Up the Ante in Battle

Think back to your favorite Dungeons and Dragons battle. Chances are, it was a cliff-hanger, a nerve-wracking nail biter from which you barely escaped with your life.

D&D wouldn't be the same without the thrill of combat, and it's a DM's job to make sure that each encounter a party comes across is unique and challenging in its own right. As your party grows in strength, that task becomes more difficult. Creatures your players would have struggled to defeat in single combat are now a cake-walk, and you soon find yourself combing the pages of the Monster Manual, looking for something that's a suitable challenge for your quickly-advancing characters.

But wait! There's another way!

You don't necessarily have to dish out tougher creatures to up the challenge rating of a battle. There are plenty more subtle options for a DM to up the ante in a fight without throwing a Red Dragon or Beholder at your hapless party. Here are a few examples:

• Obstacles, Obstacles, Obstacles
  Nothing slows down the progress of a party like a few well-placed obstacles on the battlefield. Put a pair of ordinary weak skeleton archers behind a set of stalagmites that give them 50 percent cover, then place a steep slope of loose rock between them and your party. Suddenly, those easy-to-defeat skeletons are anything but easy. Your ranged party members will struggle to overcome a percentage dice roll, while your heavily-armored tank with his terrible armor-check penalty falls on his face trying to climb the rubble slope to get within melee range. Meanwhile, your puny skeleton archers are raining arrows down on the party.
• Create Your Own Creature
  On the other side of the dimly-lit glen, you see two bright yellow eyes watching you. Out of the shadows steps a wolf—but you quickly realize this is no ordinary wolf. To start, it's as tall as a horse, with a hunched back and unnatural long limbs. And as your eyes trace the wolf's sinewy form, you realize with an involuntary shudder that its legs terminate in paws that look an awful lot like human hands. You unsheathe your sword, trying not to stare too deeply into the malevolent yellow eyes of the beast as it approaches.
  
  Nothing will surprise your players more than a unique creature of your own design. Seasoned D&D fans come to expect the orcs, trolls and other common denizens of a high fantasy realm. But when faced with an entirely new, utterly alien creature with its own unique abilities, they're suddenly back to square one. How do you deal with a creature you know nothing about? You'll just have to learn from the school of hard knocks.
• Unknown Alignment
  Players always expect enemies to readily identify themselves on the battlefield, but what happens when evil lurks beneath a seemingly innocent surface. The best example I can think of is a situation my own party faced several sessions ago, when they traveled to an abandoned town to solve a series of murders. The only person still in the village was the town's resident wizard, who had remained behind to put an end to the violence. The characters expected him to be friendly, or even helpful. What they found when they arrived was an old man driven to madness by an all-consuming evil. Most lawful or good parties will hesitate to attack another being until that being displays hostility toward them. Let your NPCS or creatures get the drop on your characters. In my experience, the end result is a frenetic, hard-fought battle.
• Unique Setting
  Make your characters think on their feet in a battle. What happens if their enemies are a group of bandit archers firing down on characters from hidden positions up in trees. The characters will have to climb the trees to reach them or even set the tree on fire to smoke the opposing ranger out. Or maybe your players are the first in a boarding party about to breach an enemy ship. To get across, they have to dodge a hail of arrows while crossing a wooden gangplank. Or maybe your characters are forced to fight a flying enemy while clinging to a narrow ledge overhanging a vast, subterranean cavern. There are plenty of interesting features or settings to spice up your next fight.