Plenty has been written about why a GM should take greater care in arranging the battlefield. When it comes to how, though, ideas can be a bit thin on the ground. I, myself, often struggle to come up with ideas on how to make encounters more dynamic, like the combat scenes in movies. The Star Wars lightsaber duel on Cloud City would have been nowhere near as engaging if it had taken place in an empty room with the door closed and a flat floor.
With that in mind, let’s look at a few specific things you can do to turn your fights into sweeping showpieces.
Play with the environment
This is one of the most “duh” aspects of encounter building, but it often gets overlooked. The PCs and their opponents are not engaging in a void. Everything around them has the capacity to affect the beginning, middle, and outcome of the battle.
- Forgotten ruins – Rubble strewn around constitutes difficult terrain in certain areas. Broken pillars create cover. Stone arches and walls provide vantage points and the possibility for balance checks during melee atop the ledges.
- Creepy cemetery – Headstones to provide cover. Fog to facilitate stealth characters throughout the battle if they move a certain distance away and then come back. Hanging trees to allow athletics checks to leap up and swing on to move around the battlefield without attacks of opportunity.
- Boat on a storm-tossed sea – Athletics, acrobatics, or coordination checks, with failure granting a penalty to the next round due to rolling deck or slippery footing. Rigging to climb. Barrels and crates for cover or to slip into stealth behind.
- Disabled starship out of control – Fear checks to maintain calm. Endurance checks to resist smoke filling the rooms. Party split between fighting and skill checks to regain control or turn the ship to avoid the planet.
- Different levels of rotating walkways – Athletics, acrobatics, or coordination to jump and leap around. If it takes place in a reactor, knowledge checks for when and how certain things may happen (venting, adjustment, alarms, movement of platforms). If the party is overall not good at jumping, have the walkways rotate around for easier jumps at certain times. High ground can grant cover, while low ground may leave one side open to attack. If anyone falls, they can attempt checks to catch themselves on the way down.
Add some complicating factors
The environment itself can be a huge factor, but just as important are the smaller details. Remember the not-so-empty room from the Cloud City battle? What was in there? What went on during that battle? Details help keep things interesting.
- Combat takes place in a large room which the opponents have filled with people to provide cover for themselves. These can be slaves, or zombies, or droids. If the party wants to avoid hitting these people, provide an upgrade to the check or a stiff penalty. This applies both to ranged and melee checks because the room is just that packed with cringing slaves wandering around in a blind panic. If the party does not care about hitting these targets, the target gets cover, but the attacker automatically hits some of the people around him and does full damage to them as well as to the target. These individuals should be minions, or else given very low health.
- Very high wind. This is one that few people think of, but it does affect the accuracy of shots and communication. Very aerodynamic melee weapons may not be impacted, but a hulking greataxe may catch a bit of wind on its broad side. This could encourage hand-to-hand combat with smaller weapons. Likewise, the wind may be blowing sand. Or, the wind may be accompanied by torrential rain. All of these limit visibility and incur penalties outside of close range, and wind can upgrade the difficulty of ranged attacks or impart a penalty to them.
- Hanging tapestries, laundry, or carved wooden paneling. The combatants can all still see each other, and shoot through their flimsy obstacles, but it still provides a small amount of cover. Likewise, stealthy characters can disappear and reappear almost at will.
- The fight takes place during a chase. This can be a foot race through a winding city, providing cover (and allowing for the use of streetwise or knowledge local checks to grant bonuses). This can also take place during mounted chases or on vehicles. Firing at one another from speeders or atop horses adds a dash of flair. Leaping over to land on the back of a horse and engaging in melee atop it could incur some penalties, or may even open up options for alternate dueling rules with opposed weapon checks. Likewise with speeders, where a few individuals on both sides must concentrate on flying and dodging obstacles (which may also affect how the melee and ranged combatants function).
- The combatants must use inferior weapons. Maybe the party gets captured and has to participate in gladiator matches in the mud pits. Maybe they enter the sort of club they’re not supposed to talk about and get issued old knives or brass knuckles that have been handed down through generations of members. Maybe the walls are lined with various weapons to be used when these weapons break. A natural 1 or too much threat or despair could easily shatter the weapon. Similarly, every second or third successful hit with the weapon could break it in half. The weapons shouldn’t be completely useless when broken, but they are minimal at best. Nothing beats the feel of breaking a rusty sword while cleaving open your opponent, then slitting his throat with the remaining edge (see Shadow of Mordor for an example of how fun broken weapons can be).
Set the battle in stages
Typical encounters tend to have three stages: Awareness, fighting, looting. Characters become aware of the enemy, they battle the enemy, then they go through the enemy’s pockets for loose change and treasured family mementos. Rinse and repeat, ad infinitum. Breaking up this method is what makes for dynamic showpieces.
- Lengthy battle sequences. The characters are wading through minions and soldiers, with an occasional ranking officer. They may reach an empty part of the battlefield where they have round or two to recover or adjust their gear. Maybe they’ve killed so many enemies they have hills of dead piled around them, providing a barrier (or difficult terrain, or intimidation bonuses, maybe?) Keep the characters rolling through like a steam engine, but don’t let up. These battles can take up an entire session and can contain plot and story all on their own. For inspiration, look at the battle of Helm’s Deep in the Lord of the Rings movies.
- Put the PCs into a contest or gladiator match. They defeat waves of enemies, get one round to rest, then face another round of enemies. Maybe the enemy force is hovering on the walls around the battle, throwing broken bottles and rotten food at the participants (setbacks or penalties?) When the PCs defeat a wave, the enemies laugh and cheer at the good sport, then a tougher wave jumps down into the pit.
- A shootout, Die Hard style. A drawn-out bullet-fest that drags on but has some sort of point. Or, add enemies who keep coming as the party mows them down in a last stand. Maybe the party is on the run and has to shoot at enemies coming down alleyways or following up from behind. Is that a dropship landing ahead of us and deploying a turret?
Add something weird
Players love new stuff, and things that make them feel clever. There are plenty of options here, but it takes a bit of creative thinking.
- A teleporting system with numbered points stationed around the room. Upon entering or touching each one, roll a d20 and teleport to that numbered spot on the grid as a free or incidental action (with a move action or maneuver to walk up to it). I ran an encounter with blood puddles that shifted players around to one of 30 points on the battlemat, and the players went nuts with it. Sometimes the ranged characters ended up directly next to the terrifying boss and the tank had to frantically shift gears to cover them, but sometimes they ended up in the far distance with the perfect shot lined up.
- Blade traps all over the room that are currently active and hungry for faces. Players can kick enemies into the blades, or become engaged in a grapple to prevent themselves from being fed to the machines. Add an extra enemy or two at the beginning and have them walk stupidly into the traps to show the PCs what’s going on. The blades can be continuously moving on their own, or spots on the floor could be trapped and the PCs have to figure out what’s going on. This is a great way to create melee choke points while maintaining open visibility for the ranged characters.
- A third party to the battle. Rampaging animals attacking both sides, or who can be tamed by the party druid and ridden into battle against the powerful enemy boss to give the druid a scene as an overwhelmingly powerful warrior. Two opposing forces who have to deal with a third opportunistic force, maybe as a pirate fleet invades the battleground between Imperials and Rebels and boards both ships.
- Simple things can be surprisingly weird. If the party is surprised at night, have someone stoke the fire and begin kicking those Orcs into the flames, then toss their bodies around to increase the light radius. If the party is surrounded, go up into the trees and begin a climbing battle through the branches.
Make sure to have fun
Battles are supposed to be fun. If you’re just pumping out four or five battles per session to get the XP dump, you may want to reevaluate your approach to combat. One big set piece may give just as much XP as four short, uninspired battles, if that’s the concern. A big fight can also take up plenty of session time, if that’s another problem. The point is to make a battle that you’re going to have fun running and that the party is going to have fun playing. Engage their senses and their creativity, and you’ll see their faces light up.
There are plenty of other ideas that I haven’t even touched on yet. What was your most inspired encounter? What set it apart? Let me know in the comments below.