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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8085117" data-attributes="member: 16814">These are a reasonable approach to combat encounter monster selections, but I'm not sure this addresses your goal except tangentially.  In other words, your suggestions are aimed at making combat more manageable, but that's not quite the same thing as more engaging.In addition, I'd recommend looking at both the whys of the combat and a tad more of the whats outside of the monster selections.  Starting with the whys, I think that it's very important to know why the non-PC side is fighting.  What does Team Monster want to accomplish in this fight?  If you do this, then you'll have a more engaging narrative threading through the fight, helping make choices and decisions for Team Monster that align with their goals.  It also gives you the opportunity to role play that motive through the monsters.  Be careful, here, though to not thoughtlessly humanize your monsters (especially if they are supposed to represent evil).  Note I say thoughtlessly.  Don't, for instance, introduce that these goblins are fighting to save their kids in a game that doesn't otherwise deal with humanizing monsters because in the moment you think that will cause the players to face a moral dilemma.  That leads to mixed signals.  If your game does feature those themes, then, by all means, thoughtfully humanize your monsters.Secondly, look at your encounters from outside just monster selection.  If you make sure your environments are a part of the fight, then the combats will become more engaging.  Don't just have the party fight another group of trolls, have them fight trolls in a gas-filled cavern where any fire or spark will cause an explosion.  This kind of encounter places additional stress and interest on the combat.I'd also recommend building your narrative goals into the combats, or putting combats into your narrative goals.  Your point about combats being spacers between plot points is a good one to avoid, and you can do that by making the combat part of the plot point.  This also goes to having combats often be about more than reducing the other side's hp.  If you make a combat part of an escape, or a rescue, or preventing a ritual then the goal of the combat isn't just to remove hp, it's to do the thing.  In this way, combat becomes the immediate obstacle to the goal rather than something you have to get through to get to the goal.  Smart design here will make combat interesting to all sides, as it will now have a major say in what happens at the big picture level as well.</blockquote>

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