Help a fellow DM !

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My campaign is in trouble!
Every session up until now was great. The players role-played very well, and I added many a thing they never saw before. The plot is full of twists and the like, and they were very satisfied with the campaign. But as we are nearing the end the time has come for the PCs to fight some battles. And I get the feeling the fights are a bit boring. No matter how elaborate or inovative the fight is, I always get the feeling the PCs would rather be sitting at an in, sippin' ale and swappin' tales.


How do I make me fights interesting?

 

Does the dice rolling and damage assesment take too long? Computer RPGs with instant decisions spoil players. Make yourself some simple tables ahead of time so you can quickly see whether the monsters hit the players or vice-versa.
Are the fights too easy (no-one gets a scratch) or too hard (PCs killed every enounter)? The ideal is that they should feel they just pulled through thanks to their good tactics.
Sometimes varying the pace, with time outs in the bar is a good thing. And a bar is the ideal place for the good old DM standby - a barroom brawl

 

I'm always getting the feeling the dice-rolling is taking too-long, even though my players assure me they are havin' real fun (and I can see that when I create a role-playin session, but a hack&slash session seems boring).


The fights are not too hard. Maybe just a little too hard . Keeps them in check. Well...thanks for your effort.

 

I can't really help you much since my players prefer combat to roleplaying....I'm sure they're just power gamers..or at least some of them are inparticular. Anyway, the majority of my players enjoy combats where they do really heroic and interesting things, like using the cleave feat to swing a halberd around they're head and destroy several orcs, or leap out of the shadows and stab an ogre through the middle, and give the blade a good twist, or flying into a beserk rage and slashing through big, scary things. So, if you just increase heroics, make the descriptions more interesting (but not longer), it might work. But I'm not sure if that will work if they're roleplayers...

 

Malaqai,

But is fighting the only answer? Large battles are not the only way to go. You can have a battle with only one enemy, as long as it is still a challange for the PCs. Do the PCs have a hated enemy? I mean is there someone who is the main villian in the story. This always makes the fight more interesting. If the enemy has a face and a history with the party you will get more out of defeating it.
Is there a non-combat way to to finish the adventure? Can bluffing, diplomicy, stealth or political actions be used instead of combat? Can you force the PCs into a key role-playing scene with the major NPC where they know they will lose a combat outcome and must bargin or try to trick their way to victory?
I hope some of these throughts help.

Voltric

 

One way to speed up the battles, if dice-rolling is taking a long time is to have the players (And DM) roll the damage dice along with the to hit roll. This way, if they hit, the damage is already rolled, if they don't hit, ignore the damage dice. There was a very good article in one of the dragon magazines that covered this very topic. If you go to the dragon magazine website, you can purchase back issues. If I remember which issue it was in, I'll add it to this post. The website to Paizo, the company that publishes The Dragon is: http://www.paizo.com/dungeon .

I think the article I was thinking of was about preparing for large encounters but many of the suggestions are excellent for smaller battles too. It was a two part article in Issue #301 & #302; the column is called Wizard's Workshop.

[ July 02, 2003, 22:37: Message edited by: Baldak Oakfist ]

 

Another way to liven up combat is to weave the dice rolls into the story, eg:
(The orc rolls a 2) "The orcs swings clumsily, missing you by a mile"
(You roll a 16, just a hit) "Your blade finds a weak spot in his armour and penetrates"
(The orc rolls 8 damage) "A sickening blow stikes you hard"
(You roll 1 damage) "His shield parried most of the force and you barely scratched him"
etc. etc.