There’s been an influx of D&D players in the last few years, largely due to the streamlined ruleset of fifth edition and the explosion of livestreamed campaigns like Critical Role. Dungeons and Dragons has become bigger than it’s ever been before, and no individual gaming group plays the game in the exact same way, or for the exact same reasons. Some revel in the bloody throes of combat, hacking and slashing with slick, shining swords or methodical, mischievous magic. Others take pleasure in the fantasy of living in a world of magic and heroes by interacting socially with characters and creatures they dreamt of as children. These two foundations of the game harmonize with one another, but only when the Dungeon Master knows how best to manifest the mixture. The first tip I’ll be sharing with you, as we focus in on the methods of management, is how to make combat have a stronger narrative presence in your campaign.
Combat is important in D&D; it’s the time at which most players get to use their most exciting class abilities. Barbarians unleash their Rage with a gore-covered axe held high, and rogues meticulously maneuver into the perfect position for a silent assassination. But there are those who find the long hours—or even short minutes—of combat to be disconnected from the session’s journey. Things don't have to be this way. The best D&D games interweave narrative depth into combat encounters and mechanical interest into roleplaying scenes, engaging all types of players in all types of scenes. These tips are simple, but their value is deep. Intertwine everything.
The Devil in the Details
Aesthetic can function for more than just atmosphere. In the best stories, the details carry clues and mysteries to be hunted and unraveled. In your overarching narrative, your grand enemy prowls the land clad in armor of deep crimsons and ghoulish blacks. These colors can become signifiers of allegiance to this creature, or to go further, the opposite palate may signify opposition to this evil. This isn’t an uncommon use of visual storytelling. It’s the method of use, however, that ties our mysterious plot hook into battle. Good stories, be they novels, films, or D&D campaigns, don't give you any information that isn’t in someway relevant to the narrative. The description of a messy kitchen depicts how often a character cooks, and how little they care for cleaning. It may lend to how many people live in the household, and how many of them are in the care of the chef. All of these factors tell us about the life of our cook before we even meet the character. Combat scenarios can have the same effect in lending detail and intrigue, especially when long turns and poor rolls can lead to disinterest.
The mathematics of mechanical success and failure are at the will of the dice. As a Dungeon Master, you’ll see how these fluctuations affect the morale of the players at your table. Even a successful attack may not be what a player finds value in. This is an opportunity, rather than a potential dead end. For instance:
Your warlock’s eldritch blast tears through the air, directly at the chest of the heavily armored knight. Your magic strikes with an unholy ferocity, successfully dealing 14 damage to your opponent. As the knight recovers from the blow, you see beneath their crimson and black tunic another garment of green and white.
Even if the players haven’t encountered these colors, which are in contrast of the colors of their grand enemy, you’ve now given them a clue to invest in. You can directly recommend and challenge your narrative-focused players to pursue the clue with ability checks and dialogue. Invest time in aligning details from non-combat situations into your battles and your table will have a great deal of detective work laid out before them.
Not Just Kills, Thrills
Many players—especially those who cut their gaming teeth on video games or hack-'n-slash dungeon crawls—will slay just about every enemy you place in front of them unless you show them that murder isn’t the only way to achieve their goals. A great deal of what you’re doing in D&D is detective work. If we use that frame in the context of combat, it becomes a place where your gumshoes gain major advantages in their quest for information.
When your party comes close to claiming victory over their enemies, they then have an opportunity to leverage the situation to gain information. A bandit loses loyalty to their troupe as their numbers thin, leaving your heroes with a chance to take a prisoner. A cultist sorcerer deems their life more valuable than their faith and shows you a secret passage to their leader. It’s even possible that a powerful opponent finds respect in their enemy as you lock swords with them, granting knowledge upon receiving an honorable loss. Morale plays a huge role in real-life combat scenarios. You can try to represent morale with a mechanical framework (past editions of D&D have done so!) or simply through DM fiat.
In short, create conditions that are only obtainable through analyzing the potential benefits of capture, surrender, intimidation, and trickery. And on that point...
Enemies Speak!
It’s in moments of stress and tension that it’s easiest to reveal information that one might otherwise have kept secret. When in a tavern, attempting to goad the location of a kidnapped monarch out of a clever wizard, you might require a character to succeed on a Charisma check with a DC of 20 or higher. When combat is joined and staffs are raised, summoning flame and wind and water from the skies, the DC of the check might drop to 18 or lower. How do the players know that the check has become easier in combat? Give you enemies lines to speak! Show their emotional instability upon being surrounded, upon losing allies to your superior strategy or relentless strength.
Imagine yourself as the enemy of your party. If you’re the vengeful cleric leader of this group out for the blood of the party’s druid, there’s likely a lot you have to say as to why this moment has arrived between you. Lend those moments to your players, specifically to engage with. Speak a few lines and communicate that checks can be made to influence how much information their enemy may provide. Whether that be their personal story or clues about the journey at large, the value of immersion is gained. You can make this system as simple or as complex as you want by considering how conflict-averse or bloodthirsty a foe is, if they've been given strict orders upon pain of death to avoid speaking, and so on. A super simple system is this: if a creature is below half its maximum hit points and conflict-averse, Charisma checks made to get the creature to speak have advantage. If they're prone to violence, then Charisma checks have disadvantage when the creature is below half its hit point maximum.
Ability Checks Are Indeed, Free
Ability checks are one of the key ways that a character can interact with their environment, even in the midst of a violent confrontation. The rules regarding making ability checks in combat aren't crystal clear. Thus, every DM seems to have their own set of house rules regarding the opportunity cost of a ability check. Some DMs rule that making an ability check in combat requires an action, some decide that you need to use a bonus action to make a check, and others rule that an ability check is free, but can only be done once per turn... and so on. The Player's Handbook doesn't have a hard-and-fast rule for what kind of action you need to make an ability check, preferring to leave it in the hands of the Dungeon Master.
Err on the side of generosity when allowing characters to make ability checks: only a smalls set of very specific checks cost an action in combat. Otherwise, encourage your characters to interact with their environment by making ability checks free of charge. When it comes to engaging in the narrative tools you’ve laid about your combat scenario, players will rarely give up their action for a skill check because the value of actions are incredibly high. There must be an incentive to engage in your story elements, and that is easily given when participation is free. Choosing otherwise is removing one of the strongest tools you have for players to engage in the multifaceted adventure you’ve come to construct.
Lies and Deception
With all of these tools in hand, keep in mind that the opposition can be just as intelligent, clever, or convincing as your heroes, if not more. When a bard’s life is on the line, they may concoct a mixture of partial lies and half-truths in order to live another day. A proud lizardfolk may seemingly give away the location and formation of their troupe, or it may have been the last deed of honor they do for their cohorts. This brings into consideration what kind of opponent the characters are fighting, beyond the stat block. That leads into the specifics of each individual character’s ability check scores, which usually vary to a large degree. If specific players are more interested in these narrative aspects of combat, slightly tilting the required skill checks in their hero’s favor may help them engage further.
And don’t be afraid for your players to be outwitted. For more intelligent and intimidating enemies, there’s the potential for them to use ability checks against the party. For example, you raise an encounter that the players are doomed to lose. A demonstration of how powerless they are, as well as how powerful they must become. Let your villain slyly trick your sorcerer into saying more than they should by rolling insight or intimidation against one another, applying their mighty +10 and resulting in victory. This replicates the loss of sense one has when in great danger, and contrasts the valley of difference between where you’re beginning and where you hope to end. That small loss resonates with players as a trap to avoid while also building the beginnings of a rivalry. Losing a battle of wits can sometimes be more thrilling than losing a battle of blades.
Your Own Play Style
Players of many different play styles and skill sets play D&D, so there’s no one set way to play the game. When a table of players form, the rules, campaign, themes, and even setting, can change dramatically. That’s the beauty of the game. As a Dungeon Master, you have to be aware of the tools you possess to make sessions as fun as possible. A large part of that is communicating with your players and asking them what their needs are. What areas of a session are they most engaged in, and which can be flat out boring? No one creates a perfect campaign right at the get-go. It takes refining over time.
Combat is a place where this refining is much needed, especially as more narrative focused players enter the community. Expanding your skill set to best suit them is key to being the ever-evolving DM. So my final tip is to talk to your players about implementing these tools. If they don’t work for your table, no worries! At the very least, you’ve opened up a space where experimentation and open dialogue is an option. That kind of care for your players keeps them coming back each week.
Speaking of, I’ll be bringing some more of the helpful tips I’ve learned over the years here to D&D Beyond. Stay tuned for my next article, which is going to be on formulating character stories and backgrounds. Let’s investigate how we frame our adventurers before the game begins and how we might angle our heroes in new and interesting ways. Until then and beyond, keep rolling 20s.
Have you ever focused on creating combat encounters that tell a story in D&D? Tell us about it in the comments!
DC is an independent game designer, and the creator and author of plot ARMOR, as well as a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast. You can find them assisting the tabletop roleplaying game community’s growth on Twitter @DungeonCommandr.
This article is spectacular and goes miles to combat an attitude that I feel like leads to a lot of players (and DM's) to hate playing at low levels. Your character (and their enemies) can do many more things than are spelled out by their class features and the explicit actions in the PHB. In my experience running games, players (and DM's) have a tendency to think in terms of videogame ability buttons, but with a concerted effort by the whole table I think everyone ends up finding that spontaneity that makes D&D so special.
Great article and great advice! This will be very helpful in my encounters.
Great article! I try doing these sort of things from time to time, but normally forget to. I'll try to implement chat between enemies more often having read this. A house rule I have that you may find handy is saying some few words or doing an ability check as a reaction. That way players know they can only do it once per turn and will try to save them if they are being cornered. Moreover, it is very difficult to speak while trying to make melee attacks, thus I consider expending something makes sense
Simply fantastic. Thank you DC for this great tip sheet. Narrative combat is so important!
excellent read!
or reduce the combat XP and add XP to various other elements in the game. Whether that means excellent role play, skill checks, or any number of things you can devise. It really is just limited to your own design
Funny. I use a Sean Connery voice for a Rakshasa.
Agreed...the milestone system. Players level when they reach a major plot point or achieve "victory" (which doesn't have to be combat). It also helps players that might level slower because their skills aren't combat oriented. All players level at approximately the same time after a milestone.
gotta agree - great read.
Probably one of the most useful and practical articles posted on this website since its inception; excellent article!!!
So good
Well done. A very well written article, and I completely agree that remembering all this really does help combat along. I really want to add a lot of this posturing and speaking during combat in my upcoming Eberron campaign.
Or just add bonus xp. I’ve had a lot of DMs over the years that rewarded good role play. Also, once we were in the upper levels, we usually didn’t bother with xp anymore, and he told us when we hit new levels.
alas they are not ! its in the action economy of the players handbook.
they have a few "actions" which literally takes actions to perform. for exemple the...
SEARCH action if you want to loot someone in combat, it is literally taking you an action to make a perception or investigation check.
and then they proceed in telling you below it that its up to the DM to determine the action economy of everything your players does, including the skill checks.
and then they give out other exemples.
so the clear and definitive answer is no, those skill checks aren't free. the only reason we're not using actions, is that the action economy is crowded and thus we tend to give certain leaway to our players in order not to screw them up every opportunity we have with the action economy.
as for novelising your combats... while i agree that is better then just rolling... it also adds a lot of time to encounters and thus its a hard to gain habits. habits that tends to lose itself on time crunches. after all, we're not reading a novel here, we're playing dungeons and dragons. an evolving games where most, and i'll go as far as say 90% of the players are chaotic neutral and just want everything for their characters and nothing for the world around them. even critical role are a bunch of saddist maniacs who would kill anything just for gains in gold and gears. people have to realise what alignments are not just say stupid things like "lawful stupid" or things like chaotic evil is greater then the rest, cause they are there for a reason and are not for the faint of heart. thinking that everyone is playing neutrality is clearly false. most players i've seen at at a table are chaotic neutral with tons of tendency toward being a psychopath who do not care. again look at critical role and their behavior. its easy for everyone to just claim a background made the charcater as he is, but its even easier to fall into the pits of making such a background. which is pretty god darn common place to begin with.
with all that in mind, its easy to fall back onto faster combat who resolves faster by just crunching numbers.
the real problem comes from hit points. hit points are not what people think they are, they are not a representation of your health. they are a representation of how long you can be heroic. even if you lose an arm and a leg. if you want to add injuries to your game, add another step by just adding the injuries from the DMG. just calculate a hitdice of damage and when you take that much hp, an injury happens.
what i do is i describe the combat and how attacks do make an impact and make scars yet i know the character still have 100+ hp. wear and tear is hard to get a glimpse of, but it is best once you get it and can do it every game. if you want your characters to stop being the overly confident brutes even if they are a wizard. then just add injuries to your game. that should teach them that not all fights are worth it. as it will add that layer of realisim to your game.
heres what i try with my group..
DC threshold for injuries : max Hit dice per level + con modifier
anytime a character takes a number of damage equal to or greater then the threshold in one single attack, they take an injury from the DMG workshop list of injuries.
to heal an injury you must heal more then the DC Threshold.
if a character is multiclassed, that character take the highest number of the highest hit dice in his classes as the threshold.
exemple... Cleric 8 / Sorcerer 3, cleric uses D8 and sorcerer uses D6. but cleric has more levels in it then sorcerer so the threshold would use D8.
that cleric sorcerer has a 3 in constitution modifier because of a 16 in constitution.
so the character threshold would be... DC Threshold = 8 + 3 = 11
everytime the character takes 11 or more damage per attacks, he takes an injury.
if he wants to heal that inury he would need to specifically say he heals such an injury and would need to heal 11 or more hit points to heal such an injury.
exemple, that same cleric would want to heal his broken arm, he cast cure wounds at level 1 for that injury. rolling the dice, he gets a low score of 3 + 4 = 7. the injury is not healed, but hit points are still going back up. he cast another cure wounds at level 2 this time... he really needs that arm. he rolls a 6 and a 3 thus 6+3+4 = 13 its higher then 11, thus the arm is healed !
this forces players into being creative with their characters and stop thinking hit points is a measure of injuries. hit points are not a measure of injuries. that is what makes players think they are overly confident beast who can do anything without a care in the world. and death isn't the only option to give them a reality check. because death is hard to come by. with this simple DC Threshold ruling, they will not need to die to get the reality check that they can become blind if they are not careful. or worse, lose an arm or a leg.
@Timfads
The system in its actuallity literally claims to you to give them the XP if they do bring down the encounter with role play. but don't make the mistake of giving them twice the amount for disarming a situation, if you gave them the XP for role play and disarming the encounter, do not give them the XP for killing them afterward. its all in the DMs hand. you are the one who controls the game, not the players and the rules. most DMs make the mistake of giving miracles to their players and then tend to put the blame on the players when they clearly gave those players the benefits. also the XP reward is literally said to be used as a currency, thus not just monsters gives XP. quest should too, so are the role playing people give.
i literally give out 25 xp per level of the character for a good role play. and sometimes i literally give out more then i can think of if the role play lasts for a while.
let's combare that to a brute guy who just murder hobo every CR 0 critters he sees for grinding XP and you realise he's not getting anything. yet those role play dudes who role played the encounter with the bandits captain and stopped the situation from becoming an encounter. gained the benefits of the bandit encounter plus the role playing xp. who do you think will be higher level the fastest here ?
again, its literally up to you to decide who gains what. if you promote XP by just killing mobs, then of course your players will become murder hobos. but if you give them incentive to role play their way out...
exemple...
the bandits encounter happens, the players are surrounded by bandits, their captain talks to the players and ask for their purse to gain access to the way into the mountain. the players just kill them all, no answer whatsoever... they gain the bandit encounter XP, be done with it. thats one way of solving it... is there a better way to solve it and gain more XP. sure there is.
the same thing happens, but instead of just killing, the players starts to talk to the bandits letting them know that if a fight happens, they will murder each and everyone of them, and that it is literally the bandits choice to decide if their lives are worth more or less then they think. after some rolling intimidation the bandit captain thinks he's still in advantageous position because he has the numbers. a fight breaks out... same results, the players gets the XP for the encounter because they destroyed that group, but they also gain a bunch of XP for the role playing of them trying to win this without a fight. that's already more then the murder hobos would gain.
third option...
same thing happens... but the bard says "we may die, you may win, but it will be with a cost and that cost is the life of a few of your men." turning to the bandits, "are you all wanting to die for that men and his greed ?" the others shows their weapons at the ready including the mage who just opens his hand and flames comes out of it. the bard makes a perssuasion check with advantage because of the help of his companions. the bandits are telling their captain, "captain we think the numbers will not matters here..." the bandit captain can see that now, he decidedes to let go of the players and live another day to get another reward. the players disarmed the situation, they et the role play experience, but i would also give them the encounter experience because they did have the encounter. but if the murder hobos think, yeah free xp. he turns and fireball the whole group after the group clear out. i would not give him the XP of the kills, because i already gave them the XP of the encounter.
this is how you stop murder hobos.
i could also show you how i stopped a group of murder hobos when i was younger and at school...
the group were totally evil, destroying and pillaging villages after villages in the country sides. thinking no milititary is around here.
first the milice of the towns were trying to stop them, failed miserably...
eventually, some mercenaries came upon them with warrants on their heads... failed miserably.
a few mercenaries and bounty hunters after, they laughed thinking we're king of the world.
they arrived closer to the capital and met an army, which was decimated by them. they laughed hardly...
one day at a small village at the border fo the country... a lone man in white robe and golden armor with a hood over his head was walking toward them with a purpose.
the eyes of that men under his hood started to glow and his hand pulsed with energy. he meant business.
the man stopped about 60 feet from them. told them to surrender and come with him to the capital for their judgement or else they would suffer the death penalty where they stood.
the players laughed, thinking this was just another bounty hunter after their head.
the players attacked, literally all have their initiative before him. i rolled badly...
i said, the man takes all of your attacks, some succeed some fails... including a 27 to hit which failed strangely. mind you this was in 2e.
the fighter said... something is odd guys this one is probably much stronger then we thought. we should run.
the others said, nope he's just bluffing and we can wreck it easily.
came to the man in white robe... by your actions you are irredeemable and i am here to be your executionneer !
the man cast a spell, Meteor Strike, he one shots all the level 9 players... the whole group. a crater in the middle of the village.
the man turns around, tells the populace that he is sorry it fell upon their village, he will aid in the rebuilding of their village and the king will pay for all expenses.
the players said, wait that was a knight of the kings court !
i said, far worse, the knights of the kings court, you fell them a few villages ago.
wait those knights in gold armor were the kings knights !!!
who's that guy who killed us ?
second general of the kings services. he was responsible of the medical branch of the military. he's a high level cleric who used scry on you guys
for a while to know where you were, what was your position and where you were going, he tracked you down for a few weeks and finally caught up to you guys.
wait you should of given us a chance or soemthing this sucks badly...
you had all the chances int he world, you are the ones who kept piling corpses and destroying villages.
the world wouldn'T just stay there waiting for you to destroy it. its alive and other adventurers exists.
then i showed them the character sheet of one of my old players !
wait we got defeated by another player ! they said...
i said yes, all my adventures happens int he same world so all of my players have equal chances at making history.
you are about 40 years after the events of that adventurer, even if he has old age and cannot really fight anymore. a group liike you he could easily stopped.
thus the king after sending so many ressources to stop the afflicting village destruction you guys brought to his kingdom, asked a favor of the old man.
track down the plague and eradicate it. seeing that you were just a bunch of no gooders he gave you a chance to pass by the system first. you refused by your actions.
he eradicated you.
last i saw of those players, they believed i had set them up for faillure...
that's how you eradicate murder hobos. the world must strive to live, otherwise they can just waltz through it and have no care in the world.
thats why all my guards or milicia or kings have stats, they have character levels as well. you never know who used to be an adventurer before.
after all, your adventurers are not the only ones in the world.
I believe it was referring to skill checks that could be observational as it pointed out seeing new uniform colors. Skill checks like History, Arcana, and Survival when used as a knowledge check would definitely be free. It's the character thinking about things and unlike searching a body, require no outward action like movement. Even intimidating is considered something of an attack and is usually counted as an action but talking, or shouting battlecries, or giving the enemy a devilish one liner while stabbing at him/her are free.
I already am using the 3 pillars of XP system.That wasn't the point of my comment. My comment was stating that D&D RAW doesn't reward role-playing and exploring with XP like pretty much every other system does. That DMs have to add it themselves, like I have, which is a a bit disappointing.
Tim
It does say to give XP for getting past an encounter but falls waaaay short on giving out XP for anything else. Compared to most other system that are out now the default XP reward system for D&D is still combat focused. I use the 3 pillars of XP system but if I was playing another game I wouldn't have to use an alternative system to reward XP for pure social interactions and exploration, those systems reward XP for whatever happens in a session.
Tim
I think you should read more about the rewards in the dmg. It says much more then that and literally tells you to give out xp whenever you feel the players needs it.
But hey play how you want. You seem to be the kind of player who does not go beyond then the words in the book. But yeah... There is a whole section for rewards to players in the dmg. You should read it.
Great food for thought! I look forward to putting into practice what I've learned here today!