What Makes an Encounter Exciting?

[Herremann the Wise]

"Missing something fighter?"

Redgar looked...his was sword was gone from his scabbard. Across the busy city street he could see the owner of the voice, a lone goblin smirking at him. It was a tough shot, with some many people if the way....should he take it? Then he noticed the second figure scurrying away.

Chase ensues, with the second goblin running through the crowd and Redgar barely keeping pace...but he finally saw the goblin, panting, try to hide in an alley. Redgar entered...and what he though was an overhang and blankets hanging out to dry was in fact a deadfall. He realized this once it fell on him.

As Redgar struggled to lift the weight, he saw the two goblins who had triggered the trap join the third.

and from behind, the voice said "What we really wanted was your armor...."

Very clever!!!

The golden thread for any encounter has to be motive. There has to be a reason for combat. Someone has to have something to gain out of it (rather than the more obvious something to lose). If it is known or obvious what is to be gained, then the combat/encounter gains a greater depth as the enemy combatants attempt to deny the attacker - not necessarily having to kill the attacker but to thwart their purpose.

I think if this is conveyed, then even a basic/easy encounter can at least be interesting. With enough variance, and employing what other people are saying to make an encounter dramatic and exciting, you should have a broad spectrum of encounters making those special ones, all the sweeter.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[MerricB]

What the title says. Please be as specific as you can.

When the players have to make decisions that affect whether they will succeed or fail.

Going through an encounter on autopilot - e.g. "I attack the orc with my sword" - isn't that exciting.

Needing to think outside the box, or do something risky - that's exciting!

Cheers!

 

[Hussar]

To go with the location bit, use of alternative movement can also make a fight dynamic. If you're fighting something with a climb speed, for example, have them fighting from the walls or the ceiling.

In 3e, this can be downright nasty since medium creatures are considered 5 foot cubes. You could have two medium spiders in the same square, one on the ceiling and the other on the floor, fighting at the same time.

I think the biggest way to make fights better is to use more creatures rather than one big one. One big one tends to fall out in similar ways - the party surrounds the critter and beats on it until it falls over. There's no real tactics involved really. At the end of the day, the single bad guy still only gets one action per round.

But, a smaller big baddie surrounded by three or four mooks can make for a MUCH better fight. More mobile for one thing and, it adds to the number of actions the bad guys can take. So, big baddie goes left while a pair of smaller baddies goes right while a third smaller baddie heads up the wall/tree/whatever. Now the DM can perform several actions in a single round, and that makes the fight much more fluid.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Challenge
An encounter that challenges characters to the very limits of their ability is more dramatic than one than simply slows them down. Lightsabering a stormtrooper or shooting an orc can be part of an exciting encounter; dueling Sephiroth or joining a desperately outnumbered garrison against an entire army of dread Stygia is much more so. An encounter that has a significant chance of defeating the entire party is almost always the most dramatic - with the caveat that encounters that simply eclipse the PCs and leave them no chance to win are at least as boring as cakewalks.

Importance
The higher the price of defeat (and the greater the prize for victory), the more exciting an encounter becomes. Leaping across a collapsing chasm to escape a crumbling temple is dramatic; doing so to save your love interest, who is also carrying a priceless and deadly artifact of pre-human antiquity? Three times as dramatic. Fighting for loot? Potentially interesting. Fighting to save the village that's been your only refuge? Automatically dramatic.

Scenery
Battling a clockwork assassin is cool. Battling a clockwork assassin atop a speeding, smoke-belching train as it rumbles across a narrow bridge over a vast ravine is AWESOME. Ascending a ruined temple is ominous; scrambling up the steps of a ruined temple before they crumble and send you plunging into the mess of animate vines creeping inexorably after you is THRILLING. Every encounter can bring the awesome to some extent with interesting scenery the PCs and NPCs can use to their advantage.

Significance
An encounter with random monsters, now matter how cool, will never be as exciting as the climactic duel between two storied rivals or a confrontation between a mismatched band of heroes and the world-threatening evil they've pursued across the planet. Foreshadowing, recurring villains, ominous reputations and ties to the PCs' backstory can all play into the significance of an encounter.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

From what people have been saying, I see a number of important factors. To wit:

(1) Location
(2) That an encounter has meaning
(3) High stakes/chance to lose
(4) Everyone has something to do

Are any of these factors sufficient to make a fight between a 10th level fighter and 4 goblins exciting? If so, which ones? Or any other thing not listed above, of course!

RC

Well, if there's essentially no chance for the fighter to FAIL (which is not the same as LOSING), then it won't be interesting no matter how cool the location or high the stakes - the fighter pwns the goblins, succeeds, and at most engages the location once or twice because he can screw around rather than going for the most effective tactic. At best, it's a filler encounter, the equivalent of a mook battle in Wushu - designed to show how badass the character is, not to actually challenge him.

With that said, I can think of a couple of scenarios where the encounter could be exciting.

1. The fighter has to keep the goblins from reaching a civilian/child/injured comrade. He can easily kill any one goblin, but must find a way to kill or put to flight the entire pack, without allowing any of the four to get past him and use a Coup de Grace.

2. The goblins are fleeing (and have a higher speed than the armored fighter); if any escape, they will warn the entire tribe, which is both numerous and powerful enough to easily overwhelm the fighter. He must kill all four using ranged weapons, with which he is not focused or specialized, before they can dash through cover to reach their warren.

3. The fighter is captured, stripped of his gear, and thrown into a fighting pit. With no equipment and without Improved Unarmed Strike, he provokes an AoO with every attack and can easily lose his attacks against even relatively weak foes.

4. The 'goblins' are each 5th level, part of an elite strike team for a goblinoid host. They are well suited to supporting each other, with synergistic feats, talents, class features and gear.

 

[Gentlegamer]

As a player: Not knowing how to handle it, using my player skill and wits along with leveraging my character's abilities to figure out a "solution" to the situation at hand.

As a Dungeon Master: not knowing how the players will handle it, adjudicating the improvised and skillful reactions of the players.

Note: encounters are not limited to combat

 

[CharlesRyan]

My Thursday night GM runs really good encounters, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about why I like them so much. I think it boils down to this:

The opponents always have a plan to win.

The bad guys aren't just there to provide us with an encounter; they aren't a de rigeur speedbump (easy or hard). They want something out of the encounter, and they approach it with just as much attention to how they can succeed as the PCs do.

As a result, they often do things that are surprising or surprisingly smart. Our group often works up tactical plans before heading into known encounters. Because the bad guys also have plans, both sides end up having to adjust or abandon their strategies. But not in a way that makes the planning worthless; rather, in a way that keeps you on your toes and forces you to assess what's working and what isn't.

Thus the encounters are a tactical challenge, but also have a dramatic ebb and flow. It's some of the best encounter GMing I've ever experienced, and I'll definitely be taking the lessons into my next campaign (which begins tomorrow night!)

 

[FireLance]

Are any of these factors sufficient to make a fight between a 10th level fighter and 4 goblins exciting? If so, which ones? Or any other thing not listed above, of course!

Make the goblins the PCs.

More seriously:

(1) Location - The fighter is on a rope bridge, with two goblins at both ends trying to cut the ropes holding the bridge up.

(2) Meaning - The rope bridge is the only way to get across a chasm quickly, and it is not only important for the fighter to get across, he must also be able to get back in as little time as possible (perhaps he is on a mission to retrieve blessed waters of healing from an old temple in order to cure a village of plague).

(3) High stakes - In addition, it's dark (20% miss chance), there's a severe wind (-4 penalty to ranged attacks), and the narrow bridge requires the fighter to make a DC 10 balance check to move.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Challenge
An encounter that challenges characters to the very limits of their ability is more dramatic than one than simply slows them down. Lightsabering a stormtrooper or shooting an orc can be part of an exciting encounter; dueling Sephiroth or joining a desperately outnumbered garrison against an entire army of dread Stygia is much more so. An encounter that has a significant chance of defeating the entire party is almost always the most dramatic - with the caveat that encounters that simply eclipse the PCs and leave them no chance to win are at least as boring as cakewalks.

Importance
The higher the price of defeat (and the greater the prize for victory), the more exciting an encounter becomes. Leaping across a collapsing chasm to escape a crumbling temple is dramatic; doing so to save your love interest, who is also carrying a priceless and deadly artifact of pre-human antiquity? Three times as dramatic. Fighting for loot? Potentially interesting. Fighting to save the village that's been your only refuge? Automatically dramatic.

Scenery
Battling a clockwork assassin is cool. Battling a clockwork assassin atop a speeding, smoke-belching train as it rumbles across a narrow bridge over a vast ravine is AWESOME. Ascending a ruined temple is ominous; scrambling up the steps of a ruined temple before they crumble and send you plunging into the mess of animate vines creeping inexorably after you is THRILLING. Every encounter can bring the awesome to some extent with interesting scenery the PCs and NPCs can use to their advantage.

Significance
An encounter with random monsters, now matter how cool, will never be as exciting as the climactic duel between two storied rivals or a confrontation between a mismatched band of heroes and the world-threatening evil they've pursued across the planet. Foreshadowing, recurring villains, ominous reputations and ties to the PCs' backstory can all play into the significance of an encounter.

All good points.

However, I think if every encounter is AWESOME and THRILLING then it quickly raises the bar and makes it harder to do so. I'm not saying don't do it. Do it. But sparingly. Even short encounters can be fun when handled right.

 

[Chaldfont]

Not penalizing players for doing cool things. Nothing bugs me more than:

A NEW RPG PLAYER: "Ok, I'm going to pick up the table and run across the room to smash the thugs against the wall!"
DM: "Ok, you suffer an attack of opportunity... Roll, roll, roll... and take 13 points of damage. Now make a Bull Rush, but with a -4 penalty since you are going against three thugs. Roll, roll, roll. Ok they beat your strength roll. Nothing happens."
A NOW EXPERIENCED RPG PLAYER, ON HIS NEXT ROUND: "I just hit a thug with my sword."