In my group, it's quite clear that we play this game for the role play, more than the combat. We're the type of party who will write 20 pages of backstory for a one shot character, and full sessions can go by of pure conversation. There's quite a few ex-theatre kids in this group, so really it's no surprise, but combat can sometimes take a back seat to the drama. The thing is though, we all still enjoy combat when it comes up, even if it's not the main focus.
When we first started out, I was our first DM. In the early days, running my first few combats, we quickly fell into the trap of 'hit it until it's dead'. This is a fight where players stand and make attacks or throw spells, but nothing much else really happens. I felt them drag on as I waited for the monsters HP to drip away, waiting to get back to the fun RP that we'd just been having.
I wondered what I was doing wrong: why was combat so much duller than the other moments we were having. That's when I started to realise that combat itself wasn't the problem, it was the way we were looking at it. When it was ran as 'hit it until it's dead', it took us out of the story, but what I came to learn was we could make combat just integral to the story as anything else.
Here are a few changes I made to make combat more interesting, stop it from dragging, and to weave it into the story as much as possible.
Give the party an objective
Players will often fall into the trap of 'hit it until it's dead' if they have nothing else to do. This is why, in every combat, I try to have either a secondary objective, or make combat the obstacle rather than the focus of the objective.
Take for example a fight against a group of cultists. They enter the ritual chamber to see six cultists in jet black robes, chanting around an altar. Normally in this encounter, the party would fight the cultists and they win when they're the only ones left standing in the chamber. However, what if the summoning ritual was already underway, regardless of whether the cultists are alive or not? Suddenly, the party need to not only defend themselves against the cultists attacks, but need to find a way to stop this spell before whatever evil entity comes through. Maybe there are crystals dotted around the room that need to be destroyed. Maybe they need to disrupt the sigils marking the ground before they link up. If they manage to stop it, fantastic. If not, they suddenly have a much more powerful enemy on the field to deal with.
This is a very basic example, but another great way to build objectives into combat is to look at some of your other favourite games. One of my personal favourites is the ticking clock, where a group need to defend a point for a certain amount of time. In one of my campaigns, the party are travelling down a river by row boat. They reach a canal lock and need to wait for the water to rise to reach the next level. The problem is that when they opened the lock, a horde of slimes fall into the water around them. They need to hold their own against these slimes until they reach the top and can close the lock behind them. It's a simple idea, pulled from any FPS horde mode.
This can be done for many other game modes, particularly from the FPS genre. As much as we may hate them, escort quests can shift the focus on combat. Rather than throwing all their high level spells at the enemies, the party's focus is on defence: abjuration, speed, protective manoeuvrers. This way, rather than the enemies being the sole objective, they become an obstacle to what the party is actually trying to achieve. It helps players to think differently, mix up their tactics, and stops every fight feeling like the same battle of numbers.
Use the terrain
Another factor that can make combat feel boring is where it takes place. If you lay out a sheet of grid paper with no other features on it, every combat feels like it takes place in a void. With nothing else to think about, the players only have to worry about the enemies. This means we once again fall into 'hit it until it's dead' mode. Sure, some combats will take place in an open field, but this should be the exception, not the norm.
There are a few different features that can really help spice up a battle map. One of my favourite ways is to use moving pieces in combat. In the earlier combat I described, my players were in row boats, limiting the solid terrain they could utilise, but also giving them a bit of battlefield control. As an action, any player could move the row boat to a different position. This meant they had to balance positioning with attacks, as they couldn't use their action for both. Was it more important to try to kill the slime, or to keep the party wizard out of harms way?
If you want to limit player control over these moving parts, maybe they are travelling via mine carts through a vast system of rails and enemy goblins are travelling alongside them on another track. Each round of combat could pull them out of harms way or put them closer to their enemies. It also gives opportunities for interesting mechanical choices. Can the ranger make a perception check to see where the track is going and shift the direction at the last possible moment? Can the druid use heat metal to weaken the enemies track and send them hurtling into the darkness below?
Another consideration is environmental factors the players can use to their advantage. If a river of lava runs through the centre of your battle map, and only a rickety rope bridge stretches between it, the party could buy some time by cutting the ropes, or even drop a group of enemies into the molten rock. If they make a successful dexterity check, maybe they cling to the rope as it falls and are now climbing up towards them, or pull one of the players down with them. Perhaps stalactites hand from the ceiling, just waiting for a player to send them crashing down on to the colony of mind flayers below. It gives the players more choices and lets them mix up their tactics, rather than falling back on the same old tricks.
Give the action flavour
Nothing gets more boring in a fight than quoting numbers at each other. For players less comfortable with role play, a fight can easily turn into:
Player: I hit the goblin with my sword. That's a 17.
DM: It hits.
Player: 10 points of damage.
DM: Ok, it dies. Next up...
There are a few ways around this. If you can see the player is uncomfortable with role play, and is struggling to add in more description, as the DM you can add this flavour for them. In the example above, when they say they hit, I would instead say something along the lines of:
The goblin circles you, matching each step as you look for your opening. As you lock eyes, it's foot catches on a stone and it falters, giving you just enough of an opening to catch the creatures chest with your blade.
If the damage is fatal, I'd then go on:
Your blade plunges through the creature's heart and as you pull back it clutches the wound. It stumbles forward, as if you strike out with its bare hands, but instead falls limp at your feet.
With a bit of extra description, it makes the player feel a lot more triumphant about their move, rather than just thinking they rolled pretty well. After a while of doing this, you may start to see these same players start to narrate it themselves. Rather than 'I hit it', instead it becomes:
I leap onto the battlement, run along the narrow brick and dive on to the creature, my sword aimed for its neck.
It makes it feel more like telling a story together, with epic highs and lows, rather than just quoting numbers at each other until one or the other falls down. No one says 'remember when you rolled that 20 and killed the thing'. Instead they say 'remember when you swung across the ballroom on the chandelier and cut down the assassin, the second before he killed the duchess'. It's the moments we remember, not the numbers.
Roll with the weird
This one may be down to personal preference. I know some DMs who are very mechanically minded and like to follow the rules to the letter. That's fine if that's what your party are here for. You can absolutely play this way. However, in my games, the moments we talk about for years after the fact are the moments when someone wanted to try something weird.
This is how the goose army came to be. We were in the final days of preparation for an epic battle against a dark god of entropy. His floating castle hung in the sky and an army of their followers assembled on the fields below. We had made some allies with some ents, a group of city guard, and some others, but we didn't know if it would be enough. It was at this point that our bard, a half-elf named Rin, had an idea.
My character, Joey, had at some point in the adventure come across a magical item that would allow him to summon a goose. It was meant as a joke item, but Joey instantly claimed the goose as a new friend and loved him dearly. I gave it a dagger that it held in its beak, and happily took it into battle with me. Over the course of a few sessions, it became a running joke that it kept getting the last hit.
With the legend of the goose building, Rin decided that if the goose was going to be this effective, why not take more. She cast sympathy on our house 10 days before the fight, specifying that any goose in the area would be drawn to us. As the days passed, more and more geese showed up, and thanks to a very understanding blacksmith we were able to arm each with a simple dagger.
When the battle came, the god that we were fighting looked down in horror as the battlefield turned white, a legion of geese charging as the front line.
Obviously, if you're trying to run a serious, high fantasy campaign, this may not be for you. However, the legends of the goose army have made it into the history books of our campaign world, and even several characters down the line occasionally stumble upon a book describing their noble sacrifice.
The DM could have easily said no – that there were no geese in the area and maybe one or two showed up. But, by rolling with the weird and letting the chaos follow, he made one of the most memorable moments of our campaign.
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