D&D General Ending the Slog

[TaranTheWanderer]

In the RPG Torg it is fairly common encounter design to combine combat with some sort of skill-check related ultimate goal.

For example....the players enter the room with the evil mastermind and his minions just as they hit the self destruct button and begin to fire up the escape copter. Knowing that they will be blown to bits if they don't shut down the self destruct sequence, the players will need to start working on shutting that down. At the same time the minions are attacking the players in combat so some of the party has to protect the person disabling the self-destruct by engaging and taking out the minions. Optionally if they have enough resources or a good enough plan they can even dispatch another party member to pursue the evil mastermind up to the roof to try to prevent him from hopping on the escape copter.

In this example there is not a combat of 4 PCs vs. 16 henchmen and 1 mastermind to the death. There are multiple interacting moving parts that all contribute to a dynamic and exciting battle with the disabling of the self destruct the PRIMARY goal, and capture of the mastermind the SECONDARY goal. The killing (or not) of the henchmen is inconsequential to the scene.

Yeah, that makes sense. It's a stop-the-ritual-before-it's-too-late sequence - to put it in D&D terms. It's hard to do that with every encounter, though. What techniques do you use, in general, to create more intensity without it always feeling like the same combination?

Edit: thanks @iserith

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I would seek to change the fight. Where are my allies? Where is the rest of the party?

It was @Lanefan who said they ran this combat. I would assume since the combat lasted 38 rounds that the party was not available.

As @Ruin Explorer stated earlier, this is something that usually requires the GM to do a bit of "tweaking" to make sure the PC is alone before it happens. Separating the party and making each person encounter something on their own is a pretty common trope you would find in old-school style adventures and the "fighting a clone of yourself" similarly is something that isn't super rare.

I don't necessarily have an issue with the separation or the clone fighting, its more of an issue with having to fight battles that last 38 rounds that would make me want to check out. I don't find much joy in the combat portion of D&D, even when it's a normal length battle.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Yeah, that makes sense. It's a stop-the-ritual-before-it's-too-late sequence - to put it in D&D terms. It's hard to do that with every encounter, though. What techniques do you use, in general, to create more intensity without it always feeling like the same combination?

One advantage Torg has is that its story incorporates multiple genres simultaneously so you can choose from...

Primal Dinosaur Setting
Magical Fantasy Setting
Cyberpunk Setting
30's Pulp Setting
Victorian Horror Setting
Post-Apocalyptic Setting
Espionage Modern Horror Setting

...all in the same adventure. It keeps itself fresh when you bust down the portcullis to the ruined castle and charge inside only to find that it's occupied by some Cyberpapal church police backed up by a hovertank pointed at the gateway.

But if you are restricting yourself to just D&D....then my suggestion is to always incorporate at least one environment feature in every single battle that the players can interact with. Similarly I try to always think of a way in which a skill check can turn the tide to giving the players a distinct advantage for each encounter. I try to emphasize the lesser used skills as those used in combats and try to spread around which one is useful.

Example: Players kick in the door to a large open room with a makeshift barracks inside. In one corner of the room is a stockpile of 2 gallon kegs of oil and a small armory. In another corner is what appears to be some sort of circular area with a small raised wall. The blood filling the area and the various animals trapped in cages near it seems to indicate the guards pass the time by betting on animal fights.

You have now added in a fun terrain feature that both the players and the bad guys can use in the battle (a large amount of throwable kegs of oil to make the area slippery or aflame) AND you put in a feature that would allow a player to get some quick low-power allies with an Animal Handling check and freeing a wolf or wolverine or whatever from its cage and pointing it at the bad guys.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I came here to say this. We use the morale rules at our table, and it works pretty well. I mean, unless the party is fighting mindless opponents, why wouldn't the enemy try to flee, or negotiate, or otherwise end a stalemate? Why does every battle need to be to the death?

One reason fights often go to death is the prisoner problem (not to be confused with the prisoner's dilemma). If the bad guys surrender, what do you with them? Nobody wants to deal with captives.

 

[Dausuul]

One reason fights often go to death is the prisoner problem (not to be confused with the prisoner's dilemma). If the bad guys surrender, what do you with them? Nobody wants to deal with captives.

Surrender is a good idea if you have reason to believe your enemy will let you live. If you don't, however, it's suicide--and the monsters generally don't. When the monsters realize they are losing the fight, I have them flee if they can. If prevented from fleeing, they fight like cornered rats. They rarely surrender unless the PCs first offer it.

 

[CleverNickName]

One reason fights often go to death is the prisoner problem (not to be confused with the prisoner's dilemma). If the bad guys surrender, what do you with them? Nobody wants to deal with captives.

Surrender is a good idea if you have reason to believe your enemy will let you live. If you don't, however, it's suicide--and the monsters generally don't. When the monsters realize they are losing the fight, I have them flee if they can. If prevented from fleeing, they fight like cornered rats. They rarely surrender unless the PCs first offer it.

It's not really a "dilemma" for me unless I haven't had enough time to prepare for a hostage/prisoner situation and I'm squeamish about improvising one on the fly. Or if the adventure has a tight schedule, and I don't want to pull focus from the main goal. I've been in both situations several times, and it stinks, but I push through. All I can say is that it gets easier with practice.

I guess there are lots of ways to play this game, and no one way is better than any other. But I encourage surrender, retreat, and taking captives at my table. Bad guys are worth a lot more alive than dead, so I award double, sometimes trip XP and bounties for live captures. Captured guards will sing like canaries, live beasts could be wort a fortune to the right buyer, wealthy monsters will pay the party off, etc. And it's a good way to build a moral quandary ("This guy's evil, but he asked for mercy...whatever shall my paladin do?") It's my job to be flexible and let the players be as creative as they want.

And on the flip side, my bad guys behave the same way. Unless they aren't particularly bright (or just very hungry), the party is likely to be held for ransom, sold to the highest bidder, possibly kept as pets, etc., if they surrender. Since my current adventure is about to be derailed with a TPK, why not let it derail into the direction of a new adventure? Something like a Dramatic Escape scenario? Maybe they are thrown into a pit with an Important Someone, who will reward them handsomely if they help him escape. Heck, maybe getting captured is the whole point...it guarantees that the party will be escorted past all of the traps, guards, etc., and taken directly to the lower level of the dungeon where the McGuffin waits.

I'll do just about anything to avoid a TPK. I'll give multiple avenues of escape, I'll have the monsters take them hostage, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt during a full retreat. But if they just stand there, blindly swinging their weapons until they are pushing up the daisies, it's out of my hands.

 

[Lanefan]

I would seek to change the fight. Where are my allies? Where is the rest of the party?

Nowhere to be seen. The set-up was similar to the one in Secret of Bone Hill, where a character looks at something, gets sucked into an empty demi-plane, and has to kill its own clone (which appears right next to it) in order to get back.

Unfortunately, by sheer luck the character who looked was the high-AC Fighter (Archer). Shooting, which she was best at, was out of the question because a) she couldn't outrun herself to get a clear shot and b) each realized the safer option was hand-to-hand.

The rest of the party spent ten minutes or so (rounds in my game are 30 seconds) looking for her, then gave up, assumed she was lost, and carried on...meaning that when she did reappear, another 10-ish minutes later after having finally beaten her clone, she was all alone in the dungeon...

As for the player - as someone suggested above - just giving up and rolling up a new character, never! Both I and the player quickly realized this was going to be a crazy-long fight, and we ran it through in part just to see how many rounds it took (and set a still-standing record in the process). Also, the player didn't want to give up his character without a fight; and nor should he.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't necessarily have an issue with the separation or the clone fighting, its more of an issue with having to fight battles that last 38 rounds that would make me want to check out. I don't find much joy in the combat portion of D&D, even when it's a normal length battle.

Thing is, because it was one PC vs one clone those rounds each went by pretty fast...ignoring the various breaks because we were laughing so much, that is.

 

[Lanefan]

I'll do just about anything to avoid a TPK. I'll give multiple avenues of escape, I'll have the monsters take them hostage, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt during a full retreat. But if they just stand there, blindly swinging their weapons until they are pushing up the daisies, it's out of my hands.

There's also no real accounting for sheer bad luck.

I'm not shy about killing off a party, but parties are shockingly resilient things and thus - though having come very close a few times - I've only ever managed it once. The foe turned the party's main Fighter against them, the Fighter (with help from the foe) then killed off the rest of the party, and the foe then kept the Fighter as a prisoner/slave until he starved to death. Escape wasn't really an option, given the way that both the encounter (the only way out was a ladder up a shaft and the Fighter quickly took control of the bottom of the ladder) and the module (on a small demiplane with no way home without completing the adventure) were set up.

 

[MNblockhead]

Older editions had morale checks for the bad guys. This should have been retained, even more so in 5e where the end of the combat (the mop up) can be devoid of excitement.

I would recommend picking up an older monsters manual (the 2nd ed one is splendid) to get morale scores. Roll a dice, is it = or lower than their morale, they fight on. Higher, they run.

I don't want another random roll that is mechanically trigger. Yet another thing I have to track.

As DM I run the monsters/NPCs based on what I've determined to be their culture, individual personalities, motivations, fears, etc. I've also been heavily influence by The Monsters Know What They Are Doing blog and book, which gives a framework you can apply to different monsters to not only determine when they might flee, but their overall combat tactics in general. With a little thought to how stats and abilities might effect tactics, plus having a concept for the groups in your world and how they interact with it, I don't see the need to randomize their behavior more than the combat roles, saves, and ability checks that are already part of the game.