About Monster Mechanics...

I’ve been behind the screen for a long time now.

I got my start as a player almost three decades ago in 1998, when my cousin sat me down and said something like, “So… there’s this game where you pretend to be an elf and yell at goblins.” I remember it clearly because it was the moment I realized tabletop RPGs were a thing at all.

It broke my brain in the best possible way.

Very quickly, I slid from “wide-eyed new player” into “forever DM.” You probably know the type. I was the one who bought the big books, drew cursed little dungeon maps in the margins of my school notes, and started obsessing over monsters and combat way more than was probably reasonable.

Because here’s the thing that grabbed me early on and never really let go:

Dungeons & Dragons gives you stat blocks… but it does not really teach you how to fight with them.

You get a wall of numbers, a couple of traits, some spells if you are lucky, and then the game quietly assumes you know how to turn that into a fun, dynamic, terrifying encounter for a group of wildly unpredictable players.

If you have ever sat behind the screen thinking, “Okay… it bites for 1d8. Now what?” then you are exactly who this blog is for.

What this blog is about

This blog is about making combat feel good.

Not balanced on a spreadsheet. Not technically correct according to every obscure rules interaction.

Just good.

I want fights to feel dangerous without being miserable, smart without being tedious, and cinematic without needing a three-hour tactical briefing before initiative is rolled.

It does not matter if you are running level 1 villagers with pitchforks against a single giant rat, or a level 17 party diving headfirst into a showdown with Tiamat. Your players deserve encounters that feel alive, that react to them, and that tell a story in motion.

Numbers help. Stat blocks matter. But they are not the whole picture.

The secret sauce is how creatures think, behave, and adapt in the middle of the chaos.

The problem I kept running into

Pretty early in my DM career, I realized something that honestly frustrated me.

You can learn a lot of DM skills just by reading.

You can read about how to improvise NPCs.

You can read about pacing, story structure, and worldbuilding.

But combat? Real, dynamic, “oh no, this matters” combat?

You cannot really learn that just by reading rules, because combat is not static. It is not a script. It is a moving puzzle full of weird player choices, unforeseen spell interactions, and “I didn’t think you were going to do that” moments.

You are not prepping a cutscene. You are prepping a sandstorm.

You have to be ready for all sorts of strange angles your players will come at the fight from, based on their builds, their personalities, and the way they like to solve problems. And it is your job as the DM to keep that storm fun, dangerous, and interesting at any level of play.

That means your monsters cannot just walk up, trade hits, and die politely on schedule.

They have to act like they want to live.

They should use the environment. They should retreat, reposition, ambush, call for help, try to isolate the wizard, throw someone off a ledge, dive into the water, slam a door, break a bridge, or just flat out run away when things go south.

In real life, there are not a lot of animals that will calmly stand still and get beaten to death.

An owlbear that is being roasted by three adventurers and a summoned flaming sphere is not going to just stay there and take it until the hit points run out. It might flee, it might try to drag someone into the woods, it might barrel through the weakest looking character just to clear a path.

That behavior, that survival instinct, is what makes combat feel real and memorable.

The niche that nobody really filled

When I started digging around for help on this, I found a lot of good content… just not the specific kind I wanted.

There is great advice out there on forums.

There are excellent videos about how to run monsters in a general sense.

There are breakdowns of “this monster is CR 7, here’s its abilities, here’s how hard it hits.”

But I kept wanting something that went deeper into the tactics and personality of individual monsters.

Not just, “The owlbear has multiattack and is very dangerous in melee.”

More like, “Here is how an owlbear actually behaves in the wild. Here is how it reacts to fire, ranged attacks, getting surrounded, or having its young nearby. Here is how it uses terrain, when it flees, when it pushes, and how it feels to fight from round 1 to round 6.”

I wanted prep help that would let me sit down and say:

“Okay, tonight they are fighting a beholder. How does this thing think? What is its game plan? What does round 1 look like? What does round 3 look like when it is bloodied and paranoid?”

And for the most part, nobody was really doing that in the way I wanted to see it.

So, like every DM who has made a terrible life choice, I decided to do it myself.

What you will find here

This blog exists to answer one big question:

“How do I make my monsters fight in a way that feels smart, fun, and alive?”

Around that, everything else spins.

You will find:

Deep dives on individual monsters, where we talk about not just their stats, but their instincts, fears, goals, and combat patterns.

Practical encounter advice, not theoretical. Things like, “Put the archers here, give the ogre this basic strategy, light this section of the battlefield on fire, then watch what your players do.”

Thoughts on how to use environments as weapons. Chasms, doorways, fog, cramped tunnels, rooftops, boats, swamps, ruined cities, all of it.

Ways to make low level enemies matter, even when your players are high level monsters themselves. Goblins with a brain are scarier than a dragon that just hovers in place and breathes on cooldown.

And, underneath all of it, a simple philosophy:

We are here to have fun first, and worry about being perfectly “by the book” second.

I am not interested in rules lawyering your table into misery. I would rather bend, twist, or completely ignore a rule if it means the fight is more exciting, the story hits harder, and everyone walks away buzzing.

How this shows up on the battlemap

Whenever I talk tactics here, I like to tie it to something you could literally draw on a battlemap or visualize at the table.

If I am talking about an owlbear trying to escape, for example, I will suggest things like:

“On the map, have the owlbear break through underbrush or a ruined wall, leaving difficult terrain behind it as it flees. Let the players see the trail of smashed trees or broken stone as it goes. Maybe it knocks over a tree that creates cover for it but also a hazard the players have to leap over.”

If I am talking about a band of goblins using hit and run tactics, I might say:

“Place a few narrow alleyways and ledges on the map. Have the goblins open with volleys from the rooftops, then retreat behind a corner where the party cannot see them without moving. Scatter a few crates, carts, and doors that can be shoved over to block line of sight or create cover. Move the goblins constantly. Make the players chase them, not just stand still in the open.”

I want you to be able to read an article here and walk away thinking, “Oh, I know exactly how I would sketch that out and run it on my grid or VTT tonight.”

Community, not lectures

At the end of the day, I am just another DM who loves this hobby and has spent way too long thinking about whether a pack of wolves would really stand their ground against a plate-wearing paladin with a glowing sword.

This blog is not meant to be a holy book. It is meant to be a workshop.

I want DMs and players to toss ideas around, argue about monster behavior, share their “my players completely ruined my carefully planned boss fight” stories, and build better encounters together.

If something here sparks an idea and you twist it into something wild for your own table, that is perfect. That is the whole point.

Use what works for you, ignore what does not, and always remember:

Your monsters are not just bags of hit points.
Your players are not just numbers on a sheet.
Your combat is not just “roll to hit until someone is sad.”

It can be clever, scary, funny, desperate, surprising, and memorable.

That is what I am here to help with.

So, welcome to the blog.

Whether you are a brand new DM staring at your first goblin ambush, or a veteran who could run a lich fight in your sleep but wants it to feel fresh again, I am glad you are here.

Pull up a chair. Grab some dice. Let’s make your monsters think, your battlefields matter, and your encounters feel like the stories your players will still be talking about years from now.