Situations to keep combat interesting

[Denaes]

So, not just any way to keep combat interesting. Being a better GM would help. Enthralling the players would go really far and so would practicing your theatrical skills.

But Situations. Everyone can come up with situations. Could be a complication or an event or some bizarre tactics.

What actually makes things more interesting?

Keep Action Moving - Things keep happening that matter
Movement - Don't have players/Enemies just sitting there
Terrain - get something interesting that will keep combat varied without crippling either side.
Bad Assery - Nobody likes someone who hogs the spotlight all the time, but give the players a chance to just do something balls out awesome without a hugely impossible penalty.
Consequences - Make the fight matter in some way, either personally or plot wise.

Any other ideas on what generally makes things more interesting? Specific examples? I have two I'll post below.

 

[Denaes]

The Chase

The point is to get to a foe. Obsticals in the way add to the excitement if they matter without just screwing the players.

This is a scenario I had where the players were set to boring guard duty with the likelyhood of a boring combat, then the wagon with multiple carts they're guarding takes off.

Two players made it on the cart and had to fight their way to the front with dangers of falling off in combat or moving between carts or with sudden maneuvers. Towards the end, they have to manage combat while now allowing the vehicle to lose control.

Two players made chase on a lighter faster cart. They had to plan a strategy to catch up lost ground while forcing the other wagon to slow without damage.

This is all the while in a narrowish canyon thats been prepared by foes in their favor. So there are reinforcements, opponants leaving/entering combat, tough terrain, etc.

In the end it also included one player teleporting to a horse on the other cart to regain control while another player had to jump between carts to aid an ally who was in a crunch. The crunched player ended up bailing out to avoid death.

In the end, a dozen or so opponents minions lay dead or captured, the treasure was secured and the masterminds escaped a grueling 1:1 duel. The players went in search with a chained creature to try and track down their lair.

 

[Denaes]

The Contraption

Players knew someone was digging around some ruins and expected a dungeon crawl. Instead they found a quasi magical contraption built to siphon energy from a sleeping demon for some purposes and some crazy men who were half human, half demon.

So there is a room with a rotating pillar, 13 positionable body size mirrors around the room.

All the while, the players are unsure what is going on, they don't want to waken the demon but they don't know whats keeping it in stasis. Would destroying the machine wake it up?

A fight ensues with minions using the mirrors as cover. The Mirrors will reflect back magic ranged attacks (important when you have a ranged magic user in the group), also shoot their own negative energy and illuminate the room.

The players ended up destroying the mirrors and the lack of light caused a dimensional barrier to weaken further causing demons to phase in and out. Turned out that the foes were an order of monks trying to seal the dimensions, but were being tainted by the energy and losing their humanity.

 

[Quickleaf]

Complications

I'm notorious for using enemies that with numerous resistances and unique vulnerabilities, as well as cursed foes who the PCs don't want to kill. Whether it's a case of the villain knowing where the prince is captive or an ally gone into a blood rage lashing out at innocents, complications make combat more exicting and less predictable.

 

[MortalPlague]

Good thread. I love to come up with interesting scenarios for combat, and I always try to keep things fresh and interesting. Here are two things I've done that worked out very well.

The Beast Pit

In the throne room of a minor villain in the game, he had a pit with a couple of fire beetles skittering around. His brute had a knockback attack, so as the PCs came around the pit, some of them were forced in. Once inside, a hidden goblin flipped a switch to activate the floor blade trap; 6 rows in the pit, each one marked. A d6 is rolled on the trap's initiative, and it attacks everyone in that row. It made the pit fight very tense.


Collapsing Pillars

...because everyone likes collapsing architecture. I had a hall full of kobolds where they had rigged pillars to fall in a huge, 2 x 6 square blast. Anyone caught in it took an attack to deal damage, then a secondary attack to pin them. The area was then turned into difficult terrain. It made what might've been a run-of-the-mill kobold encounter exiting and dynamic.

 

[FireLance]

I also strongly recommend reading this thread: Creative combat objectives (other than "kill 'em all")

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

On a similar-but-not-the-same note, a player of mine really enlightened a game over the weekend, just with a bit of good description.

I was using a Bone Demon against him (which I recommend, by the way, as Bone Demon's are full of awesome) and when I came to use it's teleport power he interrupted me and instead of just having it "blink" from one place to another he described it as turning into mist and flowing there, reforming in place.

This then lead on to all sorts of other mist based description for it's various attacks and defenses, and picked up the whole fight. It was excellent!

So - put a bit of extra work into your monsters, don't tell your players what they are, or the name of their attacks, just let them know what it is they're doing.

 

[Rel]

I've had a few recently that were pretty dynamic and fun.

Fights on an Airship: First one had some of the bad guys land (on Griffons) on top of the gas bag and some land on the deck of the ship. The PC's were fine fighting the latter until they started seeing ropes snap loose from above as the the foes up there began cutting the lines. That certainly gave them a sense of urgency to get up top and do something about it. Also the big bad guy in that fight had a lot of Push effects. Scary stuff when you are thousands of feet off the ground.

Later they ran into some Harpies. Harpies Pull and a couple of characters got dragged overboard and fell onto the rocky ledge below where the Harpy nests were. In retrospect I really wish that I'd had some young harpies down there to feast on the bodies of the fallen. Because tumbling 30 feet onto rocks for a bunch of damage and then being attacked by babies would have made that scene pop even more. I'll know next time.

I also had a fun battle where the enemy spellcaster was doing a ritual to summon a demon. So disrupting the ritual was an objective in the fight. As it turned out the demon got summoned but wasn't controlled or bound. So it ended up killing the summoner before attacking the party.

I'm also a big fan of fights that change significantly part way through. The PC's were fighting some Ettercaps and their "spider queen" in her lair. They had a couple of regular Ettercaps to fight and each round the spider queen would rip open an egg sack and add another Ettercap minion to the fight. The PC's finally finished off the Ettercaps and turned on the queen spider. When she'd take a certain amount of damage her huge abdomen ripped open and a swarm of tiny spiders spilled out. This completely changed the nature of the fight and required the players to use totally different tactics than they had been so it made for a fun finish to the fight.

 

[MortalPlague]

I'm also a big fan of fights that change significantly part way through.

Likewise. In the same vein, I'm also a big fan of monsters who gain or lose abilities when they become bloodied. I'm a firm believer that every solo monster should gain an ability or change somehow once they become bloodied.

Even for creatures that don't change mechanically, I'll sometimes describe how they cry out with wounded fury and strike at their foes with hatred. I love the "Oh sh**" reaction from the players...

 

[Pbartender]

Likewise. In the same vein, I'm also a big fan of monsters who gain or lose abilities when they become bloodied. I'm a firm believer that every solo monster should gain an ability or change somehow once they become bloodied.

Or even bad guys that simlpy change tactics halfway through the battle. Bloodied, in 4E, is a good marker for tactics change... It's often the point where it becomes obvious to everyone involved that PCs will be the eventual victors in the fight.

At that point, I'll often have bad guys start looking for ways to withdraw and retreat. Or, they start using more desperate tactics in a last ditch effort to throw the PCs off balance... sabotage or hostage taking, for example.