8 Tips to Make D&D Enemies and Combat Encounters Scary

 

8 Tips to Make D&D Enemies and Combat Encounters Scary (and Other TTRPGs)

D&D is a difficult game to make scary. From a mechanical standpoint, D&D combat is often subject to frequent pauses where the players take turns describing their actions, filing out spell slots, and crunching the numbers. From a narrative standpoint, it's difficult to its hard to make monsters "fit" in a horror campaign when all of the players are either capable of rending the universe asunder or killing gods.

To compensate for these drawbacks a few considerations need to be made surrounding:

a. The narrative theme of the game and enemies (the world, the setting, the ambience)

b. The mechanical effects of the enemies (attacks, stats, numbers)

This article will be focusing on the mechanical side of things, as this is the prime section of combat, and what additions can be made to make combat and enemies more frightening.

1. Add Damage Thresholds to Hitpoints

A few times I have played games where a boss monster had a Damage Threshold. A Damage Threshold is a static number where all damage the monster receives is subtracted from the Damage Threshold before affecting Hit Points. 

For example, if Monster A had 15 Hitpoints and a Damage Threshold of 5, and was then hit for 3 points of damage, 7 points of damage, and 2 points of damage, then:

Per Hit Threshold

x - y = z

x = Damage Dealt

y = Damage Threshold

= Damage Received

3 -  5 = 0

7 - 5 = 2

2 - 5 = 0

Monster A would receive only 2 Hitpoints worth of damage.

This is an example of a Damage Threshold that triggers every time damage is received. For more fair Damage Thresholds (and ones that promote party cooperation instead of "only ones who matter are the ones that give out giant damage numbers"), set it so that the Damage Threshold tallies all damage and then marks off the damage at the end of the turn.

Per Turn Threshold

x - y = z

x = All Damage Dealt this turn

y = Damage Threshold

= Damage Received

3 + 7 + 2 -  5 = 7

Monster A would receive 7 Hitpoints worth of damage.

Damage Thresholds are best used in conjunction with other features mentioned on this list, and sparingly used for only a select few reoccurring monsters or singular boss monsters.

2. Devastating Attacks and Roulette Stacks

Have you ever played Fear and Hunger? Or looked at some stat blocks in the Monster Manual? A common trend between the two is that a few monsters have abilities which can only be used once every couple of turns. When a party member is hit by a Devastating Attack, they are usually subjected to:

a. Multiple debuffs and status effects

b. High amounts of damage

c. Lingering Injuries (see Lingering Injuries later in review)

d. Multiple of the above 

Devastating Attacks are power abilities that can change the tide of the battle, or cause serious problems or unsuspecting players in the immediate or long term. As a result, the following rules of thumb should be used whenever a Devastating Attack is usable:

a. The Devastating Attack should ALWAYS be foreshadowed in the turns leading up to its use. The monster spends its turn doing nothing but convulsing, a strange buzzing starts emerging from its throat - something is needed to signal to the players that their enemy is about to do something that will inflict dramatic injury unto them. Devastating Attacks should NEVER be something the players would not be able to reasonably foresee based on the monsters actions. Foreshadowing Devastating Attacks also gives players an opportunity to hide, run, or prepare instead of simply attacking and tanking the damage.

b. There should be a "wind-up" or "recharge" time in-between Devastating Attacks. Devastating Attacks are not something which should be used every turn. About 4-6 turns should be spent in-between each Devastating Attack, and at least 1 to 2 of those turns the monster should use its action to foreshadow the Devastating Attacks use. There are exceptions to this, but usually with severe limitations (i.e, a monster spending one turn using a Devastating Attack, and one turn charging, constantly).

c. Devastating Attacks should not be used by every single enemy. Bosses or rare monsters are fine, but not every single enemy.

d. Devastating Attacks should be severe. They are not meant to be something that can be shrugged off without consequence. Look at other items on this article for ideas as to what consequences a Devastating Attack can cause.

e. What if my players don't run/hide/dodge/prepare for the Devastating Attack, even though I foreshadowed it and let them know the attack will bring terrible consequence unto them? Well, as long as you foreshadowed it, you did warn them. It will be a learning lesson I suppose.

How to Determine If a Devastating Attack Hits?

Having your players roll a d20 wouldn't be stressful enough, no no no no no. You could do that though, I'm not running your campaign.

What I like to do is set a Roulette Stack. Its simple. Pick a die from your pool; d2, d4, or d8 are good choices. Then give the player a number to represent their "Roulette" (if you have any Luck stat in your game, you can use that as well). The Roulette represents the number of "numbers" that the player can pick from the die. Ideally, the Roulette should be 30 - 60% of the total faces on the chosen die.

For example:

We are using a D8 to represent the Devastating attack.

The Roulette is 4.

The player picks 4 numbers on the d8, and chooses 1, 2, 3, 4

After that, roll the dice. If the dice lands on a number that the Player chose from their Roulette, the attack misses. If it doesn't, the attack hits in full.

While I agree this system can be needlessly complicated, you could also just keep it simple and flip a coin (or do d20 + AC).

3. Lingering Injuries

Lingering Injuries. They are fairly straightforwards. Whenever a character goes Down, roll a Constitution saving throw. On a failure (DC10), suffer a Lingering Injury by rolling on an Injury table. Some tables recommend rolling on every critical hit, or in my case if a Devastating Attack ever lands, but its up to you. Lingering Injuries are good to prevent situations where the party goes down to 0 HP, is healed back to 1, then goes down again in an endless loop. There are numerous Lingering Injury tables online, and in the DMG so if you don't like one you can always shuffle them around.

As a house rule, injuries should affect players regardless of class (otherwise, why even bother healing an injury as a rogue if it's only going to affect wizards), should have some costly way to heal them (usually a high-leveled healing spell, special materials, or simply time), and should have an impact outside of merely "Reduce stat by 1". 

4. Evolving Enemies

One tool, while tricky, are evolving enemies. This doesn't mean levelling up enemies CR as the party does - while you can do that, it might be a bit tedious after a while, especially if you have to figure it out on the fly. Rather, evolving enemies means that part way through combat, the enemy can change their statblock to add more attacks and spells, or change their stats. Usually, this is done through an item or regular action.

One drawback to this approach is that it requires you to build a template statblock for evolved enemies in advance. However, once you've outlined the changes you can simply drag-and-drop the changes from one statblock to another with ease.

Example for changes to evolved enemies can include stats, attacks, spells, feats, creature types,

Example of item that can induce evolved enemies:

Use an action to stick a needle in your body. If you are an Insectfolk, for every needle, reduce up to 5 points from your Int, Wis, and Cha scores and add them to your Str, Dex, and Con scores. If you are pierced with an Antimagic Needle unwillingly, you remove the max number of points (5) from your scores. If your stats (Int, Wis, Cha) ever go below their designated scores of (3,5, and 4), you immediately must roll a Wisdom Saving throw or act as if under the effects of Antimagic (see Effects). For Plantfolk and Thumblings, they reduce their respective decreased stats by 5. No increase is made.

5. Changing Statblocks

This is a short and simple one; change your stat blocks. Or at the very least, don't broadcast to your players the name of the creature they are fighting. If you are in a swamp, say something like "the lumbering beast rises, a limb wrapped in warped iron and blistered skin, a roar, a sigh, a sight of eyes drift into yours. Run, run, the beast has awoken.", or something similar. Don't say, "you find a troll", because then everyone is going to say, "ah yes, a troll is weak to fire and does x and y.". Realistically, the characters don't know the ins-and-outs of every monster they come across, so the players shouldn't either.

In short, don't put a name to the monsters face. Swap the original statblock with the statblock with another monster, and keep focusing on descriptors rather than a short and simple name (unless the characters have reason to know what the monster is).

6. High Damage Attacks

Another short one. Bit of a repeat. Make your creatures deadlier. 

Have attacks be complimented by feats.

Have damage be deadly.

Example: An Excerpt of Part of the Insectoid Statblock

For Bite, choose one of the following depending on the insect. Use the T-Rex Stat block as a template.

Small Bite. *Melee Weapon Attack*: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. *Hit*: (1d6 + 3 + Strength Mod) piercing damage. If the creature is flanked by an enemy who has also hit them, they must roll a Strength save or be knocked prone.

Large Bite. *Melee Weapon Attack*: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. *Hit*: (1d8 + 5 + Strength Mod) piercing damage. The creature is Grappled with disadvantage while being Grappled this way. If the creature is smaller than the attacker, it is Restrained. You cannot attack with Bite while the creature is grappled by it.

Tearing: *Melee Weapon Attack*: +2 to hit. If a creature is Grappled, Tearing can be used a reaction against the Grappled opponent. *Hit*: 1d4 + Strength Mod Slashing damage. If the creature is being Grappled by this character through a Large Bite attack, remove the disadvantage caused for escaping the Grapple.

7. Exhaustion and Status Effects

Have your monsters inflict status effects. This is one aspect of D&D many DM's choose to ignore; either they don't want to keep track of every individual status effect on each character, or the effect doesn't have an overbearing impact on the characters.

If you don't want to have anything to do with status effects, skip this section.

If you do, read on.

Make enemies inflict status effects.

That's it. That's all you need to do.

A million low-level monsters that focus exclusively on speed and Grapple.

Wizards that look towards Grease and Proning characters.

Poison. Elemental damage. Flying.

Fear effects and restrictive hallways with few exits.

A goblin that inflicts a single level of Exhaustion is more terrifying than any other creature your players will face.

8. OSR and Unbalancing Your Encounters

To make anything truly terrifying in D&D, you need to be acutely aware that the difficulty is centered around numbers. While I disagree with the notion of having the viewpoint of a cooperative narrative game being solely numbers-driven, it does play a significant role in the game's exploration, skills, and combat. 

One method that helps players start playing a bit more careful is utilizing tricks from the OSR rulebook; random encounters, and mismatched difficulty. 

Random encounters is exactly as it sounds like. Parties will get ambushed when camping out in the middle of the night, or travelling the road. A party can find and open a random dungeon in a tranquil pasture, or investigate a haunted castle where the BBEG resides. What will they will face? Well, thats up to them, you, and mostly the dice.

A common quote is that not every fight is winnable, and sometimes it is better to run than to die.

Random encounter tables force characters to deal with enemies that may be stronger, have more than expected, think about supplies, where they are, and how long they will be travelling,

Also, build scalable dungeons. What I mean is, when you make a dungeon then don't make the entire dungeon custom-built for a certain level. Have some parts of the dungeon be for higher level, some for lower level. Sure, your low level party can choose to leave the dungeon and come back at a higher level when they think they're prepared, risking loot to be taken and more monsters to flood the dungeon, or they could risk going into more dangerous areas for greater reward.

This is more of a design standpoint around dungeons rather than a mechanical improvement, but it fits just the same.

And that's it! You should be ready now to make monsters mechanically scary to your party. 

One thing that also helps (narratively) is to add ambience and weird sound effects. You can always freak people out by playing recordings of chicken noises. Trust me, I've done it before.