3 Guaranteed Ways To Make Great DnD Second-Phase Encounters!

Hey, sometimes your boss can be smart enough to be like “F*** this, I’m OUT!” This tip can easily feel cheap or a copout, but there are two aspects to this that will guarantee (as far as predictability goes in DnD, anyway) to make it rage-inducing in a GOOD way.

The first part of this happens BEFORE the encounter. In fact, this could be well before the dungeon itself. Depending on the narrative you’re creating, you should, of course, make sure your boss has some sort of relevance to your character’s motivations. Whether directly or otherwise. This is important because you want your players to actively hunt down these evil-doers because they WANT to, not just to progress the story that’s clearly presented for them. You’ll understand why this is important in a second.

The second part of this is on the antagonist’s side. An enemy running away can be due to a plethora of reasons, and deciding on which one will greatly shift how you want to describe their disengagement. An example of this could be, let’s say, your antagonist is known to be very cold and calculated. It makes sense that they wouldn’t let their ego take over enough to stupidly assume they don’t have to make a backup plan if there were even the slightest chance of things not going their way.

Keeping these two things in mind, let me present to you a very basic scenario: One of your player’s characters has a particularly passionate motivation to see this enemy go down. Let’s say the first phase isn’t easy, but not seemingly impossible, and it looks as though they’re on a good foot in bringing them down. But then the boss realizes, “Hell, I guess I need to regroup and better prepare.” They then make their getaway, having already set up traps and ways to impede their pursuers.

If done well enough, that one player (or ideally all of them) will feel their blood boiling as they lock into hunter mode. So now the fight isn’t so much solely reliant on bringing down the boss’s HP to zero, but rather catching them in order to enact the final few blows. Nothing is more primal and invigorating than catching your prey and finishing the job. In a game, I mean. Relax.

Chekhov’s Mana-Nuke

Now here’s a wildly different take on this subject. Let’s say the boss ends up actually being some relatively squishy enemy, and while taking them down isn’t horrendously difficult, it wasn’t super easy either. As the DM, be sure to have hinted at some sort of “Big Project” that the antagonist was working on beyond whatever they were doing that initially pulled in your group.

Now, it’s important not to give too much away, and it’s for this reason: “Okay, Lord Big Baddy falls in a heap on the floor, our valiant muscle-mountain bisecting him like warm butter. But after a moment, once the sounds of the battle die down, you hear a rhythmic hum…” Add some tense descriptions that force your players to investigate, and voila, they realize the entire boss stage is sitting upon what is effectively an armed nuke! What fun!

But to keep the momentum flowing, it’s important to have another factor play into this. Perhaps a horde of minions has been taking a while to reach the top of the tower, or where this chamber/room resides. Not only does your group have to figure out a way to diffuse the device, but also hold back the encroaching baddies who may themselves not be aware of the bomb! (OSHA what? OSHA who?) As nutty as DnD can be, who knows, perhaps your highest charisma character could somehow convince the rest of the baddies that “Hey! We killed your boss, and they were totally fine with killing you, too! Isn’t that kinda MESSED UP?”

A lot of this depends on your setting and previously established adventures, so the details I’ve thrown in may not directly fit into your campaign’s vibe, but I hope the overall approach can help you make second phases more engaging and fun.

Do Your Homework, Nerd!

DMing is difficult, and DnD lends itself to being able to facilitate literally any story or setting you could think of if you’re passionate enough. The main takeaway of this article should be this: Expand your mind! Learn new things beyond just the niche of tabletop gaming! Whether it be completely different genres or even beyond games in general, learn more about the world around you, and I GUARANTEE that if you keep an open mind and are willing to learn new things, you’ll find inspiration in the most random places. Instead of diving into the lore of DnD, get sucked into the lore of the real world! More often than not, truth can be weirder than fiction!

Happy adventuring!