Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 102 - Designing Better Encounters Part 2

Episode Date: December 5, 2021

Continuing last week's discussion on encounter design, this week we tackle the environment, tactics, stakes and motivations of the combat.  We discuss variety of the above and how to make combats feel different and better for our 5e and Pathfinder players.

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. Another way you can make a fight more interesting is to change the footing. Melee combat on a road with sure footing, yeah, okay, that can be interesting. But the same fight on a swinging rope bridge? Now we're talking. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 102 of the Taking20 podcast. This week, continuing the Designing Better Combat Encounters air of episodes, hopefully. This time, part two.

This week's sponsor, ice. As a reminder, if your house is made of ice and it starts to fall apart, all you have to do is igloo it back together. Part two, baby. I was a bit too loquacious last episode and I had to expand to a second week. Hey, those fart jokes don't write themselves, so sometimes this happens. To recap, last week we talked about varying up your combat by sometimes including customized equipment or stat blocks and including leaders, lieutenants, spellcasters, and allied creatures. Last week was all about the things the PCs will fight, but that's only half the picture.

Now let's talk about what's going on around and during the combat. In other words, the where and why of the fight. Once again, the watchword is variety. Let's talk about the ways you can make better combat encounters by varying the environment, the stakes of the combat, the tactics of the combat, the motivations of the combatants, and then adding mid-combat developments to make your combats more interesting. For better combat encounters, make the environment matter. The area where you fight can have a dramatic effect on the excitement of the combat. The first thing you can do is to give the environment a third dimension to move around in. I mean, a lot of DMs don't worry about the environment where encounters take place.

They treat the area like a mostly flat plain with very little difficult terrain, some select cover and concealment locations. They roll out the miniatures and let the arrows fly. Nothing wrong with that at all. I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else, so I'm definitely living in a glass house. Which means in Pathfinder, my walls have a hardness of 1 and 1 hit point per inch of thickness. Or in 5th edition, my walls have an armor class of 13 and hit points based on size. The Taking20 podcast, come for the DM tips, stay for the obscure material rules. For me, this was especially true when I had to draw a bunch of maps before I moved digital.

My maps were mostly flat, some trees, the occasional bush, maybe a hill. That was about it. I was being lazy. You know, wait, that's not fair. I was spending my prep time on other stuff. NPCs, social encounters, plot developments, next steps, improvisational planning, which sounds weird but it works, reading, customizing pre-written adventures, that type of thing. What I want to say is forgive yourself for past mistakes.

If you look back on some of the stuff you've done and cringe, that's a really good thing. It means you've grown as a GM and maybe even as a person. really good thing. It means you've grown as a GM and maybe even as a person. But back to making your environments three-dimensional. Have multi-story buildings, trees, flying, platforms, that kind of thing. It makes combat feel different and rewards participants who can take advantage of this third dimension. I talked about this pretty extensively in episode 84, Three-Dimensional and Underwater Combat, so give that a listen if you want more details. But to sum it up, DMs should have a third dimension that characters and baddies can move through to give them an advantage on attacks, take them out of danger, or give them some sort of advantage when they're above or below the opposing side.

Even if no one can fly. If you've seen The Princess Bride, for example, think about the sword fight between the dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo Montoya. And as an aside, if you haven't seen that movie, go fucking watch it. Like, right now. Don't worry, we'll wait for you. For those of you sticking around, take the next hour and a half or so to ask yourself, why is it when you chop up a troll

that has regeneration like a starfish, you don't get four or five trolls out of it? You could rule that it's because only the section with the heart regenerates, but that's not in the rules anywhere. Also, what's stopping regeneration from going wild and having a troll that grows a third arm, or an extra lobe in a lung, or a second vagina? And welcome back to those of you who took time off to watch that movie. It's a great movie, right? In the Dread Pirate Roberts and Nego Montoya sword fight, they roam all over the cliffside ruins, fighting upstairs at the top of a ruined tower, swinging on conveniently placed metal bars. It's a great sword fight, partially because of the

height variety and witty banter, but fights with height options make them much more interesting. Another way you can make it interesting is to include weather or environmental effects in your combat. The simplest thing you can do is increase or decrease the temperature to a level that makes one side or both sides uncomfortable. Fighting a white dragon when it's 20 degrees out is one thing, fighting it at minus 40 is something else. And you can make those temperatures Fahrenheit or Celsius, either one makes the point. Just don't make those degree measurements Kelvin.

What the hell does minus 40 Kelvin even mean? What, you're colder than all molecular motion stopping? We're in the realm of theoretical physics alongside magnetic monopoles, point masses, and assume a cow is a sphere of constant density now. How the fuck did I get from combat encounters to spherical cows? I keep saying this, but I really, really need to start pre-writing this shit. Oh yeah, fighting at unusual temperatures will give an sense of urgency to the fight, as the party, or maybe even both sides are taking

constant cold or heat damage or maybe they're getting exhausted from the same. Another way you can make a fight more interesting is to change the footing. Melee combat on a road with sure footing, yeah okay that can be interesting, but the same fight on a swinging rope bridge? Now we're talking. Not only do the combatants have to worry about their attack succeeding, but also the surety of their footing and the risk that the bridge could collapse at any time. Much, much more interesting combat. Similarly, have a fight where the combatants are fighting in mud or knee-high water where movement is limited and slowed. It opens the door to certain tactics that otherwise aren't used much, like fighting defensively, active shield blocking, and combat maneuvers like trip.

Another thing you can do to make fights interesting is to start messing with light levels and sight lines. Why would everyone fighting be able to see equally well? Sure, maybe you've got two sets of humans squaring off at high noon, no problem. But if the characters are below the temple of the Nine Intestinal Spasms, or whatever, where no surface dweller has trod for hundreds of years, why can they see like it's a weekend trip to the beach? I think that robs you, the DM, of an opportunity to bring tension to the game. It's dark in the distant corners of the underworld. There are creatures down there who see just as well as darkness as we do in the bright sun. That gives them a tremendous advantage in combat, and this fact should not be lost.

Darkness and limited sight lines can really ramp up the fear that your PCs are experiencing. Think about it. You're in your house or apartment, and you hear a floorboard creak somewhere in the house. If it's three in the afternoon, you probably go check it out without thinking much about it. If it's 3 a.m., you'll probably have a bat in your hand because A, it's dark, and B, no one should be moving around your house at that time of night. In areas of limited light, creatures without low light vision and without dark vision will be hampered, unable to see beyond where their full torchlight can reach. Meanwhile, in the darkness, danger waits, hungry, waiting for the torch to go out or the holder to turn his back so he can get an easy meal. Changing the

global light level is one thing you can do, but imagine fighting in areas where part of the map are encased in magical darkness or deeper darkness with high-level spells impeding the light of sight. Imagine the lead scout lifts her torch and there seems to be an impenetrable wall beyond which the torchlight simply won't reach. A vertical column of pitch blackness that swallows up the light like a lake on a starless night. And from within, you hear a low growl. Besides changing the light level, though, put things in the way to obscure lines of sight. Columns, hanging laundry, tall furniture, shoji like you see in Japan, which is that translucent paper on a lattice frame,

curtains, anything to obscure long sight lines. It automatically makes everything feel more claustrophobic. This darkness and limited sight lines give both the PCs and the baddies the opportunity to take cover or concealment before and during the encounter. It just it lets one side surprise the other one at some point and that makes for a much more interesting combat. Encounters are just more interesting when the player characters don't have all the information at the beginning of the encounter. The unknown naturally generates tension for players. Areas of the map that are obscured or hidden will definitely make veteran players' hackles sit up and turn red.

Meanwhile, the newer players will be pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised when they find out that three more combatants were waiting in the guardhouse on the map. To add character to your combat, if you're in an area where there's a special type of movement like flight, swimming, or good traction would give your baddies an advantage, give stronger baddies the movement type to take advantage of that environment. Or vice versa. For example, in Pathfinder, Ice Elementals have rock-solid footing on icy surfaces and can climb them as if they were affected by the Spider Climb spell. That definitely isn't true for your player characters. Barring certain class abilities granted to high-level rangers or monks, on ice, most of your PCs will look like newborn fawns,

desperately trying to keep their balance as their legs keep slipping out from under them. I've got this. I got it. Okay. I got it. I raise my shield. Oh, shit. And the fighter's legs fly right out from underneath him, and prone he goes. Meanwhile, the elemental strides right up to him and punts him for yardage. Another example would be if your NPCs can fly, give them room to do so. Fighting a harpy on a cliffside is a very different fight than fighting one in a 30 by 30 foot room with a 10 foot ceiling. Put yourself in the harpy's... shoes? That's not right. Claws?

Talons? Forget the phrase. Imagine you're a harpy. Would you spend a lot of time in an area where you couldn't use one of your primary advantages? Of course not. That'd be like a shadow saying it's going to go out and get a suntan. In more general terms, let monsters use their abilities. Read up on them. Put the fight in areas where those abilities would come in handy. Close quarters, open spaces, danger of falls, extreme heat, and so forth. Another thing you can do, and I touched on this earlier, but make the area rife for an ambush by one side or another. Narrow corridor, high rocks, plenty of foliage. Give opportunities for one side or the other to start with an advantage. Whether that's height advantage, positioning advantage, something that might make surprise mean something. I've been playing a lot of Darkest Dungeon lately, and one feature that I love is

when the monsters surprise the party of adventurers, they can be caught out of order. That Arbalest that you had in the back was chatting up with your Crusader when the monster sprang from the darkness. Now, instead of fighting from the back where she's comfortable, she's in front where she's in real danger. Consider a situation like that where either the PCs, the baddies, or both can be surprised and caught out of your traditional ideal position on the battlefield. Also, you've been around PCs and you can know how four PC groups and 6 PC groups like to fight, with the fighters in the front and the soft squishy people in the back. Why the hell wouldn't the baddies do the same thing?

They know their fire singer isn't as strong as their frontline troops, so they're going to keep him in the back and put their spear-wielding, strong creatures up in front. Have good tactics for your baddies. It'll make the fight much more interesting. Another thing you can do is to change the stakes of combat. Dovetailing off of previous points, raise the stakes with the environment. A fight against three orcs in the street is one thing. A fight against three orcs in a burning living room is something entirely different. In the first fight, you're just worried about who's going to win the fight and who's going to see you do it. In the second one, you could win the fight and die anyway.

Combat is much more interesting when you're fighting for something or over something, rather than just fighting to fight. Fighting over the only oasis for 60 kilometers in any direction lends a feeling of desperation to the combat. If we lose and we can't get water, we're going to die out there in the desert. Fighting two city guards behind the tavern is one thing. Fighting two city guards that called your elf friend knife-ear will pack a bit more punch and will mean more to the party. So what I mean by stakes is that have the fight be for adventuring resources like water or food, for honor, over which side has the rights to the discovered secret treasure, or over who gets to bring the magic what-some-a-call-it back to the guild leader

and gain respect in the underworld. Having stakes like that means the fight is just more important than just turning the page on the adventurer to see what happens next. Another interesting thing you can do is make the stakes different between the two sides fighting. In the earlier example, the orcs and the PCs are fighting inside a burning house with the inhabitants maybe tied up in the kitchen. The PCs want to save the inhabitants and possibly the house if they can get around to it. The orcs don't give a fuck about either one of them. Disparate stakes like this will make the encounter much more interesting. One of my favorite examples of this was, I believe, the movie Rush Hour.

Jackie Chan was fighting some baddies in a room filled with priceless and fragile historical relics. Not only is he trying to defeat the henchmen, he's trying to minimize the damage to these priceless artifacts so he would take actions mid-combat to try to stabilize a vase that was about to fall off the pedestal, or a statue that was about to tip over. Once the baddies realized this, they started making the artifacts unstable themselves, thereby making the fight harder for Jackie but easier for them since he was preoccupied. Find something like that that the PCs would want to preserve and add that complication to the battlefield. Fragile

things, valuable things, living things. The battle's in an orc camp and they have captured villagers tied in a ring around the arena. Any missed weapon strike has a chance to hit these helpless innocents. To make a combat encounter more interesting, give the baddies more motivation than kill the PCs. Mindless creatures, sure, they're looking for their next meal and aren't motivated by higher functions like honor, sacrifice, duty, or tactics. But intelligent creatures? Not every fight should be a fight to the death. They could be fighting for a different purpose. Maybe they're testing the PC's strength to provide information back to the ultimate leader of the group. They're distracting the PCs from the real fight going on somewhere else. Or they're trying to kidnap one of the PCs from the rear while the front line is distracted and occupied. Non-mindless creatures usually know when

they're beaten, and when they figure that out, some of them are likely going to run away. They'll report back about the presence of these strong enemies in the area. Smart leaders then will begin to prepare for the inevitable arrival of the PCs and give themselves the best opportunity for survival. Even hungry animals run from obviously unwinnable combats, so why wouldn't the bandit group as well? Bring a little nuance to the motivations of the baddies, not just kill, kill, kill, and then we'll have a light brunch and then kill, kill, kill some more.

The last way you can make a fight more interesting is by introducing changes to anything and everything in the middle of the fight. Developments that require the party to re-evaluate their tactics and priorities automatically make a fight more interesting. An example could be the revelation of new information that changes the combat. Like they figure out that the existing combat was a distraction and now the real attacking force is hitting the southern gate of the city. One of the combatants begins showing signs of a disease that might spread to the PCs. The boat that they're fighting on was stable but now has begun to sink. It keeps fights from feeling samey. Oh look, it's another fight on the bridge. Nope, a storm is blowing through and the winds have picked up,

so now everyone is safe if they lie down prone, or they can make dex checks to keep their balance and not fall off the bridge and possibly to their death. Oh, look, it's another fight outside an abandoned starbase. Wrong! For some reason, the turret's just activated. Now everyone's at risk for getting shot. One of my favorite complications to add to an encounter is to have non-combatants show up.

The family on a wagon traveling to another city that happened to be here at the wrong place at the wrong time. The villager pushing a stroller who takes a wrong turn into the middle of combat. The crowd gathering to watch the fight for some entertainment before the police arrive. Obviously, the non-combatant arrival needs to make sense. I'm not sure a parent with a stroller would show up in the, I don't know, nine hells. Or maybe that's the scariest fucking thing that you could run into. No, there has to be some sort of badass devil there and the baby's probably going to eat our faces off. Complete the picture with a stroller playing some happy calliope music something, and you've got some weapons-grade nightmare fuel there. Let's go back to innocent

non-combatants getting hurt and leave creepy devil babies behind. It makes a fight more interesting when there's a risk of injuries to those not participating in the combat. Hopefully most of your adventuring parties are good and display some level of empathy towards other creatures. If not, well, then these non-combatants make great meat shield. And the party doesn't mind committing a murder, or five. They could be useful. The last development to make your combats more interesting I want to mention is have waves of monsters come in. Why do all the combatants have to show up simultaneously? Have them show up spaced apart by maybe a round or two. The party thinks they have the combat in hand because it's just a couple of city guards. We got this. But

then there's two more. And then four more. And then a well-armed sergeant shows up with a whistle. And shit just got real. Or they think they have the vampire on the ropes when his thralls finally make it to the battlefield. And then more. And then more. And here come the wolves. Oh look, there's swarms of bats behind them. Oh gosh, the next door neighbors were vampires. We didn't know that. Wait, I thought all vampires were attractive. That's a Nosferatu. Suddenly, the combat that was in the bag becomes a knife fight in a phone booth and they have to start fighting desperately for their lives. I certainly wouldn't make every combat a wave after wave, but occasionally? Yeah, do that when the PCs attack entire tribes of creatures. Try to take on the entire police force,

or any other situation where they are ludicrously outnumbered, but go in anyway. There's a lot to digest over the last two episodes. Is it harder as a DM to make interesting combat encounters? Sure. It's easy just to roll out the miniatures on a flat plane and have the sides duke it out. But we can do better. Our players deserve better. Throw in monster variety and change up the environment somewhat. Change the stakes of the combat. Give the monsters varying tactics and motivations, and I guarantee you and your players will have fun doing it.

I know I ask this a lot, but please give this podcast a rating and a like wherever you found it. I've gotten surprisingly few ratings after all this time, and I would love to see some rating feedback whenever you found me. It only takes a minute, and I would really love to hear from you.

Tune in next week, where I'll be continuing the class series all about Paladins and Rangers. Before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, ICE. John Steinbeck wrote one of the only books ever about how mankind lives in snowy wastelands. Check out his book of ICE and Men.

This has been episode number 102, Designing Better Combat Encounters, part two. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 podcast is a Publishing Cube media production. Copyright 2021. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2021. References to game system content are copyright of their respective publishers.