As long as it is foreshadowed in the description of the environment, players should somewhat expect it. And, if you are already using difficult terrain, high ground rules, and traps... then the players are probably used to looking for such things already. You don't want it to seem forced.
That chilly breeze and rolling fog... yeah, the fog that was over there is now over here... reduce vision accordingly.
That steep hill with exposed rocks and crumbling dirt probably has some surprises for you should you try climb it.
Things like flash floods and sinkholes are "rocks fall, party dies" territory, and should probably be avoided.
...something hit me that, in ALL the years of running games in 3x and PF1 never occurred to me...
Yeah, he'll do that. He may be an obnoxious, arrogant weirdo, but he has a way of breaking things down and revealing some absolutely vital stuff at the ground level.
As far as making combat specifically dynamic, I would of course recommend taking a look at his articles on combat. But to the question at hand:
Let's continue with your gnoll knoll example.
First, there are the things that can apply pretty much anywhere. Rain, high winds, darkness or even the glare from a noonday sun--really just weather and time of day.
Not the most dynamic on their own, but what about a thunderstorm with gusts of strong wind? The intrepid heroes, hiding behind a broken wall, waiting for the wind to die down long enough to give them a clear shot, or waiting for it to kick back up to dart out from cover and advance up the slope
Then, there's basic stuff that could apply to this specific hillside. Thickets of brambles or thistle--difficult terrain that can cause minor damage, maybe like caltrops?
A scree slope is a classic--dont forget that climbing up a steep hill costs extra movement, so difficult terrain on top of that could be extra painful, and difficult terrain that could potentially shove you backwards and/or knock you prone even worse.
I think the key here is to offer choices, but not to make them simple numbers-games. Do you want to trying hiking up the side of the hill in the pouring rain? It's the most direct route, but it's all open ground, and the footing is trecherous.
You could make your way up the westward side; it'll take longer, but the ground is more stable and there's cover from ruined tower. Then again, there are more guards that way, and they could even try pushing chunks of broken masonry down on top of you. Or there's the southern side, but that's an 130ft climb up a sheer face of mud and falling water that ends in a 115° overhang.
You can easily get into crazy levels of detail with this sort of thing until it becomes overburdened and unwieldy. But honestly, this is a big reason I don't do much high-level play; with the amount of variation I can introduce into every encounter, my players of two decades still aren't bored of lvl3 characters fighting hobgoblins, gnolls and ogres. Because it's just *so different* and *so engaging* every time.
Finally, I would consider elements that go well beyond the concept of the grassy hill. Is the hill in a haunted cemetery or perhaps a burial mound in it's own right? Maybe our heroes need to fight off zombies and gnolls. Or maybe, with a little luck and know-how, they can turn some ghouls or wights against the gnolls.
Maybe it's in a swamp? Sawgrass and clouds of gnats, knee-deep oozing muck, the works.
How about a peat bog? Maybe the hill is the only solid ground here; everything else is a mat of roots and moss and rotting plants, floating over a lake the color of strong tea. Fall through, and it may not be a matter of how strong a swimmer you are or how much rope your friends are carrying. Not if you can't find your way back to the surface. At that point, the bog itself is probably more dangerous than the gnolls.
For everything, I try to keep the mechanics as simple as possible. Slipped on some shifting gravel? Prone. Slippery mud? Follow the rules for icy surfaces.. A nest of angry yellowjackets? Perception to notice, Knowledge (nature) to identify, Reflex to avoid. Etc.
As far as dynamic or passive - This is not actually true as this is a game with narrative elements.
I would say that the narrative elements are entirely separate from the mechanical ones, and that juggling the two so they compliment each other as much a possible and interfere with each other as little as possible is one of the more important aspects of being a good GM.
As to the dynamic vs. passive concept, I didn't get that from reading those articles at all. When something is dynamic, it is constantly changing and active. It is absolutely harder to make encounters that don't involve combat dynamic (and even more so if there isn't some kind of social interaction, either), but definitely not impossible.On game challenges- ...
Struggling to see what you're saying, here. I think I like the first part, about constraints and self-constraints, but I'm not sure I follow the rest.
I consider a river a passive challenge.
Having things ready to Bull Rush characters into the river provides a dynamic challenge.
Passive challenges are going to come down to skill checks, or saves against environmental factors.
Dynamic challenges involve characters in combat, still needing to be aware of environmental hazards.
Like the deck of a ship... Wind can push you off. Waves can push you off. The enemy can push you off.
Now the ship is on fire, but you are still fighting zombie pirates... or whatever.
Not allowing the players to get tunnel vision, all laser focused on the enemy where they exist separate from the environment. Put the environment in their way... literally.
I consider a river a passive challenge.
Having things ready to Bull Rush characters into the river provides a dynamic challenge.
Passive challenges are going to come down to skill checks, or saves against environmental factors.
Dynamic challenges involve characters in combat, still needing to be aware of environmental hazards.
I can't agree with those definitions, either in terms of game design and storytelling or the actual, literal definitions.
A passive challenge would just be one thing that remains what it is until it's overcome or you can no longer attempt to overcome it.
If you're fighting an enemy on a flat, featureless plane and the two of you just exchange attacks and reduce each other's hit points until one of you is down, that's pretty passive. Boring.
On the other hand, if a river has some rapids it uses to tip you out of your boat, a waterfall it tries to throw you over and some huge boulders it wants to grind you against--that's much more dynamic. That's going to be a fun encounter.
At any rate, I feel like this breakdown of "dynamic" and "passive" is veering off-topic.
To address the OP once more, the concept of "weaponizing the environment" might be too narrow. It's really just a matter of brainstorming ideas and then implementing them.
A much more useful tool in my opinion is getting into a headspace where you assign non-sentient obstacles motives and allow them to be sources of conflict.
The river isn't just a lame, 2-D thing lying in their path. It has a motive. Maybe it's to prevent them from crossing. Maybe it's to drown them. Or to destroy their boats and send all their supplies downstream.
The wind wants to blow the PC's off the deck of the ship, or foil their attempts at archery. The fire wants to burn them all.
If combat is involved, you can play with how the different sources of conflict overlap and influence each other.
It's not just about "how to add more stuff to combat". There's enough stuff in combat. It makes up the vast bulk of the Pathfinder system (and most others, for that matter).
It's about understanding at a very fundamental level: what are we trying to do when we sit down to play a ttrpg? What, in the simplest, most basic terms, makes a session enjoyable, and why? And once we understand that, we can apply it to fighting giant scorpions in the desert, surviving a blizzard in the middle of a frozen waste, or talking to the innkeeper about the latest goings-on in town.
A much more useful tool in my opinion is getting into a headspace where you assign non-sentient obstacles motives and allow them to be sources of conflict.
The river isn't just a lame, 2-D thing lying in their path. It has a motive. Maybe it's to prevent them from crossing. Maybe it's to drown them. Or to destroy their boats and send all their supplies downstream.
Love this... need to learn this mindset.
The scope of my chat is on the chat here, the impact of yall reading an informal conversational guide to building better challenges/encounters.
The scope of your chat is on the chat here? I'm sorry, but I still don't follow. I might just not be familiar with your manner of speaking, dialect, or something of that nature.
So widen that PoV up a bit to encompass Real Measurable Events.
This...feels disrespectful?
If that was not your intent, okay. If you were actually trying to take a shot at me or others, please stop.I'm going to reference basic RPG description and GNS Theory...
This is interesting. I'll have to look into that more soon.
What you describe at the end is something I've become familiar with; I've mentioned the importance of making a group fall back on their Plan B in several other threads.
I would point out though that "dynamic", in the way the term has been used here at least, does not really mean "more difficult". Fighting larger numbers of foes or attempting skill checks with higher DC's is more difficult, but it is definitely not inherently more dynamic, engaging or memorable.
Quicksand, deep mud, briskly moving water, and carnivorous plants are a way to "add threats" to an environment. Old or poorly crafted rope bridges can also add an element of danger, especially at the lower levels before everyone has access to flying. Even at the mid-levels, this can be a pain for anyone who has exhausted their means of flying for the day.
Remember the Siafu Swarm scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? That wasn't just one ant swarm, it was like 100 ant swarms, and could be treated as CR impossible. So let's say you're doing a chase scene and your party is attempting to catch the guy with the mcguffin, or maybe they have the mcguffin and are being chased, and now they've accidentally entered a CR: Impossible <insert any swarm here> area, and are still having to fight the enemies while running from this swarm. If they huck a fireball at this swarm, all it does is buy them some space.
Underground volcanoes and geysers also turn a routine Underdark crawl into a small nightmare.
One time I used a wide open expanse in the underdark that was somewhat lit light-blue by thousands of stalactites in the top of the expanse (treated as low light throughout the expanse), and these stalactites would drip "blue lava" hundreds of feet below which formed large stalagmites throughout the cavernous floor. Every 10 minutes, I would have the PC's pick two numbers, let's say 5 and 7, and if they rolled a 50-59, or 7, 17, 27, 37, 47, 67, 77, 87, or 97 on the %die, then they would get hit with this lava. It took them 2 in-game days to cross it, and there were 2 combats throughout this area, so it got a little hairy.
In a campaign-final battle showdown with a human-shapechanged dragon BBEG, he casted a DM-modified version of Reverse Gravity, which picked up an 1/8th of a major city under the PC's and through it hundreds of feet into the air in a great upheaval, and then he switched into his true dragon form and the PC's had to battle the dragon in this upheavaled mess while "falling/flying upwards". They had to jump between all the rocky "islands" and buildings as he was diving in and out trying to pick them off one by one. <---- Pro-tip on how to do this effectively: save your clear dice boxes and buy some kid's toy coins at the dollar store that have 1 thru 20 printed on them. 1 = 10ft, 2= 20ft, 20 = 20ft, 1x10 + 1x20 = 300ft, 2x20 = 400ft, etc. The Dice boxes can be stacked on top of each other, and use the kid's coins as markers for exact heights that you place underneath them. Buy a super cheapy cheap battle mat off Amazon and cut it up into various sizes, and voila, you have flying/floating terrain.
The RAW on environmental hazards is not useful. Most DCs are fixed between 10-15. Do you realize climbing a sheer cliff in PF1 is a DC 15 Climb check as the standard?
Actually...
15- "Any surface with adequate handholds and footholds (natural or artificial), such as a very rough natural rock surface or a tree, or an unknotted rope..."
20- "An uneven surface with narrow handholds and footholds, such as a typical wall in a dungeon."
25- "A rough surface, such as a natural rock wall or a brick wall."
30- "An overhang or ceiling with handholds only."
+5 it's slippery. So throw in some rain to pose a DC20-35, depending on the cliff face and the specific portion they're trying to climb.
But again, boosting numbers just isn't going to do it.
You mention how rope trivializes a climb. Well, using a climbing kit takes time. A couple minutes, to get all set up. And a couple (×10 rounds) is a cost you can't always pay.
If you want to make a go of a cliff being a significant encounter, I would suggest a map that represents the vertical surface of the cliff face. Offer them shrubs and tree roots to grab on to, areas of rougher and smoother stone, ledges to stand on or take cover under, waterfalls, high winds, caves full of bats, primitive traps--you could go absolutely crazy with it, if you wanted. And enemies on top shooting arrows at them or whatever don't even need to be present to get there.
But. Here's the other thing. The "I win" button is okay. Whether it's Feather Fall, Spider Climb or just a coil of rope. It's all about a player's choices having consequences, right? Well, sometimes their choices make a given encounter a breeze. And that's okay. Not every encounter needs to be a desperate struggle for survival. They can't all be, if you want your players to stay focused and invested.
One of the Call of Duty games had you climbing a cliff with ice-axes... for a shooting game to throw a "skill check" challenge into the mix was an unexpected departure from the norm. I found it to be both difficult and fun.
I don't see why you couldn't make it equally challenging and fun in PF1.
Just think Princess Bride where they climb up the cliff. Literally everyone can make that scene into a fun encounter.