Running Combat

This section covers the Narrator specific information about smoothly running combat in any setting. For rules about combat mechanics see the Combat and Movement section.

When you design an area in which you want your players and antagonists to do battle, you should keep in mind what skills and abilities the involved combatants possess. Try to present lots of cover, traversal options, hazards and elements such as water, fire, foliage and light. The more details you add, the more the characters can interact with the environment. Add things like: chandeliers for people to drop, lights to snuff out, traps to disarm, boiling pots of soup to spill, open flames to spread, running or deep water to shove people into and ledges to push people off of; whatever the situation calls for or the scene could reasonably contain. Along that same vein, try to avoid barren high walled enclosed arenas, devoid of cover and interactable elements. While this is an easier battle map to generate and indeed is what the majority of online and purchasable maps contain, it is by no means a good type of map. It can be the start of a good battle map, but often needs lots of additions to become fun and engaging.

Things to Avoid

There are several map situations one can accidentally include or fall into by accident. The best way to avoid these situations is to put yourself in the shoes of the main characters. If they're trying to use every feature of their surroundings to their advantage, what sticks out? Is the a large section the antagonist can't traverse? A part of the map they can't reach? A range a character could easily achieve that the antagonists can't?

There are a few common situations that are best to avoid. Note that there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these map designs so long as the players can't abuse them.

Ring Around the Rosie - The players can and will use a large enough non-traversable structure as a means of buying time or stalemating a fight. Try to avoid these types of situations unless the fight centers around such a mechanic, or intentionally place them to later have the massive beast or abomination they are facing destroy the obstruction.

Bottlenecking - While this is a legitimate strategy, it can result in a terrifying scene becoming comical or drawn out and methodical. Only create bottleneck situations if you want your players to utilize them. Otherwise, try to avoid them. Create multiple entrances to a room. Use large or broken doorways, secret passages, crawlspaces, attics, windows and vents as means of preventing players from solving every situation with a strong front and support team.

Open Spaces - Try to avoid battle maps that occur in an open plain, or field. These can easily be taken advantage of by more experienced players. This isn't to say never use them. In some stories they can be perfect for setting the scene. However, if we take inspiration from game and cinematic design across various genres we find some commonalities. A clearing with tree cover, a plateau, large caverns, massive tents, ship decks, warehouses, power stations, malls, moving vehicles, train interiors and exteriors, aircraft interiors and exteriors, starship interiors and construction sites are all excellent locations for a fight scene or battle map because they are interactable and add obstacles that can be utilized be anyone involved. Use the architecture, landscape and room design to your benefit. Have a player who is constantly flying high up in open spaces or sniping from a distance? Create smaller rooms, or obstructions that make it difficult to get clear shot once people start moving around. The most common problems in campaigns can often be solved with a slightly different approach to map design.

If you are attempting to craft an effective boss or reoccurring enemy make sure they have a kit of skills, abilities, maneuvers, programs and spells that will make them a worthy adversary for the characters of the story. You want your enemy to be a good fit for the story and characters involved. Have them grow and react as the story does. If the players they are going on adventures, the bad guy should be scheming and executing plans. This can even be in direct response to player action, or biproduct of events set in motion by the players.

Adversary Building

If the main characters consist of talented mages, perhaps have the antagonist be a powerful sorcerer or wizard, capable of more powerful magics. Another option is the you could use a highly skilled assassin, sharpshooter or warrior well kitted out to deal with pesky mages. Suppose the players have chosen a mixed and balanced party? Use an individual or organization with a wide range of skills or abilities. What if the players are all highly skilled rogues? Have them face off against a powerful crime organization, mages guild, corporation or government. You can always counter power main character skills with powerful magic, but make sure to give your antagonist a reasonable limit to their power or give them an obvious or eventually achievable weakness.

Make sure to select antagonist abilities and situations that force or encourage players to use all their best moves. Don't design your enemies or encounters to simply cancel out player abilities. Play off their abilities and give them room and situations that allow them to attempt risky maneuvers. Remember we're all working together to make this as fun, immersive and cinematic as possible. It's more fun when something goes off or fails spectacularly. Be aware of player kits and familiarize yourself with their sheets. If players have developed wash and repeat strategies, try to actively place barriers to those strategies. Nobody wants to watch 20 episodes of people firebombing everything they encounter.

Situational Advantages

If the characters face off against the antagonist, make the situation as advantageous for the antagonist as possible. There's nothing wrong with giving a memorable enemy a situational as well as XP advantage. If they are in their own fortress or lair, give them homefield advantage. A devious or paranoid individual will have traps. alarms, security and escape routes planned in advance. At the same time, try to reward players for knowledge or insight about their antagonists.

If the players are being tracked, followed or watched you can have their enemy ambush, trick or betray them. You can even set up situations so dire that that if players do not retreat when necessary they can be defeated and captured. Allowing for further plot development and interaction with the antagonist as they work on their escape.

Movement

Have your antagonists move and maneuver, actively preserve their lives. Better yet, force the main characters to move in order to preserve their lives. This is an opportunity to show off what your big bad can do. Simply standing in the middle of the room and waiting for the characters to come to them in a barren arena is a somewhat silly power move and should be used sparingly. Such a gesture is a show of power and dominance and will lose its potency of overused. Resulting in a general blandness and monotony to combat situations.

One of the most difficult aspects of managing combat is controlling and tracking details of many creatures in a reasonable amount of time. There are a few different approaches to overcoming this hurdle.

Use Stronger Enemies and Smaller Numbers

One of the easiest solutions to the creature management problem is to simply use less creatures in your fights. Use more XP or a higher level version of an individual creature to increase its threat level. This will reduce the amount of initiatives, turns and actions you will need to perform in order to run combat. Be careful not to make an individual creature too powerful unless that is the scene you are trying to set.

Use Weaker Enemies and Larger Numbers

If you want to use a bunch of enemies in a encounter, try to track them in groups. Roll initiative for each enemy type or function rather than individually. If you're using large numbers of enemies that you want the characters to be able to defeat, make sure that the individual enemies have low HP numbers that the players can dispatch in a single attack or spell. Otherwise they can easily surround and overwhelm the players with creature-walls made of HP. This forces the fight into a stagnant brawl in the center of the room, which slows down pacing and reduces the element of fun in the game.

Balancing

Try to reach a semblance of balance. We want the terrifying monstrosity to nearly defeat the heroes and force them to rally and overcome. We don't want them to defeat the beast effortlessly, nor do we want it to kill the entire cast. Defeating a player in a single attack should be avoided unless the danger of the situations has been foreshadowed. Even so, there should be some means of possible escape for the characters. Terrifying and devastating monsters should be doled out with care. Not every fight needs to one-up the last, some fights exist simply to allow the audience to see how proficient the cast is or has become. Others exist to prove that while the heroes are strong, there are things that even they should hesitate to fight.

Forming Swarms

Swarms are an excellent way to group and manage a large number of small or tiny creatures. While in swarm form they act, move, attack and receive damage as one. This ultimately reduces the amount of work involved in tracking that number of creatures.

Movement - The swarm has a movement speed equal to that of the slowest creature contributing to the swarm. The swarm can occupy the spaces occupied by other creatures and enemies and does not provoke opportunity attacks.

HP - Simply use the sum of their HP and allow them to occupy the same space as other creatures in the swarm. Make a note of the number of creatures in the swarm and the amount of HP each creature in the swarm contributes. When the swarm receives damage equal or exceeding that amount, it should lose a member of the swarm and subsequently decrease the damage it deals.

Attacks - A Swarm can typically attack any and all adjacent creatures or creatures whose spaces it is currently occupying. When the swarm attacks it makes an attack roll or causes a creatures whose space it currently occupies to roll a Saving Throw. The Attack Roll Modifier is equal to the average of the creatures in the swarm. The Saving Throw DC is equal to the Maneuver Save DC average of the swarm's members. If it hits or the target fails the saving throw, it deals an amount of damage equal to the damage die/dice of 1 of their attacks multiplied by one half the number of creatures currently in the smarm. Do not add the the Damage Modifier from strength or dexterity to swarm's Damage Rolls. The damage is whatever type of damage all the swarm creatures can deal. The damage can be divided by the number of creatures the swarm successfully hits with Attacks.

If you are collaborating on a tragedy or even a moment of deep sadness, you should have conversations with your players to make sure they agree with the death of their character and are in a place emotionally where they can accept the end of a character with whom they have spent many real hours and potentially years in game. While this is a game of chance and split second decisions, you control the odds. This is a collaborative game, but you have the most power over the world the characters live in, and thus the highest responsibility.

In the stories we typically seek out, a character death has weight and purpose. A noble sacrifice, a justly deserved death, a moment of weakness; these are all ways that, if done well, the death of a character can add to a story. The senseless end of a character only has a place in certain story genres. Slashers and dungeon crawlers have their place, but it would be a sad world if every story fit into those genres.

Inform or hint through gameplay to your players about powerful abilities, spells or maneuvers the antagonists or enemies possess. If an enemy is preparing for a massive strike or area attack, describe how they are winding up or building arcane energy. For example "The wizard pulls a visible stream of magic from their staff before forcing that energy into a ball in their palm, it begins to glow like the light of a forge. His eyes move from the ball of fire in his palm to you and a smile begins to form on his face."; sounds worlds better than: "The wizard prepares to cast arcane bomb.". A few sentences of description can go a long way and help sell the scene.

Foreshadowing

This gives players a chance to take action or prepare for a difficult situation rather than be blindsided. Any ill preparedness or failure on their parts will then be attributed to their actions, rather than feeling surprising, cheap or out of the blue. For example if the antagonist is a powerful necromancer capable of easily raising the dead, players will feel very differently if they know about his necromantic nature or it was hinted at previously, if for instance, that antagonist leads the characters following them to a graveyard or crypt. With that knowledge they can prepare for, or avoid the trap entirely. Without that knowledge they can only suspect or be blindsided.

Telegraphing

When things happen and they are observable, describe them to players. If the dragon recharges its breath, describe how they can see the light in its chest grow brighter after having briefly dimmed. If the sharpshooter is spending their turn aiming, describe how they seem to have entered a deep state of focus and have steadied and quieted their breathing whilst aiming directly at you. This gives keen characters a chance to react to cues that would be visible in a full production, increasing their immersion and the overall cinematic nature of the game.