D&D General Two Simple Ways to Make Combat More Engaging

[Jahydin]

Nothing I dislike more than to look over the screen and see people mentally checking out during what should be the most exciting part of the game! Over the years I've found no matter the "D&D like" system I'm playing, I always do two things with combat to make it more engaging:

1. Get rid of Initiative rounds
Nothing is more boring then pausing the game right when the action starts to figure out everyone's order. Worse, knowing you go dead last and just sitting there waiting for your turn. Get rid of it!

There's quite a few ways to do this. Some of my favorites:

• Just let the PCs go first and get on with it!
• Split actions up and narrate in loose order using common sense and what's fun. (For instance, initiative could go: Movement -> Missile Fire -> Melee -> Magic)
• Everyone rolls for Initiative, but the GM just starts going. He can be interrupted at anytime by anyone who rolled better than him and is ready to take their turn. (My absolute favorite)
• Popcorn Initiative
• Lightest weapons strike first. Unless you're approaching someone with a longer weapon, then the longer one goes first.
• Mix and match any of the previous!

2. Make combat descriptions matter
When players take the time to describe their attack in a way that seems beneficial, uses a weapon that seem perfect for job, or comes up with a clever idea not covered in the rules, reward them!

With the first two examples, I usually give a +1 or +2 bonus in secret and just narrate it as being "effective" in some manner. For the clever ideas, I'll usually tie it to a Skill Check and keep the effect close to the power levels of what's normally available in the system. If it's something that player really likes to do, I'll take the time to flesh out a whole new mechanic.

This goes a long way in encouraging players to think about what they could do on their turn other than just "attack". Complete game changer in OSR systems to add depth as well as to more complex games like PF2 to add variety to the same "routine" the PC is built to.

Anyone have any hacks of their own they use to make combats more engaging?

 

[JamesLFlowers]

Make the party work for it. Now I don't mean throw things overpowered so the party gets killed. But make the party think and work. Something more than the run up to the bad guy and bash him with the magic sword while the guy in the robe hits him with a Ray of Death and Destruction. Remember that the bad guys think (unless they are a Tarasque and then they just eat you and the rest of the town). Some of the most fun encounters I have ever played, we really had to think and work and use our skills, abilities, etc to defeat the bad guy.

 

[Bae'zel]

Unless the antagonists are mindless automatons (constructs or undead) have them waver or even flee when the PCs kill a few of them. Maybe that amazing critical where the Barbarian decapitated the champion makes the minions reconsider if it's worth it.

It makes the players feel badaass AND can shorten the fight duration if the antagonists flee / surrender.

Also exploding terrain. Barrels of flammable booze. Rickety platforms. Flimsy railings around bottomless pits. Give opportunites for the PCs to shove, trip, break stuff down. Goblin snipers giving you trouble? Why, there's an unsprung trap set up behind them that could be of use if triggered, say from a distance...

Bonus: the bad guys ALSO have these tricks available to them. PCs found a loophole by staying behind cover or creating a bottleneck? Announce the sound of reinforcements approaching from BEHIND them. Or the antagonist shaman casts a terrain spell that messes things up (get to higher ground!).

Zones of different heights help too (either literal miniature terrain or theatre of the mind). Give three dimensionality to a fight if possible.

 

[Charlaquin]

The brand new (at time of posting) episode 2 of Critical Role campaign 4 has a great example of keeping combat feeling active and fast-paced in the opening minutes. Brennan Lee Mulligan uses narration before, after, and during the players turns to keep the focus on action rather than mechanical action resolution. Most importantly, he commands the action of the scene. At one point, it goes to Laura Bailey’s initiative and she briefly hesitates, asking what her goal is. Where a lot of DMs might simply answer the question and give Laura time to make a decision, he immediately launches back into narration to remind her of the context in a diegetic way, while keeping the scene feeling frantic despite this technically being a stall. Nobody is being rushed to make a decision before they’re ready, but also no one is waiting around while someone else “umm”s their way through a bout of decision paralysis. I think this is the number one most important DM skill for keeping combat engaging. Be aware of the narrative monumentum, and never casually toss it to someone else or allow the person with it to do so. Carefully and intentionally hand it off to the player when it’s their turn, and when they’re done with it, take it back with some narration of your own and deliver it to the next player. If a player drops it, catch it! Give some more narration and then carefully and intentionally hand it back to them.

 

[Charlaquin]

As for methods of handling initiative, I think they have much less impact on the pace of combat than keeping up narrative momentum does, but they do have some impact. I’ve long been a fan of initiative variants that involve re-rolling initiative at the top of each round, to keep the action dynamic instead of falling into a predictable cycle. However, the one major flaw of such variants is that they usually require the players to declare their action at the top of the round, which can be a challenge for a lot of players, and introduces the risk of losing your action if it becomes impossible before your turn comes around, which is a real bad feeling for the players. But I recently had the revelation that instead of declaring the actions at the top of the round and rolling for when to act on that round, you I could treat a player’s action on their turn as functionally their action declaration and have them roll then for their initiative on the next round, with the roll essentially representing recovery time rather than wind-up time. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m excited to take it for a spin in the next campaign I run for my regular group. Here’s the full writeup of the system if anyone is interested, or finds my summary here too abstract to grokk.

Spoiler

Order of Combat
Any effect that would normally occur at the start of a creature’s turn occurs at the start of the round on which that turn will take place. Any effect that would normally occur at the end of a creature’s turn occurs at the end of the round on which that creature’s turn took place.

Initiative
At the start of the first round, roll a die based on your character’s size to determine your Initiative.

Size	Initiative Die
Tiny	1d4
Small	1d6
Medium	1d6
Large	1d8
Huge	1d10
Gargantuan	1d12

Creatures take turns in ascending order of Initiative. If two or more PCs have the same Initiative, the players decide what order their characters take their turns in. If two or more monsters or NPCs have the same Initiative, the DM decides what order they take their turns in. If any PCs have the same initiative as any monsters or NPCs, they take turns in descending order of Dexterity scores, with PCs winning ties.

Your Turn
On your turn, you can move up to your speed and take one action and up to one bonus action. The actions and bonus actions you take during your turn determines your Initiative on the following round.

Attacks
Whenever you make an attack on your turn of the weapon used to make the attack, or 1d4 if the attack was an unarmed strike. The highest result rolled this way on your turn becomes your Initiative on the next round.

Spells
Whenever you cast a spell on your turn, roll 1d4 if the spell requires verbal components, 1d4 if it requires somatic components, and 1d4 if it requires material components, and add the results together. The total is your Initiative on the next round.

Items
Whenever you use an item or activate a magic item on your turn, roll 1d6. If the item had to be retrieved from a pack or other container, roll another 1d6 and add the results together. The total is your Initiative on the next round.

Other Actions
If you take any other action during your turn, or end your turn without taking an action, roll your Size-based Initiative die. The total is your Initiative on the next round.

Other Actions
If you take more than one of the above actions on your turn, use the highest result rolled as your initiative and ignore the rest.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Well I don't really think the issues with combat feeling "unengaging" lie all that much with initiative. My main tweak to initiative is just that if the DM is going to have multiple enemies with separate initiatives in a planned battle they should roll intiatives for them in advance, or at least write down their initiative bonuses, or just not bother with enemy and npc initiative bonuses unless they are notably quick or slow. It's not that it really takes that long in the grand scheme of things, it's just that it can take a minute or two when the players are all champing at the bit to have you write down their initiatives and get started, and pausing to focus on a purely game mechanics task invites everyone to take their bathroom breaks or whatever.

When I have been bored by combat it has primarily been some combination of these issus:
1. Low stakes for players (though letting players have a low or no stakes battle to steamroll enemies with awesome abilities is great from time to time, especially if they recently leveled up or got cool new equipment).
2. Poor or repetitive enemy tactics (which tends to also generate low stakes for players)
3. Dull encounter design, including dull spaces for encounters.
4. Encounters not actually being designed at all, but rather something that happened because the players caused a fight when the DM wasn't expecting it (nothing wrong with this in general, frankly it's a lot of why I take a ttrpg over a video game, but you do get a few real slog fights in the mix, and sometimes you get ones that only one "it's what my character would do" player wanted)
5. Spells or abilites which render my player character powerless for extended periods of time (no don't mind the occasional petrification or whatever in principle, but it's going to mean a lot of downtime for someone at the table).
6. Enemies immune to primary means of dealing damage, such that they have to be slowly bled over many rounds (only really a boredom problem in low stakes situations, but if the only thing you've got dealing damage is one mage's firebolt or whatever it starts going on forever).
7. Rounds taking too long (usually either because there are too many folks in the initative order or because someone doesn't know how to play their character efficiently or doesn't bother to, or has a severe math allergy. A turn may also take a long time because of a critical or difficult decision but that isn't likely to bore me).
8. DM unwillingness to just call a battle when it's clearly over.
9. Having a story or roleplay thing I really wanted to get to only to have it be interrupted by 30 or 90 minutes of kind of tedious combat.
10. Just having it be the wrong day for me to play D&D. The game is all so dependent on commitments to meet made days or weeks in advance, sometimes when the agreed upon day arrives my heart is not actually in it for all manner of reasons.

Few of these are really system design issues per se. So I'm afraid my main advice is not to redesign anything or add any cool new house rules but simly be aware of what drags and to plan accordingly and get good. DM should have meaningful stakes for battles (this may be danger to PCs or someone they are trying to protect, it may be something they are trying to accomplish or desire to defeat a particularly loathsome enemy), enemies using engaging and sensible tactics (unless they're mindless undead or automatons in which case by all means play them comically stupid but that should not be the campaign's typical battle), in interesting spaces which PCs and enemies can interact with and use to tactical advantage. Enemies and enemy abilites which might render a PC irrelevant or make the enemy a long slog to kill should be used rarely and judiciously. Places where players may initate a fight should be recognized and planned for. Much of these DM imperatives are also relevant to publishers of modules. Players should learn to play their characters, do math, be considerate of other people's time, and maybe not start needless fights other people at the table don't want. Everyone at the table should practice patience because even if you're all superstars sometimes something just misfires or someone is just not in the right headspace.

 

[Koloth]

Nothing wrong with the GM pre-rolling the NPC's initiatives as part of prep. One less thing you have to do 'in the moment'.

Allow use of a hero point to allow a character to go NOW! Handy for that wizard that sees the perfect setup for a fireball but somehow managed to roll last in the initiative order. Avoids the problem of that pesky barbarian running into the middle of the encounter before the AOE folks can act. Even if you don't normally use hero points, let each character start an encounter with a temp point that vanishes when that encounter is over.

If a player is taking too long to act, declare that character stunned and amazed and go the the next character in the order. Don't delay the game for several minutes because some player was lost in his phone and wasn't paying attention to the game. When the player finally has something figured out, he acts then and the character moves to that spot in the order.

Avoid the everything fights to the death scenarios. Even animal intelligence critters can do a basic cost/benefit analysis and will run away if the prey is being too difficult. More intelligent critters might pull back to regroup, release the caged monster, send for help, sound an alarm, etc. The goblin running out the back tunnel followed a few seconds later by a loud gong and 'ALARM!' can make the encounter suddenly more interesting.

Provide ways for the party to avoid combat encouters by stealth, diplomacy, etc. Let those rogues and bards earn their keep.

 

[bloodtide]

I generally do daily initiative, so it is just one roll per game day...and characters might just be 'fast or slow' that day.

I love descriptions for bonuses and I go from 1-5 for most rolls. If a player can describe a nice bit of something their character is doing it is worth a bonus.

A big thing that has seeded up my combats is my three second rule. When combat starts, and it is your turn, you have three seconds to state your characters action. anything more and you will be passed over and your character will stand confused for the whole round.

The above also goes a long way to have all players to know all their character abilities.

A also don't allow many OOC questions during the game. As soon as a player says "Hey DM how much damage does.." I will just cut them off and say "your character stands confused for the round, next!"