So far, we’ve covered this in my D&D encounter improvisation strategy:

Step One: Consider the context

Step Two: Get a feel for the encounter

Step Three: Choose enemies and hazards

Now we’re up to Step Four. This is the last step in creating the encounter - but not the last step in the process because there’s more to it than that - so let’s get into it.

Step Four is to add personality and depth to at least one enemy.

This is where they stop being stat blocks and bundles of rules, and start being living, breathing people.

How?

Here are a few ways.

Drivers

Whether it’s an owlbear, a goblin raider, a ghost, a demon or a bandit, the enemy has to have something they want.

A ghost might have something specific and rigid, like to haunt an area and attack anyone who enters it. Creatures with a tad more free will shall have more complex motivations.

Defending territory leads to different behaviour than hunting for food.

Someone yearning for gold and glory will fight to the death before someone who’s only following orders will.

This is similar to the context from Step One, so let’s move on.

Profession

Take one of the enemies. What do they do when they’re not rolling dice against player characters?

Deciding one of the bandits is also a baker can be superficial. Give them some flour stains on their trousers and stop for the day. If you want to go deeper, you can think about how a baker sees the world.

How would someone who gets up early and relies on patience fight?

Combat style

How did they learn how to fight?

Are they a professional soldier or self-taught? Did they learn a martial art or from getting into bar brawls?

Either might throw a punch, but the description of those punches could be completely different.

In one of my campaigns, I have five villainous factions. Each had their own style of martial arts - one used the Snake, another used the Tiger and so forth. It was subtle, but it changed the flavour of the fights and their tactics.

Synergy with the environment

Maybe one of them breaks off a tree branch to use as a club.

Maybe they grab a handful of sand or a mugful of ale.

Battles don’t take place on a grid in a white void, even if it feels that way sometimes. Put an enemy into the world, not just on top of it.

Something distinctive

Give one of them something that makes them stand out - a cool scar, a bad accent, a unique scarf.

It doesn’t have to be fancy. Remember, this is improvising an encounter - you don’t have time to go into something complex.

Luckily, you don’t need time. It doesn’t take much to make an enemy stand out, which is enough to make a fight memorable.

And there you have it - the four things I tend to do when improvising encounters. We still have some other things to cover in the next few weeks, but this is enough to get you to quickly and easily build interesting encounters on the fly.

It makes a difference, knowing you can pull a fun encounter out of your sleeves at any moment.