You really don't know how difficult it is to be a good GM until you've tried it for yourself. And I'm not just talking about the plots or the characters, I'm talking combat. Like it or not, most tabletop RPGs are combat-based. Some moreso than others, but most of those stats you juggle around on character sheets are for the sole purpose of leaving you better off than the other guy after weapons are drawn. As a GM, it is your job to make every combat memorable in some way, and it is exceptionally difficult to do so. In my Pathfinder games of this week, we explored a few different encounters, and I made a few observations about the matter. Read on for more about how to make battles that leave lasting impressions, and the importance of a balanced, diverse party.

MEMORABLE COMBAT AND PARTY PLANNING

As I have previously mentioned, I am currently part of two separate Pathfinder games, with many consistent players between the two games. In the first game, which takes place on Monday nights, our team had some new players this week. This was due to the fact that we almost never have a full party due to scheduling or technical difficulties. So our team is now comprised of an oracle, a witch (as a necromancer), a fiery sorcerer, a druid and his raptor companion Fluffy, a hunter, a brawler that throws his shield (Captain America), and a swashbuckler (me). That's a pretty diverse crew, but, as usual, we were down some players due to various difficulties - tonight we just had the witch, the sorcerer, the druid, the brawler, and the swashbuckler.

Our team had just entered a cave to investigate some strange murmuring. Shortly after we entered, we were attacked by an ooze monster that was disguised as a rock. We weren't too concerned - it had thus far only attacked one of the witch's undead minions and we all knew that oozes have horrible defenses. We started to attack, and swiftly discovered that we had to make a reflex save every time because it could transform points of impact into rock to reduce damage. This kind of defense would be extremely challenging to lower-level party, but we were able to overwhelm its defenses and bring it down.

Just as we finished with the ooze, we were attacked by several Dark Folk, creatures that can see in any darkness and explode like a flashbang grenade when killed. They had sneak attack damage like a rogue, but we were able to slay them before long since they were still quite squishy. At the end of the battle, we were still in good shape - our casters hadn't used many spells, our melee characters hadn't been too injured - so we pressed on. Our next encounter turned south very quickly as we found ourselves surrounded and bottlenecked by a good dozen or so Dark Folk. Normally this wouldn't be so bad - they were still squishy, so even a swam of them would fall quickly to our attacks - but immediately their caster hit us with Deeper Darkness, a spell that blackened the caves and blinded the entire party.

No one in the party had a way to deal with the darkness. A dispel magic or powerful light spell (daylight) would have solved the problem, but no one had that prepared. The Dark Folk were not impaired at all since they could see through any darkness, but only one of us had Blind-Fight through the use of his unique class ability. What ensued was one of the longest and most tedious fights we've ever had, solely because of the darkness. Half of our attacks missed, and the sorcerer was out of his AoE spells. Only one or two party members came close to dying, but ultimately it was just an exercise in tedium as we kept on swinging until they all dropped.

I'll talk about the lessons we can learn from that fight in a moment, but first let me switch to the other game, the Tuesday game. Our team there was a warpriest, a gunslinger, a slayer, a ranger, and a monk (me). Towards the end of the session, we came across evidence of vampire activity in the building that we were investigating. All of us knew that vampires were involved out-of-character, but none of our characters had a way to know about vampires, so they pressed on in ignorance. We next discovered four coffins in a crawlspace beneath the shop. Again, we all knew it was vampires, but our characters did not. So our ranger led the way and opened up one of the coffins with the gunslinger at his back. Fortunately for us, the creatures were only vampire spawn, so they weren't that tough, but unfortunately for us, the ranger was dominated immediately. As the ranger and gunslinger left the crawlspace, the four vampires misted through the floor and engaged us. The ranger fought and killed the gunslinger due to the domination right away, the warpriest engaged the vampires, and both myself and the slayer fled (we had told the warpriest to run due to being outnumbered and because the ranger had turned traitor, but he engaged anyway). I attempted to bring the gunslinger's body with us, but he was too far out of reach. The next round, the warpriest was dominated, and the battle was over. We lost three party members in that fight, but should be getting some good replacements next session.

Lessons to be learned: Making combat interesting

We probably will not forget about those fights for quite some time. What made the Dark Folk battle interesting was the darkness. All of us were significantly impaired because we had no way to blast an area, to dispel the darkness, or to mitigate the penalties associated with blindness. The ooze battle was interesting because of its defensive mechanic and its ooze characteristics - it was already in close quarters with us and you NEVER want to grapple an ooze. The vampire encounter was interesting because of both the domination and the location. The four coffins were in a crawlspace (difficult terrain for everyone since no one was small-sized), effectively splitting the party at the battle start, and then the domination spells quickly cut our numbers almost in half. In each of these circumstances, the standard tactic of "walk up to it and hit it until it stops moving" was not the best option in any of these situations. The fights forced us to change our tactics and try different things, with varying degrees of success (mostly none). We can look at these situations to point out other ways to make combat more memorable, but the most common factor is some unique circumstance that forces the party to plan or act in ways that they normally wouldn't. Here's a more in-depth look at various ways to make your fights more memorable:

The Environment:
Let's start with the easiest example - the environment. In the above stories, that was the crawlspace. Nothing special or magical about it, it was just something that prevented the party from effectively moving together. If we had small party members or a Reduce Person spell, it wouldn't have been an issue, but remember that those are things players wouldn't usually think of. In many cases, a small character is treated just the same as a medium one except for combat or skill numbers, and Reduce Person is largely ignored in favor of the much more useful Enlarge Person since that one gives your fighters reach. Other environmental factors can easily be thrown into most encounters to spice them up, such as:

Spilled drinks/oil - free Grease spell. Maybe the stuff is flammable, maybe it's not, but making players move around spilled liquids is a good start. They'll have to make saves or else fall prone while moving through the affected squares. Not a big deal for the rogue, but the fighter in full plate with the massive armor check penalty is going to change his course.

Weakened floors/walls - Construction standards probably aren't too rigorous in the world of Pathfinder, and an upper story floor might not be able to take the impact of a fighter in full plate dropping prone there. Same for walls in case he's pushed back. Maybe the floor is rotted away and just walking over it causes it to collapse. Either way, now the encounter is a rescue to get the character back, as well as handling the enemies.

Elevation differences/sniper posts - Balconies, tree limbs, windows, and the like all provide areas for people to take cover and shoot at the party below. Only the party's caster or archer can really handle these guys, or your fighter can demonstrate his intelligence by using the backup bow he brought for just such an occasion.

Clutter/difficult terrain - Slows down the party and prevents 5-ft steps.

Lighting - If your party has lots of non-standard races or hands-free light sources, this probably won't be an issue, but technically dim light is supposed to provide 20% concealment. That's extremely annoying if you don't fight near a torch.

Water - Almost no one takes ranks in Swim, so a sudden dip into a place with an aquatic monster can be a huge game changer. Even if you don't actually make them swim, you could argue that water does interesting things to electric-based spells and weapons. Oh, and don't forget gear. Walking around in wet clothing should be a penalty to Sneak. Your scrolls? Better hope they were in a waterproof bag or they're probably ruined.

Traps - These take a bit more prep time, but large, obvious traps (things they don't need a rogue to see) can quickly corral a nervous party along the path you want, and then you send in enemies that are good at forcing the party into the way of the traps.

Spells:
There's a reason why transmutation casters are considered the "best" arcane casters. A caster can take on many roles, but one of its best is shaping the battlefield such that the fighters can do their thing at their best. Think about it, combat generally goes on until one team's HP reaches zero, and the fighter-type characters are designed exclusively for making the enemy team's HP hit zero as quickly as possible. In most cases, they will be your team's best when it comes to taking and dealing damage, so as a caster, you are immensely useful to your team when you line up the enemies for your fighter to knock down. Shaping the entire battlefield can be an enormous advantage, and can easily create or counter many of the environmental factors listed above. Enemy sniper perched up high? Won't be a problem after the wizard casts Fly on the fighter. This is also why Haste is one of the most damaging spells in the game, despite the fact that it doesn't do any damage by itself. Some good, situational spells can easily catch a party off-guard, or force them to positions/rooms that they wouldn't otherwise use.

I could do an entire journal just on the uses of transmutation magic and the roles of arcane casters, but that's for another time. For now though, just look at transmutation magic, as well as any spell that's dismissed as "useful, but only in certain situations." You are the DM. MAKE THAT SITUATION HAPPEN! Use those spells to alter the battlefield, like the darkness used by the Dark Folk above. However, try to keep it to spells that the party could feasibly counter. If they need a really obscure, situational spell to counter your really obscure, situational spell, then they'll just get frustrated. Remember that you want to make them change plans and adapt to the situation, not make them deal with a really annoying battlefield without any way to adapt to or counter the battlefield circumstances.

Mechanics and special abilities:
The darkness effect worked wonderfully for the Dark Folk because they have natural abilities to ignore that condition. It made sense that they'd use it to their advantage. Similarly, creatures with Scent using Obscuring Mist really works well too because they can "see" through the mist with their scent - they're playing to their natural advantages. Have your NPCs do this often, it makes them much more unique.

Similarly, every once in a while throw in an NPC that has a really weird build. Don't just send a fighter against them, send a fighter that specializes in the Dirty Trick maneuver. Instead of a ranger, use a ranger with a spider companion that immediately webs the party. Send in enemies that work in teams that all share certain teamwork feats. They won't be expecting exotic setups like this, and will have to change their plans to deal with them.

While you're planning your battles, it's important to keep your goal in mind - you don't want to KILL the party, you want to CHALLENGE them. You want to give them something that they -should- be able to overcome if they play smart, but will punish them if they act stupid.

However, sometimes the party makeup severely limits your options. Looking at our stories above, the darkness encounter was ultimately a failure. It was certainly interesting and memorable, but we didn't have fun. Why not? We had no way to plan around or deal with the darkness. We couldn't retreat because it was on something that one of the enemies carried with him. We had no one with Daylight or Dispel. But should we have had something like that? Maybe. Out of the entire team, we had two people capable of using Dispel Magic. One of them was the oracle, who has consistently missed games (so we couldn't count on her). The other is the witch, who only had two level 3 spell slots and had not had a prior occasion to prepare Dispel. So no, this was a situation where we really could not have planned around the darkness, we just had to deal with it.

Let's look at the vampires next. There were two problems with this one. The first was a lack of knowledge about vampires. The party had two occasions to discover that we were about to fight vampires, and neither one was relevant because no one had the knowledge skill to make use of those observations. Had we known, we would've been able to prepare and stand a far better chance against them, but instead we got dominated and ran. The second issue was the domination magic itself. This is classified as an SoS ability, short for "Save-or-Suck", because if you fail your save, you suck for the rest of the fight. These are differentiated from "SoD" abilites, short for "Save-or-Die", which, as you might expect, kill you outright if you fail. Most players and GM's have a gentleman's agreement to not use SoD abilities because no one likes them and they typically do not do anything other than frustrate both players and GMs. However, sometimes SoS abilities drift into SoD territory, and this fight was one of those times. Ordinarily, it's fairly easy to detect a domination effect, especially if you're a caster. However, in that game we didn't have an arcane caster, and our only other caster didn't do much in the way of spellcraft. So our characters had no idea what domination magic was or how to fix it. This made the domination ability into an SoD effect solely because the party didn't have anyone that could respond to it. In some cases, like with the Darkness, you can call it the fault of the GM, but that only extends so far. You're an adventuring party - you're supposed to be prepared for all sorts of things, and if you don't have someone with the right spells/abilities, hire them as an NPC. Obscure spells and effects - yes, you can blame the GM for those, but basic magic? Nope, that's the party's fault.

This actually would take me into a much larger discussion about party planning and roles, but I am noticing that this post is approaching 5 pages in length. So that will be saved for the next journal. Suffice to say, sometimes you just have to suck it up and play a class you don't want to for the sake of party balance.