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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6762107" data-attributes="member: 5834">I tend to build enemies with condition removal abilities or high saves. I tend to look at combat as "survival of the fittest." When I see an encounter designed that couldn't possibly survive contact with a competent adventure group, I modify that encounter so they could survive, usually be adding condition removal abilities or resistances to a creature or creating a party that works together to fight against similarly armed parties. Even though D&D isn't realistic, I still like to use realistic ideas like the arms race. The reality is that some solo high level fighter without magical support has no chance of ruling anyone but some small group of relatively in effective thugs. He has no chance of ruling a kingdom or even a fiefdom without magical support because the first creature that shows up with magical support will unseat that person. I've never seen the point in designing enemy encounters with powerful martial NPCs with no magical support because they have next to no chance of success. There is no reason to believe they could have obtained any power in a world where magic exists. It would be the modern equivalent of holding power with no guns or no air power against a nation with air power. It's not likely save in very primitive areas no one really wants to occupy.I take that thinking and design encounters accordingly. That means lots of counters which the players have to bypass to succeed. They end up in a chess match where no one player will be effective alone. So a player that does something like remove an effect from another player on his turn feels useful because the battle is likely to turn on such an action given the strength and capabilities of the enemy. I never make key battles short unless something ridiculous happens like an enemy rolling a 1 at the wrong time. Over a long, challenging battle, it's pretty rare that a player has time to disengage. And make sure you can run combat fast. Running combat slowly is one of the main causes of player apathy. Players get really bored when a DM doesn't appear to know what he's doing. Reading monster entries during play, choosing actions slowly, and the like cause players to disengage. Pacing is important when running a game and keeping players engaged.</blockquote>

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