“And then I fired, and then I fired. And I missed. I missed both times. And then I fired. And I missed. This went on for several hours.”
Game Grumps
Nothing is less enjoyable than boring combat. And, let’s face it, there’s only so interesting swinging and (hopefully) hitting your imaginary enemy can be when that is all there is to do. So, let’s dive into how to make combat more interesting!
Designing Based on Effect
For the most impact, we need to construct our combat with our desired outcome in mind from the very beginning. So, truly, think about what you want from the combat — whether it’s an in-game or out-of-game desire. Do you want your paladin to feel the fear of god? Do you want to force your players to manage their resources? Do you just need to put an easy fight in the middle of a dungeon? Whatever you pick is fine, but you have to pick something!
Now, when picking monsters, comparing CRs, and selecting an environment for the battle ahead, you have a quick touchpoint to reference. Each choice should contribute to your overall goal, even if that goal is to give your players an easy win.
But, there’s more to making combat more interesting.
Make It Harder
Increase the CR
Of course, the most obvious way to make combat harder is to up the CR of whatever your party is fighting. A level 3 party against an Adult Red Dragon (CR 17) won’t fare too well regardless of how well they roll. However, scaling things up appropriately to match your party’s actual strength levels can make combat less tedious for both sides of the table.
There is a level of nuance associated with this approach. It requires you, as the DM, to accurately take stock of your party. You have to be brutally honest with yourself when assessing the skill level of all of your players. Sometimes, you just have one player who’s a little too good at combat.
Enemies Abound
My preferred method of increasing the heat is to throw in more enemies. Groups and minions are by far one of the best ways to increase the lethality of any given combat. With multiple enemies on the field, the party must split their action economy, meaning that they cannot all concentrate on the Big Bad in front of them without consequence. They must address the lackey that is hunting the wizard across the map. They cannot leave the enemy mage unattended to. And, still, the Big Bad is stomping across the battlefield to squash these pests once and for all. This forces the party to make strategic decisions and ups the tension as different priorities compete for each player’s attention.
For this to be most effective, don’t group all the lackeys up in one nice circle for your Sorcerer to cast fireball on. Additional enemies make combat harder because they divide the action economy, force resource management in an already tough fight. Allowing your players to knock them all out with one action defeats the purpose of rolling so many damn initiatives.
Intelligent Groups
Similar to adding more enemies, running groups brings a level of intentionality to combat that forces players to actually think. Groups, unlike a hoard of rats for example, have roles and strategies just like the players do. Supports, tanks, and damage-dealers are staples of any well-balanced RPG party, and your adventurers are not the only geniuses to notice that! The evil fiend hoping to steal the souls of an entire city wouldn’t allow himself to fall to a few well-placed hits. He would defend himself with minions, some of whom likely patch up his wounds mid-combat.
One of the most successful examples I have run is a group called the Bardy Boys. The five of them were all modified bards, but only two of them actually packed a punch. Two of them served to disable the party and buff their frontliners while the last guy constantly pumped healing spells out to anyone who needed them. Coupled with using the environment to hide the supports, my players fought a difficult battle that they still talk about to this day.
Alternative Win Conditions
Sure, the fight is over when every enemy is dead. But, that doesn’t mean the battle is won.
Introducing new ways for players to solve combat encounters creates an environment that steps away from merely rolling dice and hoping to hit. When using alternative win conditions, the monsters on the field become mere obstacles, meant to prevent the players from achieving true success. It allows players to be creative and resourceful, and as the GM, it removes the pressure of balancing combat perfectly every time.
Some broad categories for alternative win conditions that I like to use are:
- Time-sensitive, like saving drowning hostages
- Environmental, like interrupting a magic ritual
- Survival-based, like escaping a too-powerful enemy
- Task-oriented, like apprehending a thief mid-theft
In each case, these goals are not accomplished by killing everyone around. The hostages are likely dead. The thief was meant to be captured alive. The too-powerful enemy murdered them all. The ritual is complete. Congrats, players! You won the fight but lost in the grand scheme of things.
If the idea of building your own alternative win condition still sounds out of reach, let’s look at some examples from video games.
In my opinion, Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced excels in this department. While most of the combats still rely on slaughtering everyone on the map, new win conditions are peppered throughout the missions. Sometimes, the goal is to ensure a charge survives a journey through the mountains. And sometimes, the goal is to destroy a magical tree while a homicidal mage hunts you across the battlefield. In a game that only advances the story through combat missions, this variety is crucial to maintaining players’ attention.
Perhaps a little more familiar to TTRPG players, Baulder’s Gate 3 has several combats with alternative win conditions. Hell, it opens with an alternate win condition. Reaching the console on the Nautiloid is the goal. Killing the demon and the mindflayer won’t stop the ship from crashing. Similarly, the fight in the Last Light Inn is another great example of an alternative win-condition (though poorly advertised in my opinion). Protecting Isobel is the main goal because the fight ends once she drops. Even if you’re winning the rest of the fight!
Adding variety to what players need to manage and think about during combat keeps the game engaging. Balanced with more traditional combat encounters, alternative win conditions can elevate a good game to great.
Staging the Combat
How we stage our combats can heighten the drama of a combat. A cunning enemy might hide away in a crowded warehouse with plenty of places to hide whereas an arrogant enemy may confront the adventurers in a wide open field, with nowhere for either party to run. In both cases, the setting of the fight creates opportunities and issues for the players and enemy to exploit. Who wins might boil down to who capitalizes on their surroundings best.
Thinking back to designing based on effect, picking a setting for combat should be intentional, even if it’s intentionally simple. Why is this combat happening in this place? On whose terms is this combat happening? Are there traps or obstacles that could make combat difficult, like room size or potential witnesses? How is this location advantageous to either group, if at all? Creating the battlefield with players and monsters in mind allows for competitive combat choices.
If utilized consistently, designing combats based on environment can also impact the game dynamic outside of combat. Players may strategize ways to corner enemies into fighting on the party’s terms instead. Monsters with known lair advantages, like dragons, already have this effect on players since luring a dragon into the wild makes it significantly easier to kill. If it becomes obvious in the game that the location of a fight has more consequences outside of a cool map, combats become much more engaging for players before, during, and sometimes even after the fight.
One great example that I played myself was a surprise attack from a werebear in a residential part of a city. Homes covered the street, and as the road climbed uphill, a retaining wall lined a community courtyard ten feet below. The setting offered opportunities for the single PC who was attacked to hide in houses, push the enemy off a ledge, or call for help from the citizens tucked peacefully in their homes. Calling innocent civilians into a battle against a werebear carries its own risks, though, which might lend itself into interesting roleplaying once the fight ends.
Note: While exceptionally fun, utilizing complex environments in combat requires the GM to have some solid off-hand knowledge of the rules of combat to truly have an impact. (Think: partial and full cover, hiding, difficult terrain, sight lines, alternate attacks, shapes of spells, etc.) Adding in complexity only to slow the game to a crawl ruins any tension that creating a unique setting may add. If unfamiliar with how certain combat rules are applied, test them one at a time until you have a good grip on how to implement them. There’s no shame in struggling to remember all the rules of combat — especially the ones to do with the environment.
Skill Check 