Three months ago, I wrote about some initial combat lessons, that I would try to put into practice. Running a game for a party of seven is difficult at the best of times, but combat has been the hardest part for me over the past four months. Everyone was telling me that they enjoyed the fights, enjoyed the anticipation and the planning, and then getting to put their plans into action to absolutely smash the enemies. But it wasn’t as fun for me when my monsters didn’t get to use all their abilities because they died too quickly. So, last week, I asked for combat advice – everyone I play with also runs games.

The advice came down to a few things: More Hit Points for the monsters, Don’t be afraid to have a big first round of their most powerful abilities, and Bring on the combat in waves.

Hit Points

The various monster manuals always list an monster’s hit point in two ways, a number and an expression of their hit dice. Example, a medusa is: 127 (17d8 + 51). So, in a regular sized group, you might take the 127 hit points, the average of a roll of the hit dice, and settle for that. In my case, I have generally been doing the math and giving the monster maximum hit points and then rounding off to a nice even number for my group that is twice the normal size. For my medusa (which, you’ll remember, they didn’t fight), the math puts max hp at 187, so mine had 200HP, in case it became a fight. 

For my monsters this week, one monster mathed out to 350HP max and the other around 150HP. For the larger monster, I was having the party fight two of them, with possible second wave of smaller versions, and to prevent it becoming a damage slog, I left it alone at those max HP. For the second fight, they were fighting three of the smaller monsters, and my party has proven they can take down a 150HP monster in a single round, heck, one member can put out that much damage on their turn if they roll well enough and action surge. So, for these, I upped their HP to 200 each, as well as having a second wave of a different enemy. This worked out well, and the final blows felt earned in both fights.

Alpha Strike

In the case of both of these fights, I went for something that had worked for me in the past. Having monsters with a rechargeable Area of Effect ability is a great fight starter. This time, unlike in the past, however. I let all monsters present use this ability all at once. A true alpha strike against the party. Now, my party, due to item choice at the outset of the campaign, cannot be surprised. So, the first fight was with burrowing monsters who were able to position themselves how I wanted before rolling initiative. The second fight was with flying monsters who can move very quickly. I did not win initiative in either fight, but it did not matter, since I was able to maneuver the enemies into advantageous positions to make their breath weapons effective against the entire, or nearly entire party in both fights. My secondary waves also had AOE abilities, though far less effective against the party, but still a good opening to remind them the fight was not over.

This isn’t just about getting to do a bunch of damage, though. This party has a lot of healers and a lot of healing potions. Not to mention an artificer who has a temporary hit points bot in nearly every fight. These devastating attacks at the very beginning of the battles meant that the fight was challenging for everyone. It kept them engaged and aware of each other, it made the danger real. In many fights the party was taking basically no damage thanks to renewed Temp HP each round. That did not happen in this fight. The Temp HP bot was just part of the many mechanisms keeping them alive. The player also had to make choices about who got the Temps in these fights because the setting was the wide open space of a desert, instead of a compact dungeon room. The healers had to balance attacking with healing, and there was a very real threat of death if they did not work together and keep dialed in. It made the fights fun for the whole table, not just the major damage dealing PCs.

Combat Waves

The advice from my player-DMs was: If the fight is going too quickly, bring on another wave of baddies. A lot of the fights the group gets into are hunts they’ve been sent on, and I generally have already upped the number of monsters. Their contract is usually for the Challenge Rating appropriate number of monsters, but then I add more, sometimes up to doubling it, just to make it more challenging. So, having already upped the number of combatants, I generally don’t then bring on another set of monsters. Often it wouldn’t make sense, or, in once case, they snuck away so skillfully that the other monsters I planned on didn’t find them. But, I wanted to give it a try this week.

Initially, I thought of using the two monsters I talked about above all in one fight. Then the players specifically asked for hunting missions to get more cash. So, I split them up into two fights and looked for appropriate second wave monsters. The initial fights went so well, that my second waves didn’t go as planned, but I still wanted the flavor they added.

Big monster fight, I planned to bring on two young monsters after a few rounds. Due to the state of the party, I ended up just bringing in one young monster to finish out the fight. It got to do some fun ability stuff, and nearly swallow a PC, but the beleaguered party was able to deal with it and finish out the fight, exhausted, but alive.

Smaller monster fight, were constructs made of souls. Three souls per construct, to be exact. And I wanted those souls to rise up and fight the party when the construct fell. Two issues arose from this. One, I couldn’t find the perfect monster template to use for this, so I ended up just using Ghosts. Two, the party was so destroyed by the initial fight, I ended up only raising one ghost per downed construct. It was late in the night by this point as well, so I was tired and didn’t use the ghosts to their full potential, but, again, I think it was a good exclamation point on the end of the fight.

All in all, this advice served me well this week. I had a good time, I felt my monsters put up a good fight. The party had fun fighting and nearly, but not, dying. I never enter a fight wanting to kill the PCs, but when they put themselves in these situations, I want them to feel the closeness of it. When they get back to town, they will be purchasing diamonds. They are of a level where death doesn’t have to be permanent, but on this particular outing, they were not prepared to fend it off had it occurred.