D&D General GM's are you bored of your combat and is it because you made it boring?

[WayOfTheFourElements]

When combat is seen as an obstacle between A and B, as opposed to a natural consequence of attempting to reach B, the game becomes more like an obstacle course an adventure.

 

[Charlaquin]

Another useful tip is not to plan “combats.” The moment you decide a combat is going to happen, you shut yourself off from the possibility of alternate resolution methods. You might tell yourself you’re open to that possibility, but you’re still putting the players in the position of having to convince you to let them “bypass” a combat you have decided is going to happen.

Instead, give monsters and NPCs goals that conflict with the PCs goals and treat combat as one valid means among many of resolving that conflict. If the PCs want something and the monsters want something that is mutually exclusive with what the players want, combat becomes a way to decide which side is going to get what they want.

 

[CleverNickName]

I agree with all points. I would also like to add: boring combat isn't completely the fault of the GM. Some players build their characters to do only One Thing, and to do it only One Way, in combat scenes. Then you end up with a bunch of players repeating the same action, rolling the same dice, and getting the same result, over and over again. And that's fine for a few minutes, but it quickly gets dull (especially for the GM).

It's easy enough to fix, though. If combat is getting dull, modify the monster abilities to change up the players' expectations, or even use completely new monsters of your own design, to push them out of a rut. There's nothing wrong with letting your players "spam the A-button" every now and again, but no two battles should ever feel the same. Mix it up if things are getting repetitive (or worse, predictable.)

 

[Helldritch]

In fact, I’d say DMs who write stories out ahead of time are undermining the goal of play. If the story is already written, the players are merely acting it out rather than creating it.

I would say the complete opposite. When I write an adventure, the only thing I know for sure is how I intend to start it. How I hope it will unfold and how I think it will end. Players make sure that my hopes will be crushed, reduced to powder, mixed with water, baked and formed into something unexpected that I would not expect.

It is exactly for those moments, where the players breaks my expectations and surprise me that I love being the DM. If they don't, no problems, I'll have a story anyways.

What irks me, is when a DM pushes the players to do the story that HE wants, going as far as punishing players for doing the unexpected. These are the bad DMs.

 

[Puddles]

Interesting thread!

I’m an experienced wargamer and so very familiar designing scenarios and missions for war games, as such, putting together a well crafted combat encounter is something I absolutely love doing and one for my favourite parts of D&D.

For me, the most important thing is to design an interesting terrain layout. No battle needs to take place in an empty chamber. Fill it with anything from tables to pillars to a roaring bonfire or spinning mechanical platforms. Dynamic elements (like the room filling with water) are great. As is verticality (having higher up spots that are hard to access).

Interesting doesn’t have to just be about combat tactics too. Designing somewhere jaw-dropping, mysterious and memorable can all be fun things to create too. Perhaps the battle is on the precipice of a waterfall, or perhaps the back wall is a Rosetta Stone of a lost language to the ancient ruins they are exploring.

You can learn a lot from video games with both these aspects, and they are a great pool of inspiration.

Once I have the layout designed, I think of exciting and cunning ways for the enemies to use that layout to force the players into making decisions.

Another rule I have for myself is never for the party to fight the same selection of enemies more than once. This doesn’t mean you can’t have recurring bad guys, but that a new element should be added in for each fight. For example, in my current campaign the players fought some goblins riding on wolfback in their first session. Two got away, and now they have tracked them to their lair. The wolves will be penned in cages elsewhere, but they’ll have an enraged Yeti waiting for the players instead and the goblins will be hiding up top in the shadows with bows. There’s so much cool stuff in the Monster Manual I don’t see the need to make 2 encounters ever be the same.

 

[Charlaquin]

I would say the complete opposite. When I write an adventure, the only thing I know for sure is how I intend to start it. How I hope it will unfold and how I think it will end. Players make sure that my hopes will be crushed, reduced to powder, mixed with water, baked and formed into something unexpected that I would not expect.

It is exactly for those moments, where the players breaks my expectations and surprise me that I love being the DM. If they don't, no problems, I'll have a story anyways.

What irks me, is when a DM pushes the players to do the story that HE wants, going as far as punishing players for doing the unexpected. These are the bad DMs.

I think you’ve misunderstood me. What you say irks you is what I was saying undermines the goal of play. Having a planned start to your adventure, a resolution in mind, and some idea of what shape you expect the adventure to take is just standard adventure prep. But the point is for the story to emerge through playing the adventure, rather than for the adventure having a pre-planned story for the players to “experience.”

 

[Puddles]

One devious tactic I recently used was a manticore following the characters for a whole day, never getting in bow range. But when the players got in combat with orcs, the manticore attacked them with tail spikes from a far. It went on an other two days when the ranger finally thought of hiding the group and lay a trap for the manticore with an illusion. Since the group was not distracted as the manticore thought they finally got it. But a simple combat became quite a story. They will remember that manticore a long time.

Combat can be its own story.

This is a great bit of inspiration. I think I will have to use the “following monster” in a future adventure for my players! It’s a great random encounter too!

 

[Lanefan]

One way to quickly get the players (and yourself) engaged is simply to cheer for the monsters with a smile on your face. "19! Yay! 7 damage! Take that, Desmond, and feel the pain!" This tends to get the players cheering for their side, and thus more into the whole thing.

 

[iserith]

One way to quickly get the players (and yourself) engaged is simply to cheer for the monsters with a smile on your face. "19! Yay! 7 damage! Take that, Desmond, and feel the pain!" This tends to get the players cheering for their side, and thus more into the whole thing.

I do think there is great value to the DM playing The Heel while running games. The players need to know it's a put-on though.

 

[ClaytonCross]

One thing I’ve observed as a DM is that encounters feel less tense from our side of the screen because we have more information than the players do. I’ve had many encounters that I knew the players would win, but that the players thought they were losing and felt relieved that they managed to survive. The first few times I thought maybe they weren’t as good at assessing encounter difficulty (many of my regular players are fairly new to D&D), but after seeing it happen so consistently I realized it was because I knew how much HP all the monsters had, so I could tell fairly easily how close the players were to winning, while all they saw was “oh my god, I’m bloodied and this guy still isn’t dead yet!”

Absolutely, and the possibility of GMs getting bored because if this is absolutely something that can drain GMs making them dread tactical combat slog. So what do you do to keep your interest when you know your going to lose, but your players are still engaged?