Encounter design....looking beyond the monster combos.

[Shadowslayer]

I'm wanting to learn more about designing better encounters and am looking to see if there is some sort of resouce/blog/website that focuses on encounter design.

Most of what I've been able to find focuses on monster combos etc, but I'm more looking for info on where to place terrain, how much to use, where to place the baddies when the combat starts....thoughts on all that kind of stuff.

Is there anything out there like that? I'm finding my encounters feel a little bit lacking. I guess its because I've never been much of a tactician and don't actually know if I'm getting the most out of my monsters/terrain or not. I want to get the best effectiveness out of them, but don't necessarily want to use terrain to completely stack the deck against the PCs either.

Anyway, just curious if anyone knows any resources that focus on encounter design theory: rules of thumb, advice etc.

Thanks in advance.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I suspect the best resources you will find are here on Enworld. There have been many threads in various places here and elsewhere that have discussed the topic, but few and far between are any more formal resource collections. I suspect people look at that kind of thing once or twice and then it kind of just collects dust. There have been various attempts to create groups over on the D&D community site. They just don't seem to persist.

I mean, we can have another thread on the subject right here and now It will probably rehash mostly what has been said before though.

 

[Quickleaf]

What he said. I really like Mike Shea's Sly Flourish (though you'll need to do some digging in their archives for encounter specific articles):

Article Archive | Sly Flourish

Also page 62/63 in the good ol DMG has solid advice about what kinda of terrain to use with which monster roles. I always forget about that.

 

[Quickleaf]

Double post