How to fix BORING TTRPG Combat 

Holes filled with pain are always scary. You thow a troll into a hole with a gel cube in there, that's way more exciting than hitting it with a torch

I feel like dnd 5e with how many options it gives players, even with varied terrain makes players freeze and do the simplest most powerful option. Especially for new players. I had a combat encounter once that sat with me so much, a goblin fight of 10 above and over 30 below they had stolen oil barrels from a caravan, but weren’t careful, so their was oil all over the bottom floor. I expected my players to throw fire below and wipe out majority of the goblins. Instead their whole plan was about how to lure the goblins outside and fight all 40 goblins on flat ground each player having to kill 8 goblins each. Sometimes your players will just lack creative thought for actions sometimes.

Games and tables that encourage improvisation, especially in combat, sort of need props, yeah. Makes perfect sense. Are there dynamic environment generators out there for encounter scenes? I've seen a lot of tables in the games I like to play but they don't seem geared toward this specific need from what I've seen so far. Interesting :)

I especially like the Oni camouflaging itself with a crowd *because* it's got a big, indiscriminate AOE attack. Even if it may not care about the lives of all these commonest around, it knows that if it lets that off, it's killing its own camouflage. That, right there is a phase transition in the fight.

"Just reskinned bears". 🤣 At least you are keeping the skin on the bears.

This also touches on why i'm generally not a fan of random encounters. Because how are you gonna make the most out of a particular monster if they're just plopped down on a random terrain. Mechanics that promote environmental thinking, like the "Improvised Weapon" cards in Dragonbane, are a good starter but you still want to be intentional with where you place your monsters.

Definitely did the Gelatinous Cube in a maze with iron bars, to this day one of my favorite encounters. I also added in a puzzle mechanic with levers scattered throughout that raised some iron bars while lowering others, changing the paths available to the players.

Savage Worlds. Joking aside I feel like terrain is a just a crutch for what are very boring to interact with combat systems. where the DM either has to waste time drawing a map for skirmish or coming up with gimmicks that the system itself does help or influnce (even if it's just a tiny roll table)

I dont run a lot of mapped combat, but even in my theater of the mind combat y trick is weak enemies with punishing/difficult or otherwise interesting terrain. this lets YOU as the GM play an interesting adversary and its a SHOW dont tell situation where your players immediately start learning from you. Players cannot learn from a beholders busted abilities, but getting their butts kicked by a few crafty goblins leaves them with a ton of learned strategy.

Great video! I feel like a dumbass not realizing this especially after playing bg3 and just shoving bitches

Simple don't use 5e or one of it's derivative.