What techniques do you guys have for causing other problems during a combat scene rather than just strict slaughter? Especially those times when you don’t have many opportunities, if any, to make hard moves due to good player rolls. I want to throw other things into the mix than just a straight up duel between the group and a pack of monsters.
What techniques do you guys have for causing other problems during a combat scene rather than just strict slaughter?
What techniques do you guys have for causing other problems during a combat scene rather than just strict slaughter?
Are the monsters attempting to accomplish something other than overrunning the PCs? Torching the caravan the PCs are defending, perhaps? The PCs can be rolling all 12s to kill a few monsters, but if they’re not actively taking steps to defend the caravan (which may not always mean Hack & Slash!), the caravan gets torched anyway. Who paid them to defend that cargo? Etc.
Yeah, its a rare thing for combat to exist in some static space without some thing else going on. Rituals are being performed, dungeons are collapsing, treaures are being looted, helpless are being threatened. If you do end up with some simple us vs. them fight, are you sure slaughter is the primary goal? Do the monsters just want to escape? Capture the PCs? Steal their gear?
Also, changing the setting can be useful. Fighting three goons on a road is pretty standard. Fighting them on cliff with molten lava falling from the sky, is another story.
Check out Descent 2nd ed. Each scenario has an objective and hanging around to kill monsters often means you fail your objective.
I rely heavily on “play to find out what happens” and I rely a lot on what players will do to help change or drive the story. The problem is that sometimes it becomes nothing more than a fight.
I’ll use an actual example from last night. I could tell that i lost some momentum after one scenario ended and had to scramble to move to another front. That was my fault. But I went to the players to help me discover what was around them, etc. They reported that they were in the desert and there was a pyramid, so i took them there and gave them a moment to plan. At this point, it felt like I was forcing every encounter and situation on to them. They came across some gnomes inside the pyramid who told them that they had to leave, so they did without question. Then they ran into some bandits outside the exit whose plan was not obvious (why would it be) and they just jumped into a fight with them.
So I wanted to add interesting aspects here but couldn’t seem to get a different reaction other than force from the players. Now, i am not blaming them at all. I can’t always view the current situation from their angle but I was wondering what, perhaps, I was not putting in front of them in order to spur some ingenuity and not just fight their way out.
So, I am wondering if there was a better way I could engage them with hostiles without just letting them fight their way out. I think a big part of this was that I didn’t necessarily have a big picture plan for the situations. I was relying on that to unfold during the encounter but then it just didn’t.
More often than not, combat isn’t actually about killing anyone. You fight to stop someone from doing something or taking something or going somewhere. Violence is the consequence of their not doing what you want. Think about the underlying essence of the battle. What drives it?
Agreed, Adam. I think what went wrong was it felt to me like nothing was at stake. Whatever it was we were supposed to be doing was very confusing to me.
Hmm, I can see how it appeared that way.
I run into that situation sometimes with my players, especially with one guy who likes to focus on combat. One way I been able to get past this is to have the enemy surrender or try and parley in combat. Now the players have to decide what to do with them. Bring them back to town for bounty? Kill them in cold blood? What if one escapes and goes gets reinforcements? Or tries to stab the party on the back when they aren’t looking? Things always get interesting with hostile npcs hanging around
Adam Koebel
Precisely what I meant to say. What do the PC’s want to achieve apart from just killing things? Their objective should drive the encounter, and it often works better if it is not “kill stuff”.
I’ve never seen a fight where all sides just want to murder each other. Fights occur when other avenues fail or they represent a means to an end – often driving away monsters will do the same. Ask the characters: “what are you fighting for, here?”