11 Tips for Creating D&D Encounters Your Players Will Love (and avoiding tedious combats)

in my hand of light d d campaign years ago the characters were confronted by a band of hugoths as I finished describing them to my players I said they attack rule initiative and then one of my players Ben said really with that one word I knew exactly what he meant you see I was breaking one of my fundamental rules of d d encounter design so I backpedaled a little corrected myself and we went on to have one of the very best Encounters in that campaign today we are going to Deep dive into d d encounter creation my goal is to make this as complete a guide as I can to designing and running encounters that both you and your players will love number one the three types of encounters the first thing to recognize is the not all encounters are combat nor should all the Encounters in your game be combat now there are probably some groups who might enjoy that but for most groups that will become old and boring pretty darn fast there are in fact three different base basic types of encounters you should use in your games first you have the pure social interaction where combat is very unlikely this might be when they encounter a group of merchants traveling on the road or perhaps the blacksmith is taking his Wares into the next town over your goal with these types of encounters is usually to deliver information progress the plot somehow or just have a scene with a fun NPC that the players might enjoy so the Caravan of versions We mentioned that the players run into well they happen to have some information about the next town over in so much that there was a military coup and many of the merchants are being driven out of town There's a plot hook the adventurers might decide to go over and investigate things and that blacksmith well same reason he's going to the next town over to sell his Wares because he can no longer sell them in the town he's originally from because well he and his family were exiled the next type of basic encounter is the potential combat this is where enemies people who are probably negatively predisposed toward the characters are going to approach them or the characters are going to open a door and happen upon them and then the enemies open with dialogue they don't immediately draw swords and attack instead they talk to the characters they don't like the characters they might hate the characters and despise the character they don't attack they open with dialogue but they are also willing to fight if it comes to it now your goal with these sorts of Encounters in your game is to put an obstacle in the path of PC's goals that must be overcome either through their wits in talking with those monsters that have just challenged their presence in their dungeon either with the dice perhaps they try to persuade them or intimidate them or deceive them and then have to roll for it and see how successful they are or through pure Force of Arms if persuasion and deceit don't work then it might just come down to fighting those goblins or monsters in that dungeon room your goal here also is to present a combat to the PCS if they so choose because you know a lot of players enjoy combat in d d in fact a lot of the core rule mechanics are based around combat d d is known as a combat focused game so not surprisingly many players love combat and that's one of the big reasons they play so having a group of enemies that might talk to them or might come to combat if things aren't resolved in a different way gives your players the choice of hey we could talk we could try to deceive or persuade but hey if we want to just fight we could just fight these guys you're giving your players the choice the option of how they want to engage with that encounter and giving players choices and options in this game are bread and butter more choices and options they have usually it's a good thing unless of course they're the type of group that gets locked into analysis paralysis and just can't make up their minds and then well then you might have to try a different tact now part of this thing though of having your monsters talk first and not attack is that you really should think of some role-playing reasons for having monsters attack first and not not attack first but having the mind monsters talk first instead of attacking first there should be something that justifies that a reason that they don't just attack first and I think for a lot of intelligent creatures even goblins or Orcs or bug Bears things that are aggressive and nasty they still have a decent amount of intelligence and they know that fighting is dangerous it might result in injury or death and so if something can be resolved in a different way then they might be predisposed to or taking that route so justifying it isn't usually that difficult the next type of encounter you can have is that of immediate combat in other words the enemies simply attack as soon as the characters become obvious and apparent to them they draw their weapons or they bear their claws and fangs and they leap to attack dragons breathe breath weapons and stuff too that's equally cool and you're cool with this sort of encounter is simply to present a combat that the PCS must overcome to progress their mission I mean you essentially you're having a combat because they're just fun or because there is really no role-playing justification station for the monsters not attacking on First Sight now in my opinion these sorts of encounters where the enemies attack immediately should be rare usually you want to give your players the choice of whether they want what what tactic they want to use in bypassing I should say overcoming an encounter however sometimes it's what the bad guys would do and there's really no other option but my recommendation here is that you do your best to provide a variety of these three different types of Encounters in your game those words pure social interaction where combat is very unlikely those where there's a choice of overcoming an encounter through talkie talkie persuasion diplomacy Etc or through combat and occasionally those where there is no choice it's a combat and that's all there is to it variety is going to be king here number two open with dialogue I talked about this a little bit in the three different types of encounters that we just got done discussing but beginning most encounters as social interactions is one of the very best pieces of advice that I can give you this one thing will make your encounters and games so very much better trust me and it is in fact infest players options for how they want to proceed how they want to resolve the encounter either through intimidating deceiving persuading bribing or combat because I mean you know you get all of this gold in DND 5th edition the core rule mechanics give you almost nothing to do with all the gold even though the dungeon master guide tells dungeon Masters to hand out all the gold why not just bribe monsters with it instead because it's not doing anything kicking around in your bag of holding is it in my experience I have found that putting the power of choice in the player's hands is usually best players seem to have a lot more fun when they can choose and when things aren't forced upon them and they have no choice we've all heard people Riot and rant about railroads and how unfun those sorts of games are and when you give your players choice even in small things like how to go through an encounter and whether they should talk or whether they should fight when they have that choice in those things the entire game is going to feel less like a railroad even if you're kind of giving them a linear game experience with linear Adventures in a linear campaign when they can have choices here and there over small things maybe not the adventure they go on because you're running a linear campaign let's say but it will feel a lot less like a railroad because it linear Adventures aren't railroads and I have actually entire videos about linear campaigns and railroads and sandboxes you know I'll probably throw a link around here or something if I remember or you can search for it on my channel but a linear Adventure in a campaign is not a railroad but when players don't have choices in the small things like encounters it can feel like a railroad and it can feel like they're just marching along and things are going to happen where they're going to happen because the dungeon master has decided they are some of my group's most memorable encounters have resulted from opening with dialogue and giving players the choice for instance I have a video my channel called d d story my players tricked in ogre and in that video You're Gonna basically in that encounter from a group from years ago I had an ogre come across the group and instead of just having the ogre attack them there was instead dialogue that happened and they ended up tricking the ogre getting the ogre to go on their side and help them and it resulted in one of the most awesomest Encounters in that entire group over like the three years or so that we played together yeah so uh it was really cool you can check that video out yeah and by the way in that story from my hand of light group that I tease you with at the very beginning of the video not starting the encounter as a social interaction was in fact the mistake I made and I am very grateful that Ben questioned me on it because his really spoke volume it was his way of asking so we have no choice but to fight aren't there any other ways we could resolve this would this encounter be better if we the players had some say here too I mean if what we try doesn't work that's cool we could always just fight them but wouldn't it be more fun to at least let us try hey where did my dog go it's it's the tried and true dog snatching it works every time anyway are you ready for today's sleazy plug with the Barbarian and a little doggy now this doggy's name is Zoe and unfortunately she can't see um she's blind and you know sometimes she she also poops on the floor too and and then I have to clean it up I mean well no she she actually poops on the floor a lot actually I I don't I don't know why she does that I think I think it's a Chihuahua thing anyway sorry for the um mildly inappropriate tangent I I love my little doggy doggy I do I just I just wish she wouldn't poop on the floor quite so much now if you're a dungeon master without a lot of time to prep for your games or maybe you're just a new dungeon master who's not sure how to design an interesting game for your players or maybe you just like to wear blue face paint like me and have a dog who poops on the floor a lot and any of these cases I know you're just going to love Lair magazine what's going on doggy yeah maybe doggie loves layer magazine too you see layer magazine is the monthly publication that all DM layer patrons receive and it has tons of professionally designed dungeon master resources to help you run your DND game each issue contains adventures with digital maps and other game elements such as traps puzzles Standalone encounters magic items NPCs new monsters and more now lots of you may think that I write Lair magazine myself with crayons and while I do have a very nice crayon collection and lots of experience using them that's just simply not true so please stop perpetuating that rumor even even though it is very flattering thank you anyway you could become a DM Lair Patron at the link below and instantly get two issues of Lair magazine and then every month you'll get a new issue that's why we call it a monthly magazine it's like the very best thing ever and it's way better than cleaning up dog poop from the floor across the Barbarian become a DM Lair Patron today right doggy yeah right doggy he's my little doggy doing with my dog oh gotta go well I I sure hope he takes her outside number three on designing non-combat Solutions okay so since we want the possibility for non-combat solutions to exist we kind of need to have an idea of what they might be and there are two basic ways to go about doing this first you can decide what those Solutions are in advance in the situation with the yugolovs and my players I could have designed that encounter to have different paths that the players might choose to follow to resolve it path number one they simply say screw that we're gonna fight and then they fight the ugoloffs I might have decided in advance that they could bribe the yugoloths and I could decide upon the amount of money the Hugo lost would accept regardless of any sort of persuasion check I might decide that for a lesser amount of money but a very good persuasion check they would accept that and go on their way and I might decide that no matter what if the bribe is far too low that nothing they can no persuasion rules whatsoever would consent convince the Hugo lost go away and not fight I could literally build out all the possible different options that could potentially take place in that encounter in advance of the game happening now of course the downside to that is that it takes a lot of work and time to theorize and hypothesize all of the different things your players could possibly do to overcome that encounter chances of you covering all of your bases in every possible thing is probably rather low and not going to happen so you might make the argument that you just kind of did all that work for nothing because of course the other alternative is to Simply decide the solutions on the fly as your players come up with ideas for how they might circumvent or overcome that encounter you simply role play your enemies in response to what your characters say and what they do and the dice rolls in other words you're not pre-determining all the different possible paths before the encounter takes place before the game happens instead you're just kind of doing it on the Fly you're making things up and you're adjudicating and you're role playing the monster here's the thing of course if you are a new dungeon master without a whole lot of experience that might be challenging for you there is a certain level of comfort and it helps to prepare a little bit your mind and stuff to think about these possibilities before the game begins and if you find that useful then do that do that exercise have those possibilities mapped out in advance however if you have a decent amount of experience or you feel comfortable just doing it on the Fly by role playing the enemies and just thinking on your feet then by all means dispense with the preparation ahead of time and just simply react to your character to the player's characters and what they say and they do in the dice rolls and role play your enemies and simply decide in the moment what your monsters are going to do there's nothing to say that you have to have predetermined the monster's actions depending upon all the various different things characters can do who is the dungeon master are fully within your right to role play your monsters and decide in the moment what they do number four Advan Advanced encounters compound encounters so your traditional DND encounter is basically the characters and then a group of NPCs we call them bad guys they might be monsters they're they're all essentially NPCs but some of them have ulterior motives might be bad guys evil guys and stuff like that others might be shopkeepers and things like that but basic encounter is characters and a group of NPCs however you can add an additional layer of complexity and fun to your encounters by combining this basic setup with other game elements such as traps puzzles and social interactions for instance you might combine your encounter with a trap I once had a game where the characters were going into a room and a Beholder can I think they were called Death kisses descended from above and attacked them now in this room there were also pit traps and as the characters were fighting these death kisses and moving around in this room they were triggering these pit traps because you know they weren't being careful and checking and all this stuff they were in the middle of a fight after all they were falling into these pit traps there were spikes inside them they were taking damage but not just that the doors the tops of these pit traps were spring-loaded and after they fell in and took damage they closed trapping them inside and so this had the added benefit from the death kiss's point of view obviously of splitting the party up and taking some characters out of the fight momentarily while they tried to figure out how to get out of this pit trap and how to open this door oh and by the way the beholder can these death kisses they could fly and they were floating around and attacking they were not subjected to these pit traps they used their brains and decided and determined their Terrain in advance so that it would work in their benefit and this is an example of a really cool encounter that we had by combining that encounter with traps you can also have an encounter with a puzzle in my ancient dragon game that I run for my patrons there was an encounter where a nightmare of zatirth I'm not gonna be able to explain all the details on that you're gonna have to just kind of use your imagination here but anyway they were fighting a nightmare of zatiric this horrible dark lord in a domain of dread called the dark shark and the battlefield here was like there was some Lake not a lake there was like a little pool or a puddle over here there was some train and stuff and then I combined a puzzle in there inside these different elements of the terrain were features of that puzzle things that they had to find and interact with and then there was an overall puzzle that they needed to resolve now the thing with this puzzle is that um the monsters arrived and started attacking and every round of combat more monsters were arriving it was becoming apparent that they would just have an overwhelming amount of monsters constantly arriving attacking them from this nightmare of satir that was uh enveloping them and taking them into it and finally probably around I mean my players knew that there was some sort of puzzle going on because they were finding these puzzle elements and they knew that they should resolve the puzzle but through the first like I think two or three rounds of combat they were predominantly focused on fighting the monsters it only occurred to them after about around three or so that hey you know these monsters aren't gonna stop they're going to keep on coming I bet we need to solve this puzzle to stop them otherwise they're eventually going to wear us down and we're screwed so they started to focus their efforts and tactically say who's gonna fight the monsters who's gonna hold them at Bay and who's gonna go investigate these different puzzle elements so we can figure out what this puzzle is and how to resolve it so that we can stop these waves of monsters and we can actually survive and in the end they did end up resolving it and everything turned out just fine but there was an element of tenseness to that encounter and perhaps desperation as well as they realized that the bad guys weren't going to stop until they figured that puzzle out that they had kind of been ignoring for the first three rounds or so of combat the next thing you can do is combine your encounter with a social interaction and this is really easy actually the basic idea here is that as the combat is going on over the courses of the rounds the enemies can continue to talk to the characters or perhaps taunt them while they're fighting I do this a lot in my games and I feel like it really adds to the combat when you have the enemies engaging with them in conversation or taunting as you go of course you need to be a little bit reasonable about it I mean each round of combat is six seconds so there's only so much that you can say during one round of combat it's usually like maybe a sentence maybe there was once this actual play a very very well-known famous actual play a d d show that they put on you know twitch and YouTube and stuff like that and there was a round of combat where the characters were all having a conversation that lasted I don't know two minutes two minutes and finally the dungeon master says okay guys that was one round um we're on to the next round I'm like looking at this and I'm just like dude that was not a round of combat that was like two minutes of conversation that was literally 20 rounds of combat but anyway I digress number five creature selection an important part of designing an interesting encounter is choosing the creatures that will be in it generally speaking when you only have one type of creature in an encounter let's say it's a standard Goblin that encounter tends to be less interesting now adding different types of creatures makes the encounter far more interesting and tactical because the puzzle becomes more complex players will have more things to consider before deciding what they do and their actions are more meaningful now of course when I say that the puzzle becomes more complex I'm not literally talking about having a puzzle in the encounter what I'm saying is that every encounter when there are creatures and characters fighting each other it is a puzzle in some regards they have to choose where they're going to position themselves how to use the terrain what spells they're going to cast what actions they're gonna take who they're going to attack that that is the puzzle that is the challenge in your brain to figure out how are we gonna go about overcoming these enemies okay so when we're deciding what creatures we're going to choose to put an encounter we need to determine or we need to consider the three different basic types of creature you essentially have melee creatures ranged creatures and casters now I know other people have broken down the types of creatures into far more categories you have like brutes and Strikers and ambushers and I don't know there's a whole bunch of different things you could you could infinitely break them down almost into tons of different categories and perhaps for some people breaking it down even more is useful and I'm sure it could be helpful if you really want to Deep dive into tactics and stuff like that but I like to keep things simple and considering just these three different basic types has served me fairly well throughout the years and one of the things you're looking for when you're trying to choose your creatures and you're choosing among these three different types is synergism you want to pick creatures that work well together for instance you could have goblins and Goblin archers the Goblins engage in the front line and go attacky tacky and The Archers stay in the back and perhaps they're shooting at the wizard casting spells or at the cleric who keeps on using healing words or you could have goblins and wolves working together wolves have a trip attack that could yank characters off their feet and the Goblins swarm and stab with advantage or you could have a goblin and a goblin Shaman who stays in the back and casts spells while the Goblins spread out up front and make sure the characters can't get at the goblin Shaman and we're just talking about basic types of creatures at this point we're not really analyzing all of their special abilities because if you dig into Creature abilities you can find some really cool synergistic combinations that will make any combat that arises far more interesting now of course when you're choosing creatures for your encounters you need to choose ones that support the adventurous theme like the adventure as a whole like why is there an ooze in that castle have a reason for it if you have goblins and wolves and Goblin shamans what is the giant doing there is the giant a mercenary perhaps that the Goblins are paying to be there because you know some Giants aren't that smart or maybe the giant is in charge of the goblins and that's the big bad but there should be a reason there should be an ecology that works together and makes sense and here is a really big suggestion for you um don't have more or not not that many don't have more than three types of creatures in your combats for instance goblins Goblin archers and then a goblin Shaman the thing is that when you have too many different types as a dungeon master that gives you like that many different stat blocks that you need to run in the combat and it can get to be rather difficult and put a lot of cognitive load on the dungeon master but when you only have three types or fewer it makes things easier for you that reminds me I once ran a combat with about 8 or 10 different types of creatures that means different stat blocks for each one of them and it wasn't really my fault I don't remember the exact details but I'm pretty sure I had planned a certain encounter and then something happened and it caused different monsters from throughout the dungeon to coalesce or converge I should say on the player's characters and then we ended up with this crazy massive combat I literally had on my desk in front of me like eight or ten different stat blocks that I had to run in this combat and man it was challenging it was an amazing combat I mean the encounter of the fight was fun we I I'm pretty sure we all enjoyed it a lot but wow was it challenging for me as a dungeon master to run that many monsters at once by the way if you're enjoying this video finding the information mildly useful please give me a thumbs up and leave a comment for the algorithm down below let us know your tips for creating and running amazing Encounters in D D or just tell us about a really cool encounter you and your group once had number six loot placement when you're designing encounters one of the things you want to keep in mind is to place some valuables on the creatures so the characters will find something when they loot the courses courses the corpses of course that is unless the characters forget because we've all been in the game either as players or as a dungeon master where the the players just don't loot the corpses and it turns out there was something really cool on them I'm often that player by the way I I don't like exploration a whole lot and so looting corpses and poking around on them is kind of part of the exploration pillar so I usually just let somebody else do it and I just want to go on to the next part of the dungeon next part of the adventure so I I'm the one that usually doesn't care a whole lot and I probably as a player miss a whole bunch of cool stuff because I don't poke around dead bodies which I guess is a expectation in d d so anyway this is not a complicated step but it is important for there to be some tangible reward even if it's minor on the bodies of dead creatures your players are likely to kill and remember it doesn't have to be gold or magic items information is equally as valuable especially when you're like rolling in gold and magic items because the core rule books just tell you to give so much gold and magic items to your players characters final Point here too you don't have to determine the loot in advance you can always make up the loot on the fly as you go there are actually loot tables in the dungeon master guide that you could just roll on every time an encounter ends if they decide to search the bodies so on the one hand i'm criticizing the dungeon master guide loot tables that tell you to give too much loot and then I turn around and I tell you to use those same tables I mean I'm a hypocrite I don't know what to tell you I use those tables too it's the resource that the game designers gave us it's like what I use I mean maybe someday we'll get better loot tables and a more balanced fifth edition economy wouldn't that be nice if like in the next Edition they're coming out with one D and D they actually balance the economy a little bit and make things make more sense I mean wouldn't that be cool number seven terrain designing the terrain that will accompany the creatures in an encounter is one of the most overlooked considerations in encounter design the terrain can make or break an encounter in my opinion okay here are some quick tips on terrain first avoid empty rooms or areas like just completely empty there's nothing in the room there's no desk there's no bed there's no table there are no chairs nothing it's just an empty room or an empty area there's nothing of Interest you're like in the swamp and the swamp is just like knee-deep water that's it they're no fall on logs there's no branches under the water that you might get tripped up on it's just emptiness so avoid that and you also want to design the trainer on the creatures a little bit as well are there wolves because you know the Goblins have wolves and they they live in their own little chamber over here well you know what might be in a wolves chamber you probably have some shedded fur there might be bones lying around there might be a big pile of junk that the wolves have dragged in there as well I don't know what kind of junk wolves would drag into their Lair but let's just let's just pretend they did okay you want your terrain to be thematically appropriate if the Goblins have appropriated an old castle well then guess what's gonna be in that old castle probably broken up Furniture things that are rusted and rotting away goblins don't take care of things they just inhabit the place and let it continue to go to ruin you might also want terrain that synergizes with creature abilities if you're fighting Cobalt and they're Warrens guess what Cobalts are little small creatures they can fit through tiny tunnels you might want to have some tiny tunnels there that they can take advantage of did that that was fun all my all the medium-sized creatures were like having trouble going through this these Cobalt Wars and the Cobalts were like popping in and out of these small tunnels doing all of these things and wow the players were kind of frustrated like this is what it feels like to fight Cobalts and their Warrens dang I don't I don't think they went back or you might have something like lizard folk warlocks that have that knockback ability added onto their Elders blast and you could couple it with pits or a Chasm that the lizard folk warlocks are blasting the characters and trying to knock them into there's no there's no saving throw on that either so they just fall isn't that great game design and I'm proposing that you use it against your character probably not a good thing to do but men is it tempting a general idea here is that you want to have your enemies use the terrain to their advantage and by the way I did make a video called 10 ways to improve combat maps in d d that has more thoughts on designing terrain if you want to check it out number eight tactics getting everything set up is great picking your monsters designing your terrain all that kind of cool stuff however the tactics you the dungeon master and the Monsters use during the combat is also very important and many times these tactics are things I consider before the game session that is I plan them in advance as part of my encounter design for instance you could have waves come from nearby areas there's no reason that when you have an encounter that whatever group of the characters initially find is the only group of enemies there you could have goblins from nearby rooms come by because because why well the noise of the first combat alerted them or the Goblins here decided to send a runner to alert some more of their buddies and bring them on over to help them out other tactics include taking advantage of terrain using cover going around corners to break line of sight so you can't get shot at gaining The High Ground shoving your enemy into holes knocking over Furniture to create difficult terrain or to block doors that sort of thing and those are just general tactics you can use for your monsters in combat you also have tactics that are specific to monsters themselves in fact I'm creating an entire playlist an entire series of videos around monster tactics tactics for the undead tactics that Giants will have tactics for other creatures like kuatoa or even goblins perhaps usually about one of these videos comes out every single month and I am compiling them into a d d monster tactics playlist I'll put a link somewhere around here for that if you want to check it out there is also a pretty decent book called The Monsters know what they are doing that does a deep dive into monster tactics and explains what they would probably do during combat and explains why number nine beginning the encounter now there are three basic ways that encounters usually begin first we're gonna call this one kicking down the door basically when you kick down the door of a dungeon neither of the two parties were aware of each other both of them are will say surprised by each other's presence in other words is there on even ground and nobody has an advantage the second way is that one of the groups is surprised perhaps the PCS get a drop on the enemies and could take actions before the bad guys do or it could be vice versa because the third way is that the BCS are surprised the enemy is set in Ambush or otherwise surprise the characters and the characters don't get to do anything during the first round of combat and the bad guys just wamp on them a little bit my suggestion here as it usually is is to have a variety of things happening you're kicking down the door and both groups are pretty much on even playing Ground other times one or the other sides is surprise my suggestion though is to minimize the amount of times the enemies get the surprise on the characters because it can feel a little bit heavy-handed if the dungeon Masters bad guys are always surprising the group and they're always getting to go first and having a free round basically of attacks so as a dungeon master I try to do that rarely in my games and the next Point here is that how an encounter begins depends in part on game master design but it also depends on the player's actions for instance in that situation where they were kicking down the door and both groups didn't know each other was there what if the players instead of just opening the door they decided to use a little drill or something and try to make a hole in that door or pry open a board a little bit so that they could see everybody who was inside that door and then they were aware of them but the people inside somehow weren't aware of them let's say they rolled a stealth check so they were quiet about it in that case the players are aware of the monsters inside the room and they might be able to get surprise on the monsters so it isn't just what you design in advance as a game master but it's also what your players do in the game at the table my next tip here is to use your words describe the enemy and what they do at the beginning of the encounter and during the encounter ask the characters what they do like when the Goblins see them and drop their hands to the hilts of their swords and are ready to go but don't quite attack yet describe that and then ask the characters ask your players what do you do do you say anything do you just attack it's important when you're running an encounter like this at your game table that you're using your narrative descriptions you're using your words you're describing what's happening because otherwise your players aren't gonna know because they they can't read your mind number 10 running the encounter now in the case of social interaction encounters where you're not in combat and there are no rounds it's basically free for your players can say and do things as they wish and the creatures can as well but what you're gonna find is that many of your players are going to be more talkative than others and are going to constantly be talking to the creatures whereas you're gonna have quieter players that aren't so forthcoming and don't jump in and say things now it's okay if all the players don't want to contribute and feel better just watching other people doing all the talking but as a dungeon master you want to ensure that they have the opportunity to participate if they want to so when there are quiet players during an encounter you want to make sure that you call on them and see if they want to say something too you're going to have to quiet down the talkative players a little bit and ask them to give the other ones a chance and then call on them and acknowledge them so that if their characters want to say something to the NPCs in the encounter they're able to do so one of the tricks here that I've used as well is to have enemies directly address the quiet characters hey your friend over there isn't saying a whole lot what do you think and there you go they they have a need Now to respond to the enemy or the NPC maybe it's not a bad guy okay now if you're running the encounter and it is a combat encounter everybody has their own turn you're running it in rounds and so there is structure to that which helps you facilitate that gameplay but my biggest tip here is going to be to keep it moving you want to keep the pace going you don't want things to bog down and take forever during a combat encounter because combat should be exciting it should be moving forward there should be some action it shouldn't be sitting around and for instance waiting for somebody to make up their mind about what they're gonna do boring after a while anyway I do have a video called 12 steps to faster combat in d d if you're interested in ways that you can improve the speed and pacing of your combat I suggest checking that video out and next keep using your words don't let your combats devolve into just saying 18 to hit that's it how much damage 12 damage 12 damage cool all right what would you like to do they roll dice they hit they do damage we still want to describe things we want to describe the enemy actions are they swinging their sword are they jabbing are they ducking are they blocking with their Shield did they take a wound to the thigh and they're thumping they're like crunched over what am I looking for hunched over they're like hunched over in pain are they grimacing are they blinded temporarily from sweat that's in their eyes like describe these things describe the smell describe the blood describe the grunts and groans the cries of pain there's so much cool stuff that happens during a combat that you could describe going on they will make things more exciting also keep having the enemies talk as they go throughout the combat oh that was a good hit but I'm gonna get you next time things like that it doesn't matter maybe that's cheesy maybe you don't want to do that maybe you have different ideas for dialogue keep that dialogue rolling as well number 11 ending the encounter there are various ways encounters can end death where all of one side is just completely dead maybe maybe some of them are dead and the rest run or they all run perhaps enemies morale breaks and they decide to book it and just throw their weapons down and run away unless they be murdered or the characters might decide to run because hey you know that dragon is just gonna murder us if we don't get our butts out of here or shoot those Cobalts man can't kill those Cobalts those things are hard now of course the problem with fleeing in d d 5th edition is that the rules don't support it very well Running Away in D D kind of sucks because you know the rules basically the first side that decides to run away and try to run away is probably just gonna die that much faster so my suggestion is that instead of trying to use the 5th edition combat rules when one group tries to run away instead I would shift to using a skill challenge basically if one side of the combat can reach the edge of the map that you're using you could initiate a skill challenge or what you could do is at the beginning of a round if the players all decide that they're going to run away or the enemies all decide that they are going to run away you immediately drop out of combat and you start in on a skill challenge now if you're interested in how to run a skill challenge in d d 5th edition I have a video dedicated to explaining our skill challenge system it's titled running skill challenges in DND 5th edition you can go watch it and it'll explain exactly how to do it at the game table and if you're looking for our fifth edition skill challenge system in writing because that makes it easier to reference and all that kind of stuff then we did publish it in the July 2022 issue of Lair magazine wishes and waste which is now on the DM layer store you can just go over there and pick it up and it has our skill challenge system for 5th edition in there there will of course be links to all the stuff I'm talking about somewhere probably in the description or the pinned comment next you have surrender it is quite possible that the characters will decide to no I don't think I don't think I've ever had players decide to surrender in a game like that never happens at least in my experience but enemy is will very often surrender in my games when it's clear that it's over they'll throw down their weapons and give up and one of the reasons I enjoy doing this is that it presents a moral dilemma to the characters like what are the characters gonna do what are the players going to do at this point sure they're going to interrogate the surrendered enemy and try to get some information from them that that is a given but are they going to use torture are they just going to try to use intimidation or persuasion there's a little bit of a moral dilemma there and then what happens after they get done with the interrogation and either they got all the information out of the enemy or it becomes clear the enemy is not going to talk are they just gonna let the enemy go are they going to tie the enemy up and take the enemy along with them with the intention of turning them over to the town guards or are they just gonna like you know slit the throat and uh walk away it's a moral dilemma a quandary that can present interesting situations at the game table oh and by the way when the bad guy is giving out information my suggestion here is to be careful with what you reveal you want to give the players something for the effort of trying to get information on the bad guy don't give them too much I mean unless you were planning on it and you have an idea of what you're going to do there you want to reward toward the players you don't want to give them the entire treasure horde okay cool the enemy has surrendered and the characters decide to take prisoners so they're not gonna let them go and they're not just gonna kill them they're gonna actually take them as prisoners so do they just string them along with them and they just have to pull them along and hope they don't join the bad guys or run off or something they leave them tied up in a different part of the dungeon so that they they maybe aren't in the way but then that raises the question of course what if the prisoners tried to escape they slip their ropes and they get away do they reunite with their buddies and help them in the future do they just book it for a different dungeon and join up with the ogres down the street or in the case of releasing the hostages I mean did the bad guys just leave do they Circle back and join up with the other bad guys I mean there's there's so many different cool things that can happen here in these sorts of situations and this is one of the reasons that I have my bad guys surrender at times because I want to present the players with all of these different choices and opportunities because cool things can resolve click on the screen now to watch my d d and counter building playlist us for more information about building awesome encounters for your game or to become a deal mayor Patron and get an issue of letter magazine every month don't do it for me do it for the doggies oh sorry doggy oh no

Channel: the DM Lair

Views: 96,943

Keywords: d&d, d&d 5e, dnd, dnd 5e, dnd 5th edition, dungeons and dragons, dungeons & dragons, rpg, role-playing game, roleplaying game, dungeon master tips, DM tips, dungeon master advice, DM advice, the dm lair, luke hart, dnd encounters, dnd encounter creation, the ultimate dnd encounter creation guide, dnd ultimate encounter creation guide, dnd how to create encounters

Id: bKqD2g7T7Nw

Length: 39min 59sec (2399 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2022