So if we remember that an Adventure is an Episode in a TV Series then an encounter is a scene in that particular Episode. Encounters can be quite fun to do! Just remember to not to do overdo it and make it too complex for yourself or the players.
Encounters need to account for the party being able to succeed, partially succeed and outright failure. Be sure to have those outcomes in mind and the consequences and rewards of them to make the players feel like the encounter was worth their time.
Be sure your encounters make sense in the overall scheme of the adventure involved. Especially if you want your characters to follow through on the storyline you had set up for them. For instance, if you set up bandits on the road to impede the party escorting their charge to their destination that makes sense.
However, that party might not want to fight the bandits traditionally and thats ok! Let your players come up with clever solutions that are reasonable like bribing the bandits to let them pass.
Combat Encounters
Now I’m not gonna lie this next part can be dense and filled with a lot of math. SO here is a combat generator that will help take away some of that hard math.
The main goal is to make these combat encounters really fun and a general rule of thumb is the easy difficulty shouldn’t the tax the party too much. Medium should be kinda scary but no casualties. Hard might kill off a character if they are being reckless and Deadly might kill off the whole party.