Behind the Screen: Desigining a Great Encounter

Over the weekend, things came back around in a big way for our group and we were able to pull off a largely satisfying session. The interesting thing is that the session was centered around a single battle encounter.

It all starts with a plot point

Our players were suffering from a lack of engagement... they weren't able to see any personal tie-in to the larger world around them. So my co-DM and I set out to create a major plot point that would tie the actions of our characters during the first campaign to our current one.

We created a battle encounter that seemed relatively consistent with a few others that we've had during the session, but we added in the presence of a very, VERY evil aligned NPC. They jumped right into the fray, luckily!

And yes, I got to use some suspense and horror!

The encounter took place near dusk, and the spot check to see the baddies was pretty difficult. Luckily, nobody rolled high enough to see the evil NPC behind the standard baddies until they were entrenched in battle. A few more difficult spot checks to make out some important details made them curious, including the fact that she did not engage them in any way.

The NPC was an evil aligned goddess from the Book of Vile Darkness, and the baddies were her underlines that she put out there because she enjoys torture, pain, and inflicted suffering. The characters realized something was up when the baddies would laugh and writhe ecstatically with every successful strike. As they died, a tether would appear connecting their essence to the evil goddess.

This got them all extremely interested in what was going on.

The all encompassing power of flavor description

After the baddies were reduced to less than zero hit points, they were so overcome by their ecstatic pain that they fell to the ground. At this point, the evil goddess would re-assert her dominance and tethered them with a spiked collar that did nothing but break bones and sinew, causing a disgusting series of images for the players and their characters.

Then, one by one, as the characters attacked the goddess they were stopped dead in their tracks, mid-action. The goddess then had a speech explaining the plot as it concerned the characters, and her actions up until this point and the players were all very interested in what she was saying.

In fact, the two note-taking types in our group were writing so furiously I had to stop for a second to tell them I was going to post this talk on the forum that accompanies our game sessions so they could focus on what was being said. They were pleased.

Get to the point already!

The long and short of this story is this: much can be done to create a good encounter by mixing a whole lot of intrigue with a piece of the plot and sprinkle a battle in there liberally.

The session that I described was the first time in my DMing career that the entire group was engaged at some level and the entire night revolved around a single battle oriented encounter. Several of my players told me that the session was extremely good, and I felt extremely good while running it so I'm willing to chalk this one up as a success story.

Special kudos go to my co-DM Kanati, who found said evil goddess and made her speech positively hair-raising!

Why You Don't Really Want Realistic Combat In D&D

When I was growing up, I couldn't get enough sci-fi and fantasy. And the cheesier, the better. I remember many nights at my grandmother's house watching Troma movies until 4am. Most of the things that happened in these movies didn't make a damn bit of sense, but I loved them anyway. I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere between then and now I found myself having more trouble suspending my disbelief when something goofy or unrealistic happens. (Which is kind of tragic, considering I'm a big Star Trek fan!)

I've played D&D a very long time, and for many years I never really gave a second thought to how combat worked. Then I read some passage in the 1st Edition PHB that talked about how a character's hit points reflect a character's toughness and experience in avoiding damage. I thought to myself, that's kinda silly. And doesn't Armor Class handle that sort of thing instead? This trend continued, and I began to notice more and more weird things that just didn't mesh right with how combat actually works.

It must really suck to be an assassin in D&D. Zero-level targets are fine, you can kill them in one shot and sneak off into the night. But to kill a high-level PC.... geez, they'd need 20 minutes and a quiver full of arrows with explosive tips. And for their target to be unconscious already. All this just by virtue of him having enough hitpoints to soak the damage of a single attack.

And come on -- SIX SECONDS for a combat round? Any idiot drunk enough to flail his arms can throw 10 to 12 seperate attacks in six seconds. But what do I know.... maybe that bar down the street is secretly training epic level fighters?

To Kill With One Blow

As we've mentioned on occasion here, all of us here at Stupid Ranger have some martial arts experience. This definitely does not help matters, because we have a lot more experience with hand to hand combat than the average joe. For YEARS, I've thought it silly that punches do nonlethal damage without the Improved Unarmed Combat feat. Sure, a trained person might have an easier time landing a punch, but that doesn't mean some 300lb angry redneck at a bar isn't going to push your off button with a big heymaker. A punch delivered by a skilled person causes a shockwave that can do all sorts of nasty stuff to one's internal organs. I don't doubt in the least that a hard enough punch to the head would kill a man, or at least cause him serious brain damage. (It's getting past that pesky armor class that's the problem.)

The nature of real combat is frequently that one hit does the job, especially if a weapon is involved. The blow might not kill the person outright, but a well-placed hit will end the fight (leaving the victor the option to coup-de-grace, if they so choose). This is what we're taught to do in self-defense, and even when we're sparring little weeny techniques are not counted. The Japanese term we use for this is ikken hissatsu, which means "to kill with one blow".

I always thought it'd be completely awesome to have D&D or a videogame behave realistically in this way. That is, until I came across a game called Bushido Blade on the Playstation back in 1997. This game was all about realistic samurai swordfighting. One hit usually killed your opponent, and if it did not, it injured them somehow. And by "injured", I don't mean "his hitpoints decreased". I mean "his leg doesn't work anymore" or "he lost an arm so he can't swing his sword". As you may have guessed, if you got injured, you were very lucky if you won the fight. And usually the fights lasted about 15 seconds -- 12 of which you spent approaching the opponent.

I thought it was completely amazing for the first half hour or so. Then I alternated between being really bored and impossibly frustrated (depending on how difficult my opponent was). And the matches were over so fast that it became a pain to start the game again and again. In short, it was an amazing idea on paper -- but the execution left much to be desired. Applied to D&D, realistic combat would mean (like Bushido Blade) very few hitpoints or keeping track of injuries and their corresponding effects. And very short battles. And lots, lots more character death -- which is really undesirable for a roleplayer (like me) who invests himself in a character.

Crash

The point of all this is, if combat was realistic in D&D it would be a vastly different beast than it is now. And I can't honestly say it would be more fun. Need another example?

I don't think D&D combat addresses the issue of adrenaline crashes at all. I can spar with Dante all night and usually we're tired but we can go an hour or more and be basically OK. A real battle is a lot different -- the body gives you a real nice hit of adrenaline which helps you out for a minute or so, and then you crash. HARD. While I haven't been in many street fights, tournaments are frequently scary enough to give a lot of competitors the adrenaline crash. You drag butt to the point where you can't breathe and you can't hit anything to save your life. In D&D terms, I would say a CON check or a Fort save is necessary every round or you start getting fatigued.

Would it be fun to have your whole party panting and wheezing with large penalties to hit and saves during a long and protracted battle? Maybe, but I suspect not. The rules for combat have been balanced and they work -- maybe not perfectly all the time, but they make for usually-just-long-enough epic battles. And you don't want some random halfling to sneak up and shiv your 18th level barbarian with his tiny dagger, rupturing his pancreas and killing him in one shot. That would suck. However, if you're playing an assassin -- here's hoping the DM sends you after a zero-level target or likes to waive the standard combat rules for the plot's sake.

Que Sera Sera

After all this, I feel inclined to just suspend my disbelief for awhile, accept that the way the world works in D&D in a little different, and let combat happen. (At least, until my character dies and my rules lawyer decides to start issuing subpoenas!)