I recently learned a great deal from the game Left4Dead. The players are attacked by huge numbers of relatively weak opponents, all the locations have multiple entrances and sometimes unexpected entrances (zombies break through the partition wall) and there are special attackers that drag players out of their fortified position and make them helpless forcing other party members to mount an urgent rescue mission. Another blinds one player temporarily and makes him or her the focus for all attacks, so that other players must provide cover. I recommend following the designer commentary track for the game one time: very thought-provoking stuff. I shall be building some of this into my next encounter….

One of my biggest challenges as a DM is keeping track of monsters and which are doing what. I try to find monsters with synergistic abilities and draw up a plan to use them effectively, but my plans are usually specific to how I imagine things playing out. When the players go off script (this usually occurs by round 2 at the latest), my plan falls apart and the monsters end up behaving like old-school video game AI (“attack the nearest thing to me at all times regardless of my own helath and well-being”).

I think assigning simple objectives to each monster would be a great way to give the bad guys better focus and cohesion while requiring less planning on my part.

This could even be useful for a simple generic encounter setup, for example…

- A soldier monster engages the defender toe-to-toe for as long as possible, then attacks melee strikers if the defender goes down.
- Two skirmishers assist the soldier, providing combat advantage whenever possible. If the soldier goes down, they assist their next-closest ally.
- A brute attacks the nearest ranged damage dealer or controller, then moves to the next if its target goes down.
- Two more skirmishers try to knock the brute’s target prone and trigger its special attack.
- Two artillery are assigned to move in and provide support fire after the brute or soldier becomes bloodied.

Going to try this out during my next one-shot game and see what happens.

My experience of PCs becoming too hard to beat is largely that I set up encounters which they have time to plan for in advance. This is partly a consequence of my scene-to-scene style of DMing (so they always know that they’re being presented with a potential encounter when I open my mouth!) but it’s also partly because I’m a nice DM and they always seem to end up in this position. PCs with a chance to plan can often swing a significantly over-powered campaign in their favour. I suppose then the solution is more ambushes. Or more creative ambushes. And less scene-setting…
.-= faustusnotes´s last blog ..Player-driven campaigns =-.

All in all this could be a blast to run. And if your players have time to grouse about how their plans didn’t work it just means you have to sell them on buying into your story more.

@Scott: I’m particularly intrigued by your objective system for combats. I will absolutely experiment with this!
.-= anarkeith´s last blog ..Getting Started in D&D 4e: Entry 3: Role playing vs Role Playing and the WoW effect =-.

So no need to be oblivious to social cues they play with me out of sheer terror….

OH, and there’s what chatty said, take your pick…

But I find it interesting how you phrased that little internal discussion of yours.

Yan, Chatty frequently describes seeing his players get antsy and tired near the end of a four-hour session. How do you get the same group to stay longer? I don’t want to cause a fight between you guys but I am thinking you might say “by being a more interesting DM” while Chatty would say “by being oblivious to the obvious social cues that everyone is getting tired.”

A little while ago my players and i got fed up with the Grind of combat and i started experimenting with other methods to run combat which have both been fun and interesting. While it may not help with dealing with Synergy bonuses it might help shake things up a bit.

Firstly, i love my minis and i use them often, but sometimes the battle maps and minis can detract from a battle. Every now and then, i don’t use them at all and rely on descriptions and skills to run battle. Using the Att and Dmg as oppossing skill checks to AC and HP. Some of the best and biggest battle scenes recently haven’t involved mini’s. A massive chase scene really came to life through the shared descriptions of my players and myself on the environment and the actions. Previous chases that involved combat died once that minis hit the mat.

Secondly, Story is the biggest part of my dnd campaign and i find it very helpful to focus on the story elements of the battle instead of the maths and mechanics. This being said, i tend to throw in extra monster abilities and traps during combat when i feel it helps to improve the story.

Finally, my monsters go hard and fast, i always used increased damage and each monster has some simple objectives to achieve. Ranging from making a PC bloodied, to sacrificing the princess before dying. The Pc’s don’t know the exact objectives of each monster but have hints given to them. Once a monster completes his objective, the next hit kills it. Depending on how many objectives were achieved by the monsters, affects how well the PC’s went through the battle. If all monsters pass, the PC’s fail the battle causing dificulties, either immeadiately or later on. I find this increases the battle speed as some monsters can die quickly when they shouldn’t. Primarily it removes the focus on abilities and just killing monsters for the sake of killing them but it also keeps the PC’s guessing, a small skirmish with three goblin bandits was an extremely intense battle as the Pc’s strived to defeat them before the objectives were completed, the Wizard grappled a goblin soldier for most of the battle in a back and forth epic wrestling match to stop the goblin killing a civillian (the goblin’s objective)

I hope some of these ideas are useful for someone out there.

Scott

I am definitely going to ruin some of my party’s game plans now, though I’ve always been good at throwing surprise monsters at ranged strikers now my party is light on strikers and heavy on leaders so I think dealing more damage might be part of the solution.

What I’m saying here is the DM equivalent of Civilization’s AI. If you can’t keep up with the player’s expertise and synergies, use all the tricks at your disposal to bring back encounters to the ‘Challenging’ level, one where the outcome of the fight is not determined after the first d20 roll.

Thanks for the feedback.
.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Keeping up with the PCs: Part 2, What Not to Do and Quick Fixes =-.

However, the general premise is good. Take the strengths of your critters, traps and terrain into account and maximize them. If the Party is hitting the 3rd or 4th encounter, then foes should be starting to react to their SOP.

But just because you know the party is going to do X, Y and Z, you as the DM shouldn’t automatically set things up to squash it, I don’t think.

It is a matter of degree and frequency, I think.

Yes I have more time for my game then yours although they are less frequent and therefore the total game time his pretty much the same.

Combining everything is also great for really good players and Tournament adventures should be based on that.
.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Keeping up with the PCs: Part 2, What Not to Do and Quick Fixes =-.

I am going to end my 75% hp houserule, but will still keep with the +5 damage/+10 damage suggestion, as well as the extra damage at bloodied that Mike Shea recommends.

However, after looking at the math, I’ve realized how little difference there is between the Low/Medium/High damage amounts on Page 42. I’ll discuss this a bit further on my blog later today.
.-= Dean´s last blog ..What I want WotC to do in 2011 =-.

Then you let combat take it’s course.

Yan is more patient than I am (and his game sessions last much longer than mine) so he often has surprises pop up on round 7 or 8 while I tend to bunch everything in rounds 2-4.

As Yan says, seeing players adapt to your dirty trick is cool… and an indicator you need to take another tack to keep things excited.

.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Keeping up with the PCs: Part 2, What Not to Do and Quick Fixes =-.