, that does not mean ALL areas will. Trees provide partial cover, shrubs hinder movement, and crumbling walls make the terrain difficult to cross AND offer the possibility of scaling a surface. Even offering different levels of elevation can make the game more fun.

2) Tactics: Barbarians might like to charge right into the fray, but not all opponents do. In fact, some opponenets (who KNOW they are screwed if they get in a fair fight) will try and set-up the area to give themselves an advantage. When elves start shooting arrows from up high when there is only a few ways to ascend, players are provided with a challenge. I refer you to Tucker's Kobolds (google it, if need be) for a perfect example of this.

3) Win Conditions: I try to mix in a variety of "win" conditions for my PCs to discover. Yes, slaying the dragon will end his reign of terror...but so will sealing off his cavern. You could try and fight the opposing army...or perhaps try a diplomatic approach.

Heck, sometimes I even give monsters "immunities" that render them difficult/impossible to defeat till you figure out how they are surviving. For example, I once pitted the party against a ghostly child riding some sort of horse-like beast. The child had "imaginary friends", other children riding horse-things that looked EXACTLY LIKE HER...save the color of their hair. The only way to damage the girl was to attack and destroy the "friends" first, as she would simply switch places with one of her friends (immediate action) whenever she was attacked. I made sure the "friends" could still attack and harm the party (though they only did have the real girl's damage), but I also made sure to make them fragile (only 5 HP each). You could imagine the look on the party's face when they decided to attack the real girl first, only to have her constantly switching places with her imaginary friends.
...
Oh, and a new friend would appear every round (maximum three), so the party had to keep a balance of clearing the field of imaginary friends and attacking the right child.

That kind of combat makes for memorable experiences.

[elliott20]

hehe, I like that encounter idea Tarkahn.

this reminds me of the encounter where the enemy was a very powerful child, but also had an imaginary friend... which came in the form of a small pair of shoes.

destroying the shoes instantly makes the villain think that his imaginary friend has been killed and sets him off first into a bawling mess, and then into unkept fury and rage. (which was really scary) but it also meant he was no longer as cautious as before since he would lower his defenses to go on the offensive.

[Ceres]

My solution was, as it often is when I encounter a problem, to change the system. After playing Feng Shui for awhile, and then returning to D&D, how bland the combat-system was quickly becam apparent.

So I changed it more to resemble Feng Shui, where rounds are split into one second "shots" instead of 6-second rounds, and encouraged players to do "stunts" by giving them combat-bonuses when doing so. Soon I had my players swinging in chandeliers, kicking their opponents in mid-air, smashing the environment etc. Then I made a particularily violent system for determening damage as well, so when you attacked the guard, you didn't just hurt his hitpoints, but sent his head flying 1d4 feet :)

Now of course I made combats interesting as well, as with the suggestions from the previous posters. I had them fighting undead elves on a flying ship, while battling a Ctulhu-kraken and rescuing a band of minotaur-slaves :) Though making combat-situations special is of course smart, I found that changing combat to a shots-system is the best thing I've ever done to combat. It trully makes it much more cinematic.

[Diggorian]

Besides the tried an true methods already stated:

1. Staying in Character: I never give game terms for things that arent evident.

Last week my low level party fought a big grey-furred four-legged beast with overmuscled fore legs and neck, a short muzzle full of sharp teeth, and powerful jagged claws. None had Knowledge Nature, so it was unknown. After they hit it, the beast foamed with a bloodthirsty rage ready to fight to the end.

If I had just named it as a dire badger it wouldnt have been as tense cause they'd know it's generally not a big deal. The difference between being scared and acting scared.

2. Compounded Encouters: This is like using terrain to raise the difficulty but taking it a step further.

Ascending a tall tower with ancient logs jutting from the walls to make a spiral staircase, balls of blue light float up the center giving illumination. The PCs are already wary of the creaking stairs. A red flash of light is seen far below as a red ball of light shoots up the tower. At their level, it explodes like a fireball-- setting the dry wooden stairs ablaze -- and releasing a fire elemental.

Kill the elemental before you fall to your death.

3. Cinematic Detail: Describing the result of every single die roll in graphic detail as others do. The less the HP left the nastier the description.

The first orc charges in thrusting his spear point across your hip bone in a searing gash, 10 pts piercing. (10 out of 40 HP, minor) You swat it's weapon to the left then reverse swing with your greatclub bashing the right side of his skull, popping out an eye as it snaps his neck with a wet crunch, 11 pts bludgeoning (11 out of 6 HP, gruesome) he's down.

I've Houseruled that the lowered HP triggers Fatigued and Exhausted conditions to better portray damage as well.