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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Puddles" data-source="post: 8085264" data-attributes="member: 7026093">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.</blockquote>

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