Alongside exploration and social interaction, combat is one of the 3 main pillars of most any Dungeons and Dragons game. Despite this fact, it’s astonishingly easy for players to get bored during battle scenes. Most often, the root cause is fairly straightforward. Players simply identify what their character’s best abilities and tactics are and then fall into a routine of using the same ones almost every round, fight after fight. Why change if the same old things keep working? Unfortunately, this is boring and your players will eventually lose interest in your encounters, their character, or the game itself.

The solution?

Don’t give your players a chance to turn on auto-pilot! Design encounters that will encourage them to take new approaches, use a variety of abilities, and interact with the game in new ways!

The basic recipe for creating such encounters is to vary each of the 3 main ingredients that go into a battle: the combatants, the battlefield, and the objectives.

Combatants

The most obvious way to create an interesting encounter is to use interesting combatants. But there’s a lot more to this than flipping to a random page in the Monster Manual. Notice how I specifically used the word combatants and not enemies or monsters? Both your individual PCs and their foes play a huge role in how a battle will play out. This alone offers us a lot of tools to create fun encounters.

Mix and match enemy types . If you suspect that one of your encounters will lead to stale gameplay, you might consider adding a second, third, or fifth type of enemy to the fray. It’s important, however, to recognize that some enemies will add more variety to an encounter than others. Narratively, goblins and kobolds might find a reason to team up against your party but the combo won’t necessarily foster strategic decision making for your players. Pair the Goblins with a Hill Giant though and now there’s an important decision between dealing with the swarming nasties or bringing down the bruiser. 4th edition introduced the concept of monster roles to try and codify various enemy types. Just because the idea didn’t make it into the 5e Monster Manual doesn’t mean we can’t continue to think about things in the same way. I recommend doing some googling to learn about this.

4th edition introduced the concept of monster roles to try and codify various enemy types. Just because the idea didn’t make it into the 5e Monster Manual doesn’t mean we can’t continue to think about things in the same way. I recommend doing some googling to learn about this. Use monsters with synergies, resistances, and weakness es . Situational abilities allow you to place the same foes in a variety of encounters that might each require a different approach. With their immunity to fire, packs of hell hounds are a much different encounter when they come accompanied by a sorcerer that can cast fireball!

Vary the number of foes in your fights. Interesting solo monster fights are difficult to pull off in D&D but it can be fun once in a while, especially if you’ve built up to such an encounter beforehand. Swarms of weaker enemies are also fun but can bog down combat if there’s too many. As a general rule you probably want about an even number of fights where the PCs outnumber their enemies, are outnumbered themselves, and fights where both sides are close to even in number.

Use monsters that are mobile or can attack from range . Fights full of melee attackers can get old fast because there’s often little incentive for characters to move or change tactics once they’ve engaged with an enemy. If an enemy can threaten from far away with spells, ranged weapons, or mobility then players will need to think much more about movement and positioning.

Have your monsters employ interesting strategies and tactics. Intelligent foes might be smart enough to exploit a weakness in the party or use a battlefield feature to their advantage. Others might not be. Some monsters focus fire, run away when weakened, or finish off downed enemies, etc. The presence of a powerful monster leader could even influence how his underlings fight!

Use dynamic monsters and abilities that can fundamentally change details of the battle as it progresses. Keep thinking in terms of combatants, battlefields, and objectives. Additional enemies might appear halfway through a fight, a monster might destroy parts of the terrain, or some might even take NPCs hostage! Legendary and lair actions in 5e are great ways to incorporate such effects into your boss fights. The possibilities are endless!

Don’t let the party’s default approach be the best strategy. If you’ve come to realize that some of your players are falling into a routine, throw a wrench at them! Take a look at your fight and think about out how the PCs are likely to act. Add or change a detail in order to discourage that plan of action. Similarly, you might also build an encounter specifically to encourage the use of some of the party’s more neglected abilities.

Battlefields

The way a fighter approaches a battle against a troop of goblin archers is a lot different if there’s a chasm separating him from the combatants. Don’t neglect the battlefield’s role in creating interesting decision points for players.

Consider how the battlefield’s size and shape affect the fight. A cramped corridor might make movement difficult but will make area attacks highly effective. A wide open field will have the opposite effect.

affect the fight. A cramped corridor might make movement difficult but will make area attacks highly effective. A wide open field will have the opposite effect. Use terrain and battlefield features that can be interacted with or taken advantage of by the PCs and monsters. Basic terrain features can slow or block movement, block line of sight, provide cover, serve as a dangerous hazard, or even be picked up and interacted with. Even seemingly useless props can often be utilized by creative players in unforeseen ways.

Think about what types of positioning and angles of attack your battlefield allows for. Positioning directly affects how effective melee and ranged characters are and might even allow for stealthy characters to spring a trap or sneak past a fight altogether. Additionally, encouraging the PCs to split up or giving them the opportunity to block or divert some of their foes are great ways to get players thinking on their feet.

your battlefield allows for. Positioning directly affects how effective melee and ranged characters are and might even allow for stealthy characters to spring a trap or sneak past a fight altogether. Additionally, encouraging the PCs to split up or giving them the opportunity to block or divert some of their foes are great ways to get players thinking on their feet. Design a dynamic battlefield that can change in the middle of a fight. This could happen automatically or as the result of certain actions.

Objectives

Too many encounters are simply about two groups of foes wailing on each other until one side is incapacitated. If your players have the same objective in every combat, it’s no wonder they’ll end up using the same old strategies over and over! (Sometimes alternative objectives might allow the players to find a way to avoid fighting at all. This is not a bad thing!)

Give one side a specific target they need to eliminate or protect. A fight where the enemy is focused on attacking one or two individuals in the party would definitely change how the players act during the battle. Remember that a target doesn’t need to be a character at all but could also be a specific location or object.

Rather than a deathmatch, design an encounter as a race . What if one side needs to reach a specific area or objective before the other? The tactics used to slow an enemy down are rarely the same ones used to kill them.

Design a chase scene! Similar to a race but one side wants to pursue or escape from the other. Though less common in RPGs, there’s plenty of chase scene inspiration to be found in hollywood.

Establish a ticking clock . Your players might act more recklessly if they have a limited amount of time to accomplish an objective or if the encounter is getting progressively more difficult the longer they take.

Build alternative objectives and dilemmas into your encounters . Two or more mutually exclusive objectives for the party will force players to make interesting decisions and think in character. Make sure you plan for each possible outcome.

Offer optional objectives and bonuses to your players. These are similar to dilemmas in that they force players to make decisions, except a bonus is optional and not mutually exclusive to the main objective. The straightforward solution might be easy but a different approach might yield an additional or alternative reward.

Consider featuring more than 2 competing teams in a single encounter. When not all PCs or foes get along or agree on which objective to pursue, it can create very interesting situations.

Dynamic objectives ! Just like combatants and battlefields, there’s no reason that objectives need to stay static during a fight. If the players accomplish (or fail to accomplish) one thing, maybe another objective arises to become a priority. For an extra complicated battle, you could even build a chain or branching tree of objectives.

Context and Cohesion

Making use of interesting combatants, battlefields, and objectives is a great way to create individually great encounters. However, as a DM, it’s often important to consider the bigger picture. Battles are experienced within the context of an adventure which likely features many other fights and scenes. Here’s a few ways to make sure that your great individual encounters form a cohesive whole that’s both fun and rewarding for your players throughout an entire session or adventure.

Vary the difficulty level of your fights. If every battle takes 2 hours (or 2 minutes) to resolve, players will get bored no matter how unique each one is. Some fights should feel easy and be resolved quickly while others should be more impactful and might take an hour or two. Usually you’ll want to slowly ramp up the average difficulty and complexity over the course of an adventure.

Consider how the party’s limited daily resources affect how they might approach an encounter. A group on their 6th fight of the day will likely act very differently than if they’d just spent a week recovering in town. By stressing specific resources several encounters in a row, clever DMs can force a party to consider alternative or more conservative tactics. Foreshadowing can also encourage players to think twice about using a resource if they anticipate a better use for it later on.

Create encounters that are both fresh AND familiar . You want to find ways to provide unique experiences to players while also rewarding those who learn and apply lessons from previous encounters. One great way to accomplish this is to reuse monsters or even battlefields but add a new twist each time. Players will be able to use the knowledge they acquired from their first experience in order to adapt to whatever is new.

One final strategy you can employ to keep players interested in your combats (or any other scene) is to shine the spotlight at them! For each player in your game, design at least one encounter per adventure that will give them a chance to really show off their stuff and be the big hero. Unlike most of the other tips, this one isn’t designed to offer interesting tactical decisions to the players. Instead, it’s all about pulling the players into the game by making them feel like valued members of the party. If your party’s tank hasn’t had the chance to show off recently, you might consider throwing a big heavy hitting melee monster into an encounter. Such a beast might be able to drop other group members in 2 or 3 rounds but you could play up how well the tank is able to absorb its blows while his friends deal with any other enemies.

Ultimately, variety is the key to creating interesting D&D combat encounters. Mix, match, and experiment with all of the tips above and you should be able to create a nearly infinite number of fun and unique fights!

[Note: It’s my goal to make the advice contained in this piece as solid and approachable as possible for those who may read it in the future. As such, I’ve made a few edits based on constructive criticism from several sources and reserve the right to continue doing so going forward.]