jgsugden
Legend
D&D is an RPG. A role playing game. Characters play a role in the story. So do their enemies. Make sure you're telling a good story.
If you believe the above is important, you as a DM should *not* be finding strategies to counter the strategies the PCs rely upon unless you are doing so in the shoes of a monster or NPC that is in position to do so. If an enemy does not know of the PCs, it will not be crafting a strategy to stop their tactics. If there is someone that has been hunting the PCs and watching them, they might craft their approach to the situation.
When crafting NPCs and monsters, ask yourself what they know, what concerns them, and set their abilities to line up with what they'd have developed.
Obviously, a DM can metagame this approach to set up situations that would result in the enemy just happening to have great coutermeasures. "The Orcs have been attacked by nearby elven spellcasters so they have a bunch of counterspels and dispel magics prepared by their Shamans." As a DM, you can try to avoid this, steer into it, or do whatever you want - but the best, immersve, full worlds I've experienced were ones in which the DM created a world agnostic to the party's abilities and hen let them walk in it.
If you believe the above is important, you as a DM should *not* be finding strategies to counter the strategies the PCs rely upon unless you are doing so in the shoes of a monster or NPC that is in position to do so. If an enemy does not know of the PCs, it will not be crafting a strategy to stop their tactics. If there is someone that has been hunting the PCs and watching them, they might craft their approach to the situation.
When crafting NPCs and monsters, ask yourself what they know, what concerns them, and set their abilities to line up with what they'd have developed.
Obviously, a DM can metagame this approach to set up situations that would result in the enemy just happening to have great coutermeasures. "The Orcs have been attacked by nearby elven spellcasters so they have a bunch of counterspels and dispel magics prepared by their Shamans." As a DM, you can try to avoid this, steer into it, or do whatever you want - but the best, immersve, full worlds I've experienced were ones in which the DM created a world agnostic to the party's abilities and hen let them walk in it.