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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gold Roger" data-source="post: 2620333" data-attributes="member: 33904">Here are some things I've learned:Concentrate on defensive abilities - A opponent with a broad selection off offensive abilities will die before he can use more than two off them at high level. A though opponent may have only three special attacks, but he lasts to really show them off and gives the PC's time to use theirs.Roleplay fighting action - villains that fight according to their personality are much more interesting and athmospheric. An overconfident evil knight should take great risks, all the while taunting the PC's, and get angry or confused if he gets hurt. A honorable opponent doesn't flank, a carefull wizard takes more defensive mesures than plausible and uses his spells and limited items sparsely. The deceitfull liar holds back his true power or tries to pass of his spells as higher level than they really are (for example "hold person" combined with a secretly cast low level illusion may look like "stone to flesh"). This applies to PC's as well, my wild shifter took risks and was reckless, the clever changeling mage stayed back, used his spells carefully and only when needed and made use of prepared actionsUse waves - Similar to reinforcements, but plannned by the opponents. This can be simple, like three new orcs every round or as elaborate as the following: first some mooks run up and test the strength, then some more come up and catch the PC's in melee, then more with ranged attack (precise shot is mandatory) and entangling spells, rain down the true attacks on the PC's. Should any PC's be able to reach the ranged attackers the next wave reveals itself: hidden melee specialists hung back to catch such opponents off guard. Then the melee mooks in the center get support by flying, summoned or teleporting melee monsters. The troupes leader stays with the ranged attackers and flees if threatened.Avoid instant kill attacks - Nobody but mooks should be taken out in the first round off  combat. Instant kill effects boils down combat to who wins initiative and/or fails his save first. A fast ended combat can be fun and exciting once in a while, but usually longer combats tend to be more tense ,unless it's just the "how many hp can this darn thing have?!" kind of long.Keep risk or at least it's illusion alive - a fight without risk is a boring fight, unless it's a boya we rock power demonstration. If you are a Rat Bastard DM you allready know what to do: Sundering, energy drain, having demonstrated that you don't fear to kill a PC if the dices fall, tightly calculated combats and evil surprises keep the fear for the PC's up. It's much harder if it's a beer and pretzels game or your one of the nice DM's. Doing things that don't kill or constantly damage a PC, but damage their pride is one way to keep a risk in combat. To keep the illusion, you've got to lie to your players. Kill a NPC that travels with the PC's and behave as if you didn't expect him to bite it, tell players a save was close, even though he easily avoided a simple doom spell, whatever. I prefer the RBDM method, so I don't know much about this kind of stuff.Don't fudge - I did it for some time, believe me, sooner or later you get caught or found out. If you fudge in the PC's favor the risk gets lost, if you favor the NPC's your DMing skills get under attack, for not being able to make combat challenging any other way or railroading.Create time pressure - I haven't actually done this yet, but it adds a new dimension of possible failure. Time pressure can be created many ways. It can be plot related (a la stop the dark rituale), it can be something like escapeing the collapsing tunnel or place with the bomb or a split party were the others see one/two members fight a overwhelming force, but have to get through a mob off mooks before they ca help them. This can combined with waves as well. The small force you fight may not be a threat, but three of these forces may crush you and you hear two more that will arrive in a few rounds.Play with the fears off the players - for example I have friend that expects his charakter to die in caves/crypts. No matter how bold he is everywhere else, he fears for his character the moment he puts his feet underground, even if he only fights gobbos. Other players may think that certain monsters/attacks are especially threaten his charakter. This fears shouldn't really have an effect on the true difficulty of the combat, nor should they be overused. But if the fighter thinks ropers are a specially terrifying opponent for him, a roper going after him in a bigger fight will make a nice memory, once he defeated it on his own.That's what I could think of for now.</blockquote>

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