Mike Mearls Games

Your Encounter Areas are (Probably) Too Small

Added 2024-09-25 05:11:55 +0000 UTC

If you find that the fights you set up in D&D are dull or grindy, your encounter areas might be too small. It's a common issue in published adventures, so it's not surprising that it also crosses over to DMs running home games.

Most characters have a speed of 30 feet. When you create an encounter, start with a rough sketch of your map using 30-foot squares. You can think of these squares as worth 1 move by a character.

For each square, get an idea of what you want to put there, like a terrain feature, an objective, some cover for a ranged monster, and so on. Put some thought into areas where characters (and monsters!) can hide.

(Aside: I posted earlier about using terrain to adjudicate hiding, with some squares marked as areas where PCs and creatures can stealth. IME, that approach works much easier for me.)

Then, take a look at the encounter area in terms of your 30-foot squares. A character who dashes can cover two of those squares in one action. Does that give you enough space to stretch the party out? Does moving to a location require a commitment, or can PCs do it and still use an action? Do you have enough creatures to fill up the map and keep things interesting?

I like to start with an area that is 24 squares on each side, or 2 feet by 2 feet. That translates into a 4 x 4 grid of 30-foot squares, giving me plenty of space for creatures and characters to move around. If the PCs need to reach a creature or area across the map, they need to put in several rounds of effort to get there.

Keeping in mind 5e's assumption of three round fights, that means a character who starts on the map can usually reach the other side on round 3 unless they dash.

I mentioned earlier that many published adventures feature encounter areas that are far too small. You can sometimes get around that by blocking out a dungeon into 30 foot squares and combining multiple encounter areas into one. As long as the dungeon doesn't have a lot of chokepoints - 5-foot wide passages and doors turn 5e encounters into slogs IME - you might find that fights are a lot more fun and dynamic.