GMing Posted in General

Difficult fights suck. We’ve all sat at tables as the GM “challenged” us with unhittable/unkillable foes that blasted us with tons of MEGA!!! damage. Once the players blow their resources, they spend these battles chipping away at the enemy’s life. If I wanted to watch a healthbar slowly deplete, I could play a video game. At least then I would have some dodging or quick time events to keep me amused. Don’t let your roleplaying games run like this. RPG combat should be fast, thrilling, and creative. More importantly, it should be challenging, not….hard.

A difficult or “hard” fight generally involves pumping up numbers. In all other ways, it is identical to any other fight . The only difference is that it takes a lot longer or involves more resources. Players might be more inclined to take advantage of rules like cover or high ground to even the odds, but, ultimately, how well the fight goes is a numbers game. Players want to roll better, not play better.

Lest anyone take this article too seriously, let me stress: it takes a lot more to ruin your game than you think. Remember to keep your expectations low. Your friends show up to have some fun and tell a cool story. B ut even the lowest of expectations can occasionally be disappointed by a boring fight.

Bigger, Badder, Harder to Kill

If I haven’t made it clear by now, don’t pump hit points and defensive values to make a fight “difficult.” Bad guys don’t have to crumple like tissue paper, but a few really good hits from a well-made character should take them out. This didn’t really become clear to me until I picked up Savage Worlds…after a year-long D&D 4e game. The difference was night and day.

In lieu of upping the healthbar, some GMs think they’re being clever by giving a monster super-secret special weak spot or requiring weapons crafted from special materials. You have to stab a Morrocan Shadowmantis vampire above its right eye with a dagger made of difficult-to-obtainium to negate its paralyzing smirk. In the handful of games where studying monsters and crafting specialized weaponry takes center stage, this makes sense. The rest of the time, it just doesn’t work. Your players don’t get your hint when the dragon coddles its right shoulder. Your knight didn’t realize your campaign was going to be about hunting the fae when he chose to make his ancestral blade mithral instead of cold iron. It’s fine to give a monster a soft underbelly or a weak skull, it shouldn’t be necessary to play “pin the sword on the bad guy” to win a fight.

System Mastery (Not) Required

Don’t create situations where players must know the system to win combat. To some extent, system knowledge will always be an advantage. If you’ve played a game for awhile, you know which abilities are good and which aren’t. You know that trolls can’t regenerate from acid and that silver dragons breath ice. And, really, it doesn’t take a lot of knowledge to figure that nukers would do well to bring fire AND lightning to the battlefield, or that protection from energy is a good idea. But consider de-petrification/stone to flesh/whatever your current game of choice calls it. Of course you’d prepare it as a countermeasure if you’re fighting Medusa. Petrification is the lady o’ snake’s signature power. But what if you’re fighting a yarnagog from the 847th level of the Abyss? Should you be expected to know that they happen to have flesh to stone on their list of powers? Or should you be expected to take constant countermeasures against every attack in the handbook?

Random/Constant Damage

This often sounds like a cool idea. A thunderstorm clashes overhead and players have a 1/6 (1d6) chance of being struck by a bolt of lightning every round. In theory, this adds drama, tension, and atmosphere; in practice, it makes combat less fun. This isn’t a challenge because there’s nothing the players can do about it. They just randomly have some damage to heal every round. If the damage rolls too high, you may kill a player in an uninteresting, meaningless way. Naturally, there are exceptions. A collapsing cave is fine because players can take a countermeasure (get the hell out of town) —but “rocks fall, make a DC 40 saving throw or take 10d6 damage” is not.

Understanding Challenge vs. Difficulty

On the other hand, a “challenging” fight forces the players to adapt to a variety of circumstances. Players shouldn’t be doing the same thing round after round, or the fight isn’t forcing them to think and adapt. A challenging fight includes things that change the circumstances of the fight. An example of this is calling reinforcements.

One of my favorite D&D experiences came early in my tabletop career. It was a basic low-level ogre’s lair, but, surprise surprise, mama Ogre wanted a piece of us too. I remember the excitement as I bellowed formation orders to the others and the ogress burst through the wall shouting, “Oh, yeah!” Okay, maybe it didn’t happen exactly that way, but adding foes to a conflict in progress can deepen the game’s tactical elements and push the tension higher.

Word to the wise: do this sparingly. Unnecessarily prolonging fights bores players as much as increased difficulty levels, and it could lead to Dragon Age 2’s “why are enemies spawning in the middle of my team” syndrome.

Likewise, feel free to add interesting terrain. Battles don’t happen on featureless flat plains, or at least they shouldn’t. Every fight needs complexity on the battle-board to keep it fresh and interesting. Give players the opportunity for cover or concealment, difficult terrain to stumble over, or some sources of danger. A fantastical setting might have teleportation glyphs and explosive runes, while a modern war setting might feature landmines and barbed wire.

Finally, switch up the objective! Your players may not remember that they fought some orcs in a house, but they’ll certainly remember that they rescued a baby from orcs in a burning orphanage. Not every fight boils down to killing the other dude before you die. Nonviolent challenges can range from fires breaking out to hacking a sophisticated security system. Giving the players innocents to rescue (or not), gives them opportunties to play their character’s split second instincts.

In summary, make sure your fights are interesting. Challenges cause players to take action, while difficulties…don’t. Just ask yourself this question: Is there something the players can do about the thing I just threw at them?