One of the biggest parts of Dungeons & Dragons is combat — this roleplaying game literally started out as a war game first. So, an important task for every DM is to ensure that combat will be engaging throughout their sessions. Luckily, there are many monsters you can use to make your games more dynamic.
Still, what if most of these were already used? Or what if most of your players are veterans and used to the Monster Manual and its tricks? Instead of having you and your players take turns in saying “I attack,” you can offer different types of challenges for them.
Alternative Winning Methods
Do More Than Zeroing The Enemy’s Health
Now, we won’t get into too many specifics since we’ve already written about this, but whether you’ll go with one of our ideas or something else, changing the victory conditions is a fun way to make combat more engaging.
Things such as escaping the boss, making them vulnerable to damage, or outsmarting them in some way are fun concepts that turn the core concept of combat into something different and unique, allowing for some fun encounters to happen.
Specific Death Conditions
Use The Entry Above And Still Keep A Deadly Encounter
Diving even deeper, you can still keep the concept of a fight going normally, where the key idea is to zero the boss’s hit points, but you can give them an ability that every time their health reaches zero, it turns into one hit point instead.
Then, to actually defeat them, the killing move has to be something specific. Maybe a special weapon related to the narrative, or a specific damage type, needs to be used for the killing blow, or they need to undo whatever magic is preventing the boss from dying.
Use Strong Conditions
Add A Ticking Clock To The Fight
Instead of having abilities that hurt your party, you can do things that slowly give them conditions. If they don’t eliminate the enemy soon, they might become stunned, paralyzed, or worse, petrified. Maybe the condition gets worse every few turns, and the enemy doesn’t need to cause a single hit point of damage.
Alternatively, you can use the best condition for this trick: Exhaustion. Something like an enemy that forces players to start dancing against their will or something tiring, and if they don’t free themselves and beat the enemy, they’ll exhaust themselves to death. Like the others, you’re not causing damage at all, and due to how exhaustion works, this encounter is as deadly as actually hitting them would be.
You can control the difficulty by how many rounds it takes for them to get one point of exhaustion.
Charged Attacks
Hurt Them Bad
If you still want to cause damage, a nice idea is to do something similar to our entry above, but with actual attacks. You can create this massive attack that is an instant hit and will cause a lot of damage to one (or all) player characters in one swoop.
To balance that out, the enemy has to charge this attack, taking one, two, or even three turns before this attack is ready to go. You can narrate as the energy around them gets stronger, and your players can choose how to deal with this, from finding a safe place to get full cover, killing the enemy before they can perform this attack, or maybe causing a condition, like stunning, that will make the charging process stop.
Shared Damage
One For All
Another trick you can pull is using a narrative gimmick that intertwines the party, and then, whenever one of them takes damage, everybody does. With this trick, every player will need to be extra careful during the big fight and protect the one with the lowest AC or saving throws.
Because everyone will take this damage, we recommend ensuring that your boss (or multiple enemies) doesn’t hit particularly hard, as that might make the encounter difficult. Low damage with a decent chance to hit, and having attacks that revolve both on attack rolls or enforcing saving throws, is already enough to make this combat interesting.
Alternatively, you can link the party to a friendly-but-weak NPC, so the party needs to protect this person or take damage, too.
Multiplication
All For One
What if the enemies share a health bar? You can have one monster that, along with all its combat features, can multiply. They can do this whenever, when they reach a certain amount of hit points, through narrative conditions, your call.
A boss turning into multiple is certainly a powerful trick to keep the players on their toes. To ensure things won’t get out of hand, all versions of the boss maintain the same health bar, so the main boss always takes damage. You can even have them share conditions, and if the players notice that during the fight, they could really turn the tide by paralyzing all copies with a single Hold Person or similar.
Environmental Control
Mess With The Terrain
Something that is both interesting and overlooked is the environment. Whether you’re adding particular hazards or just changing how the battlefield looks from time to time, it will already make your encounters a lot more dynamic.
That said, what if your boss has power over the environment? Their spells and abilities can leave lingering effects on the place they used, from damage to conditions, or you can create some weird scenario where they can literally control the place, such as shrinking the area, elevating or lowering the ground, among other things.
Copycat
Hit Them As They’d Hit You
For this one, it’s preferable if you have a copy of the party’s sheets. The key idea here is that the boss has only one ability: the power to mimic someone else’s abilities. Then, each fight (or maybe even round), what they’ll do is completely different, and a copy of one of the player’s abilities.
For a more strategic character, you can choose who you’re copying at the start of the round, or, if you want to be more chaotic, you can roll a dice to decide who you’re copying or copy the last person who hit you.
If you want to add some challenge, you can homebrew an NPC who has access to multiple of their abilities at the same time (we don’t recommend all of them, though, as it might get too tough).
Multiple Phases
Show Them Your Final Form
A common tactic in video games, adding a second phase to your encounter, is a popular and effective strategy. Your monster can get a few buffs, new abilities, or others when the phase changes, allowing you to spice things up during the fight itself.
You can even mix the ideas here or use different winning methods between phases, with the first part being about destroying a shield around the boss to be able to harm them, and the second phase being about actually kicking their butt. This concept can go many different ways.
High Mobility
Think With Portals
Enemies who are capable of teleporting or moving without causing opportunity attacks are already a thing in the Monster Manual, but you can turn this concept up a notch by making these abilities stronger.
An enemy that is just capable of going nearly anywhere on the battlefield — whether it’s teleporting x feet away, traversing through shadows, etc. — will cause a complex fight where the characters need to ensure they’ll stay in place so they can beat them. You can also give this character perks against ranged attacks, so even your ranged martials and spellcasters will have a hard time, such as deflecting projectiles.
- Original Release Date
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1974
- Player Count
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2+
- Length per Game
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From 60 minutes to hours on end.
- Age Recommendation
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12+ (though younger can play and enjoy)
- Franchise Name
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Dungeons & Dragons
- Publishing Co
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Wizards of the Coast