Making Combat Interesting

Q: "I've asked a lot of questions recently, for two main reasons: I'm doubting my quality as a new DM (five games in), and I'm not really having fun anymore (and kind of dreading the game every week).
But one of my biggest struggles is: How do I make combat more interesting? The way I'm doing combat now, there's nothing interesting or fun about it. Your turn comes up, you roll a d20, more often than not you miss, and if you do happen to hit you make a small dent in an otherwise bulletsponge of an enemy. Lather, rinse, repeat. There's no strategy. There's no excitement. There's no real feeling of tension, or fear. If I do a large group of enemies the players get bored of the monotony. If I do one large enemy, they get bored fo the monotony. I don't know how to design encounters so that they're not just a game of Worms."


A: This is a fantastic question.

1) 4th edition had a similar issue with the "sacks of hit points" problem, and the hack was cool - lower monster hp by half, and have them all hit harder.

2) 4e also used a "minions" mechanic where lots of little dudes would show up and take only one hit to go down.

3) 13th age has an "escalation die" mechanic where you start with 0 during the first then "tick it up" each subsequent round from 1 to 6. Mechanically the die gives it's bonus to all attack rolls given by either side in the fight.

4) good fight descriptions can be awesome, but it's not a requirement. Personally, I save it for epic or game changing hits. Recently one of my player missed w a flame attack in a fight w a bunch of goblins, and I told him he hit the door frame and knocked it onto the ground. Little descriptive moments like that are good.

(4.5) critical misses are a great opportunity to do something cool or funny

5) Fate has this mechanic (Situation Aspects) where you prep little "props" in your combat spaces for players to take advantage of. For example if players get into a fight in church, the props might be "giant stained glass window" and "pews" and "the lectern". Getting your players to think about interactables is key "you can attack, or you could pick up the lectern and use it as a shield". "You could push the bad guy through the glass window as a bonus action here roll.STR"

6) D&D is not designed for grid combat. Take advantage of this by running swift combat with note cards. A simple rule of thumb is that each notecard is an interaction space, so like if the NPC's and players are on one space, they can fight melee. If they are in two adjacent spaces, they can fight ranged. Don't worry about stated "ranges" for spells or arrows, just be fair and reasonable. This lets you do all sorts of crazy stuff, like pirate ships in a massive sea battle, or moving from city block to city block in an enemy invasion.

7) multi-goal combat and "beat the clock"

For showcase fights you can ramp the tension up with timers - the castle is wired to explode if the players can't disarm the magical trap, (series of skill checks) while the rest of the players deal with the wizard and his magic golem

Appendix:
Faster and Deadlier 4e Combat
Transporting 13th age escalation die 
On Narrative Combat - Sly Flourish
d100 Fumble Chart 
Fate Core SRD Situation Aspects