Do your monsters bore you? Are your fights uninteresting? I’ve run into this problem. It is an issue plaguing many DMs. However, it is easy to fix. I stopped doing the minimum. I made a list of criteria, looked at each encounter, and decided if it was missing things from that. So take a page from my book, and see 10 ideas to improve combat in D&D (or another game).

1. Terrain

I’ve overlooked terrain for years. It’s such a simple thing, yet easy to forget. It isn’t even hard to fix. Your encounters improve dramatically when there’s cover, difficult terrain, and varying elevation. I wouldn’t use all of them all the time. Just one or two for “common” encounters. More climactic encounters benefit from two to three.

2. Numbers

I include more weaker monsters in my encounters than stronger ones. I do, however, know what each of the creatures does very well beforehand. Not knowing this slows the game down. The up-side is your players have more options on what to attack and feel more powerful mowing them down. For 1st level characters especially, reconsider those CR 0s and some CR 1/8ths.

3. Traps

Sadly, I’m bad about not using enough traps throughout my games. Adding them into an encounter makes for another enjoyable level of danger. It is especially fun if the party can hijack the trap instead of just disarming it. If it makes sense, that might be a feature of the trap or it might be a reward for a high roll.

4. Hazards

Surely, hazards are just natural traps, right? Nope. Hazards can function like traps, but there’s not as much a party can do about them. Toxic swamp gas? Rock slides? Cacti? Fungi? Yup, they’re all valid choices. Still, I take a “free-for-all” approach to them. That way, the party or monsters can use them.

5. Goals

Say, do all battles have to be about one side dying? No, they can (and should) have other victory conditions. Now, a fight with an evil priest might be about taking his scepter. Now, a fight with some assassins is a chase to keep them from the king. See, it all goes a long way towards a better game.

6. Skills

Huh, skills? Yes, skills! Perhaps you expected skills to stay with traps or hazards? No, they can be with monsters too. And, they can go beyond just athletics or stealth checks. For instance, one of my adventures has a goblin who’s sewn stolen gold into his clothes. Therefore, a Dexterity (sleight of hand) check (or a critical hit) frees the gold. As a result, it turns his masters against him. Admittedly, this is harder to do. In short, think about a creature’s flaws that a skill could take advantage of.

7. New Abilities

Yup, giving monsters new abilities is a decent way to spice things up. Consequently, its novelty is fleeting, so use them sparingly. A cockatrice that sets people on fire instead of petrifying them, perhaps. A blindfolded beholder (or one that willingly had its eyes sewn shut) with psionic power. Sand sahaugin with sand sharks. Rust elementals. As a result, that means more work. So, aim for reskinning and tweaking if you can’t make new monsters.

8. Rivals

Rival battles can mix things up and be used multiple times (sparingly). Another adventuring party competing for the same goal might offer to have a sort of formal duel. This rival isn’t meant to be antagonistic, per say. They fight until they yield (maybe even quickly with a skill check) or are knocked unconscious. Rivals that are villains need to be built like a boss monster: several ways of escaping (invisibility, smoke bomb, teleports, straight up speed, etc), lots of HP, and when their hit points reach half or less, they make their escape.

9. Gauntlets

No, not the metal boxing gloves. Consecutive battles! This is a risky option, and it’s easy to mess up. If your battles weren’t interesting before, just adding more of the same makes things much worse. String several easier encounters together. Of course, heed my previous advice. Perhaps kobolds pepper a party with slings, lure the party into a trap, and all charge back into the fray with their fledgling dragon in toe. Hobgoblins soldiers block a party, their siege weapon or beast slowly lurches in behind them, and then their cavalry appears to help turn the tide. Stage encounters after the party has finished (or mostly finished) their current problem. Otherwise, you’ll kill them.

10. Power Trip

Seriously! Sometimes, you just throw woefully weaker creatures at your party. It’s especially satisfying if the dead-men-walking are arrogant and think highly of themselves. Use these at higher levels and the least often.

And that is how you do it. 10 tips to improve D&D combat. Thought, much of this translates well to any game with combat. Regardless of your game, when you’re stuck in a rut, take a page from my book!

-The Clark Side