Wizards of the Coast has promised that its new Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual will be packed with practical advice. Monsters now have tables of flavor, suggested biomes and creatures to bother with, plus varied loot preferences. All this will (hopefully) help budding DMs design more interesting combat encounters. But there’s one crucial piece of advice that new Dungeon Masters need to know.
Great combat is about more than just cool monsters; the setting needs to be just as nuanced. When players fight in the dreaded ‘white void’ of an empty battlemap, things get samey – and easy – far too quickly.
I speak from the heart here, as I myself was a victim of the white void in my early days of DMing D&D. I foolishly assumed that, when a random counter triggered, the stat blocks would do all the planning for me.
When Initiative was rolled, however, my lack of creativity would become apparent. In a perfectly flat, square, and empty battlefield, there are few restrictions on what DnD classes and DnD races can do. An enemy’s area-of-effect spell can always be avoided with ease. Melee characters can always square up to a foe, and spellcasters have perfect line of sight almost all of the time.
In these situations, my players quickly steamrolled the DnD monsters set to challenge them. I’d leave sessions feeling that I’d not given them the best experience a D&D game could offer. And while they were too polite to ever point out my failings, I’m sure they would have appreciated encounters with a bit more oomph.
Luckily for DMs who want to avoid my mistakes, spicing up the environments of your fights is something that the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide already recommends. However, the paragraphs in chapter four imparting this advice are brief and easily overlooked.
In less than 200 words, D&D publisher Wizards explains how to “make a combat encounter more interesting or challenging”. The advice includes elevation changes that “reward clever positioning”, enemies in hard-to-reach defensive locations, hazards creatures could stumble into, mixed groups of monsters, and “reasons to move”.
All of this is good advice. However, it’s more important advice than the DnD book makes it out to be. If you really squint at the example adventures that follow in chapter four, you can just about see Wizards’ advice in action. There’s certainly a variety of elevations in the appendix’s provided maps. However, there’s not much in the way of hazards, clear defensive locations, and reasons to move.
With such a brief look at encounter design (and how indirectly the examples show these lessons in action), I wouldn’t be surprised to see an influx of new DMs relying on the dreaded white void.
I have my fingers crossed that, when the DnD release schedule launches the new Monster Manual, it’ll highlight this advice with a stronger spotlight. But you can’t rely on others to do everything for you, so I’ve also put together some examples of my own. These aim to fill in the gaps in the basic advice provided by the DM’s Guide.
Elevation changes
What the DM’s Guide says: “Terrain features that provide a change of elevation (such as stacks of empty crates, ledges, and balconies) reward clever positioning and encourage characters to jump, climb, fly, or teleport.”
Ranged attackers gain no attack bonus from being elevated, but they gain the benefit of being harder to hit in melee. Getting to higher ground might also be the only way to land a melee strike on a flying target.
That being said, a creature on a high, precarious surface is also in danger – one good push or misplaced step could result in fall damage. A cliff edge or a rickety bridge crossing a ravine is a great way to limit movement and add extra tension for both sides of a fight.
Defensive locations
What the DM’s Guide says: “Enemies in hard-to-reach locations or defensive positions force characters who normally attack at range to move around.”
The best defensive location is always one that your enemies can’t reach. That could be the balcony or turrets of a fortress, which the opposition must storm while taking cover from incoming ranged attacks. Or it could simply be the air above the enemy’s heads, where a flying or climbing character can suspend themselves, out of reach of many attacks. You could even use a tight corridor, which will be hard for one side to traverse without taking a few hits.
If you’re planning an encounter with creatures that can climb or fly, it pays to give them a chance to show off these skills. On the player’s side, it’s rewarding to exploit an advantage – and on the monster side, it’s exciting to show your party everything their enemy is capable of.
Dungeon design that has natural defensive positions built in rewards planning. A player group that spots an exploit deserves to enjoy using it – and a party that carelessly stumbles into a trap should feel the full consequences.
Use your environments and monster abilities to cause problems that your players will need to solve. They should always be solvable, though. The tight corridor needs to come to an end eventually, allowing your melee fights to get their licks in. And if a flying character goes up, it’s not going to be much fun if nothing on this earth can get them to come down.
Hazards
What the DM’s Guide says: “The ‘Hazards’ section in chapter three describes dangerous features, such as patches of green slime, that characters or their enemies can use to their advantage.”
Hazards are best used with characters that prioritize area control. If your party’s strategy doesn’t include pushing, pulling, and repositioning enemies, they’re likely to ignore these props entirely. The same goes for your monsters: if they’re not great grapplers or shovers, then the hazard is just set dressing.
That being said, you could design a space that forces creatures to move into the hazard zones. I’d recommend this for hazards that slow characters down rather than ones that hurt or restrain them. In my eyes, difficult terrain (water, mud, thick foliage) still counts as a hazard – it just serves a different purpose.
If you are determined to seriously hurt or hinder your characters, make the damage avoidable. A player who can use Acrobatics to dodge past a swinging blade trap will feel pretty pleased with themselves afterward – so there’s reward as well as risk.
Mixed groups of monsters
What the DM’s Guide says: “When different types of monsters work together, they can combine their abilities – just like characters with different classes and origins. A diverse force is more powerful.”
Melee-only combat is boring. Ranged-only combat is boring. Fighting six monsters who all do the same thing can also get pretty dang dull. Have more than one kind of monster in a fight unless you have a very good reason not to.
If you can pull off a one-two combo by combining different monster abilities, that’ll feel pretty satisfying as a DM. A creature that knocks enemies prone is a great pal to any melee fighter, for example.
This is also an important rule for action economy. No matter how elaborate your Big Bad Boss’ abilities are, if they’re going into a fight alone, they’re probably toast. Make sure they’ve got some minions to add variety, provide support, and soak up a few of the heroes’ hits.
Reasons to move
What the DM’s Guide says: “Use features that encourage characters and their enemies to move around, such as chandeliers, kegs of gunpowder or oil, and rolling stone traps.”
Almost every other tip Wizards gives could be boiled down to this one simple mantra. A battlefield that changes is infinitely more interesting than one where two sides hit each other from a static standing position. Encourage players and monsters to reposition and try new tactics.
Perhaps a freak earthquake occurs every round, knocking anyone who fails a Dexterity saving throw prone. Maybe reinforcements are arriving after a certain number of rounds, and they’re adding new abilities to the fray. Perhaps the main monster can phase through walls, forcing players to chase them from room to room in order to land a killing blow.
High-CR monsters often have these kinds of features built-in thanks to lair actions, but you can use the environment to add this kind of challenge to any fight. Look at what your monsters are good at, where your players are likely to fight them, and let your imagination run wild.
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Source: Wargamer
