#combat tips

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Overwhelming video game tutorials - Combat Tips

Recently in my home games, I have had an issue with engagement during combat. Since my other passion is fight direction and choreography, I tried to figure out what the issue was and made some discoveries that I think would be useful information for dms having similar issues in their game.

Firstly, the issues I believe are the root cause of my problem are that players:

1. Feel that combat is repetitive and boring.

2. Feel that there is little risk and so paying attention isn't critical.

3. Feel that their characters aren't useful in the current situation, or they don't understand all their abilities.

This caused me to realize that most of the problems with my combats was in my designs. When it comes to understanding your character's abilities, that's on the player, but all the other things are fixable by just adding a couple things to your normal combat design.

1. Add a time limit.

2. Give them problems they cannot solve just by fighting.

3. Raise the stakes above only the player's lives, but not so high it becomes less relatable.

For example: let's consider a quest where the party has been hired to deal with a group of Necromancers in a nearby cave. The normal process of thought is figuring out the mechanical numbers. How many necromancers, where in the caves, the statblock of the boss, and treasure in the dungeon to be found. This planning becomes a classic dungeon crawl, which is amazing with a group that enjoys it. However, let's reimagine it a little.

Along with all these considerations, let's imagine it is a day where the planets have aligned for a powerful necromantic ritual. The party can learn this by interrogating one of the few necromancers that can be found in the upper dungeon... When they reach the final room they find the necromancers that were missing before, all drawing sigils on the wall, along with five innocent hostages, each with a necromancer pointing a knife at them, waiting for the sigils to be complete...

Now, the fight gains a new level of urgency. The lives of five innocents hang in the balance, and the party not only needs to fight the necromancers, but also stop them from drawing the sigils, erase the ones that are already finished, and make sure the hostages are not in direct danger in case something much worse arrives when the ritual is complete.

The number of things going on will draw in the players, who will most likely be looking for a problem to solve, and will allow for the people who feel like they are useless to think of creative ways of either escaping with the hostages or erasing the sigils until they think of something cool to do against the necromancers. On the other hand, it also punishes letting things fall through the cracks, which forces focus. If the party doesn't deal with everything, then people will die or something powerful and evil will be unleashed in the area.

In essence, as I plan out new combat encounters, I ask myself three questions:

1. How can I apply a time limit to this?

2. What is the underlying goal behind the combat, and if it is achieved by either side, what happens?

3. What happens if the party fails or misses something?

Since we no longer have Toxic, Speed, and Strong, the new types are:

Tech

Science

Mystic

Cosmic

Physical

If you fight against an enemy with a weaker affinity you will deal 25% more damage:

Physical is strong against Mystic

Mystic is strong against Cosmic

Cosmic is strong against Science

Science is strong against Tech

Tech is strong against Physical

chart:

If there is ANYTHING I have learned from running a game with level 20 characters, it is that balancing encounters at high levels is SO HARD. If your party has the capacity to shake the entire world, it is hard to make things difficult for them. What I discovered to be the way to help with that challenge is an applicable strategy across all levels of play.

1. Focus on number of actions on each side. The side with more actions will usually have an easier time in the fight. So put more enemies in play rather than giving individual ones more hit points and higher damage outputs.

2. Put the pcs into combats you don't know if they will be able to win, they will manage to win despite your expectations. This isn't to say you should make encounters impossible, but go to what you think is balanced and add a couple more things until you honestly don't know if they'll be able to do it.

3. Use strategy on the side of the enemies. Have them make smart decisions and fight to win as much as the PCs are. Watch some videos on ttrpg tactics and have your enemies use it.

To get help with the game and talk with others you’ll get much quicker answers by visiting the Reddit board or going to the Discord chat from the people on the Reddit board. There’s an amazing guide to stats, combat, and skills located here.