The goal of every DM is to make an encounter that leaps off the grid, gripping his/her players’ imaginations and being a topic of discussion years down the road. 4e makes encounter design much easier, but to get those memorable encounters, extra care must be taken. There are at least as many elements that can make a great encounter as there are DMs. One element remains constant through all of them: Complexity.
Now, it doesn’t mean that your players have to solve differential equations every encounter. When citing cmoplexity, I’m really citing that element of the encounter that makes it more than just laying blast templates and rolling for attack. To capture your player’s mind, you have to put them into encounters more complex than using their abilities. Added complexity creates “stretch”, how far players have to stretch beyond the normal range to beat the encounter. Generate stretch and generate interest. Generate interest and you stand a good shot at making a memorable encounter.
You stretch players:
- when you exhaust their resources
- when you add complications
- when you add unique goals
- when you “re-write” basic game assumptions
Boiled down to essentials: Memorable encounters need opponents, goals and complications.
Opponents
On the surface this one takes no thought –every encounter needs someone for the PCs to fight, right? Of course. But since the opponent is the “meat” of the encounter, choice of opponent matters. This will sound wierd, but the actual statblock you use is unimportant. No one cares! For a memorable encounter, what your players will remember most is what the monster looks like, how it behaves, who he is. Don’t ever place the burden of making a memorable character on statblocks. Better you re-skin a kobold than to throw a plain-vanilla monster at your players.
Describe what your opponent is doing, and give him his own flair. An evil swordmage who cuts himself to activate his powers; a beserking eladring barbarian who shouts fey obscenities; A yuan-ti sorceror who casts magic through discharged spittle like a spitting cobra. These tweaks and flourishes mean more to your players than the monster’s AC or HP.
Good opponents “stretch” your player’s imagination. you’ve implanted an unusual or vivid seed in their mind. Time to make it grow.
Goals
Most encounters, the goal is “Kill the monster…don’t die.” That’s a fine goal. I personally enjoy living, and would make that my goal if I were in the business of exploring underground caverns and fighting mythological terrors.
Your players deserve more. Give them different goals, and you’ll stretch their boundaries. It’s simple in 4e to approach matters in a rather linear and tactical fashion. It’s part of the fun! But let’s give the PCs a new goal in their next fight…let’s say they have to protect the townsfolk that we are now putting on the map. If you really want to motivate the PCs, give them extra XP (and tell them — a goal that the PCs don’t know isn’t really a goal!) for saving a certain portion. Now the PCs have to kill the monster, not die, and save the people. Your PCs are getting hooked now. That’s when you hit them with…
Complications
This is where a good encounter can become great. A complication is anything that impedes the progress of your players towards their goal. So, using the protect the villagers goal above, let’s complicate it. What, protecting the villagers from the monsters is complicated enough? Meh. A proper complication is always welcome. Complications stretch your player’s minds. Not only do they have a goal that forces them from the basic assumptions of the game, they now have a few roadblocks preventing them from reaching it.
Really, adding complications is just good storytelling.
So let’s complicate our PC’s lives. They have to protect villagers, but the villagers are panicked, and sort of …stupid. You can protect them by directing them off the map, but they’ll run in any direction at random. They’ll run right into the jaws of the big bad if you don’t tell them otherwise. So the PCs have to protect the villagers…and play traffic cops. Hilarity ensues!
A few things to note about complications. A complication needn’t be complex. You don’t have to add a whole new game system for a complication. For traffic cops, just roll a die and have the villagers move in the direction indicated by that die unless a PC is within burst 3. If that’s the case, a PC can make a diplomacy (moderate DC) check to steer them where they should be going.
A complication ideally extends or compliments your goal or opponent in some way. This complication works, because it naturally extends the notion of mobs being attacked and freaking out. We could have made it rain, create concealment, but that’s not ideal because it’s just something else on top of the opponent and goal. Proper complications bring the goal in clear focus by pushing the characters further away from it.
If you use these three elements your encounters will at the very least be more vivid. Keep stretching (your players)!
Similar Posts:
- Zen and the Art of the Impossible: Epic Theories, Part 2
- Skill Challenge #10: Prison Break: The Armoury
- The Final Boss Has No Stats
A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
By day he is a technologist.
Follow gamefiend on 
Great post, another good complication can be changing the battlefield. I ran an encounter with a group of Korreds(i think that’s what they were called, they are the dancing crazy fey dwarves from the manual of the plane) and a bullette. The drummer basically enchanted a bullette with his drumming and directed where the bullette attacked.
I altered the bullettes rules so that whenever the bullette burrowed it did so close enough to the surface that it created difficult terrain whenever it moved underground in the path of the bullettes movement. Whenever the bullette popped up the area where it popped up would become a 10 foot pit, so within 6 rounds the clearing in the forest got torn up.
Between the bullette rampaging and the dwarves dancing crazy jigs while beating the crap out of the pcs to the maniacal drum beats of their leader it was a pretty memorable encounter. It was also the first session where I killed a pc, and then a second one. It was epic. especially the part when the surviving party members decided to loot their fallen comrades bodies.
I really like this idea. I find all too often that as a player, I’m actually somewhat disappointed by linear “smash until they die” encounters. Especially solos — shouldn’t fighting the main bad guy feel a little special?
Riffing off your idea, perhaps it’s the baddies who’ve rounded up the villagers that the PCs wish to protect. The “holders” could stay close to the villagers to prevent the PCs from using burst or area-effect attacks whilst their defenders keep the PCs busy at a good distance from their goal. Perhaps missing with an arrow could result in taking out a villager by mistake?
Superb write-up on the components of a memorable encounter. The constant scream from the disenfranchised D&D masses is that 4e turns every fight into a slug-fest. It doesn’t have to be that way. It’s the DM’s responsibility to add that creative flare that makes your game superior to something that runs on a computer, and this is a solid way to do it.
thanks guys!
kaoesdad & j_king, those are both great examples of good complications! Thanks!
Solo fights in particular need complications, as it is far too easy to lock a solo down and then grind it away.
Ethan, glad you liked! I totally agree –people seem to expect systems to do stuff that DMs are supposed to do.