Secondary Challenges · Game Master's Laboratory

Secondary Challenges

In a few hours, I'm wrapping up a big old two year campaign, and we're ending in a giant fight. Because of a whole lot of campaign background I won't bombard you with, the main objective of the fight is to hold magic items near specific points before the bad guys do the same---steal from each other, control the battlefield, unlock the Wish.

I think it's pretty common advice online to offer, the idea that even in combat heavy games, it's usually way more interesting to have a different objective aside from "reduce all enemy HP to 0." What are your favorite secondary challenges to deploy, or a specific encounter that went well using this tactic? This definitely applies to way more than combat in any game: traps with a distracting enemy, heists with social encounter as the distraction, puzzles with a ticking clock are all some of my favorites. How about a game you've run or played in?

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