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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jbear" data-source="post: 4627503" data-attributes="member: 75065">My Tip: Give the Players A Goal as the Combat Unfolds As I've been reading about Grind and experienced it for the first time in my game where 3 hobgoblin Soldiers fled the battlefield shrieking out of sheer boredom, I decided to add some pizzazz to my encounters, and have things going on that aren't just : who should I kill next. Quick examples: A simultaneous Skill Challenge/Battle to stop a Drow Ritual involving unlocking various arcane circles which had different effects on those who entered into them. The main lock had a confusion effect and the valiant rogue who approach it to disable the device suddenly found himself licking the Statue of Lolth... Young Drow Minions rained down attacks as the PCs alternated between taking them out and trying to stop the ritual and save the person about to be sacrificed. The Minions were actually stopping the ritual from preceeding until the master returned. And as the last one fell the Ritual kicked in again....and with the arcane lock still keeping them out of the circle of sacrificial stones and a massive Shadow Drider being summoned and leeching life from the person they were trying to save....arggh!I won't go into more details, but needlees to say it was fun for everyone. Another Example: After walking through a desecrated cementary with an evil looking tree with hanging skulls the PC's were met on the other side as they left, by furious headless skeletons and the heads on the tree inside the cementary on the tree began calling out to them in a strange indeciphrable language. Suddenly the PC's clicked on that the words the skeletons heads were calling out to them were backwards and that as the skeleton bodies pummeled them mindlessly, the heads were begging for help to be returned to their bodies and have their suffering lifted. (heir bodies were obviously unable to enter into the cemetary) The party split, half keeping the bodies at bay and the other half raced back into the haunted cementary to retrieve the heads and bring them back to their bodies, ending their curse and setting them to rest. This ended the combat before a single skeleton died as the PC's decided it wouldn't be wise to kill them. But it was tense, exciting, fun til the end and justly rewarded, more so than if they had simply bashed the skeletons to bits. I won't treat every single encounter I do this way, but it certainly is something I want to add to many encounters so it's not just: Fight these monsters until they are dead, there is no other way around this until you've killed every last m.@# f.@#$$ one of them.  No matter how interesting the terrain I think other stuff needs to be going on as well, and conflicts can be resolved in other epic ways.</blockquote>

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