Dynamic Combat

Play

Tal and Moss are launching an attack against 3 Scholar-Knights of the Order, vengeance for their attacks on the Realm.

Ref: So you’re charging in full-pelt?

Moss: Yeah, should we focus on one of them?

Tal: Okay, I’ll send my raven out to Attack another.

They roll their attacks, wounding the Scholar-Knight and using a Gambit to dismount another. The Order fight back, doing some Damage but no wounds yet.

Ref: Okay, the Scholar-Knights bark orders at each other. It’s not clear who’s in charge. Still, the two on horseback dismount and form a close formation with the other, pulling their shields up into a shieldwall.

Tal: Right. They were already hard to Damage, I feel like we shouldn’t just dive straight in.

Moss: Yeah you’re right. Is there a way we can break up their formation?

Tal: That one we spoke to before was particularly proud of their horse, right? How about if we try to spook the horses away, they might break away to stop us.

Moss: Sure, let’s try it.

Ref: So what are you doing exactly?

Tal: I don’t want to hurt the horses, but I’ll give them a whack with the flat side of my hammer, scream at them I guess. Shoo!

Ref: Okay I guess the horses will break away if you do that, but let’s see if the Scholar- Knights break their formation.

Ref fails a SPI Save for the Scholar-Knights, so describes one of them running for the horses, breaking the shieldwall.

Moss: Great, I’ll Attack the Knight we damaged last turn now that the shieldwall’s broken. Actually, I’ll use Smite to make sure we put them down.

Thoughts

Dynamic combat is the idea that a fight should change with each passing round, rather than being a war of attrition. This doesn’t have to apply to every combat, some are simple and end too quickly to have much of an arc, but it’s especially useful to consider for longer, more significant fights.

Here we see just two rounds of combat, but there’s already a narrative forming. Round 1 is the charge, round 2 is the shieldwall followed by breaking it up, and on round 3 Ref could introduce a new factor such as an environmental change or new enemy tactic.

Even just having the enemy show a changing attitude to the fight can work, showing how they’re feeling about their survival chances.

A missed opportunity here is that we don’t see Ref describe the location of the Attack. For all we know it’s happening in a generic, featureless field. While the players were creative enough to use the dismounted enemies’ steeds against them, this creativity could have been encouraged through including other tactical hooks on the battlefield. These can be mundane, such as describing especially thick woodland, boggy ground, or a nearby waterfall. For more unusual features rolling a prompt can be helpful. This could see the combat happening amidst a roaring fire, in a dim, rat-infested cave, or among choking vines hanging from the rafters of an abandoned barn.

It’s great if these environments carry mechanical weight, or offer tactical opportunities, but sometimes just the change of flavour is enough to create interest.

Another good element to introduce is a time limit. Perhaps they had word that the Scholar-Knights were meeting with more of their Order, so reinforcements were expected in an uncertain number of rounds.