DMs! Lately combat has been boring for both me and my players to run. What are some things I can do to spice up the combat? Maybe homebrew rules? Unique interactions other than roll and hit? Explain your ideas here:
Broadly speaking, there's two things that make combat more engaging: fear of failure, and difficult decisions. These are somewhat tied together.
The easiest way to create fear of failure is by ramping up difficulty; fear of outright losing does focus the mind. The drawback of this, as a DM, is if you keep using combats with a real chance of losing, well, eventually the odds will catch up with the PCs and you've got a TPK on your hands. The other alternative is to have a way the PCs can fail without winning the fight. For example, the bad guys are trying to assassinate someone, or stall the PCs by long enough for something else to happen, or raise an alert.
Difficult decisions typically occur when the PCs have multiple targets or objectives, and which one should be the priority isn't obvious. This is connected to fear of failure, in that making the wrong decision doesn't matter unless it could cause you to fail. The easiest way to give the PCs decisions is to have a mix of multiple types of monster, though there's also non-creature problems like traps, trick monsters (to defeat it you have to do something special), and monsters that are doing something that isn't relevant to this fight but might be a problem later (such as the monster that's running for help).
Goals. Your combat is boring because the goal of the monster is t okill the player, and the goal of the player is to kill the monster.
liken it to the difference between an action movie and a boxing match. you're aiming for the action movie, but you're getting the boxing match - two sides who agree on facing off against one another, square up, and then try to win the fight. In the action movie, this doesn't happen - instead, you get one side trying to do something, and the other side trying to stop them, or getting in the way, and the fight ensues - Indiana jones is trying to get Marian out of the plane before everything explodes, and the big bald guy is trying to kill him, and that makes tension - can Indie kill the big bald dude before Marian explodes?
Here's a situation which we can expand on - the old "bandit ambush" that happens on the road.
Scenario 1: the party are travelling, and they either notice or fail to notice the ambush, and combat ensues. The party have one goal - to kill the bandits - and the bandits have 1 goal - to kill the heroes. The bandits might retreat after so many die, but it remains one dimensional. You can add terrain and such to spice it up, but the players will go through the same motions of resource management to win the fight.
Scenario 2: same setup, but the bandits have a goal in mind - to steal the packhorse with the adventurers supplies in it, or one of their backpacks. This takes a bit of foreshadowing in that the party need to be aware of their stuff and how it's being carried, but that's a good bit of light immersion to throw in anyway. Now, the first move the bandits make is to draw the heroes off to the side, away from the pack horse. The second move is to run in, jump onto the horse, and start riding it away. Suddenly, what your party thought would be a mathematic-duel of numbers vs numbers is now includign roleplay - he's running off on the horse, what do you do? the other bandits are stealthing away, melting into the shadows. You've been robbed! They might give chase, the druid might turn into a hawk and track them, the wizard might scry on the horse to see where it is - they have new choices to make!
I'd apply this approach to between a third and half the encounters - some will be hungry beasts wanting to kill them, so that does happen. But in each situation, think to yourself; what is important to the party, both material to be stolen or sabotaged, or their goals in the current situation, and what encounters could you use to affect them? Is the bad guy running to raise the alarm? Is there someone powering up a giant suit of armour which they really want to stop coming to life? do they return to the dragons horde to find several theives rolling up a portable hole and sprinting from the door opposite, leaving but a few trinkets behind them?
as soon as you give the players a goal beside "kill these guys, in whatever order or method you choose", then it will improve the interest. Legolas shooting orcs in the battle of helms deep was fairly dull, but when he shoots at the orc with the torch, and keeps rolling 1's for damage, that's when the fight became exciting. give your players something to do quickly, which forces them to make choices they wouldn't have done, EG "you're surrounded by 2 wolves, who are trying to push you back. then you see the goblin opposite start turning the wheel, raising the gate ahead of you. behind the gate, you hear something big growling." Now they would have just killed the wolves, then killed the goblin, but they have a decision to make, a chance to take, to make winning easier.
Published modules typically say something like "There are three zombies beneath the surface of the water. They attack if the PCs causing any disturbances." This leads to tedious "wander into area, what's there? Fight it, move on" type gameplay. It's very boring. Moreover, this type of encounter feels like it's not really part of the story: every encounter should be part of the story in some way.
There are also other reasons that combat can be dull, the major one being that it's too easy. If you aren't threatening character death, there's no outcome to pursue other than to get through the combat so it ends. Run 2-4 encounters per day, and all of them should be deadly. Anything less than that is a waste of time.
This is how I run my game. It may not work for everybody, and requires extra prep, but for my games combat is pretty exciting.
Every fight you run should have a gimmick; something that means that this fight is going to be different.
The gimmick requires a Mechanic. That means that in every round of combat, the gimmick will do something, and will force the players to act differently.
You can reuse simple gimmicks. More complex ones are one-offs.
Simple Gimmicks - examples
An ambush - the party begin the combat with a Surprise round, and may well be surrounded.
Terrain issues - thick fog reduces visibility to 15 feet, howling winds increase movement by 10 feet if you move south, but reduce it by 10 feet (where the enemies are shooting from) if you head north, wildfires burst up in a random square each turn etc.
Protect the NPCs - the PCs are not the target of the combat, they intervene to rescue NPCs. Success/Failure is reliant on how many NPCs survive.
These are simple because you don't have to modify any monsters to run them, it's generally a zone-based rule or setup that creates the unique factor.
Complex Gimmicks - examples
Deep Breath. A monster you homebrew can take a Deep Breath as a Bonus Action on its turn, gaining a Charge. The following turn, it can spend a Charge and a Bonus Action to breathe out, dealing huge AOE damage to everything within 120 feet that isn't in full cover. The PCs must keep moving and hiding. For extra fun, the monster can smash over the terrain features they're hiding behind.
Onslaught. Every turn, a full encounter's worth of slow monsters spawn. The PCs know that they have to hold out for a long time - I ran it as 9 turns of combat. As the slow monsters charge them they have to thin the numbers, but more and more spawn. Use varied monsters - e.g. a portal can spawn 4 foot soldiers, 1 giant, or a spellcaster. Spawn 3-4 portals per turn. The PCs should be totally tapped by around turn 7 and struggling to stay up. All monsters despawn at Initiative 30 on Turn 10.
Rolling Boulders. The PCs are climbing a mountain slope. The enemies (I used deathlocks) roll 4 huge boulders down the slope. Each boulder trundles down 20 feet/turn and will deal 10d10 bludgeoning damage to anything it runs into. Throw in some Hold Persons to make them extra threatening, and make sure you have enough boulders rolling that the PCs are forced to move.
Look at video game raid bosses for inspiration - even if you do not play MMOs. Many video game bosses have mechanics that can easily be added to a combat encounter. Things like “two enemies that are linked, if you don’t kill them within the same round, any at 0 regenerate their health some”, or puzzles that have to be solved to stop immunity to damage.
Healing is another way to make a fight more dynamic, provided it is more interesting than “the monster heals” or “an ally heals the monster.” Something like the monster creates a minor effect that it can consume if they players do not destroy it. Or healing orbs that slowly approach the monster if not stopped (giving your party something to interact with). Or keeping track of certain damage types, and having it heal any damage taken from that type when it hits zero, the healing reduced by how much damage of another type it took (effectively resistance and immunity tacked on at zero health, not when damage dealt, so players feel like they are getting their hits in, but have to figure out the mechanic itself).
Another option is to look at lair actions on bosses and add them in as effects to combat (perhaps in a weaker form). These actions could trigger at certain HP amounts of the monster or if the party does certain things, making the combat more dynamic. Many change the terrain of the battlefield itself, ensuring the fight takes a new direction and the party has to adjust tactics some.
I often like to incorporate some sort of puzzle element into combats, like how boss fights in video games make you have to figure out something in order to beat the boss. That way the puzzle can challenge the players at the same time the combat challenges their PCs.
Maybe the monster keeps burrowing underground and attacking from below and the players have to figure out how to overcome that challenge. Maybe the villain might keep casting disguise self and hiding among civilians and they have to figure out how to overcome that challenge. Maybe the hoard of monsters keeps coming and they have to figure out how to overcome that challenge. Maybe… we’ll, you get the idea.
Maybe the players will use terrain to their advantage? Maybe they’ll put up a bill zone and sacrifice their own ability to use magic to take that option away from their enemy? Maybe they’ll make clever use of some spell or equipment or ally or something? I never figure out the solutions, that’s their job. I only ever design the challenges they need to overcome. They always seem to figure out a way to overcome them.
I always find that using spellcasting or ranged enemies helps, especially if they're in hard-to-reach places. As people on the thread have mentioned prior, varying terrain really helps. Also, varied enemies and bosses, with combos and fun descriptions.
Remember that the monsters/NPCs aren't just there for the characters to manipulate or abuse, they're individuals (except when they're not!) in their own right. They have their own goals, their own ways of achieving them, and their won tactics and point they'll cut and run. Don't treat the world as if it exists for the players'/characters' benefit, treat it as if it would exist whether they were out adventuring or not. Beasts hunt for food, aristocrats find ways to steal from peasants, villains have evil plots, and heroes fight monsters (and occasionally die to them).
How this relates to combat is that if the PCs are fighting bears, the bears will probably run away once they take a bit of damage. If they're fighting a smart villain, it'll probably run the moment it feels it can't win, or the fight isn't worth the risk. If the PCs manage to use smart tactics, they can trap their enemies and beat them, but they need to be quick. Their adversaries will use everything they have to win a fight. Truly evil/clever villains will endanger innocents to distract the PCs from the fight, or rig up traps that can be employed during a fight. Things like beholders will build their layer vertically, because they can float and most things that would be coming for them can't.
I agree on the monsters gimmicks and the puzzles. Last night my players had a fight in an exotic monsters store in which the beasts got loose and began attacking both sides. I added a Gremlin like monster that could duplicate whenever it tasted blood, with the duplicate having its turn immediately after the original and being able to duplicate as well. They underestimate how quick that could escalate, specially once it began attacking the other pets since they had lower AC and it went from one to like fifteen monster in just a few turns. It didn't help the the enemies they were originally fighting against were mind controled innocents so the players were taking the time to stabilize them and had to be careful with area of effect attacks. There was a bit of a panic as well when a couple of the monsters began running for the door of the store and almost got loose in town.
Besides though, I think the best encounters are the ones in which you go ham with the descriptions. There was a boss monster that they fought twice in my campaign. The first time I went to describe how every miss did stuff like blowing up a wall or made them feel the wind due to a narrow miss or how the sidekick it was attacking had to roll and crawl under it to get away and it was a lot of fun. The second time though, we were on a hurry and I added a lot of mechanics that I was unfamiliar with so I had to check and pause without giving a lot of description other than the effects. Suffice to say, while the second fight was considerably harder (which is what usually my party considers the most fun) they preferred the first one.
My advice though would be to see if you can add exageration of the effects from combat both from players and monsters and make the fight easier to picture as something dangerous. I would also suggest adding a few funny moments, like a monster being particularly cowardly or always complaining to make them distinct from the rest.
DMs! Lately combat has been boring for both me and my players to run. What are some things I can do to spice up the combat? Maybe homebrew rules? Unique interactions other than roll and hit? Explain your ideas here:
A New DM up against the World
Broadly speaking, there's two things that make combat more engaging: fear of failure, and difficult decisions. These are somewhat tied together.
The easiest way to create fear of failure is by ramping up difficulty; fear of outright losing does focus the mind. The drawback of this, as a DM, is if you keep using combats with a real chance of losing, well, eventually the odds will catch up with the PCs and you've got a TPK on your hands. The other alternative is to have a way the PCs can fail without winning the fight. For example, the bad guys are trying to assassinate someone, or stall the PCs by long enough for something else to happen, or raise an alert.
Difficult decisions typically occur when the PCs have multiple targets or objectives, and which one should be the priority isn't obvious. This is connected to fear of failure, in that making the wrong decision doesn't matter unless it could cause you to fail. The easiest way to give the PCs decisions is to have a mix of multiple types of monster, though there's also non-creature problems like traps, trick monsters (to defeat it you have to do something special), and monsters that are doing something that isn't relevant to this fight but might be a problem later (such as the monster that's running for help).
Terrain - give them options to get cover, or move to avoid being hit.
Have players describe how they are doing their actions.
Goals. Your combat is boring because the goal of the monster is t okill the player, and the goal of the player is to kill the monster.
liken it to the difference between an action movie and a boxing match. you're aiming for the action movie, but you're getting the boxing match - two sides who agree on facing off against one another, square up, and then try to win the fight. In the action movie, this doesn't happen - instead, you get one side trying to do something, and the other side trying to stop them, or getting in the way, and the fight ensues - Indiana jones is trying to get Marian out of the plane before everything explodes, and the big bald guy is trying to kill him, and that makes tension - can Indie kill the big bald dude before Marian explodes?
Here's a situation which we can expand on - the old "bandit ambush" that happens on the road.
Scenario 1: the party are travelling, and they either notice or fail to notice the ambush, and combat ensues. The party have one goal - to kill the bandits - and the bandits have 1 goal - to kill the heroes. The bandits might retreat after so many die, but it remains one dimensional. You can add terrain and such to spice it up, but the players will go through the same motions of resource management to win the fight.
Scenario 2: same setup, but the bandits have a goal in mind - to steal the packhorse with the adventurers supplies in it, or one of their backpacks. This takes a bit of foreshadowing in that the party need to be aware of their stuff and how it's being carried, but that's a good bit of light immersion to throw in anyway.
Now, the first move the bandits make is to draw the heroes off to the side, away from the pack horse. The second move is to run in, jump onto the horse, and start riding it away. Suddenly, what your party thought would be a mathematic-duel of numbers vs numbers is now includign roleplay - he's running off on the horse, what do you do? the other bandits are stealthing away, melting into the shadows. You've been robbed! They might give chase, the druid might turn into a hawk and track them, the wizard might scry on the horse to see where it is - they have new choices to make!
I'd apply this approach to between a third and half the encounters - some will be hungry beasts wanting to kill them, so that does happen. But in each situation, think to yourself; what is important to the party, both material to be stolen or sabotaged, or their goals in the current situation, and what encounters could you use to affect them? Is the bad guy running to raise the alarm? Is there someone powering up a giant suit of armour which they really want to stop coming to life? do they return to the dragons horde to find several theives rolling up a portable hole and sprinting from the door opposite, leaving but a few trinkets behind them?
as soon as you give the players a goal beside "kill these guys, in whatever order or method you choose", then it will improve the interest. Legolas shooting orcs in the battle of helms deep was fairly dull, but when he shoots at the orc with the torch, and keeps rolling 1's for damage, that's when the fight became exciting. give your players something to do quickly, which forces them to make choices they wouldn't have done, EG "you're surrounded by 2 wolves, who are trying to push you back. then you see the goblin opposite start turning the wheel, raising the gate ahead of you. behind the gate, you hear something big growling." Now they would have just killed the wolves, then killed the goblin, but they have a decision to make, a chance to take, to make winning easier.
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Published modules typically say something like "There are three zombies beneath the surface of the water. They attack if the PCs causing any disturbances." This leads to tedious "wander into area, what's there? Fight it, move on" type gameplay. It's very boring. Moreover, this type of encounter feels like it's not really part of the story: every encounter should be part of the story in some way.
There are also other reasons that combat can be dull, the major one being that it's too easy. If you aren't threatening character death, there's no outcome to pursue other than to get through the combat so it ends. Run 2-4 encounters per day, and all of them should be deadly. Anything less than that is a waste of time.
This is how I run my game. It may not work for everybody, and requires extra prep, but for my games combat is pretty exciting.
Simple Gimmicks - examples
These are simple because you don't have to modify any monsters to run them, it's generally a zone-based rule or setup that creates the unique factor.
Complex Gimmicks - examples
Look at video game raid bosses for inspiration - even if you do not play MMOs. Many video game bosses have mechanics that can easily be added to a combat encounter. Things like “two enemies that are linked, if you don’t kill them within the same round, any at 0 regenerate their health some”, or puzzles that have to be solved to stop immunity to damage.
Healing is another way to make a fight more dynamic, provided it is more interesting than “the monster heals” or “an ally heals the monster.” Something like the monster creates a minor effect that it can consume if they players do not destroy it. Or healing orbs that slowly approach the monster if not stopped (giving your party something to interact with). Or keeping track of certain damage types, and having it heal any damage taken from that type when it hits zero, the healing reduced by how much damage of another type it took (effectively resistance and immunity tacked on at zero health, not when damage dealt, so players feel like they are getting their hits in, but have to figure out the mechanic itself).
Another option is to look at lair actions on bosses and add them in as effects to combat (perhaps in a weaker form). These actions could trigger at certain HP amounts of the monster or if the party does certain things, making the combat more dynamic. Many change the terrain of the battlefield itself, ensuring the fight takes a new direction and the party has to adjust tactics some.
I often like to incorporate some sort of puzzle element into combats, like how boss fights in video games make you have to figure out something in order to beat the boss. That way the puzzle can challenge the players at the same time the combat challenges their PCs.
Maybe the monster keeps burrowing underground and attacking from below and the players have to figure out how to overcome that challenge. Maybe the villain might keep casting disguise self and hiding among civilians and they have to figure out how to overcome that challenge. Maybe the hoard of monsters keeps coming and they have to figure out how to overcome that challenge. Maybe… we’ll, you get the idea.
Maybe the players will use terrain to their advantage? Maybe they’ll put up a bill zone and sacrifice their own ability to use magic to take that option away from their enemy? Maybe they’ll make clever use of some spell or equipment or ally or something? I never figure out the solutions, that’s their job. I only ever design the challenges they need to overcome. They always seem to figure out a way to overcome them.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I always find that using spellcasting or ranged enemies helps, especially if they're in hard-to-reach places. As people on the thread have mentioned prior, varying terrain really helps. Also, varied enemies and bosses, with combos and fun descriptions.
"A wise man puts Charisma as his dump stat"
-Sun Tzu
The Monsters Know What They’re Doing
Remember that the monsters/NPCs aren't just there for the characters to manipulate or abuse, they're individuals (except when they're not!) in their own right. They have their own goals, their own ways of achieving them, and their won tactics and point they'll cut and run. Don't treat the world as if it exists for the players'/characters' benefit, treat it as if it would exist whether they were out adventuring or not. Beasts hunt for food, aristocrats find ways to steal from peasants, villains have evil plots, and heroes fight monsters (and occasionally die to them).
How this relates to combat is that if the PCs are fighting bears, the bears will probably run away once they take a bit of damage. If they're fighting a smart villain, it'll probably run the moment it feels it can't win, or the fight isn't worth the risk. If the PCs manage to use smart tactics, they can trap their enemies and beat them, but they need to be quick. Their adversaries will use everything they have to win a fight. Truly evil/clever villains will endanger innocents to distract the PCs from the fight, or rig up traps that can be employed during a fight. Things like beholders will build their layer vertically, because they can float and most things that would be coming for them can't.
Here, this might help:
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I agree on the monsters gimmicks and the puzzles. Last night my players had a fight in an exotic monsters store in which the beasts got loose and began attacking both sides. I added a Gremlin like monster that could duplicate whenever it tasted blood, with the duplicate having its turn immediately after the original and being able to duplicate as well. They underestimate how quick that could escalate, specially once it began attacking the other pets since they had lower AC and it went from one to like fifteen monster in just a few turns. It didn't help the the enemies they were originally fighting against were mind controled innocents so the players were taking the time to stabilize them and had to be careful with area of effect attacks. There was a bit of a panic as well when a couple of the monsters began running for the door of the store and almost got loose in town.
Besides though, I think the best encounters are the ones in which you go ham with the descriptions. There was a boss monster that they fought twice in my campaign. The first time I went to describe how every miss did stuff like blowing up a wall or made them feel the wind due to a narrow miss or how the sidekick it was attacking had to roll and crawl under it to get away and it was a lot of fun. The second time though, we were on a hurry and I added a lot of mechanics that I was unfamiliar with so I had to check and pause without giving a lot of description other than the effects. Suffice to say, while the second fight was considerably harder (which is what usually my party considers the most fun) they preferred the first one.
My advice though would be to see if you can add exageration of the effects from combat both from players and monsters and make the fight easier to picture as something dangerous. I would also suggest adding a few funny moments, like a monster being particularly cowardly or always complaining to make them distinct from the rest.
.