I was inspired by a recent podcast of Sly Flourish’s, and have made a kind of checklist of ways to make combats interesting. Most combats don’t need many, if any, of these at all. In general, it’s better to keep these to the larger or more important battles. Edit: Interesting Monsters + Fantastic Location paired with 2-3 of these for a special battle will make it very memorable.
Interesting Monsters, and a Fantastic Location
The easiest and best way to make a battle different is to vary who is being fought, and where. Even superficially, an arcane gate feels different from the woods, each of which is different from a blank page. One consideration is to ensure the maps aren’t too big because it’s no fun to run for a few turns just to get to the enemy. Without anything else, this is a great way to make each fight feel different.
Zone-Wide Effects
This is the most interesting one to me. A Zone-wide effect is an effect that is everywhere in the arena, and effects everyone, usually linked to the place the battle is happening. Sometimes it can be linked to an object that can be turned off in some way (destroying it, a switch, whatever), but usually it is linked to the location itself.
These can be things like “Necrotic Whispers”, which require a CON Save to be able to complete a spell casting, “Dark Monastery” which halves healing, or “God of War’s Domain” which causes weapon attacks to deal an extra die of damage.
Traps and Hazards, and Interactable Objects
Where Zone-Wide Effects are global, these are more local. Traps and Hazards are places where someone can be hurt or inconvenienced by the environment. These can be known or unknown – a swinging axe would be a known hazard, whereas a rotten section of a wood floor would be more hidden.
These can be combined with Interactable objects like crumbling pillars, catapults, or even ways to activate or negate said traps and hazards. Just by having more things to pay attention to or be surprised by the map, the combat instantly becomes more dynamic. And combining it with interaction will bump that aspect up and change PCs’ and enemies’ strategies up.
Advantageous Positions and Cover
Advantageous positions encourage tactics and movement to get to the locations that provide the most benefit. These could be as major as arcane circles that add damage to spells or more mundane like a clifftop where you gain advantage on ranged attacks and half cover from them. Speaking of cover, don’t forget about giving opportunities for cover. “Half cover is easy to find, Full cover is hard to find” – fallen pillars, furniture, and million other things can provide cover to a crafty PC. Give opportunities for them
Difficult or Fantastic Terrain
Messing with the map is a great way to make a battle more interesting. Narrow bridges, cliffs, ships, shards of glass on the floor – all of which make the battlefield more dynamic than if the field was flat and plain. Even areas of simple Difficult Terrain will change how a party navigates a fight.
A Roc is attacking the party as they are trying to cross a long bridge is very different from a pirate attack on a ship. Other examples are how a lich might have areas where living creatures are vulnerable to its spells. Ethereal rifts that puts a character in or out of the Ethereal Plane can change the battlefield drastically – I know what I’m doing for my next fight!
The Goal (and Morale)
This might be the most important one. By changing what the goal of the battle is, you completely change the dynamic of the fight. A race to get to the secret relic is different from activating the six monuments or protecting a target. The way the fight goes will be hugely influenced by the goal of the combat. It will fundamentally change the way the PCs and enemies fight, and will especially let the combat end before all the enemies are dead. It has the side effect of having combats where the enemies are out to kill that much more interesting.
In combats where there isn’t a distinct goal, like a random encounter, it might be worthwhile to add a kind of morale system, which can influence the way the enemies fight – they won’t fight to the death randomly – they should at least have the chance to run away. This also adds to the situation when a villain and their henchmen won’t run away, since their goal is to kill the party, making those fights more intense. It also allows your PCs to fight more or bigger monsters since you can expect the monsters to decide this fight isn’t worth it and run away or try and parlay with the party (I’ll give you information if you let us live!). It also can help stop combat a few turns earlier if the combat has a forgone conclusion. If it comes to a point where the PCs will wipe the floor and there won’t be anything interesting, you can just ask the PCs “How do you defeat the rest of them?” and let them have fun describing what they want to do without going through a few more turns of combat (no morale roll needed).
Bonus: Highlight a Character’s special or unique role or abilities
It can be fun to try and highlight a Character’s unique abilities with the fight, especially if it is one where it is related to a specific PC. Perhaps the enemy has a damage threshold where they can’t take more than 12 damage at once, causing the Fighter and monk, who get many hits in, feel better. Alternatively, they reduce each instance of damage by 10, making the rogue’s single big hit that much more valuable. Perhaps the fight takes place in an arcane anomaly, where the sorcery point cost to do spells is reduced by 2, allowing all kinds of flair. An old growth forest where the Druid’s magic has increased potency would also be a factor. I definitely wouldn’t make this a part of every combat, but I might try and implement something like this to highlight a character’s role in the party or them as a character.
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