The encounter is the heartbeat of most D&D games, especially in 5E. A lot of the system is built around them, and that’s where you get to play with the toys: Characters get to use their neat powers and DMs get to bring out cool new monsters, traps and challenges. Get your encounters right, and the players have a great time. Get them wrong, and your session may not be very fun.

In this episode, we talk about how we lay our own dastardly plans for encounters. We get into our philosophies for what we want to accomplish with encounters, as well as the tactics and tips we use to build the challenges. We’ll also talk about what hasn’t worked for us and times our encounters have gone totally wrong.

2:00 What’s the role of encounters in our games? What are we trying to accomplish with them?

8:00 Encounter balance … and how it’s not always what you think it is

12:00 What encounters teach players about the game world and where they are

17:00 Encounter balance, CR and party size

22:00 Building tension and intellectual engagement

28:00 Fast vs. slow encounters

29:00 How allowing players to occasionally do the impossible builds your group’s gaming mythology

35:00 What makes a bad encounter and how do you get the party to fix it?

41:00 When the party doesn’t listen, take the bait, or otherwise trigger your cool stuff

48:00 Using monster lore and backgrounds to shape encounters

51:00 Encounters without tactical thinking are boring — ways we keep them interesting

53:00 Motivations make the monster — and great encounters

56:00 Crunchy tips for building interesting encounters

65:00 Common encounter mistakes and how to tell when you’ve made one

75:00 TPK, TPC (capture) or TPR (retreat): How we handle encounter deaths and defeats

85:00 Unapologetic DMing

87:00 Final thoughts and how many rounds should an encounter go?