In my campaign, I want to make the fights a bit more interesting to work with, in that I want to have the combatants change partway through. The goal is to establish the "rules" for the fight, and then change them suddenly when everyone thinks they get it.
For example, an opponent who freezes anyone who comes close. Easy enough, after one round, the party have learnt to stay away from them. But then things shift, and a fog falls around them, giving cover if they are not within 5ft. Suddenly, the dynamic of the game changes.
That was off the top of my head. Another example would be a melee opponent facing a sentinel/polearm master character, and them thinking they can just stop them every turn - but then the opponents sword snaps out into a bladed whip with a reach of 15ft, and they have to work out how to get close instead!
What sort of battle-dynamic shifts have you employed in your games? I'm looking for anything that can shift how a battle is happening in a fairly sudden manner!
For large boss fights, I've recently tried adopting some MMO style design with phases much like what you're described.
I did a creature of the shadow weave that had one phase for each of the dominant schools of that weave (illusion, necromancy and enchantment), where abilities and lair actions changed for each phase. Like what you're suggested, this meant that the players had to adapt their strategy for each phase.
Some things I learned by running that encounter, that you might find useful (even though you were asking about ideas):
- The phases need to last a while to be meaningful, that is for the PCs to be able to actually adapt
- The previous point means that the encounter will be long, so plan IRL time and in game recourses accordingly
- Unlike MMOs, there is no second or hundredth try, so you have to telegraph clearly - unknown abilities that kill a PC outright unless properly dealt with don't work (also an excellent excuse to get the PCs to research the creatures lore before the fight, whicher style).
- These fights are really hard to balance, try to make optional buffs or debuffs to use if the fight swings hard
- In general, creating this kind of encounter is a lot of work and it can take a lot of time to play through. I would not use them often, reserving it for major plot resolutions - that makes them more impactful and keeps the DM sane.
For more "day to day" phased encounters, I like to use waves of enemies. A simple example is adding a wave of ranged enemies on raised platforms when the party is engaged in melee or adding a priority target like a spellcaster to force a shift in strategy.
My DM ran a fight once where at the start of the enemy’s turn, it would change colors based on random rolls. There were always 2 different colors. One represented damage it was resistant to, and the other damage it was vulnerable to. It was a cool concept, but the execution didn’t quite work. For one, we couldn’t figure out which color meant what. For two, lots of characters, martials in particular, aren’t really able to switch up their damage types, so it wouldn’t have mattered a lot. But for the right group and the right fight, it could be pretty cool.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
In my campaign, I want to make the fights a bit more interesting to work with, in that I want to have the combatants change partway through. The goal is to establish the "rules" for the fight, and then change them suddenly when everyone thinks they get it.
For example, an opponent who freezes anyone who comes close. Easy enough, after one round, the party have learnt to stay away from them. But then things shift, and a fog falls around them, giving cover if they are not within 5ft. Suddenly, the dynamic of the game changes.
That was off the top of my head. Another example would be a melee opponent facing a sentinel/polearm master character, and them thinking they can just stop them every turn - but then the opponents sword snaps out into a bladed whip with a reach of 15ft, and they have to work out how to get close instead!
What sort of battle-dynamic shifts have you employed in your games? I'm looking for anything that can shift how a battle is happening in a fairly sudden manner!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
For large boss fights, I've recently tried adopting some MMO style design with phases much like what you're described.
I did a creature of the shadow weave that had one phase for each of the dominant schools of that weave (illusion, necromancy and enchantment), where abilities and lair actions changed for each phase. Like what you're suggested, this meant that the players had to adapt their strategy for each phase.
Some things I learned by running that encounter, that you might find useful (even though you were asking about ideas):
- The phases need to last a while to be meaningful, that is for the PCs to be able to actually adapt
- The previous point means that the encounter will be long, so plan IRL time and in game recourses accordingly
- Unlike MMOs, there is no second or hundredth try, so you have to telegraph clearly - unknown abilities that kill a PC outright unless properly dealt with don't work (also an excellent excuse to get the PCs to research the creatures lore before the fight, whicher style).
- These fights are really hard to balance, try to make optional buffs or debuffs to use if the fight swings hard
- In general, creating this kind of encounter is a lot of work and it can take a lot of time to play through. I would not use them often, reserving it for major plot resolutions - that makes them more impactful and keeps the DM sane.
For more "day to day" phased encounters, I like to use waves of enemies. A simple example is adding a wave of ranged enemies on raised platforms when the party is engaged in melee or adding a priority target like a spellcaster to force a shift in strategy.
My DM ran a fight once where at the start of the enemy’s turn, it would change colors based on random rolls. There were always 2 different colors. One represented damage it was resistant to, and the other damage it was vulnerable to.
It was a cool concept, but the execution didn’t quite work. For one, we couldn’t figure out which color meant what. For two, lots of characters, martials in particular, aren’t really able to switch up their damage types, so it wouldn’t have mattered a lot.
But for the right group and the right fight, it could be pretty cool.