Encounters in Dungeons and Dragons can be fun, but how do you make it so the battle isn’t just taking turns repeatedly taking the attack action? How can you encourage players to move around and make meaningful, tactical decisions? My solution is to think about how to gamify your encounters.
What exactly does it mean to make an encounter more “game-like?” D&D IS a game, so isn’t it game-like by default? Well, yes. But here, I’m talking about turning encounters into puzzles or riddles for the players to figure out, or making players think about when to use certain actions and where to best position themselves. If players “solve” the encounter and “play” their strategies effectively, they will be able to more easily tip the encounter in their favor.
The way a gamified encounter should go is thus:
Creatures in the encounter take actions
Players identify threats or weaknesses based on those actions
Players take steps to mitigate threats or take advantage of weaknesses they have identified on their turns.
Creatures continue to fight, but are now less effective.
Players feel accomplished for their cleverness.
(Optional) Enemies then change up their tactics, learning from the players and increasing the encounter’s complexity. Repeat.
There are several ways to go about gamifying your encounters. You don’t have to give your encounters every single one of these traits, but adding two or three will help push the encounter’s depth.
Several of these use examples from two boss battles I posted, which can be found here: Ilesstra and Kormak.
Give your creatures, particularly single-monster encounters, some sort of consistent pattern for players to recognize. This way, the players will get stymied the first time, but then the next round will be able to react appropriately. Keep in mind that Medium encounters typically last 3-4 rounds, which means the pattern needs to be pretty obvious that it will repeat. Players may not even realize it repeats until the second round, which means they only have a few rounds left to seize the advantage!
Ilesstra: Ilesstra’s lanes in her lair’s battle map can fill with poison from obvious pipes on the map. Once players realize their significance and effect, they can work out a strategy to avoid them.
Kormak: Powering up his crystal takes a noticeable cause and effect by taking an action to charge (making it glow) by powering down once its charge is spent (so it’s no longer glowing). Players can visually see when Kormak is hard to hit and about to hit hard and conversely when his abilities and defenses are weak.
Your encounter can involve synergy. This can be between two creatures and their abilities, a creature and its environment, or between a creature’s own abilities. Players should be able to pick up on this synergy so they can attempt to disrupt it to their advantage. Often, synergy involves one part of the encounter being in a sometimes-state, then another part of the encounter gets more powerful when the other is in that state.
In fact, the encounter could actually synergize to the players’ benefit. Perhaps a creature could freeze players in ice while another creature’s thunder attack can shatter the ice thunder damage. Players could try to coerce the thunder creature into freeing their trapped companions.
Ilesstra: Poisoned creatures take additional damage from her, and her actions can poison creatures in her lair. Her pet can drag away creatures attacking her.
Kormak: His crystal enhances his minor abilities when it’s charged. His minions jump in front of attacks with reactions.
If you have meaningful targets in the encounter other than the creatures, players will be tempted to use their actions to deal with those rather than the creatures, which can create a dilemma. Players only have so many actions, so using them on a different target has to be worth it for them; it should give them a meaningful advantage to do so.
Putting an innocent life in danger or having a target that is making a boss monster superpowered is a valid excuse to change focus. The idea is to split the players’ attention between at least two things so that they need to evaluate allocating their resources or action economy.
Ilesstra: If a pipe in her lair is destroyed or plugged, it will create a permanent safe zone for the players that won’t fill with poison gas. Her pet crocodile is actively trying to drag people into the water below, which can prove bothersome.
Kormak: If Kormak’s crystal is destroyed, he can no longer gain temporary HP or empower his attacks. If his allies are slain, he can no longer defer the damage he takes.
Alternative Victory Conditions
Adding a new way to “win” the encounter will make players need to decide between attacking the enemies or trying to achieve victory through the other means provided. Types of alternate victories might include:
Disabling the Doomsday Device
Destroying the Villain’s Power Source
The circumstances will always depend on your campaign, but you can always provide a miniature goal inside of an isolated encounter.
Ilesstra: Destroying the pipes that emit poison gas will put an end to her main form of attack, possibly forcing her to retreat.
Kormak: Destroying his crystal will severely weaken him, potentially causing him to retreat.
Everyone knows adding environmental factors to a battle map will make it more interesting. It gives players ways to hide, cover for arrowfire, and hazards they must avoid and use to their advantage. When designing an encounter, particularly for boss battles, try adding some areas that are harmful for the players. Perhaps there are lava pits with trapdoor grates above them that the enemy can open, or maybe the enemy has an area attack that the players can work around.
The goal is to give players areas that they are aware are dangerous and areas they know are safe so that they can take advantage of it or plan their actions around it. Bonus points if the areas move in a regular pattern.
Ilesstra: Her lair has three lanes that can be filled with poison gas using her action. Players can hide in the small space between the lanes or in the water below the grates. An alternative strategy for players is to spread out and limit the maximum number of targets since she can only affect one “lane” at a time.
Kormak: His crystal is trapped by the magic circle surrounding it, and his minions can attempt to push PCs into it.
An easy way to make an encounter require more thinking is to use different types of enemies with different abilities. Players will have to consider strategies for each different creature separately, which makes things different. Perhaps certain players will be better at facing one enemy, but not the others, forcing them to adjust their focus.
Ilesstra: She has a giant crocodile companion that is inoculated and immune to poisons. While Ilesstra is more of a glass cannon with low hit points and AC but high damage thanks to poison, the crocodile is a brute that can grapple creatures away from its master and hold them in a hotspot area.
Kormak: Kormak is a spellcaster and controller while his Barbed Devil minions are brutes.
Give your encounters multiple, distinct phases that they enter once circumstances are met. These might be when a certain number of enemies are defeated, when the boss drops to half their hit point maximum, or when an alternative victory condition is met. Once this triggers, the encounter changes in a fundamental way to force players to change their tactics. Essentially, you’ve added a mechanical twist instead of a narrative. The best examples are from World of Warcraft raids where the bosses will have different phases.
Discoverable Vulnerability or Strength
The creatures have something obviously strong or weak about them that the players can easily identify in one round. Once players identify it, they can attempt to take advantage of a vulnerability or dampen/avoid the enemy’s strength.
A vulnerability might be taking damage from a unique damage type, a character flaw that can be goaded into a bad decision, a macguffin that holds all their power, or perhaps they simply have certain targets on their body that can be hit at +5 AC but for double damage.
Meanwhile an enemy’s strengths should hopefully be visible right away. Players should have a good idea what a given creature is good at or what its abilities are as soon as a fight starts, whether this means it was foreshadowed earlier or is revealed in their appearance or attack methods. Players know what to do against a glass cannon rogue and a tanky bruiser warrior or a controlling mage. Likewise, if they find an unknown creature surrounded by petrified humanoid statues, they will know to keep their distance in case they befall the same fate. Their insights should be rewarded and should influence their thinking. Players should never feel totally unprepared.
Ilesstra: Her strength is primarily using poison damage, but she is physically weak. Meanwhile, her companion giant crocodile is mentally weak but physically strong. These are both readily-apparent.
Kormak: His crystal visibly charges to empower his abilities and protect him; destroying it will hinder his powers. His strength lies in fire magic, which he and his minions are both immune to.
Adding a question of morality to an encounter is a good way to make it not only impactful but also create more decisions for players to make. Perhaps there are innocent lives in danger. Do players risk their lives and spend their valuable action economy to save them? Or do they let them perish to optimize their mechanics and defeat their foe?
Simply adding a hostage or bystanders can do the trick for the average encounter. For boss battles, though, you can increase the stakes even further. Perhaps killing the villain will somehow make things worse for the greater good, giving the players pause mid-combat. Maybe the villain is related to one of the players, or has charmed someone the players love into fighting them to the death. Maybe destroying the boss will take more time than it will to stop their cultists from finishing their spell to open a gate to Hell, so players will have to ignore them and stop their minions instead.
Morality can make fights much more interesting because it forces players not just to consider their strategy, but also their values.
Basically, the thesis of gamifying encounters is to force players to change their tactics each round, but in a way that makes players feel cunning and smart. Take all these tips into consideration and try and make your homebrew boss battles and encounters special:
Provide Alternative Targets
Provide Alternative Victory Conditions
Make Hotspots and Safezones
Discoverable Vulnerabilities or Strengths
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