A persistent source of frustration for me has always been how my combat encounters would routinely devolve into wars of attrition that were both, not fun to run and definitely not fun to play. I’ve tried a lot of different approaches to injecting life into my combat scenarios, most of which involved putting in interactive elements like turrets and cannons into to my maps and hoping that would be interesting enough for my players to engage with. None of it really worked out the way I wanted it to, but I had to keep trying for the sake of fun.
The list of issues started with me not doing enough preparation in advance of combat-heavy sessions. I cannot overemphasize how important it is to do your prep work for battles. I always thought I’d be able to adjust on the fly and make enemies coordinate attacks and spells in a meaningful way, and while maybe some GMs can do that, I cannot. There’s a fun juxtaposition to behold when comparing my love of D&D to my complete inability to think tactically. My ambushes rarely felt ambush-y enough, my boss battles lacked “oomph,” and no amount of narrative leading up to an encounter could make up for the boring slug-fests they eventually devolved into.
Aside from just knowing enemy abilities and modifiers, one of the biggest things I had to contend with was the concept of how aware of the world around them an enemy should be. Specifically, should my enemies be able to identify the party wizard as such, and then use that knowledge to avoid clumping together in optimal fireball range, or should this band of goblins be thoroughly unfamiliar with the concept of magic altogether? I’m sure that question gets answered differently from campaign to campaign, but it’s something worth thinking about when world building.
Regardless, I never consciously decided that my enemies shouldn’t be aware of spells or tactics adventurers might use, but actively deciding that they could know these things led to me playing them more thoughtfully. No longer would all of my enemies blindly charge the wizard in a single filed formation, ready to sacrifice themselves to an impending lightning bolt. No longer would my enemies be so bloodthirsty that they’d give up every ounce of advantageous positioning just to hit someone with their spiky club. No longer would my enemies be so stupid in combat unless I truly wanted them to be.
All of this is in addition to making more dynamic situations in general. Knock down, drag-out fights can be fun, but peppering having objectives or taking a wave-based approach to enemy distribution can be an absolute game changer. Combat for the sake of combat is fine, but I’ve found that encounters that are spurned on by, or have some consequences pertaining to the larger narrative, have elevated both the game play and storytelling aspects of my campaign.
Recently, my players were infiltrating the warehouse of a courier service, looking for some evidence of an alleged connection to a local drug trade that was ravaging the area. The goal was to find the evidence and get the hell out, no more, no less. The party split up to utilize the various entry points of the warehouse, which led to the rogue darting around in the shadows and scouring the place for clues, while the druid wildshaped into a spider and sneaked into the office where some incriminating files could be found. A few bad rolls later, and the majority of the party is in combat on the warehouse floor, while the druid secured all the evidence they needed on a natural 20 investigation check. While not the intent, the combat turned out to be an excellent distraction for the druid. This led to a moment where the druid had what they needed and ultimately escaped while the other members got utterly rocked by an overwhelmingly powerful enemy and their minions.
There was this pregnant pause before the druid scurried out of the window where they thought, “should I go and help them?” The druid wouldn’t have made much of a difference in combat, so the party agreed that getting the evidence and getting out was the most important thing. The druid left and ran into the night, far away from their friends whose fates were unknown.
Because of how things played out in this combat scenario, the majority of the party was separated from the druid for an extended period of time. Conveniently, the druid had some scheduling issues, so I was able to run a completely different session with the other players about what happened after they were defeated in combat. It was a whole side adventure that really added to the drama of the story and raised more questions about the characters involved, various NPCs, and their backstories. My point here is that dynamic combat has a bigger impact than just cool fights — they can also be the catalyst for interesting story beats.
But overall the biggest change I made was the easiest one to implement, and it’s something I struggled with for a long time: I had to become okay with beating the shit out of and possibly killing the player’s characters. While there is something to accommodating different play styles with varying difficulties, I would tend to bend over backwards to save my players from their bad decisions. I had a nasty habit of pulling punches out of fear that killing a player would make them want to stop playing D&D with me all together. I still have that fear, but now I trust the people around me to actually want to play the game and accept the consequences of their actions.
Just about everything I’ve written about in this article was actively implemented in our most recent session, which saw my players were taking a ride to a northern city aboard a dwarven ship. The ship was attacked by a rampaging group of Sahuagin, who were just as interested in scuttling said ship as they were killing its passengers. Instead of just making these Sahuagin horny for stabbing their enemies to death, I had some of them also attack the ship directly, which dovetailed into a whole mechanic for patching holes in the hull. I simply made some enemies change targets and it made a world of difference and especially heightened the drama behind something so benign as checks to patch the boat.
Just as they thought they had things under control however, a second wave of enemies emerged from the ocean, both boarding from atop the deck and through the already battered hull of the ship. I had hearty fish-lads, soaking up just as much damage as they were doling out. I had a spell caster keeping the rogue and druid from standing still and getting too comfortable. And I had a big, legendary action-filled boss wreaking havoc among NPC and PC alike. The battle was chaotic and I could see the desperation in my player’s eyes when they really needed to roll well. They were pushed to their limits and depleted of resources, but they managed to squeak out a victory. It was awesome.
The truth of the matter is that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to anything in D&D because every group is going to want something different. These things worked for me with my current group but that won’t always be the case going forward, and it’s important to acknowledge that. I think the simplest and most valuable tip I can offer is this: you need to know what’s written on the page. Knowing what behaviors and abilities a creature has is invaluable when running a game, because role-play doesn’t suddenly stop when you’re in combat, it’s just different. Knowing why an enemy is attacking and how it likes to attack is just as important as knowing what kind of damage dice it rolls.
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