5 Ways to Spice up Lower-Level Encounters

Keep your players guessing, challenged, and entertained at low levels (and high) with these tested methods.

1. Combat Maneuvers

When a +1 or +2 bonus matters so much (as it does at low levels), charging, fighting defensively, flanking, and knocking someone down is always a solid (if sometimes risky) tactic.

Have your archers kneel when they fire. Distant crossbowman should lay prone. Remember that even kobolds want to live, and they’ll use pincer maneuvers, tree-top ambushes, and swarm tactics to pull down one over-confident PC after another (or at least make the attempt more interesting than saying "missed.")

Hearing your players say "WTH is going on here? They're just kobolds!" is pure music.

2. Dynamic Terrain

Spill magma down the center of the battle (a hazard that could cool into difficult terrain in a few rounds). Knock over a pillar with a missed warhammer smash. Have the PCs and monsters battle on the edge of rivers, or on multiple levels where courageously stupid dive-bomb tactics might mean the difference between life with treasure and reaching for those D6s. 

Sometimes all that's required is a venue change.

3. Use a Monster from the U20 Critter Crate in your next session 

There are zillions of monsters available for your use, but try something from the creative minds outside of the published books your friends all own. No one wants their players to know what they’re up against even before they roll initiative, and even if a creature’s powers aren’t readily apparent from looking at it, the feelings of “just another orc, ogre, or goblin” will hamstring a potentially exciting battle before the first arrows fly.

Here’s a list of low-level monsters from the Critter Crate here at U20 (watch the Crate for a cool new level 1 solo—a combination of clockwork gears and flesh—coming soon), plus several other great sources for critters and critter inspiration.

Unnatural20.com - 3E

• Giant Salamander (CR 2, makes a cool mount)
• Crown of Thorns (CR 4, agile ambusher)
• Dragon Snail (CR 6, acidic breath and a solid defense)

 Unnatural20.com - 4E

• Doppelganger Jelly (Lev 3 lurker, hiding in plain sight)
• Giant Octopus (Lev 5 soldier, camouflaged and grasping)
• Primordial Changeling (Lev 6 Trans-Role Solo, will kick your PC's asses, but even if he doesn't he can escape and regenerate to try again later)

Monsters of Eden (Spirits of Eden) - 4E

Sean K Reynolds Monsters - 3.0–3.5E

Or build your own (Page 295 3.5 MM, Page 184 4E DMG, Asmor's Monster Maker)

4. One-Shot Items: Magic, Alchemy, or Poison 

Tanglefoot bags, smokesticks, potions, oils, and poisons. In 4E you have ritual scrolls, and... journeybread? (There must be more out there, but I don't own that arms and equipment guide, although I've heard great things about it).

Using these items occasionally as a DM will help your players see their worth and explore their uses themselves. They work as a great surprise attack, and at lower levels have exceptional effects that will probably provide an unexpected edge to one side or the other.

5. Award the DM’s Best Friend for Good Tactics, Roleplaying, or Descriptions

Get the players involved in cool descriptions by awarding circumstance bonuses for good roleplaying, blood-curdling war cries, vivid descriptions, and clever tactics. 

When the players start dealing 40 damage per strike you know they don’t care as much about that extra +2 to hit, but at low-levels those bonuses are great tools to encourage your players to do more than just roll dice and do math.

When the dice agree with your critters particularly well, step in and describe the situation as viscerally as you can. Try to engage all the senses. Finally, wait for your players to ask for the damage after you’ve described their character’s mangling. Before long they will associate vivid descriptions with important points in combat, and should want to recreate those for themselves.

Got tips of your own?

If you know of ways to spice up combat without exhausting yourself or buying every book on the market, let us know!

And speaking of books...

Do you own the 4E Arms and Equipment guide? Is it worth owning? Does it contain more 4E alchemical items? Let me know.

Comments

[Christopher B]

These are great suggestions, and several of them I had (by happy coincidence) been considering for the last week or so. I was also weighing options for rewarding non-adventuring behavior - fighters carousing at the tavern, clerics spending many hours in prayer, etc. - although I haven't come up with any solid house rules yet.

For some strange reason, I have difficulty applying some of these regularly in my D&D games - but in none of the other genres/games I GM. (Especially the "change of venue" concept - that one's a real issue, unless I'm really in the groove.) Maybe it's the familiarity of the game. Have I grown so used to it that I treat it like an old pair of slippers, without sparing a thought toward keeping it fresh? Hmmm...

Whatever the reason, I've determined to amend my ways, and I'm going to print and use these Five Points as a reminder to that end.

Thanks!

[Bartoneus]

Excellent suggestions! A few of these I've been doing to a certain extent, but I was really enlightened by the suggestion of vivid descriptions vs. the PCs when they take a lot of damage, and that hopefully encouraging them to describe things also.

Something that I've found is that the more prepared you are for the adventure, the more you can implement awesome descriptions, when I ran Keep on the Shadowfell I did some great descriptions because that was really all I had to worry about as the DM, but in my own campaign I'm absorbed and invested so heavily into every aspect of the game that all of these become harder to accomplish consistently.

[Bartoneus]

Also, if by Arms & Equip guide you mean the Adventurer's Vault, then yes you should definitely own it (especially as a DM), the only problem is that it adds SO many items to 4E that you can spend hours picking out items to give to your party! If you're not talking about AV, let me know.

[RPG Ike]

Thanks, fellas. I'm glad you found this little list kind of useful.

Christopher, I'm sure it's possible that you're recycling set pieces for D&D because of familiarity, but I think that's kind of okay. I mean, people play D&D because they like dungeons and dragons (and paladins and rangers and on and on). Messing with those expectations can be a little jarring to people.

For example, I recently pitched the idea of a wild-west D20 cowboys vs. zombies desert bordertown campaign combining aspects of steampunk. Everyone was on board until I said "dinosaur mounts," which broke it for one player beyond repair. The funny thing is, I'm sure I could have said "giant desert lizards" and things would have been okay.

So, if you're not bored, and your players aren't bored, maybe you don't need to switch things up (but I think you should. Interesting terrain just adds so much to combat).

Hey Bartoneus, yes, I'm a huge dope and meant the Adventurer's vault. :p I think I'll go order it right away.

I know what you eman about consistency. As DMs there's only so much energy we can put into a given session, and sometimes that means we pit our players against an orc who has a pie.

Thanks again, fellas.