- There are so many good
spells to choose from. I could choose that spell as well, that's a wonderful spell, or since there is a horde
of bloodthirsty orcs running at us, I could cast that spell. Yes, that's an excellent spell, but its radius is rather small. Of course, I might just
want to use a cantrip to conserve spell slots just
in case I need them later, but that is a lot of orcs
that want to murder us all. You know, I think I'll just go with
good old trusty fireball. - Yep, that's great. A bunch of orcs die. Fighter, it's your turn. - Oh yeah. I swing my sword. That's a 16 to hit for seven damage. - Seven damage. Got it. Old Man, it's your turn. - Oh yeah. What's going on again? - There are a bunch of orcs attacking you. - Oh yes. Well, in that case, I'll attack. That's a four to hit for one damage. - Okay, wow, that actually
kills several orcs. Good job. Barbarian, your turn. - Yeah. I would like to bury
my axe into my own face because this combat is stupid and boring. That's 29 to hit for 999 damage. - Are you raging? - Well, of course I'm raging. I'm always raging. I'm a very angry individual. - Well, in that case, you only deal yourself half
damage and you're still alive. - Yeah. - Ha ha! You suck! - Oh dear. Can't anyone make the pain go away? (upbeat electronic music) - Welcome to the DM Lair. I'm Luke Hart, and I've been a Dungeon
Master since high school. On this channel, I give practical Dungeon Master
advice that you can use in your D&D games. Today in the Lair, I'll be discussing five ways to make your RPG combats less boring. That is, how to make them
more interesting and fun for both you and your players. But first, are you a Game
Master looking to reduce your prep time and improve
the quality of your games? If so, might I recommend Lair Magazine? Lair Magazine is an RPG
and D&D publication that my patrons receive every single month. Every issue contains two expertly
written D&D fifth edition adventures with maps designed
for use on virtual tabletops, and a plethora of other
Game Master resources such as traps, puzzles,
new monsters, NPCs, and adventure ideas. I want to emphasize, too, that the adventures are written
in a way that makes them far easier and faster to prepare
and run at your game tables than the official modules. They include read-a-loud text, as all good pre-made adventures should, and top-notch formatting
and organization to make referencing the adventure
as you run the game as quick and easy as possible. Furthermore, every month, my patrons also get bonus
content such as Map Packs with even more maps to use
on virtual tabletops, City Tiles to create their
own custom cities and towns, and can even help determine
which videos I create. Become a DM Lair patron at the link below and you'll instantly
get access to two issues of Lair Magazine, and this Thursday, the August issue will be released. And now, how to run RPG
combats that aren't boring. And by the way, a couple of these points are
also covered in the fine book by Alexander Macris, "Arbiter of Worlds". It's got tons of great information
in it for Game Masters. I'll throw a link down below for those of you who are interested. Number one, the stakes must be real. So the thing is, is that
in today's day and age, many Game Masters carefully
balance encounters, they fudge dice, and they change rules to ensure that players win. So the players are here
thinking they're playing a game where the dice matter, where their decisions
actually are important and might have consequences,
and behind the scenes, the Dungeon Master is really
just rearranging and changing everything to make sure that,
hey, you're always gonna win. And somebody right now is
going to be like, okay Luke, but what's the problem with that? All right, so here's the thing. If players know that they will
win every single encounter, that no matter what happens, no matter how bad of a decision they make, no matter how overwhelming the odds, no matter how bad the dice rolls, if they know they will always win and everything will be just fine, that is, there are no stakes,
well, it reduces the drama, the excitement, and the
fun for many players. Now, I'm sure there are
some players who will rest easy in the comfort of knowing that nothing bad will ever
happen to their precious PC and that every encounter, every problem will just magically
be resolved no matter how poorly they go about it or
how bad the dice rules are. They're just in it for the ride, I guess, but there's a whole other
swath of players who will have their fun leached out of the game once they realize that their
choices have no consequences, they don't matter whatsoever, the dice don't matter because
the Dungeon Master's just making sure that everything
happens according to the story that apparently was already written and planned out ahead of time. I for one think a game like
that would pretty much suck. Old school D&D back in the very beginning was not characterized by that whatsoever. Death was very common and life was cheap. However, as the gaming progressed,
right around 1984 or so, you had something happen
that is referred to as "The Hickman Revolution"
and this represented a growing trend of removing
actual risk from the game in favor of letting the
players experience an ongoing narrative with
the certainty that they will see it finish. So the whole idea of life
is cheap and you're gonna churn through a whole bunch of PCs gradually was going away
and PCs were becoming more and more sturdy, permanent loss and death are
gradually removed from the game so that players can simply
run the same character most of the game with
certainty that nothing bad's gonna happen and they
can just play through the narrative and see the
story unfold before them. In fact, we see that by fourth edition and certainly fifth edition, PC's are practically immortal except in the case of a true TPK,
which don't happen a whole lot. It depends on the Game Master, of course, but they tend to be pretty
rare in fifth edition. Now, this whole approach to
having this ongoing narrative and story, that the players
can go through and see, come to completion, makes 100%
sense if you are a novelist, if you are writing a story. You'll of course notice that this trend is referred to as "The Hickman Revolution" and the Hickmans are, were of course, novelists in the fine
line of dragon lands. Side note here, this is not intended to knock them whatsoever. They may not even like the
fact that this trend was named after them, "The Hickman Revolution", but it was and that's
what it's referred to, so that's what we're gonna call it. Whether they are the protagonists
of it and fought for it, or whether they were
just unfortunate enough to have their name attached to it and they don't like that fact,
I don't know, in all honesty, but it is what it's called. So we're just gonna roll with it. So why does this approach makes
sense if you're a novelist? Well, if the Game Master
is writing a story, they want to control the plot, they want to control the characters, and they want to control the final outcome of the story or campaign. And controlling all of
that is a whole lot easier when the characters don't change, when they are persistent
throughout your entire story that you're writing in
your tabletop RPG game. But if the outcome of
combat, and other situations, is unknown, it is very hard
to control the ongoing story. In fact, that story you have
in mind with a beginning, a middle and an end can
no longer be experienced in an ongoing narrative,
continuous fashion when you have characters
dying all the time. It introduces new elements into the game, new motivations, new things. Who knows, if half of the party dies, they might decide that, hey, this whole part of the
campaign's way too hard, we're not doing it anymore,
let's go somewhere else, and then everything you had planned, your entire story is just,
well, discarded, thrown aside, can't do it anymore. It's a whole lot easier
if the players' characters just live and keep on going on so they can complete the whole narrative. And of course, that's from the
viewpoint of the Game Master. There's also the viewpoint
of the characters, of the players, I should say, so that they can experience an ongoing narrative of that story. that the Game Master is
unfolding before them. And this goes back to
the whole question of whether the Game Master is a storyteller, whether you have a dynamic story that is unfolding before you, or whether everything
is dictated beforehand and known beforehand by the Game Master. This gets into the whole
idea of whether you have a directed story or an emergent story. A directive story is where
the Game Master pretty much controls the way everything
goes and the things that the players do and their characters
and all that kind of stuff, it has no real effect
on anything in the game, it's all just smoke and mirrors, or you have an emergent
story where there is no known final destination,
no known final outcome, and the decisions that the
players make and the dice rules and other elements work
together to create a story as you go and nobody really
knows where it's gonna end up. Okay, so, if you are a novelist, it would make sense to want
to have a directed story as part of your gaming group because your goal as a novelist
is to tell a story. It makes sense to design modules that way and encourage folks to
run the game that way. You know, you have a
pre-decided story of everything, it's gonna turn out this way and that way and you can't really diverge from it all. The problem is that the
game becomes less of a game when you do that. It takes away player
agency when everything is pre-determined by the Game Master. If all roads lead to Rome, then does it really matter
what road the players choose? No, it doesn't at all. Their choices become
meaningless at some point and they might question why
they're even playing the game. Might, might because there
are probably lots of players out there that just
don't give a flying crap and are happy to play that game, but many players want something more. And I have ranted before
that the Game Master is not a storyteller and
shouldn't be telling the story. I definitely lie on the side
of emergent storytelling. I believe that a Game Master
should create situations, allow player agency, and then
based on what the players do, that's what happens. That's the story that results. You don't predetermine the results! That's not how to run a game. That's how to tell a story,
not how to run a game. Now, if you're a frustrated novelist who can't get published
and you want to use D&D and RPGs to tell stories,
well, be aware, then, that you might have a
group of disinterested and bored players. They probably signed up to play a game, not listen to you tell a bad story. Sorry. You're probably like, Luke, what does this have to do with
making combat less boring? I got you, I got you. I went on a big tangent
there, but it's important. The point is, again, back
to the very beginning, there need to be actual stakes. When that combat happens,
there need to be stakes! If the players know
that it's predetermined, they're gonna win, not a big deal, wee, then the combat is boring
and uninteresting by default because they know what the
result will be every single time. That doesn't mean every
combat must be brutal and doesn't have to
result in life, either. In the "Arbiter of Worlds", Macris lays out four broad levels of risk, strategic position, assets,
character, and party. By the way, do highly recommend that book, do you should go check it out. First one, strategic position. The circumstances of the adventure might change for the worst if the
encounter is not handled well. Take the example of an orc patrol that might sound the alarm. Now, the players could easily
defeat that orc patrol, but if they don't do it in
time to sound that alarm, the rest of the adventure
might be a whole lot more difficult when the orcs are all on alert. Assets is the second category. Survival from the combat is likely, but the PCs might lose things they value: treasure, horses, henchmen,
pets, magic items, et cetera. Your typical run-in with a
rust monster is a great example of where they're probably not gonna die, but their assets are probably at risk. The next one is risk to the character in that an individual PC might die. The whole group is not likely to wipe, but an individual character
might die in this combat. It's that rough. Of course, if you got fifth edition, it doesn't really matter at all because raising debt is so easy in fifth edition. And the fourth level of
risk is the entire party, specifically that the
entire group wipes NTPKs and they're all dead. So, if you've been trusting in the fudge and ensuring that your
characters always win, your player's characters, of course, put something at stake in the next combat. When your players realize
that they might actually lose something they value, it will get them far more engaged and interested in the combat. I have a video titled "Why Defeat, Death and
TPKs are Good for D&D" that also talks about this issue
of having stakes and why it makes the game better. Number two, do not ignore
the power of narration and description. All right, I'm gonna give you two examples of how a combat might sound
at the game table here. As a way to illustrate
this point, Jim Bob, what'd you get over there? That's a seven to hit for four damage. Yeah, seven misses. Sarah, what'd you get? That's a 19 to hit for 24 damage. Sorry, sorry voices. (man chuckling) Oh, that's definitely a hit. 24 damage? Okay, got it. John, what'd you get? That's a 19 also to hit for four damage. Four damage. Okay, that's good. You guys are doing some
damage to the monster. The monster takes a swing at you, Jim Bob, 18 to hit, that hits for three damage. Great. What are you guys gonna do? Jim Bob, you're up next? There you go. Just by the numbers, D&D
combat by the numbers. You're not describing
anything, no narration. You're doing math. You're sitting around and doing math. Next example. All right, Jim Bob, what you doing? I'm gonna run up to this orc and I'm gonna slash at it with my axe and curse at it. What'd you got? What you got there? It's seven to hit for four damage. Sorry, that's a miss. The orc, as you slash at it, the orc ducks back under
your axe, rolls around, and ready its weapon
to about to attack you. Oh, crap. That sucks. Sarah, what are you doing? Oh yeah. I'm gonna like sneak up behind the orc and I'm gonna look for
a vulnerable part of it and I'm gonna go stabby-stabby
on it as hard as I can. What you got over there? That's a 19 on the attack
rule with 24 damage. Oh yeah, that's definitely a hit. You'd stab that orc in the back, right over here in the
liver, and he grunts in pain, looks at Jim Bob, then looks at you, you pretty sure he might go
after you in the next round. He did not seem to like that whatsoever. All right, John, what you got over there? Oh yeah. While he's distracted,
got stabbed in the back, I'm gonna go up, I'm going to kick him
right between the legs. (man chuckling) That's a 19 to hit for four damage. Holy crap! The orc's, that's a hit, the orc's eyes roll back in the head, he reflexively drops his
weapon and grabs at himself in absolute pain. On its turn, the orc picks up its axe, and takes a swing wildly around, finally managing to take a swing at Sarah and completely misses her. He's in so much pain and agony. So there, we got description going on, we have some narration, you're describing things
that are happening, you're envisioning this in your brain, you have some words,
you're using your words! It's not just math. Now, so the natural question is, what combat would you
rather be playing in? Which one is boring and which
one is more interesting? RPG games are games of imagination, right? We are here to weave action and imagery with our words, right? So, use your imagination and do it. Use your words, use your narration, describe what's happening. It's gonna be so much more interesting. Don't just describe the numbers to hit and damage and do math. That's lame and boring. No one wants to play in
a D&D combat like that. No one. Now, Game Masters be like, well, Luke, my players don't do that. They can't do that stuff. Well, that's great. As the Game Masters set the
example by describing what your monsters are doing and how
they react to the players' attacks against them. You're the leader of the group, Be a leader, set an example,
describe, use your words, and then encourage your
players to describe how they do things and how they react. Critical hits and critical
misses and killing blows are great times for that. Just ask them, what does that look like or would you like to describe that? Word of warning! Not everything warrants
flowery descriptions. You can bog the game down
to all levels of swampery if you describe every little
thing in intricate detail and you can narrate your whole game into the grave doing that. You can go overboard. You need balance. Keep your descriptions
colorful, but succinct. The best times for cool
descriptions are critical hits, critical misses, normal
hits and misses maybe, but I usually tend not
to do those in my games because I can't go too overboard, right? Notice my previous rant. Near misses, monster
deaths, and PC deaths, all great times to do some
narration and all that good jazz. But Luke, I'm not good at descriptions! That's the cry of many a
viewer of this video, I'm sure. You're telling me to use my
words, but I got no words, Luke. I got no words! So, to get good with
your descriptive words, you need to read first. That's how I learned how to
describe crap, by reading. You read lots of descriptions. It comes into your brain
through the written word and then it sticks in there and then when you need
to go describe something, all that stuff just tends
to resurface and you can pick from it and use
it and assemble stuff. Works pretty well. My suggestion is to pick
up some fantasy books and get at it. I definitely recommend R.A.
Salvatore's "Drizzt" series. There's a link below to it. I'm not recommending him
because he's the very best, wonderful, most greatest author out there. I like his stuff. If you want an awesome, wonderful author that's like the top of the top, that's not why I'm recommending the dude. I'm recommending the dude because he is a master of combat
descriptions, in my opinion. Other authors like Robert
Jordan tend to skip over the details of combat
descriptions for the most part. Their books are still immensely enjoyable, but if you're specifically
there to learn how to describe combat with words, then those other authors
might not do it for you. R.A. Salvatore definitely will. Then, while you're reading, take notes, observe how the author uses words to describe things in combat. Expand your vocabulary. And then, you gotta practice. You gotta practice. Practice at home. Dude, you could just pull up
a Word document or a note pad and just try to write a
narrative description of combat. Practice writing this stuff. I wrote many manuscripts
for many fantasy novels, none have been published, of course, but it was great practice
for narrative description of all things, but in especially combat. And then of course, practice
in your gaming group. You're gonna feel rough at
first, it's gonna be hard, you're gonna stumble and stutter, but you gotta stick
through it and practice. Number three, allow all
players to participate in the combat. (man laughing) Somebody's going to be
like, Luke, you're a moron! Come on! Are you stretching for numbers? You got nothing else for us? I know, it seems like a no-brainer. It seems like such a no-brainer to let everybody participate in
the combat, doesn't it? Look, combat is the most
time-consuming part of the game by the very nature of how it's
designed in the rule systems. That's not a knock because I love combat and I love spending
lots of time in combat, it's lots of fun, but it is a fact. Combat takes awhile. So, if a player is basically
not playing the game for long stretches of time because they are out of the combat, that will probably make the game much less interesting for them. It's like being invited
over to a friend's house to play a game, you know, might be called D&D or
called Cthulhu or something and then you sit there all excited and you don't get to play. That might be a boring night for you. I don't know. So, specifics. Here are how to let all of your players participate in the combat. Number one, keeping the party together. Split parties present a problem. They do. You know the moment the
party splits into two, this group could get into a
combat that could take quite some time to resolve, these players over here
are not in the combat, they're just going about doing their own ordinary thing over here, so you're gonna spend lots
of time with this group working through their combat that doesn't take but like under
a minute in the actual game and these guys over here, because they're not in
combat and the rules are more streamlined and things
progress a lot faster, are gonna be sitting there
waiting around quite a bit as you resolve things with
the guys that are in combat. Yes, you are going to flip back and forth between narrating both groups. You do a little bit of combat, you go over here and talk to these guys, do a little combat, go over
here and talk to these guys, but the very nature of
how this is gonna work, you're still gonna have most of the time focused on that combat
and these dudes over here are not gonna be engaged
as much in the game. The second big thing is to
avoid using spells or abilities that effectively remove a player
character from the combat. Examples of these are
banishment, wall of fourths, (man blowing a raspberry) wall of force, polymorph,
and similar spells like that. As a Game Master, I rarely use
these spells on my players. The simple fact of the matter is is that if I banish a player, they're
not in the combat anymore. They're gone. They're pretty much gone. Luke, you can interrupt the concentration and stuff like that. That's great, but what if they don't? What if that player sits out
of the game for, I don't know, a half an hour, an hour as
that combat's being resolved? That dude's not having fun, is he? Polymorph, polymorph him into a clam and put him in your pocket. He's out of the game, right? Wall of force, dude, half of
the party could be sealed off and not able to do anything and they're sitting there watching, bored out of their skulls. So as a Game Master, I use those sorts of spells that remove players from the game seldomly. So, Luke is not saying that you
should never allow the party to split up. Luke is not saying to
never use those spells. I am simply saying that you
need to be aware of their effects on the game and on player fun and use them, ideally, sparingly, but at least use them intelligently, knowing what you're doing. Number four, pacing. Look, ladies and gentlemen, you gotta keep combat moving quickly. If the action is moving quickly, it will hold people's
interest a whole lot better. If it is moving as slow as molasses, people are far more likely to get bored. It's combat, it's fast-paced. Turns shouldn't take forever. I'm not saying, I am not
saying that fast combat equals interesting and fun combat. You could have a very fast combat that's boring and horrible, but if you have a slow combat, the chances of it being
boring are far greater. So there's not like a
reverse-inverse relationship, but there's definitely slow combat could very well be boring
combat relationship. The number one biggest
recommendation I can give you for speeding up combat, the biggest thing that slows combat down is players taking a long
time to make up their minds of what they're going to do on their turns and then resolving those things, or saying they're gonna do one thing, the Dungeon Master explaining
how it actually works 'cause they don't really
know how their character or spells work, and then they're like, well then I wouldn't do that,
let me do this thing instead. Well actually, it doesn't work that way. Well then I wouldn't do that either. I would actually do this. And you sit there for like 20 minutes because they don't know
how to use their character or spells and you're adjudicating and they're changing their mind. Yeah, let's try to avoid that, shall we? So if you can get your players
to like make up their minds about what they're gonna
do within a few seconds, under 10 seconds would be great. Then your combat is just
gonna be, woo, lightning speed compared to what it otherwise would be. The classic example of this
is the wizard taking like 15 minutes to decide what spell to cast. This happens in one of my games right now, but love the spellcaster to be just a tad bit faster sometimes. My players watching this
video are gonna be like, wait, is that me? Am I that spellcaster? And I guarantee you, I guarantee you the dude knows who he is and he's like, yeah, Luke, I know. (man laughing) By the way, if you want more
ways to increase the speed of your combats, I do have a "12 Steps to
Faster Combat in D&D" video. There's gonna be a link below and maybe up here in this card that
you can click, you know, to see how to speed your combat up. Number five, combat is more
than hit points and damage. You got, you got, you got
the orcs are standing there and they're swinging and doing damage and the players are standing
there and they're swinging and doing damage and I swing and do damage and you swing and you do
damage, you swing and damage, so it's just like damage and hit points and we're just doing math
and we're reducing numbers. We might be describing things, but we're still just kind
of standing there put and just doing, you know, doing damage and reducing hit point pools. That's really all we're doing around here. Yeah, that gets boring
too, pretty quickly, when every single combat is just a matter of standing there
swinging your weapons and dealing damage and
reducing hit point pools. So what am I saying? You need dynamic elements. You need something more exciting
going on in a combat than just standing there swinging
your weapons and doing damage. So, what could we do? We could have environmental effects. Terrain can be used, you could have a doorway
that an enemy spellcaster is popping around, firing,
and then popping back and the players' gotta figure out how are we gonna get at this guy, but he's got a frontline of fighters here, we gotta get past them somehow. Oh, look, there's a pit
in the middle of the room that some of the enemies
are trying to shove us into. Holy crap! Every so often, spikes
shoot out of the wall and hit random parts of the room. We gotta be careful and not do that. There's a river of lava
running through the room and we gotta navigate around
it as we're being attacked and firing back and stuff like that. There's a multitude of different
things you can do to make the environment more interesting. Enemies can do more than
just deal damage as well. They can inflict conditions. They need interesting actions, magic, spells they can cast, magical
abilities that they have. You need to have things
that bad guys can do besides just stand there
and swing their weapons and do damage. In my personal opinion,
giants in D&D fifth edition are one of the most boring
monsters in the entire book. They're just big sacks of
hit points that do damage and they nothing else. It's absolutely horrible. I've been reading more and
more of the "Tome of Beasts" by Kobold Press and I gotta tell you, I am very impressed by how
many interesting abilities and things that all, most of the
various monsters appear to be able to do. I haven't read them all quite yet. Those are big books, let me tell ya. But it's great when your
monsters can do special things, inflict conditions, and
have magical abilities. It is a breath of fresh air
compared to some of the things in the monster manual. Be honest right there. Enemies can do more than
just try to maim and kill. They can try to kidnap a PC, they can try to steal their things. Now, if you want more
suggestions on how to create encounters and make them more interesting and all that sort of thing, I do have an "Encounter
Creation Series" on my channel. I will put a link below and maybe up in a card in different places if you wanna go take a look at that. Remember, if you're a Game
Master looking to reduce your prep time and improve your games, become a DM Lair patron at the link below and start getting a new
issue of Lair Magazine every single month. Also, don't forget to
follow me over on Twitch for weekly Q&A livestreams
where you can ask me your own D&D questions. If you enjoyed the
invigorating Game Master advice I gave today, give this video a thumbs up
and leave a comment for the algorithm down below. Let YouTube know that I
don't completely suck. And until next time, let's not put our players to
sleep during combat, shall we?
