Designing an Encounter - Monsters
Header Image: 4e Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 by Wizards of the Coast
Monsters are often the main focus of an encounter and provide much of the challenge and flavor. A monster helps define the flow of the combat, whether because it forces spellcasters to use certain spells or because it gives the chance for martials to shine. Monsters hold a lot of responsibility when it comes to making an interesting encounter, even if they are just used as fodder by an uncaring boss.
But, to make an interesting encounter, it requires more than just difficult to defeat monsters. While the strength and power level of a monster is important in ensuring a challenge, it doesn’t necessarily make it an interesting fight when all most monsters do is just bite, claw, claw. Instead, an interesting encounter requires an understanding of monster roles, the story, and roleplay.
Purpose of the Encounter
Not every encounter is an important event, sometimes the party just needs to kill a few goblins to get to the goblin boss to kindly ask them to stop attacking their village. Each encounter doesn’t need to be a huge affair, but an encounter should be used to drive forward a story and theme.
If the party is fighting through hordes of goblins, you might want to mix that up with other monsters to keep things fresh and exciting. When coming up with monsters, you probably aren’t going to throw a pet-lich among the goblins, as that wouldn’t make much sense in the context of the story. Instead, you might add in owlbears, ogres, or wargs; all creatures that have the potential to be seen with goblins either because they captured them, allied with them, or keep them as pets.
In each of these situations, while it might be an encounter to drain resources, it still allows the GM to show that it’s more than just goblins. That goblins affect more than the characters, that these owlbears are chained up with a damaged coat of feathers from abuse. By adding in new monsters, it gives the party something new to fight and expands on the goblins and their interactions with the world. They don’t co-exist peacefully with nature, but rather take and abuse, forcing them to fight with the threat of abuse behind their words.
Or if they fight with wargs or ogres, it shows that the goblins aren’t alone in their destruction. They have the backing of other creatures who are also interested in seeing the destruction of cities. The inclusion of ogres can be foreshadowing that the goblin boss isn’t the leader, but rather a pawn in another’s scheme with ogres over the goblins, and perhaps over the ogres are giants.
Encounters for Story
Certain key encounters are designed to be more difficult than the average encounter or have higher stakes. These encounters are often done for the story and are important pieces to keep the story moving and the party continuing to the next objective. These encounters should have greater attention put on them and may even tell a small story within the encounter.
Not every story encounter is going to be about fighting the boss, but rather act as important moments for the players to learn something new. One such encounter could be them, for the first time, facing off against an elite goblin hit squad - so the players know that the goblins can be organized and highly dangerous. Another story encounter could be goblins attempting to break into a farmhouse, or the aftermath of them scavenging through the wrecked structure with the farmer bodies left outside to be feasted on by wargs or for the goblin’s supper.
These encounters help tell the story of the goblins, or whatever monster the party is fighting, and offer chances for the party to reaffirm why they are fighting. These encounters are chances for the GM to further expand upon the story they are telling, by showing the deeds of goblins, new alliances the goblins have formed, or foreshadowing that goblins aren’t the deadliest enemies the party will encounter.
Encounters for Resources
The other type of encounters are those simply made to burn through resources before the epic clash between the party and the goblin boss. Some game systems assume a certain amount of resource drain to properly balance fights or perhaps you want the party to have fewer resources going into the final showdown. Then again, random encounters are also useful for draining resources and can provide a greater living world environment for the players.
Even these encounters can be helped by thinking of the monsters and the story you are telling. Having a green dragon show up as a random encounter while the party is trying to defeat goblins can cause a shift in the attention of the party, maybe they think dragons are now behind the efforts of the goblins or they want to spend precious time tracking down a hoard that may or may not exist.
Players take notice of encounters because it channels their focus into a very specific moment, and so they are going to put stock in what encounters they are in. Random encounters or encounters to drain resources should be used to help further the story you are trying to tell without causing the party to head off in the opposite direction on a fool’s errand. When deciding on random or draining encounters, use what the party is already fighting to your benefit. Include monsters that they have fought before or even struggled with at lower levels, not only does this show that their characters are getting stronger but also allows them to further refine their tactics against those creatures.
In addition, not every encounter has to be deadly or hard for the party. These encounters can, while draining them of resources, also allow them an easy win to celebrate and increase the morale of the table. Players want to feel like Big Heroes in the games they play and if every encounter they go against shows them over and over how frail they are, then they lose that feeling of being Big Heroes. Small encounters that don’t threaten the characters but give them chances to show off are great ways to help empower them.
Roles Within an Encounter
Every monster has different abilities and talents. A mage shouldn’t be on the front line of combat, but rather in the back where they can sling spells safely behind a wall of goblins. An ogre with a greatclub isn’t going to be of much use in the backline when they have no range abilities and should be upfront where their pool of hit points can be useful.
Unfortunately for many, not every game is as upfront about what role a monster is designed for as Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition was. 4e specifically stated if a monster was a minion, boss, soldier, skirmisher, lurker, brute, artillery, elite, or a solo threat to a party of a particular level. While you don’t always need to go in such depth, it’s incredibly helpful to know where to place a monster in an encounter and how to use them to their best abilities.
An interesting encounter involves mixing the different roles of monsters so that players are forced to adjust tactics. Minions might swarm across the tanks, focusing on spellcasters, while a blaster runs in and out of the battleground picking and choosing targets. At this moment, does the fighter deal with the weak minions or chase after the true danger? What happens if they don’t deal with the minions who can easily hack their supporting spellcasters to pieces? What happens if they do deal with the minions but have overspent on resources and have a harder time dealing with a tank or blaster who shows up? These moments create tension and drama in a fight, turning it into an interesting moment with hard choices.
Boss
Bosses are powerful creatures, often a level or two higher than the party with minions to help bolster their strength. They are typically the strongest of their horde, but not always as they could be the smartest, the luckiest, or just the most conniving. If they aren’t the most powerful, this is a great way to show the backstory of the creature to the party. That while they weren’t the strongest or most gifted, they had a certain je nais se quois that allowed them to rise to leadership.
Bosses represent a key moment in the story and these encounters should include more thought from the GM about what monsters are there, the terrain, and other elements that can turn the basic fight into an interesting encounter.
Minion
These are small and pitiful creatures that aren’t much of a threat by themselves. When attacking individually, there isn’t much reason to even roll for initiative as they offer no threat to the party. Their real threat is when they come in large numbers at the party, wearing them down by their sheer numbers.
Minions hold true to the saying that quantity has a quality all its own. They are far weaker than the party and are often used as speed bumps to stop the party from simply steamrolling over the boss, forcing the players to divert their attention to different parts of the battlefield. If unchecked, minions can be dangerous from their sheer numbers, but are easily dropped by a well-placed fireball or by a warrior cleaving through monsters.
Blaster
Blasters often focus on dealing damage to a large area at a time, like a dragon’s breath or a spellcaster and cone of cold, or by dealing a lot of damage to a single creature. They often don’t have a huge pool of hit points, unless they are also a boss, and typically only last for a few hits before going down. They have a focus on mobility as they want to run to the front line, unleash on the party, and then run back to avoid being hit.
Blasters are often a hidden threat to the party, either because they can easily sneak through the shadows or because they appear unassuming at first. This is especially true for blasters who don’t also double as bosses. Dragons are easy to see as a big threat, but what about a spellcaster supporting a boss? Should the spellcaster be free to drop fireballs or, at lower levels, burning hands while the boss is dealt with? What about an assassin that can easily sneak around the party’s strongest fighters and suddenly get the drop on a ranged character?
With a focus on damage, blasters are dangerous to have a lot on as they can easily deal more damage than the party can keep up with. Unless the blasters are of a much lower level than the party, there should only be one or two on the field.
Controller
Not often seen simply because they lack some of the danger that other monsters are capable of presenting. Controllers don’t focus on death and damage, but slowing down heroes, tangling them up inside a maze or simply making the encounter harder for the opposing side to navigate. Because they lack raw power, they rely on other monsters to tank hits or deliver damage, and thus are never encountered by themselves.
Controllers stick to the edges of the battle, dropping debuffing effects on their enemies or by granting their allies bonuses. They may get overlooked at the beginning of the fight, that is until the heroes realize that the fight is far easier if they weren’t constantly being hampered by a controller monster.
Typically an encounter only ever needs one controller, and they make the perfect boss. By barking commands, dropping grease spells, and granting bonuses to their minions; they can stick to the sidelines while everyone else gets themselves killed.
Ranged
These monsters specialize in hanging in the back while minions and tanks throw themselves into melee. They often have a wide variety of abilities they can use from afar and do everything they can to avoid a face-to-face confrontation. Due to distance, it can be difficult to reach them as they pepper heroes with arrows, magic missile spells, or hurling insults. Once they are in melee, their options are more limited and they may spend their entire turn attempting to escape instead of attacking, making it so they lose their effectiveness.
These monsters don’t only appear when they have a tank, but also when there is a natural obstacle that allows them to surprise their enemies. If there is a large fissure in the ground that cuts off one side of the room from the other, they’ll launch an attack. They rely on their excellent ranged capabilities while their opponents attempt to jump the gap or try to climb to their location. By the time their opponents reach their position, they’ve already moved back to a new defensive position while their allies sweep in to protect them.
Tank
Some monster's best features are simply they have a pool of hit points or a high armor class. Their very existence is to take hits, and potentially deliver their nasty hits while in melee. They are used as a line of defense for bosses, blasters, and anyone else that doesn’t want to get hit in the face.
Tanks are only useful though if there are enough of them to stop the flow of heroes from overwhelming their allies. If a single tank is standing in the middle of a big room, they are completely ineffectual as their enemies can simply skirt around them, forcing the tank to lumber after them. They work best in tight corridors where it can be punishing to move past them or in larger spaces when they have minions and other tanks to help close any gaps, forcing the party to find a hole in their defense or move in a specific way that the monsters want.
Roleplaying in an Encounter
Encounters should offer more than just hitting and striking. There should be moments where the GM can break the fourth wall and inform a player that their character is now being targeted by #4 because they killed #3, the best friend of #4. Even if the player is never given names, they are given motivations by their enemies and can even assign emotions to plastic miniatures that they wouldn’t have before.
It also gives them moments where they can seize that and try to calm down an enemy. The players aren’t in the fiction where they can see anger in a monster’s face, and so the GM should offer small details of expression and emotion to the players when describing the actions the monsters are taking.
These roleplaying moments aren’t just limited to basic emotions, but can also be used as suggestions where it is dangerous to move through the terrain. If the minions all avoid a certain area on a battlefield, the players could be suspicious that there is a trap waiting for them. If the minions all rush past the frontline, at great danger to themselves, for spellcasters, it could show signs that there is a strategy being handed out to the goblins. Or perhaps the kobolds see a gnome and their innate hatred of that ancestry makes them blind to other threats around them.
Themes
Encounters have themes, and breaking that theme causes players to focus on the strange detail. If all they have been fighting for encounter after encounter are goblins, and they suddenly find themselves facing against an ogre - that surprise at a new enemy is enough to make them curious. Why is there suddenly an ogre? What is the foreshadowing there? Or what if you added in a kobold in a group of goblins, are they now led to believe that goblins and kobolds are working together?
Themes also help restrict what enemies you can add to a fight. Instead of just adding in whatever monster you just recently heard about, you are forced to use monsters that make sense in the encounter. Instead of adding in a vampire while the party is fighting werewolves just because you thought it would be cool, sticking to the theme of therianthropy means that you are going to keep the world realistic and sensical for your players. You could add in wereboars, wererats, or other therianthropes alongside the lycanthropes because they fit the theme. You wouldn’t add in pixies and dragons without very good reason because they don’t fit the theme and you are not trying to confuse players about the story they are engaging in.
That isn’t to say you can’t break the theme when creating encounters. Maybe you have a very good reason why there is a pixie with the therianthropes and it's because the pixie is a messenger between them and the faerie plane. The pixie acts as foreshadowing that the party is going to have to one day travel to the faerie plane to defeat Viktor Mazan, the werewolf leader of the therianthropes of Brokenstone Vale.
Are the Monsters Prepared?
Another consideration for encounters and the monsters in them is just how prepared are they for the heroes. This isn’t just about surprise rounds but also tactics. If the goblins had never heard of the heroes, they might be surprised when the wizard unleashes fire. Then again, if the party has fought them multiple times, the goblins might have specific orders to kill the magic-user and let the ogre deal with the fighter. The more that the party fights groups, the tactics should slowly begin to adjust to best fight against the party. As their skills are better understood, the goblin horde should be adjusting their tactics to deal with the growing threat.
Then again, what does happen if the monsters are surprised? If the party gets the jump on the monsters, describe their first turns as drawing swords or spending their turn affixing shields. Give the players the chance to feel like they really did get the drop on the goblins by not having an orderly fight. Maybe the goblin tank is in the back of the room and is trying to push to the front. Maybe all the spellcasters are in the front line and attempt to flee to the backline where they can hide behind their allies. There should be chaos when the monsters are unprepared for an attack.
Do Monsters Surrender?
Not every monster is willing to fight to the death, some will attempt to flee, others may attempt to surrender. When the boss is killed, how many minions are willing to stick around to be slaughtered as well? They only stuck around because they were scared of the boss, with that entities’ death, what holds them here? In a panic, they may do stupid things like flee without properly disengaging in the hopes of outrunning their enemy.
Then again, maybe one of the goblins announces that they are the new boss, at which point the goblins then turn on each other and begin fighting the party and themselves so they can claim rule.
If a monster does surrender, it shouldn’t mean they have all the secrets of the boss or their organization. They may only have their orders or been forced to fight. This should be a chance to provide exposition to the party that they dictate, and allows you to make the world larger than it was previously. If the goblin talks about how they came from the Far Mountains in the Distant Lands, it gives the party an idea that this is far-reaching than just Their Kingdom. It can be used to smartly foreshadow coming events, like the goblin could describe the Tall Ones who they saw give orders to their boss, who in turn gave their orders to the goblin in question.
Surrendering monsters isn’t just a chance to be realistic but to impart the story of the encounter and allow the heroes to learn about future encounters that they might face.
Putting It Together
Encounters are more than just about moving up to a creature and wailing on them. An encounter should be used to help further the overarching story, add details to the world, or simply to allow the heroes to feel powerful. Random encounters don’t just have to be filler to drain resources, but as a way to expand the world and the dangers within it, or to bring about new roleplaying moments where the party can reaffirm their desire to defeat the monsters or protect their homes.
Once in an encounter, monsters should be given different roles. Some will rush forward while others rush backward. Each monster understands what they are best at and will capitalize on what they do best. A frail spellcaster won’t throw themselves into the frontline without a very good plan on what they are planning to do next.
As the encounter continues, this is the time where emotions can be inserted onto generic goblin #4. The time where the party can see infighting as a goblin backstabs another or leaves them to die when they scamper away.
Every encounter is different, and by giving the monsters themes, roles, and exposition, you can turn a slugfest into an interesting encounter with decisions and challenges. If you are looking for more inspiration in creating encounters, check out our post on how to use the terrain!
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