Encounter Elements: Timing
An encounter's timing elements determine what happens when. A director who creates a film without a script will likely create something confusing, frustrating to the audience, and unwatchable.
Like a movie script, to keep things flowing in a logical order and to keep the combat encounter engaging from start to finish, consider creating a simple encounter script to describe the encounter.
Encounter Scripts
A simple encounter script might consist of the following:
- Who detects who first? (players or monsters)
- Initial engagement
- Manuevering into position
- Damage Dealing
- One side begins to pull ahead
- Fight to death or retreat decision
- Mop Up
- Tidy finish or loose ends?
- Depending on the outcome of the encounter, how will it affect the story?
You won't always know how certain elements will play out in advance, such as who detects who first or who pulls ahead, since various rolls typically determine those elements. However, considering "what if" type questions may guide you, such as "Do the monsters have a lookout?" If so, they're more likely to detect the party first.
Just defining a few of these items in advance will help you to think through the encounter in advance and will spark ideas to employ as the combat progresses.
The Ticking Clock - Immediacy
James Bond has been captured... again. His captor kills him right away, right? Of course not. He (or she) puts James in some kind of trap that triggers after X minutes. There's tension in the air because the clock is ticking and something has to be done... now!
The ticking clock is one of the most important, but infrequently used, mechanisms available when designing a top-notch combat encounter. This can be as simple as creatures coming in waves. If your party doesn't beat them down before the next group arrives, they'll be overwelmed. It can be a creature that does one extra damage per round.
Make them Decide Now
The possibilities are endless, but these challenges share one thing, the ticking clock, a time limit that forces immediate action. The biggest benefit is that it makes combat feel more like combat... less like chess.
One way I've found to keep combat moving is to ask players who haven't decided what they want to do when their turn rolls around to skip to the end of the round before taking action.
After this happens a time or two, players act more quickly, battles go faster, and combat encounters are more exciting and engaging.
Naturally you won't want to enforce this with newer players, who are still learning the rules, but once they seem to get the hang of the game mechanics, this can keep the pace of the game moving much quicker.
Keeping things moving is especially important when you have a large number of players in the game. The more time that passes between players' turns, the more likely they are to drift off in daydreaming or unrelated side conversations with other players.
 DM Tip: Keep a sharp eye out for players who appear to be less involved than others.
Are they playing with their cell phone or doodling between their turns? What does their body language say? Are the on the edge of their seat, or even out of their seat? Are they smiling and laughing or are they quiet? Some players are just shy, but you can tell a lot about how you're doing as a Dungeon Master by watching the expressions of your players.
Pay particular attention to when they perk up and get excited. Is it during an in-depth narrative or is it in the heat of battle? Your players will tell you a lot about what they like and dislike without saying a thing if you pay attention to how they act during various phases of the game.
In fact, I have found many times that what the players say they want out of the game and what actually excites and draws them in may be very different things. For example, many players will say that they like deep roleplaying (often because they think that the best players are those who do the most roleplaying). However, you may find that when they really perk up is when the battle gets heated or when you're giving story details.
Tailor your adventure to the things that get your players excited and they'll come back time and again for more. |
Waves of Opponents
One way to create uncertainty among players and to shake things up is for a combat encounter to occur in waves. Typically, your players won't know how many waves will strike them, nor will they know how many or the type of creatures involved in each wave.
When creatures come in groups, separated by some amount of time, it can be difficult for players to know when to use their encounter or daily powers. It may challenge healers to know how sparing to be with their heals.
You can also create a sense of urgency when successive groups of monsters strike. The fear that may strike them is that they'll be overwhelmed, so they need to mop up creatures fast before the next wave arrives.
DM Tip: One thing that sending creatures in waves does for you is helps you to have a failsafe if things go particularly badly for your player characters. You can simply have one less wave hit them, unbeknowns to them.
On the other hand, if they mow down each wave without difficulty, maybe you want to increase the number of creatures in the waves or add more waves than you had planned.
Using waves of monsters lets you adjust the pacing and difficulty of the encounter on the fly. This is especially useful when you are planning for an encounter and are unsure of how many players will show up or how well they play their characters. |
Foreshadowing to Upcoming Encounter Events
Key to the ticking clock is that players must know that it's in play. For example, if a second wave of monsters is about to strike, it won't add to the excitement or immediacy of the combat if the players don't know about it. However, telling them, "You hear approaching footsteps coming quickly" is probably enough to tell them that they're about to be overrun if they don't act fast.
Building (or Decreasing) Intensity Level
Timing may be influenced by an increase or decrease in intensity level. For example, if a boss creature grows larger and hits larger each round, this will affect the pace of the battle, building urgency of taking the creature down fast before it become too powerful to handle.
Conversely, when a battle starts with many creatures and no new creatures arrive as the battle progresses, the intensity level diminishes as the battle looks easier. Especially when you use minions, this can give a sense of progress, that the party is taking down the enemy quickly (since a single hit destroys them).
When designing your encounters, determine whether you want it to build in intensity as the battle progresses, or if you want the intensity to decrease as fewer and fewer creatures remain, and determine how you will build or decrease this intensity.
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