Alternate Combat Objectives

Combat in D&D is clearly the focus of the core of its mechanics as well as much of its content, however, the objectives are rarely given the variety they could receive. Typically, the only practical objective of battles is the elimination of all hostile actors. This almost always manifests in a fight to the death—taking prisoners or accepting a retreat is a rare occurrence. This is perfectly acceptable in some fights, but if used in every battle, it can lead to the feeling that combat is bland or soulless—simply a numbers game about dropping the enemy before they drop you. I present to you a series of alternate combat objectives that you can offer your players to break of the monotony of what I will call “Team Deathmatch” combat from now on.

VIP

The simplest variation on Team Deathmatch style combat is to assign outsize influence on a single combatant—a VIP. It’s probable that you’ve created VIP combat objectives before without really thinking about it. After all, a boss fight can basically use a VIP combat objective if the boss has minions that don’t need to be defeated to achieve victory. However, this isn’t all you can do with VIPs. An escort mission, where the PCs escort a hapless NPC ally, is a genre staple, but it’s fallen out of fashion for a reason. A ‘reverse escort mission’, where NPC allies act to support the PCs, or a PC focused escort mission, where one of the PCs becomes the focus of a battle seem to be options that feel generally more fun to play. In the latter case, you use this focus from a characterization perspective—find an element from the PC’s backstory or personality and make the combat a way to explore that facet of the character. Perhaps a barbarian warrior needs to prove that they’re tough enough to remain standing during a battle or a cleric of a light god is channeling the force of their god—the only thing enough to push back the darkness that threatens to consume the entire party. This can be a great way to put the spotlight on a specific character and allow them to shine (sometimes literally).

Capture the Flag

A classic variation on Team Deathmatch is Capture the Flag—instead of protecting a VIP, you’re fighting over an inanimate McGuffin, like a magic rune or bag of gold. As the MacGuffin trope is an extremely versatile tool in writing, this is an extremely versatile objective in combat design! Maybe once the party defeats the warlord, her underlings will try to grab the body and escape to resurrect her! Maybe the party’s goal is to steal a magic gem that’s guarded by a horde of eternally reanimating skeletons! Maybe the party has reached the end of the dungeon at the same time as a rival adventuring party, with both approaching the artifact contained within from opposite entrances to the final room! Now, in many Capture the Flag combats, battle may eventually degenerate back to a Team Deathmatch state, but simply having an objective can force battles to happen in circumstances that aren’t ideal to either side.  Besides, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with Team Deathmatch combat, and the times it doesn’t lead to that can lead to some very hectic chases and clever uses of non-damaging combat abilities.

King of the Hill

If VIP seeks to control a person, and Capture the Flag seeks to control an object, King of the Hill seeks to control a location. Now, this location can start under the control of either faction or start as initially neutral depending on circumstance, and each situation leads to a very different type of encounter. If the location is initially neutral, this functions like a Capture the Flag scenario where the dominant strategy of ‘just run away’ isn’t possible. If possible, try to make ‘tanky’ characters like paladins and fighters really feel dominant when the battle reaches maturity, but favor speedsters like monks and rogues during the initial phase of battle. You can do this by applying a two turn ‘countdown to victory’ for controlling the location uncontested, and deliberately setting up the scenario so it takes a ‘normal’ character one-and-a-half movements (two turns, with an action left over) to reach the location. This means that fast characters can get in an initial advantage but can’t win the scenario outright. A reasonable scenario like this might be taking a bridge. One side wants to hold it so that it can be destroyed, another side wants to hold it so that an approaching army can cross. A ‘defensive’ King of the Hill might involve the PCs holding a specific door against enemies that want to burst in and assassinate whoever’s inside. An ‘offensive’ King of the Hill might involve the PCs trying to remain inside a ritual circle to disrupt the summoning of a dark god. The potential combinations are nearly endless, just realize that, just like with the Capture the Flag variant, the PCs will come up with all sorts of janky strategies to completely circumvent fighting the encounter. To a certain extent, let them. That’s part of the way that D&D is different from a video game. It’s part of the fun!

Wave Defense

Leaving MacGuffins behind, what if enemies didn’t all attack at once? This is Wave Defense, and it’s probably the most common of these suggestions in actual play. Still, I figure it’d be worth mentioning here in part because fighting one big battle is more fun than fighting a bunch of little ones. However, it’s easy to overwhelm PCs though the use of the action economy (a lot of enemies, few PCs). The solution is to throw the enemies at them in waves! This also can make combats last longer than the traditional three round length. That’s not all, however. The ‘alternate objective’ comes in with what I call the ‘Cross the Finish Line’ objective for enemies, which is a classic component of the Wave Defense in other game. Perhaps the party is defending a wall breach against attacking soldiers, or a holy gate against a horde of demons. The enemy can’t attack all at once due to the size of the gap, so they come in waves. Either it’s defeat a certain number of enemies or hold out for a certain amount of time (another alternate combat objective) in order to achieve victory. 

Free for All

Another sort-of alternate combat objective is the Free for All, in which survival is focused on as the goal over body count. Though it’s become popular in the modern consciousness with the Battle Royale genre, the Deathmatch is a long and storied tradition in video games which can be applied to your D&D game with the appropriate level of worldbuilding. A classic of the mega dungeon is the existence of multiple warring factions within the dungeon. Perhaps this comes to a head with a battle between two factions? If either faction wins decisively, it makes the PCs lives much harder, so it falls the the PCs to ensure that any victory is pyrrhic. Perhaps an otherwise normal battle is interrupted by a wandering monster looking for an easy meal? Perhaps the Big Bad’s underling sees the climactic battle with the PCs as the perfect opportunity to betray their boss an eliminate both groups in one fell swoop? The Free for All is the perfect gift for the Diplomacy player in your game group—a challenge in which strategic thinking and diplomacy RP becomes just as essential to winning an encounter as optimal character design and tactical ability!

Combine and Conquer

Each of these strategies is not terribly complex in and of themselves, but they suggest two important conclusions that I will state outright. First, these elements may be combined with each other and with other complexity-increasing elements to make totally unique scenarios. Consider a bank robbery (a scenario I have run multiple times, each successfully). In addition to stealth and social elements, it carries with it a lot of potential combat complexities! You might need to hold down a vault door, grab the money or loot you’re looking for and run with it, or seize hold of a VIP who has the magic touch (literal or otherwise) needed to access the goods! A hostage scenario can offer a similarly complex scenario, this time with a focus on the VIP element! Finally, if you take one thing away from all this, know that a good alternate combat objective allows failure to occur without massive player death or forcing player retreat! This is a massive boon to you as a DM, as it allows you to construct scenarios where the players can fail and continue to exist as characters. This allows a lot of complexity from the PC end (how does your character deal with failure, does your character focus on the objective or on saving their own skin) as well as allowing you the ability to screw with the difficulty curve in interesting ways without risking the lives of your PCs (little sucks more as a DM than accidentally killing PCs with an overturned encounter). Finally, some of these objectives allow for partial failure to occur (a topic I will cover more later). Perhaps the PCs destroy the MacGuffin instead of allowing it to remain in enemy hands? Perhaps the Big Bad leads an orderly retreat when outmaneuvered by clever PC problem solving, living to fight another day? Perhaps some of the enemies make their way past the wall breach—enough to cause havoc amongst the defenders, but not enough to win the day? Scenarios where the players must face consequences for failure but still feel like they haven’t been utterly crushed can, in many cases, produce the most interesting encounters, and generally are a lot more interesting than a trivial victory or crushing defeat.