Encounter Elements: Using the Right Creatures
Using the right creature or almost the right creature is the difference between the bug and a bugbear. Every creature or villian your players fight should serve a purpose. They should work together well, complimenting one another's strengths and weaknesses.
When you put together a campaign, you'll likely spend a lot of time working out the story line's twists and turns in detail. Spend as much time on the encounters for greatest effect, and the monsters you use are a big part of that.
When deciding which creatures and how many to use for an encounter, consider the following factors:
- Appropriate Challenge
- Monster Roles
- The Right Mix of Creatures
- How Intelligently to Play the Creatures
- Tough or Plentiful?
- Monsters as Story Elements
Let's look at each of these in turn.
1. Appropriate Challenge
It goes without saying that the level or challenge factor of the creature you're fighting should be appropriate for the level of the players fighting them. But there's more to balancing monster challenge than comparing monster and player levels.
Different groups perform better or worse depending on these and other factors:
- How experienced are the players?
- How well do they know the rules?
- How well do they play their class?
- Have the players gamed together before?
- How well do they work together?
- Do the players enjoy short skirmishes, or epic battles?
Vary the Challenge
You want to mix things up a bit. Sometimes you'll want to throw a combat encounter at your players that taxes all their abilities, one where they must blow their encounter and daily powers to have a chance at survival.
Other times, you'll want something lighter, which may challenge them less. Maybe its purpose is to act to move the story's plot forward.
When you vary the difficulty of your encounters, you'll keep players of various play styles satisfied and coming back for more. Power gamers may love long, complicated battles.
Those who prefer to play a role may enjoy lighter battles, focusing on developing their character and enjoying watching the story unfold. Variety is the spice of combat encounters, so keep your players guessing my varying the difficulty of your combat encounters.
2. Monster Roles
The Dungeon Master's Guide (p.54) lists the following monster roles:
- Artillery - Hit at range, trying to stay out of harm's way
- Brute - Melee, high damage (when they hit), high hit points, low armor
- Controller - Manipulate enemies or the battlefield to advantage, stay behind front-line
- Lurker - Avoid direct confrontation, waiting for opportunities to attack when the time is right
- Minion - Easy to kill, but tend to come in droves, low hit points (one hit normally kills)
- Skirmisher - Uses mobility-based abilities to move in and out of combat, singling out targets
- Soldier - "Tanks," draw attacks away from more vulnerable monsters, high defenses, average hit points, work well with other soldiers
- Elite Monsters - Tougher than normal (non-elite) monsters, twice the threat (and XP)
- Solo Monsters - Designed to fight alone as a stand-alone combat encounter all by themselves, roughly the equivalent of 5 normal monsters of the same level
- Leader - Secondary role of monsters with one of the other roles, leads a group of monsters
Unless your party fights a solo monster alone, use a combination of the roles above to develop your combat encounter, explained below.
3. The Right Mix of Creatures
Select a mix of single creatures and groups of creatures. Typically, you'll have a front-line of defenders, consisting of brutes and soldiers. Behind them, you'll find artillery and controllers. Skirmishers and lurkers enter the battle at various times and locations, singling out targets, dealing their damage, then often slipping away.
Select Monsters that Make Sense Together
Many creatures have several subspecies or roles defined. For example, if you're fighting goblins, the Monster Manual outlines a number of types of goblins. Often, the Monster Manual will also give sample encounter groups. This can be a good place to start.
Not only will you want to give a good mix of monsters based on their roles, select creatures that would logically fight together... or provide a good reason why creatures who otherwise wouldn't fight side by side. An otherwise good cleric may fight for the wrong side if a loved one is held captive or threatened.
Just make sure that if you select creatures to fight together that normally don't seem complimentary, think through the "why's," because your players will. When something doesn't make sense to your players, you cause them to think of the game, rather than the story. It pulls them back into the real world, away from the immersive fantasy you have woven.
4. How Intelligently to Play Creatures
When I watch Jurassic Park, the Tyranosaurus Rex doesn't scare me. The raptors do. Why? The raptors are smart. You can't just stand very still and hope they won't see you. Monsters in D&D are the same. The smart ones are the most dangerous.
Try to play the monsters at their intelligence level. A Bullywug Mucker (MM2 p. 28), with its intelligence of 6 won't employ well thought-out tactics. That is, not unless it's directed by a leader with greater intelligence. This is another thing to add to your monster mix... intelligence. Leaders and controllers tend to be more intelligent, while brutes tend to use much more straight-forward tactics.
5. Tough or Plentiful?
The number of creatures you work into your combat encounter is a key factor. Do you want to challenge your players with a seemingly unending stream of minions, employ a formiddable solo monster, or something in-between?
Some gamers get bored when they spend a long time hammering away at a single baddie. Keep them feeling like the battle is progressing by throwing in some minions. Each minion they down will give a sense of progress, that the battle is going somewhere. More strategic-minded players often like more of a mix of fewer numbers of creatures or a solo monster.
Your players will be the best gauge of the kinds and amounts of creatures you throw at them. If they get louder and seem happier mowing through minions, make a mental note of that. If they seem to enjoy coming up with the best tactics, that may indicate that they want fewer, but tougher creatures. If your players are having a great time, you've probably done things right. After all, fun is why they play.
6. Monsters as Story Elements
Combat encounters should make sense. They should not be random, in most cases. Sure, you'll have the occasional "wandering monster" type of encounter, but if you want to pull your players into a story, even seemingly random encounters should have something to do with the overall story.
For example, maybe a group of thugs attack your party on the road, which seems random enough. However, when one of them yells, "This one's for <insert bad guy name here>," it now becomes part of the story. "Why did the villian send their lackeys after us," they ask. "How did they know we were coming this way? Are we being followed?" All of a sudden, the encounter begins to have a purpose in a larger context.
DM's Tip: When you need to stall for time to think, you can add a random encounter, but always add in some tie-in to the main story, as illustrated in the example above. I have used this at time to buy myself a little more time to plan and quickly think through what happens next. Think of the "Need a moment" Snickers bar commercials. A wandering monster encounter buys you time and keeps your players in the action, so they don't lose interest.
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