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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Harr" data-source="post: 4584618" data-attributes="member: 47190">No, he's right. He's not talking about turning combats into stories. Imagine, for example, a fight with a dragon in his cave. You could decide , as a way of making the combat more interesting, that the cave is unstable and that the dragon is familiar with it, so that he has the option of stomping his feet on the ground as a move action and making stalactites fall on the PCs.The thing is, when does he start doing that? You have a few options for that. He could start doing it right away every round as soon as the fight starts. Makes it a normal, constant part of the combat. You could have him not do it at all obviously. You could just randomly do it some rounds and some other rounds not do it, as part of just a random series of abilities to dragon does, recharging it with dice or whatever, from the beginning of the fight to the end.Of course you already see where I'm going with this... at the beginning of the fight you could foreshadow it a little bit: Dungeoneering check -> "You notice the walls are a bit shaky, some pebbles roll down to the ground". During the middle you could let it loose a little bit: "The dragon angrily stomps his feet and crashes against a wall, which makes one of the hanging stalactites crash in a thunder right beside you." And then, when the climax point arrives, ie when the dragon reaches a soon-to-die point, it suddenly goes crazy and the cave explodes in a shower of sharp falling rocks, to do damage to or stun anybody who fails an Acrobatics check on the start of their turn.You plan an encounter like that, (it's just the same way you'd plan an adventure, with foreshadowing, tension, and a climax explosion) and its almost guaranteed to have a great effect on the players.Of course you could say "But that's all stuff that needs to happen naturally!" It is and it isn't. Whatever happens naturally during the combat happens, but at the same time you planned out ahead to have clear sections for each of the three parts of the "narrative". That's what makes the difference. This is really one of those things that is intuitive and that one as DM does without thinking without being aware of it, when you're on top of your game and doing everything awesomely, but you never recognize it until someone points it out to you. And then you can apply it all the time, not just whenever the inspiration strikes you.</blockquote>

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