How much does the environment affect combat in your games? Often I hear it said that a way to keep my fight scenes fresh and interesting is to add interesting elements to the terrain. Routinely my PCs engage their foes in swamps or forests, or in dungeon type locations.
Have you ever actually read through the rules for many of these locations? Forest terrain for example is either Sparse, Medium or Dense in its concentration of trees and foliage. Any square in Medium or Dense forest has a good chance of being obscured by some kind of obstacle or Difficult Terrain. Foes can be detected anywhere from 3d6 x 10' in Sparse areas to only 2d6 x 10' in Dense.
Playing by the rules, in an area of Medium forest, its likely that an overland traveling party is moving half-speed, or slower if they're using Stealth or hunting/tracking. Based on average rolls they don't notice any foes until they are within 90' of said foes. Barring special abilities or spells these PCs are at -2/10' for non-visual Perception checks, meaning if they can see 80' with Low Light vision the first 10' is at no penalty, the next 70' suffers a -1/10' and the final 10' as they strain their hearing is at a -18 penalty.
If they have to pass through squares of undergrowth or trees, there's no running or charging. Ranged attacks have to deal with Cover and Concealment which is everywhere. There are potential Low Obstacles such as mossy boulders, fallen logs, bent branches etc throughout the landscape. All of these elements seem like interesting, if not challenging affects to heap on your players' shoulders.
But consider the bad guys.
The action economy of the game suggests that it is poor fight design to put a single attacker against a team of PCs. In order to not overload the PCs with difficulty/lethality, multiple opponents are usually lower CR than their APL. This means that the individual monsters/foes are significantly weaker than each PC. This also means that, unless you add +1CR to the fight for the bad guys being suited to an environment the PCs are not, these enemies are just as penalized by the terrain as the party is.
I often find myself ignoring some of the environmental effects just to give the bad guys a fighting chance. Other times I tack on the +1CR and adapt the foes to the terrain but this limits my budget a tad for "buying" monsters or it pumps the CR higher than I want it to be. I even tried adding in a magic item one villain was using to navigate the terrain but this ended up being almost the entire treasure for the fight scene.
Please discuss how you add challenging environments to your fights without hamstringing the bad guys?
From my experience, the most rewarding fights are when a (lower level) party fights against a similar number of enemies in a dynamic environment. Preferable 2-3 fights like these in waves, where the party is really challenged to balance their resources and partially use their characters in ways that they are not optimized for.
On many occasions I have included several specific obstacles/elevation changes/traps/ to the battlefields that all have respective benefits or drawbacks.
I even make up special rules for these sometimes. I once had a a waterwheel in a mill with essentially two open floors.
o While inside the wheel you gained partial cover from the water spilling over, but you also took a -2 to ranged attacks from standing on a moving base.
o Using a single move action and a Climb check to grab a hold of one side of the wheel allowed a character to ascend to the second level in one turn without having to run around the stairs. Up there they were treated with higher ground bonuses.
o If someone moved adjacent to the spending side of the wheel there was a % chance that the wheel caught their gear and attempts to drag them under with a CMB roll. If bull rushed or moved into that space then the CMB gets +5.
I described the wheel, benefits, and hazards to them via flavor though (not exactly all the numerical bonuses) and to my great pleasure, the party forced a cultist into the wheel who was dragged under and drowned.
But obviously... the bad guys didn't need intuition, they knew all the benefits of each position. Sometimes the bad guys even set up bear traps, or trip wires, nets etc.
The trick is to simply point out and specify certain things for free if you want your PCs to realistically use them. Sometimes maps can be hard to interpret or players are busy looking over spell/feat options. I used to force players to discover the uses of these elements on their own via Perception and other skills, but then they often were overlooked.
If you want your players to tactically utilize their environment just like your monsters can (I love when mine do) then its best to just say "Okay here is a large statue, there's a ladder over here, a slick oil patch right here, and dense bushes right there".
The simple changes make the biggest difference, it doesn't need to be complex, it just needs to almost always have something:
A 10' wide corridor, so that trying to circle around to flanking is challenging.
A staircase for giants, DC 5 climb, with archers at the top.
a river a lava splitting the battlefield.
10' of Sewer water separates you, the mad alchemist stands beside a rope bridge that crosses it.
The harpy archers hover above you firing arrows.
The ranger stands across the shallow stream firing arrows his gator companion hides in the water, unseen.
The monks have flipped over the tables making impromptu barrackades.
The pirate ship has secured itself and dropped boarding planks making two choke points, that can be defended.
And then having a very complex fight every once in a while. Underwater combat against an underwater foe. Rust monsters in a underground tunnel supported by iron columns.
Mark Hoover 330 wrote: a way to keep my fight scenes fresh and interesting
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these enemies are just as penalized by the terrain as the party is
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I often find myself ignoring some of the environmental effects just to give the bad guys a fighting chance.
If your goal is fresh and interesting supposedly are you not making it more challenging, just making it feel different. So both sides being penalized is what you want (the level of 'challenge' is the same, but accomplishing it is different meaning some go-to tactics might not work.)
If the bad guys would have a fighting chance on a featureless plain, but don't in the new terrain that says to me one of two things is happening.
1) The terrain is actually particular unsuitable for them (perhaps a reduction in challenge rating for it would be appropriate)
2) They are less effective at adapting their tactics to the difficulties than the PCs are. This might be a result of the PCs having more powers available, but it is quite possibly the result of the players concentrating more on the how to overcome the challenges than the GM is on how the bad guys would overcome the challenges.
DJ Ustus: I think #2 is the most appropriate answer to my poor GMing skills. One thing I'm lamenting here is the CR system though. For an "average" or APL = CR fight, a group of 4 Level 6 PCs require a CR 6 threat. On a flat, open plain, with no terrain hindrance for either side, this means a single CR 6 monster, 2 CR 4, or more monsters at even lower CRs.
PCs are already weighted to defeat these monsters in straight up combat. Presumably they have optimized for combat; I also run games with rolled stats that often work out higher than a 20 pt buy, but monsters in general are built around PCs with a 15 pt buy. In short, they SHOULD defeat these monsters.
In order to make things more interesting I change the open plain into a swampy forest. There's a couple ponds occupying some squares, Light and Heavy trees in others and low obstacles like stands of marsh grass or reeds, tree stumps, or mossy rocks. However the group of PCs has a number of spells, abilities and consumable items to help them ignore or minimize the penalty from their environment.
I'm either "buying" monsters that are native to the swamp and have some Movement type or special ability that similarly allows them to ignore the penalties of the terrain, to keep them as free to enter combat as the PCs, but this increases the CR by the rules of the game, or I have a fight which is already weighted in the PCs' favor where the bad guys suffer from the "interesting" terrain elements I threw in while the PCs continue unhindered.
In short; I need to get better at planning combats.
Archie up thread mentioned waves of foes. I think that's another thing I need to get better at. I don't want to overwhelm my players or their characters, just make fight scenes interesting. However when my now APL 7 group is wandering around swamps, forests and caves, with Darkvision, Boots of the Mire, and so on, and one-shotting mixed groups of monsters and evil humanoids regardless of the terrain, I can see boredom starting to set in on all of us.
On the other hand, if I have the PCs pass through an ambush spot in the woods and get into it with wave after wave of gnolls, dire hyenas, and brown mold-ridden skeletons, even if each "wave" is only CR 6 to the party's APL 7, isn't that like putting them against one super-high CR?
Getting back to Mr David however I'd like to answer one other thing. I really am not looking to use terrain or environment specifically to increase the CR or difficulty against the PCs. I'm looking to make my players actually engage with the fight scenes and have fun instead of how they sort of blithely call off initiatives, movement, and attack/damage rolls which is what is happening now.
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Try creating a few encounters without any consideration for APL or CRs. Just make what you think will be interesting, at the challenge level you want and for whatever terrain you think will be fun. After you run the encounters and if/when they meet your expectations calculate the CR by the rules. When you have a few of these compare those encounter CRs to your groups APL. Hopefully that will give you a better idea of how your group and your GM style meet up with the expected values. Don't get too locked in on a calculated CR. The whole CR system has a whole lot of 'art' involved particularly as the PC levels increase, how equipment/abilities match up and party composition all meet. Maybe between your groups optimization and play style with your GMing style their middle ground is more like CR+2 or +3 or whatever and to get a "CR+2" for your unique group the 'real, i.e. calculated' CR will be CR+4 or +5. Balance and craft the encounters for the challenge you want then worry about the CR.
One thing to remember is that the CR system is just a guideline, and it is in fact expecting 15 point buy characters. If your PCs are tougher than expected, it is perfectly fine to make the bad guys tougher as well (and you aren't obligated to give out more EXP as a result.) If it takes and extra monster or two, or the advanced template to create an 'average' challenge for the PCs (one that they win handily, but not effortlessly) then that is what you need to do.
Being 'suited' for an environment where the PCs are not is, I think, more than having one minor ability that works with it. Aquatic creatures in the water, fire creatures in an area with constant fire damage, thing like that are what I think of. I wouldn't give a +1 CR to an encounter because it was in a swamp and the bad guys had swamp stride (of course level plays a factor in this too, at first level maybe they would get that +1 CR, but at 10th or 20th just swamp stride in a swamp isn't going to change the challenge.)
As for wave attacks, they can be tricky. Assuming one wave arrives as the last is dealt with each individual wave is pretty easy, but of course the fact that they keep coming can be a challenge. Particularly parties that depend on out of combat healing (which I am a fan of) can end up having to really pull out the stops. That said, 5 waves of 5 creatures is no where near as much of a challenge is if all 25 of those creatures showed up at once. If I was to 'math' it out, my gut would be that after every 3rd wave or so would be something like a +1 CR, so assuming our waves are CR 6, the example above would be five encounters CR6 CR6 CR6 CR7 CR7. Nothing a APL7 party shouldn't be able to handle, but those five back to back encounters should have taken their resources down quite a bit and leave them knowing they had been in a fight (one good thing about this method, is that if you miscalculate and realize they are on their last legs at wave 4, you can just have wave 5 not show up, and if after wave 5 they are still going strong maybe a 6th or even 7th can appear)
I think something to consider here is that, the CR system is just a guide.
And at least with Pathfinder, my experience is that it's pretty far off (as opposed to Starfinder which is much more accurate).
For my group, CR+3 encounters is about where they start to be challenging.
So I strongly suggest not worrying about enemy CR vs party CR and instead just striking the balance of making the fight to be approximately as challenging as you intend. An "average" encounter is supposed to use about 25% of daily resources. If the party isn't using at least that many resources, then it's not an "average" challenge encounter.
To that extent, I will use terrain to tip a battle a little more in favor of NPCs without raising their level.
My group also doesn't use XP for level, we level by plot, so we don't worry about how much experience should or shouldn't be granted for the fight. We know to level when the GM tells us to.
So all of these things factor in, but I definitely like fights that use terrain against the PCs because it often makes the fights more interesting.
I've GM'd PF for a decade; in that time I've successfully run 2 "wave" encounters. Ironically both involved what I'd consider "interesting" terrain.
One was a challenging boss fight for a group of level 1 PCs. The fight took place in a dungeon chamber draped with spider webs. These squares narrowed where the party could move. The main villain began the fight as a medium humanoid with some druid abilities. After he was defeated the so-called "swarm lord" dissolved into a single swarm of creepy crawlies, using the webbing to expand it's Reach and Space. After the swarm was beaten, predictably by using fire on some of the webs, the walls crumbled a bit showing 2 "hives" that were regenerating the humanoid form of the creature. They also threatened to vomit more swarms as well. The PCs had to use their remaining powers and flaming oil to remove these so that the creature couldn't return. Of course, this caused enough structural damage that the dungeon room began to collapse...
The second was for level 3 PCs. They came down a double flight of steps in a dungeon to find a long, 10' wide hallway with tons of ossuary (bones and skulls) art on the walls and floor. A short way down to either side were crypts; niches in the walls with bones interred, vaulted in brick with wrought iron fencing as well.
After the PCs hit the main floor they realized that numerous squares ahead and in the crypts featured bones that were broken; these counted as caltrops. The skulls around them animated, creating a swarm of those Tiny sized floating head undead. As the party fought to deal with the swarm in their midst, bones moved independently through the bars of the vaults to reassemble as skeletons. These creatures ignored the damage from the caltrops (DR 5/Bludgeoning) and moved about freely, attacking the PCs on the periphery of the swarm. The final wave of bones at the far end formed a pair of giant, scythe-wielding skeletons guarding the door at the far end; they'd break apart and move back into their crypts, regenerate, then full-round action to re-emerge.
Those sound cool on paper but they were a real chore for me to run. The skeleton one is still touted as one of my more cruel fights, because of the skeletal regeneration. I find myself constantly trying to thread the needle between challenging my players and giving the tacticians and optimizers some fun and utterly frustrating all of my players with a fight they think is just me being a killer GM.
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