Placement of Terrain and Hazards for Combat

another interesting variable is movement speed. If I can move 6 squares and still attack, putthing an obstacle that takes 5 squares to get through and still places me next to the enemy is only making lose a full attack at best.

Arranging things such that it'll take a round of movement to close with the enemy will change how the opening of combat starts.
 

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I like to add non-combat goals to my encounters.

Some merely add to the difficulty, some provide a non-combat resolution to the situation. If players get to this spot and get/pull/steal/kill/break/unlock/retrieve/save the __________ (fill in blank according to your story) then x will happen either disarming the situation or making the victory unavoidable. Or as opposed to resolving the situation, getting to Y stops it from getting even worse. If Y is ignored then the situation becomes increasingly difficult. At you leisure add x elements or y elements, and when you really want chaos, add both at once.

Elements like this while a battle is raging give the PCs a chance to use skills instead of attack powers to resolve situations. Now that the characters have a very concrete motivation to get to that place, let your imagine run wild as you come up with fun obstacles that impede them from reaching that place without some effort.

i think building terrain upwards as well as outwards is a fun element. Also up there is a good place to put the __________ or the Y to make the PCs get up there, climing, leaping, teleporting til they reach their objective.
 

Here are some points that I learned when fooling around with terrain hazards (Zones, as they were called in Iron Heroes).

First, make them worthwhile. At first there were so many I would add to a scene and be hesitant to give them too much weight as to give the characters easy 'win buttons'. When the characters can dish out metric-buttloads of damage per round themselves and you offer a pillar they can knock over for a d6 of damage, it's not really that helpful. So I started bumping it up, d8... d10... d12! What I found really works though was offering a static base damage plus a die. So the pillar would be 10 guaranteed damage plus a d6 cause that why the players felt they were getting a good 'deal'.

Second, put them where stuff is gonna happen. Again when I first started messing around with stuff like this I'd sprinkle them here and there and try to make it look like it 'belonged'. Nobody's gonna break away from the main focus of the scene to go stand by a few pillars and wave a long goblin over so they can just knock it over on them. You wanna use it, it should be in a place where both sides can easily access it to entice the players to use it or risk it used on them.

Third, mix it up. Don't just have it always be damage. Some of the most used zones in the games I ran were stuff like tapestries hanging on the walls that could be used to trip or bind an opponent for a few turns. Tipped over tables for instant cover bonuses plus rough terrain on the opposite side where all the broken dishes, slippery food and drink landed were always a fav. I mean who doesn't like flipping over tables?
 

Non-combat goals are the bomb. A combat encounter mixed with a skill challenge is great.

A timing example, during a fight in a distillery the bad guys light the place on fire and the PC's will need to put it out during the fight or 'boom'.

Also really difficult terrain can be cool.

A 'fight differently example', they are in a swamp with slippery boulders sticking out. They can climb the boulders to get away from the swarms of leeches and to get a clear shot at the swamp walking monsters, but that makes them targets for the 'snipers'. Make it difficult to jump from boulder to boulder.

Both are 'stolen' from a couple of RPGA adventures.
 

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