DM encounter building tricks and tips
Nothing here is new, just putting food for thought out there and seeing what other ideas people use in their games. The following are DM tricks for interesting combat encounter building using just the monsters/hazards/gear provided in the game, yes DM’s can make anything they want from unique monsters to magical demiplanes where anything close to the rules of physics are warped or gone, but this post is about just using the lego bricks the books give us.
Better humanoids, most small and medium humanoid shaped monsters can benefit from all the gear a player character can. Give your zombies ringmail armor to boost AC up to 14 from 8, have your skeletons use shields for a +2 to AC, have goblins and kobolds use caltrops/poison/hunters traps, think like the necromancer or bugbear chief and equip your minions with useful tools.
Environment, place your monsters in areas where their special abilities work in their advantage. Have your minotaurs in a room with pits or other traps they can easily push adventurers into. Place your vampires in rooms with pillars and high ceilings to spider walk on.
Use a mix of monsters that have good synergy. Hobgoblins gain extra damage if an alley is adjacent to their target so have just a couple hobgoblin archers stand back and rain death while the party deals with a large group of goblins or better wolves (who also get benefits for having allies adjacent). An encounter I ran recently a banshee with a couple will-o-wisps the banshee wail reduces targets down to 0 h.p and the will-o-wisps consume life ability finishes them off. A hezrou (demon) with a poisonous aura and other demons like dretches who are immune to the poison fighting in tight groups.
This next group of ideas I see much less regularly than the above common ones. But it is essentially just combining the idea of environment and creature synergy.
Useful hazards, brown mold in a room with ice mephits the mephits are immune to the cold and if you use fire to exploit the mephits weakness it is absorbed by the mold and the mold gets larger. Iron golems fighting in a room with lava pools or burning hands type traps, the golem is not only immune but gets healed by taking fire damage. Yellow mold in a room or just growing on undead who are immune to the poison, or green slime covering the ceiling of a chamber with a clay golem in it.
I know this stuff is just standard to plenty of people but lets try to talk about some of the more interesting encounters you have ran using tricks like these for all the people without years of experience.
One more thing, treat your monsters like how power gamers/optimizers treat player characters, when the Aarakocra race was made into a PC race people were so excited about the idea of grabbing enemies flying up into the air with them and dropping them. DM’s have been doing that kind of stuff with flying monsters for decades, beware the roc swooping down but also beware the air elemental who can do the same thing.
Nothing here is new, just putting food for thought out there and seeing what other ideas people use in their games. The following are DM tricks for interesting combat encounter building using just the monsters/hazards/gear provided in the game, yes DM’s can make anything they want from unique monsters to magical demiplanes where anything close to the rules of physics are warped or gone, but this post is about just using the lego bricks the books give us.
Better humanoids, most small and medium humanoid shaped monsters can benefit from all the gear a player character can. Give your zombies ringmail armor to boost AC up to 14 from 8, have your skeletons use shields for a +2 to AC, have goblins and kobolds use caltrops/poison/hunters traps, think like the necromancer or bugbear chief and equip your minions with useful tools.
Environment, place your monsters in areas where their special abilities work in their advantage. Have your minotaurs in a room with pits or other traps they can easily push adventurers into. Place your vampires in rooms with pillars and high ceilings to spider walk on.
Use a mix of monsters that have good synergy. Hobgoblins gain extra damage if an alley is adjacent to their target so have just a couple hobgoblin archers stand back and rain death while the party deals with a large group of goblins or better wolves (who also get benefits for having allies adjacent). An encounter I ran recently a banshee with a couple will-o-wisps the banshee wail reduces targets down to 0 h.p and the will-o-wisps consume life ability finishes them off. A hezrou (demon) with a poisonous aura and other demons like dretches who are immune to the poison fighting in tight groups.
This next group of ideas I see much less regularly than the above common ones. But it is essentially just combining the idea of environment and creature synergy.
Useful hazards, brown mold in a room with ice mephits the mephits are immune to the cold and if you use fire to exploit the mephits weakness it is absorbed by the mold and the mold gets larger. Iron golems fighting in a room with lava pools or burning hands type traps, the golem is not only immune but gets healed by taking fire damage. Yellow mold in a room or just growing on undead who are immune to the poison, or green slime covering the ceiling of a chamber with a clay golem in it.
I know this stuff is just standard to plenty of people but lets try to talk about some of the more interesting encounters you have ran using tricks like these for all the people without years of experience.
One more thing, treat your monsters like how power gamers/optimizers treat player characters, when the Aarakocra race was made into a PC race people were so excited about the idea of grabbing enemies flying up into the air with them and dropping them. DM’s have been doing that kind of stuff with flying monsters for decades, beware the roc swooping down but also beware the air elemental who can do the same thing.
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Likewise when they encountered a hobgoblin they'd managed to pick the lock of his door and sneak up on him as he slept, so his AC was reduced to 16 for not having shield in hand.
