Waves in combat can instantly make an encounter more interesting. Combat can often feel like a puzzle that needs solving. Waves change that. A static encounter suddenly becomes dynamic. It doesn’t matter whether players love tactics or narrative, waves can make both types very happy. Unfortunately, it’s an extremely underused tool.
What Are Waves in Combat?
A traditional encounter often runs something like this: two sides decide initiative; then, they attack each other until one side is no longer standing; if still alive, the player characters (PCs) heal, loot, and then continue exploring.
This is a static encounter. For example, moving south, the PCs find an enemy camp with nine goblins. All the goblins are on a battle map, and with the right lines-of-sight, the players know where everything is. The combat is now a puzzle, and the players can see all the pieces. Once they have solved the puzzle—most likely by clearing the camp—the adventure continues.
Alternatively, moving south, the PCs find the camp with only five goblins. Then, on the first round of combat, one goblin rings an alarm bell. Next, on the second round of combat, the PCs hear more enemies coming from the east and west. On the third round, two goblins arrive on each flank, ready for battle.
By using waves, the situation has changed. The fight has become more interesting; it’s now dynamic.
Why Use Waves?
There are four main reasons:
1) It escalates encounters. Players suddenly have more decisions to make. Each new wave increases the drama. This makes the payoff of winning the combat feel more rewarding.
2) Waves are really cinematic. Movies, computer games, and many books follow the structure of beginning, escalation, climax, and resolution. Using waves helps combat copy this satisfying flow.
3) They surprise players. By changing the situation, players suddenly have new information they must deal with. There is a thrill to dynamic battles that static encounters do not have.
4) Waves give the gamemaster (GM) the ability to change encounter difficulty mid-combat. For me, this is the most important reason. This is something I mentioned in my last article. By keeping some of the enemies in reserve, I can increase or decrease the difficulty as needed. This helps with surprising dice rolls—good or bad—and player decisions—good… or bad. Additionally, it also helps me deal with any bad errors of judgment preparing the encounter in the first place.
Examples Where Waves in Combat Work
Waves are great for any escalating situation. However, they are especially useful during boss fights. In many systems, a single enemy will get easily defeated by a party of PCs. Waves not only add to the drama, they also give the boss a defensive line to hide behind; players have to react to this new threat.
Waves are also a natural way to build mixed threat encounters. Whether for story or tactical reasons—or both—these challenge the party in different ways at the same time. GMs can carefully pace the introduction of an environmental hazard, or enemies that have different ways to attack and defend.
Furthermore, using waves offers unique encounter ideas. For example, meat grinder situations where the PCs have to survive for x number of turns; or, alternatively, they must defeat x number of enemies before relief arrives. Escape and extraction missions are another natural fit. Likewise, waves work brilliantly in missions where the PCs must protect an object, creature, or location from ongoing attacks.
Advice on Planning
The first consideration comes during planning. How should the tension develop? Usually, this will be a steady increase; each wave is more dangerous than the last until the climax of the battle with elite enemies. However, always doing the same thing is boring. Narratively or tactically, it might be more interesting to start with the most difficult enemies, reinforcing them with weaker waves. Or, alternate between strong and weak waves to give the battle a feeling of ebb and flow.
In most circumstances, I would recommend using three to five waves. Too many, and fights begin to lose their fun.
Before a wave comes, foreshadow its arrival. Players should have at least one turn to prepare for new threats. They should know exactly what is coming, or have enough hints to make a smart decision in response. If they hear slow, heavy footfalls, they can guess something big and dangerous is coming; if they see lots of tiny shadows running towards them, they know the threat is probably weak but many in number.
Foreshadowing is important because it stops waves feeling like a gotcha surprise. GMs that keep adding threats without fair warning will—often quite rightly—seem adversarial. If GMs aren’t comfortable directly telling players what is coming, still give more than enough information in hints; the goal is for players to make smart decisions and so effective information is essential.
Runehammer’s Index Card RPG has the brilliant idea of using timers. Roll a d4, and that’s how long the characters have before the new threat arrives.
Consider combining foreshadowing with a dynamic environment. For example, the players hear three trolls coming down a passageway; the characters have two turns to try and block or trap the passageway, slowing or damaging the trolls. Perhaps really clever ideas can prevent the trolls from ever joining the battle. Making and taking advantage of chokepoints or forcing enemies to go certain routes are rewards for creative play.
When The Wave Arrives
Think about where the enemies are coming from. Sometimes, reinforcing existing enemy positions makes the most sense. However, waves arriving on the PCs’ flanks or behind them are a great opportunity to increase tension and tactical pressure.
Every wave arriving should be interesting. This means mixing enemy threats, making one enemy in the wave an elite, or both. Each wave works best by bringing something new to the table. For instance, if the PCs are fighting regular goblins, more regular goblins do not make a great wave. Instead, goblins riding wolf chariots or an orc berserker patrol bring new challenges to the party.
In the case of an elite, it could be a captain or a mage. If GMs don’t want more complications though, one-off or low-level abilities on an otherwise regular enemy work well. For instance, giving free movement to another enemy, or changing their attack into a small area of effect. Just making them act like an elite—bossing the others around—can help hide their identical stat line.
Mixing enemy threats is also a fantastic way to spotlight different characters. When my D&D party had two barbarians, a fighter, and a wizard, the melee characters loved large HP brawls. However, the wizard’s player wanted to cast fireballs. Lots of fireballs. One solution? Sometimes big groups of low HP enemies would arrive on the party’s flanks in conveniently, tightly spaced groups. The wizard got to use their fireballs—which they loved—and helped them feel useful in the encounter. As a side note, including enemies specifically to show off PC special abilities should be happening throughout an adventure!
Using Waves in Combat to Change Objectives
Waves also offer a clean chance to change an encounter’s objective. Lieutenants can arrive, giving new commands; enemies can switch from defending to retreating, or attacking to delaying because of these new orders.
This change can be narrative, as well as tactical. Enemies talk, and if GMs give them a free talking action upon arrival, the PCs may learn important information. Significantly, this cannot be interrupted; it also doesn’t need players to sit through whole NPC conversation scenes passively—which can often be boring anyway. Consequently, waves give the GM a way to stagger information into smaller pieces; PCs are more likely to learn more—though there’s never a guarantee here!
GMs can change a wave’s composition according to the situation. Sometimes, the PCs are struggling—perhaps because of bad dice—but the GM wants the game to keep flowing. In response, they can downgrade enemies, down-size their number, or skip the wave altogether. Conversely, if the PCs defeat some enemies way too easily to be fun, more waves, or more challenging waves, can increase enjoyment. However, avoid extending combat for the sake of it.
It’s worth remembering not all waves will want to help each other. Some enemies will be hostile to one another; or, they may be friendly to the PCs, giving the players an opportunity to exploit the changing situation. Furthermore, some waves may be entirely neutral, but still very dangerous. This can include environmental hazards like lava flows, gas explosions, or tidal waves; things everyone in the encounter will need to react to.
Thing To Be Aware Of
Lastly, I want to quickly mention a couple of things to be careful of. First, just like any tool, overuse is boring. Waves shouldn’t be a feature of every encounter.
The second is to avoid overwhelming the PCs with giant waves. Especially on a map with many enemies nearby, it may feel like everyone should come once a noisy fight starts. However, there are all kinds of reasons why they might not come immediately: nervousness, orders to stay in position, etc. Really though, it’s rarely fun and will usually feel like a GM gotcha. The best solution is to spread enemies out; empty rooms in between make it more believable they wouldn’t all come running at once.
That’s pretty much it. Used with care, I really do think waves are fantastic!
To Sum Up
Waves can reliably help with variety, tension, narrative development, and encounter dynamism. They are an incredibly flexible tool. Waves give the ability to increase the difficulty and drama of a battle; simultaneously they also offer an escape from an unexpectedly dangerous combat. They do all of this while empowering players and making them feel like badasses. Definitely give them a go!
