The Three Pillars: Combat, Social, and Exploration Encounters
Dungeons & Dragons thrives on three main types of encounters, often called the three pillars of gameplay:
Combat Encounters: Direct confrontations that test players’ tactical combat abilities.
Social Encounters: Interactions that challenge diplomacy, deception, insight, and role-playing.
Exploration Encounters: Scenarios involving discovery, navigation, and puzzle-solving.
In this blog we will focus on how GMs can use AI to uplevel combat encounters.
⚔️ Combat Encounters
Combat encounters bring high-energy challenges, clear win/lose stakes, and strategic depth. They’re exciting for players who love tactics 🎲, dice rolling 🎯, and character power progression ⚡.
🛠️ Design Tips
✅ Tie enemies to the story – Even a random monster can have a reason for being there (guarding a relic, hunting the party, or defending their territory).
✅ Use dynamic, multi-layered environments – A fight on crumbling ice floes, inside a collapsing tower, or amidst a raging storm is more engaging than one in an empty room.
✅ Vary pacing – Introduce waves of enemies, shifting objectives, or battlefield surprises to avoid repetitive combat.
✅ Build Intelligent Monsters – The Monsters Know What They Are Doing, so make sure they fight like it. A beholder doesn’t fight fair, a dragon uses flight tactically, and goblins set ambushes and retreat strategically.
✅ Make the Process of Finding the Villain’s Weakness a Part of the Campaign – A great villain isn’t just defeated by brute force—their weakness could be uncovered through player choices, exploration, and storytelling.
✅ Generate Custom Monsters – break free from traditional monster stat blocks by creating unique, story-driven creatures that will surprise and delight the players.
By incorporating these tactical elements, combat encounters become more than just a slugfest—they become dynamic, immersive, and unforgettable battles!
🔥 Using AI to Uplevel Combat Encounters
AI can enhance combat encounters by helping GMs prepare strategies, balance difficulty, and introduce adaptive tactics in real-time. Instead of manually researching every monster’s optimal approach, AI tools can suggest tactics based on the enemies, environment, and party composition.
⚔️ 1. Pre-Session Battle Prep
Pre-session battle prep with AI helps GMs quickly generate enemy tactics, battlefield conditions, and adaptive strategies, ensuring every combat encounter feels dynamic and well-balanced.
Instead of spending hours researching monster strategies, follow these steps:
✅ Tell the AI about the campaign and encounter
✅ Ask the AI a series of questions about how the NPCs/villains might behave in the encounter
✅ Prompt the AI for different strategies that the monsters might use.
💬 Example AI Prompts:
📌 “How would a medusa set up her lair to maximize the use of its petrification gaze in combat? Give me 5 unique ideas.”
📌 “How might a Beholder set up a layered defense to his lair? Make sure to consider the use of scrying and defense magic, its spy network, traps, and lastly the final defense of his lair. Ask me questions, one at a time, until you have enough information to outline this process.”
📌 “Outline step-by-step how a group of 10 goblins might structure their offense, defense, and retreat when it comes to combat with the player characters? They should use traps and be a mix of both ranged, and melee fighters.”
🎭 2. Tie Specific Tactics to the Villain
A truly memorable villain is more than just a powerful enemy—they are a strategic, calculating force with goals, motivations, and a combat style that reflects their personality.
By tying specific tactics to the villain, GMs can create engaging and challenging encounters that feel personal to the players.
AI can assist in developing villain backstories, motivations, and combat tactics, ensuring that each major antagonist is more than just another boss fight.
📜 Build a Strong Backstory
A villain’s tactics should reflect their history, experiences, and worldview. AI can help flesh out a villain’s background, ensuring that their abilities, fighting style, and strategic decisions feel authentic.
✅ Where did they come from? AI can suggest detailed origins—a disgraced warlord, an exiled mage, or a fallen hero consumed by vengeance.
✅ What shaped them? AI can help develop key life events that define their combat philosophy (e.g., a paranoid general who always fights defensively, setting up traps before a battle).
✅ How do they view the world? AI can generate villain monologues, beliefs, and ideals that guide their actions.
✅ What is one thing that they refuse to bend on? They should have the one thing that is their north star, find out what it is.
✅ What is their Achilles heel? What is the one thing that drives them mad, or they will surrender if it happens?
📌 Example: A once-righteous paladin, betrayed by their order, now fights defensively, using divine wards and summoned minions to wear down intruders rather than engaging in direct combat.
North Star: Restoring justice on their own terms, believing only they can uphold true righteousness.
Achilles’ Heel: A deep-seated guilt and hesitation when facing former allies or innocent bystanders, leaving openings for persuasion or doubt.
💭 Understand Their Motivations
A villain’s motivations should influence how they approach combat, diplomacy, and defense. AI can suggest personalized combat tactics based on their goals:
✅ A tyrant seeking absolute control might use overwhelming force, fear tactics, and psychological warfare to break their enemies before the fight begins.
✅ A cunning mastermind might rarely fight directly, preferring illusions, proxies, or environmental hazards to weaken foes.
✅ A vengeful revenant might prioritize targeting a specific PC, relentlessly pursuing them with single-minded hatred.
📌 Example: A shadowy necromancer obsessed with immortality might fight cautiously, retreating when the battle turns against them, ensuring their phylactery or backup plan is always in motion.
North Star: Achieving eternal life and ultimate mastery over death, believing mortality is a flaw to be erased.
Achilles’ Heel: An obsessive fear of true oblivion, causing them to panic or act irrationally when their phylactery or soul vessel is truly threatened.
Think Through Tactics They Might Use
Each villain should have combat strategies that match their personality and abilities. AI can suggest adaptive battle plans, ensuring that each villain fights uniquely rather than feeling like just another enemy.
✅ The Tactical Warlord – Uses formations, traps, and reinforcements to fight methodically.
✅ The Arcane Manipulator – Stays at a distance, using illusions, teleportation, and control spells to dictate the fight.
✅ The Unrelenting Berserker – Rages through battles, prioritizing brute strength and overwhelming attacks.
✅ The Elusive Trickster – Relies on illusions, clones, and environmental misdirection to confuse players.
✅ The Undying Lich – Avoids direct combat until absolutely necessary, focusing on draining resources and summoning undead hordes.
📌 Example: Instead of a sorcerer villain simply throwing fireballs, AI suggests that they harness localized storms, manipulate battlefield conditions, and attack with summoned elemental creatures that mirror their obsession with controlling nature.
🕵️♂️ 3. Make the Process of Finding the Villain’s Weakness a Part of the Campaign
A great villain isn’t just defeated by brute force—their weakness should be uncovered through player choices, exploration, and storytelling. Instead of simply handing players the answer, AI can help GMs weave clues into the campaign, ensuring that the journey to discovering the villain’s Achilles’ heel is just as engaging as the final battle.
✅ Generate Hidden Clues with AI – Ask AI to create lore-based hints, forgotten prophecies, or NPC rumors that hint at the villain’s weakness over time.
✅ Create Multi-Step Weakness Discovery Quests – AI can generate side quests or dungeon encounters where players must collect ancient relics, decipher coded texts, or seek lost sages to learn how the villain came to be and maybe, how to kill them.
✅ Tie Weaknesses to the World’s History – AI can connect the villain’s flaw to past events, creating rich lore that rewards attentive players (e.g., “The warlord can only be harmed by a blade forged from the ruins of his fallen empire”).
✅ Let NPCs Provide Misinformation or Twisted Truths – AI can help GMs generate multiple conflicting accounts, forcing players to sort truth from deception (e.g., "Some say the vampire fears silver, but an old scholar insists it’s actually sacred moonlight").
✅ Dynamically Adapt Clue Placement Based on Player Choices – If the party ignores a key lead, AI can suggest new ways to introduce the information organically, keeping the story moving without forcing players onto a single path.
🦇 4. Generate Custom Monsters
AI allows GMs to break free from traditional monster stat blocks by creating unique, story-driven creatures that are tailored to the party’s strengths and weaknesses. Instead of relying solely on pre-written creatures, AI can generate custom monsters with specialized abilities, lore, and combat mechanics, ensuring every encounter feels fresh and engaging.
AI can help you to create monster variations that will keep the players guessing.
Example: Recently we came across a swamp blob with tentacles and the ability to charm. As it turns out this was a combination of a Shambling mound and Will-o-Wisp. This totally surprise me and my character.
⚖️ 5. Aligning Combat to Player Archetypes and Journeys
Different players approach combat in different ways. I take the time to get to know my players and the journey that their character is on. Player feedback is critical to developing combat strong encounters. I will often build an encounter specifically for a player with the goal of moving their story forward. Some players enjoy mechanical optimization, others prefer thematic duels, and some want combat to serve a greater narrative purpose.
AI can help tailor combat to individual player archetypes:
✅ The Storyteller – Loves rich narratives, deep character arcs, and world-building.
Provide detailed NPCs, complex plotlines, and morally challenging decisions.
Let character backstories shape the game world and influence major events.
✅ The Power Gamer – Optimizes character builds, mechanics, and combat tactics.
Offer challenging encounters that reward strategic thinking.
Provide opportunities for character customization and powerful loot.
✅ The Casual Player – Plays for fun, camaraderie, and a relaxed experience.
Create a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere with flexible game pacing.
Encourage fun, roleplay moments, and low-stakes choices to keep them engaged.
✅ 🏆 The Completionist – Enjoys exploring details, uncovering secrets, and side quests.
Design expansive worlds with hidden treasures and deep lore.
Include optional dungeons, rare items, and extra challenges for those who seek them.
✅ 🎯 The Specializer – Prefers honing a specific skill, mechanic, or role in the party.
Provide chances to master a niche (crafting, stealth, persuasion, magic schools, etc.).
Design encounters that highlight their expertise in unique and rewarding ways.
⚔️ Wrap Up
AI is a powerful tool that helps GMs create dynamic, immersive, and strategic combat encounters that go beyond simple hit points and damage rolls. By using AI, GMs can craft smarter enemies, balance encounters in real-time, and adapt to player choices for more engaging battles.
✅ Generate Adaptive Enemy Tactics – AI suggests intelligent combat strategies based on enemy type, intelligence, and environment, making battles feel more realistic and challenging.
✅ Use dynamic, multi-layered environments – A fight on crumbling ice floes, inside a collapsing tower, or amidst a raging storm is more engaging than one in an empty room.
✅ Align Combat to Player Archetypes – AI tailors encounters to fit different player styles, ensuring that tacticians, role-players, and storytellers all find something exciting in the battle.
✅ Create Custom Monsters – AI can design unique creatures, modify existing ones, and introduce new abilities and lore that tie directly into your campaign world.
✅ Build Multi-Phase Boss Fights – AI helps craft evolving boss encounters, introducing new challenges at key moments so fights never feel static.
✅ Integrate Villain Weaknesses Into the Story – AI generates hidden clues, side quests, and evolving mysteries, making the discovery of a villain’s Achilles’ heel a part of the adventure.
Special Note: Applying The Monsters Know What They Are Doing to Combat Strategy
Keith Amman’s book The Monsters Know What They Are Doing is one of the best resources for GMs looking to run smarter, more tactical enemies. The book provides deep dives into monster strategies based on their abilities, intelligence, and combat instincts. Instead of treating enemies as mindless hit point sponges, Amman helps GMs think through how different creatures should behave in battle.
How This Changes Encounter Design
Monsters should fight smart: A goblin doesn’t charge headfirst into battle—it hides, flanks, and retreats when needed. A dragon doesn’t land and brawl—it flies, breathes fire, and forces players into difficult terrain.
Each enemy has a combat style: A berserker rages into the thick of combat, while a mind flayer fights with precision, controlling the battlefield.
Tactics should reflect intelligence: A beast may fight instinctively, but a warlord should command troops, using the environment and strategies that mirror real-world combat leadership.
By studying monster tactics, GMs can create more compelling and memorable battles that force players to strategize instead of just rolling dice.
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