D&D 5E DM Help: Tips and Tricks for Monsters In Combat

[KarinsDad]

@KarinsDad, per PHB 195 Shoving requires the attack action, so you can't do it on an opportunity attack.

Good catch on Suggestion. I had intended to use the time to poison my claws (this particular player will know exactly what I'm doing when he sees me a bottle filled with light blue liquid--it's purple worm venom, just like he himself has bought with another PC) but I had forgotten that Suggestion ends on damage. At least he won't be holding a weapon any more though, hopefully. Maybe I'll Plane Shift him instead of clawing him.

Remember that it's not "a weaker attack." Bare hands against a Rakshasa are a totally ineffectual attack. You need magic weapons to harm them.

Ah. Missed that. My old mind reads over words and they just don't stick.

Isn't an attack that doesn't damage the target weaker than one that does?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

This is ok too, but not really a great move. Every time the Barbarian takes damage, he gets another Wisdom save. So a level 5 Barbarian in a single round would get upwards of three saves. The initial save, the save if the Barbarian damages himself the first time, and the save if the Barbarian damages himself with his second attack. So we're generally taking 0 to 2 Barbarian hits against the Barbarian. This is at most a mini-nova.

Again, better to save the Dominate for if the Rakshasa starts losing the fight or if the Barbarian is greatly wounded where this might finish him off.

That's kind of the problem for the Rakshasa: he doesn't really have any great moves against a Barbarian. At least he'll be taking 23-ish points of damage per hit (he's got GWM), and I won't let him rage so he won't have resistance. Since my spell DC is 18, and he's probably got +0 to his Cha saves (I deliberately avoid learning my PCs' stats in detail so I'm not sure), there's a pretty good chance I'll be able to severely damage him or kill him without even getting my hands dirty. He'll take 140ish points of damage on average before breaking free, which is better than I could do to him with my claws.

I don't want him to run away--he's become a threat to my political plans, so I want him in prison and/or "missing" (dead).

 

[Celtavian]

These are all wonderful, and I hope to see more, since I'm not the most tactically-oriented DM. This is really helpful. One thing I would say, though, is that unless there is a reason, monsters should be played generally according to their known traits and behaviors. For example, dragons are legendary not only for their prowess but also for their arrogance. I don't imagine a "typical" dragon would look to take hostages or play a defensive game until the PCs demonstrate that they are undoubtedly a match for the dragon. It would take the dragon some time to realize it has to fight smarter, by which point a well-matched and tactically-minded party could easily already have the battle in their favor. If the PCs are famous, if they have a history with the dragon to the point that the dragon knows they are no typical adventurers, or if they have been going around slaying dragons in nearby areas, then probably the dragon would go into the fight much more carefully.

Similarly the teaming up on a single character (the closest in many cases) makes sense and could easily bring a PC down (and if it's zombies or ghouls, kill them by attacking (eating) the unconscious), but if the nearest is a knight with magical breastplate, or a wizard with initiative who readied his action for when the monsters step en-masse into melee range then thunderwaves, so be it... the battle will likely go better for the PCs than if the monsters had done otherwise.

I guess my point here is that tactics shouldn't be the first thought on the DMs mind unless the monsters are of a nature or disposition that it would be the first thought on their own minds. Still there are plenty of cases where that should be... and no doubt, as with the rakshasa example, spell casters should be able to use their spells to good effect, which generally means the DM should take some time to think about all these spells, and how they might be best used, so that they can be prepared to run the casting monster as if it were highly experienced with its abilities, as it would be. But then, maybe a caster who has gone over into the political game and has not needed its magic for many years could be quite rusty with it, too. It depends on the situation.

You are thinking like a book. I do sympathize with your thought process because I much prefer the way dragons are in books. If you think of dragons in the fashion you choose to think of them in, they won't live long against PCs. An organized PC party can waste a dragon at higher level with fair ease. I know it should not be the case, but it is if you abide by the rules. You can even play them exceptionally well and perhaps get lucky to hurt the PCs. In general, higher level PCs (somewhere after level 11) will crush most dragons. They can take their damage pretty easily having buffs for dealing with the breath weapon and outputting rather nutty damage that chews up the 200 to 300 hits points they have, especially if you are not playing the spellcasting variety.

Given this reality in the game world, dragons should be played in a fashion that encourages survivability. The arrogance you attribute to dragons is a sure path to death if they face a high level party. The dragon will have little to no time to assess the PCs that have entered before they have him near death's door. It's better to have the dragon assume he must kill the PCs as fast as a possible and worry about how strong they are later. It's in his best interests for survival given a group of PCs that dares to enter a dragon lair in the first place must be pretty damn powerful.

D&D isn't Lord of the Rings or Dragonslayer where wizards are rare and weak. Fighters can't stand toe to toe with them. Priests are just guys that read out of books and baptize people with water. This is D&D. The fighter can hammer them for huge damage in the space of seconds. Wizards can unleash giants hands the wrap the dragon up and bring it to he ground or send warriors aloft in the air to fight them where they fly or create small armies of skeleton archers to pepper them with arrows (an ode to my pal Hemlock). Priests can undo all the damage they've done in a single round.

When thinking of dragons in D&D using the Core rules, you must consider the world in which the dragon lives. It is not a world where it is supreme, but a world where it has real equals, one of them being a group of powerful humanoids that can kill it in under thirty seconds if it decides to play around at all. So playing dragons like this is Smaug in Lord of the Rings or the dragon in Dragonslayer is not taking into account the world the dragon lives in. That literary dragon arrogance should be tempered with a very visceral desire to survive by not letting humanoid adventurers live long at all. No talking with the wandering rogue like Smaug did with Bilbo. He's got to be ready to kill and kill fast. Don't play games in a world where wizards and priests make Gandalf look like a stage magician and fighters make Aragorn and Thorin Oakenshield look like the gate guard.

At least that is how I see it, though not how I prefer it.

 

[Sunseeker]

This works for Huge and larger creatures like many Dragons, but for large and smaller creatures, the melee PC does a shove. If successful, the creature is knocked prone, falls to the ground (might take damage depending on situation), and can then be gang attacked by the melee PCs with advantage.

The Enlarge/Reduce spell on a melee PC changes this to huge or smaller Dragons which is all adults or younger. Polymorph into an intelligent huge creature (or similar magic/effects like Wild Shape) allows for the tactic to work against Ancient Dragons (although the odds of success drop).

Since most monsters do not have the Athletics or Acrobatics skills trained, the odds of success for many melee PCs doing this are close to 50% (more with buffs and more with higher levels to the point that it can be an 80+% chance of success at real high levels). Once the dragon is on the ground, if it ever tries to fly away from the multiple PCs, every size altered PC that gets an OA tries to shove the dragon, increasing the party's chances of doing it again.


For a tactically alert group of players (who have multiple size altered PCs) and DM, the Dragon tactic of hit and run tends to work once before the intelligent Dragon (i.e. DM) understands that sooner or later, the shove is going to work and the Dragon had better switch tactics.

The downside of this at higher levels is that the size altered PCs tend to not have their magic items or spells available for the combat, but the hit and run tactic can be thwarted. But against adult dragons, a group with a Druid, Wizard, and melee PC can put two Large PCs on the dragon.

It's worth noting that if we're assuming the players are a skilled and optimized group, it would be foolish to not run skilled and optimized monsters. Variant rules for dragons allow innate spellcasting. Adult and older dragons should also be assumed to have lairs causing their own effects.

As pointed out before, it's easy to walk all over the stock dragon, even a poorly optimized party could do it if it isn't played smartly.

 

[Celtavian]

That's kind of the problem for the Rakshasa: he doesn't really have any great moves against a Barbarian. At least he'll be taking 23-ish points of damage per hit (he's got GWM), and I won't let him rage so he won't have resistance. Since my spell DC is 18, and he's probably got +0 to his Cha saves (I deliberately avoid learning my PCs' stats in detail so I'm not sure), there's a pretty good chance I'll be able to severely damage him or kill him without even getting my hands dirty. He'll take 140ish points of damage on average before breaking free, which is better than I could do to him with my claws.

I don't want him to run away--he's become a threat to my political plans, so I want him in prison and/or "missing" (dead).

I was disappointed with the Rakshasa. Hopefully you've powered him up some. I saw that vulnerability to magical piercing weapons and thought "this creature is asking to die."

 

[Dragonsbane]

Suggestion can be fun. I just had the party's airship captain get dominated, and then run off the deck to fall to the ocean 1000 feet below

 

[KarinsDad]

That's kind of the problem for the Rakshasa: he doesn't really have any great moves against a Barbarian. At least he'll be taking 23-ish points of damage per hit (he's got GWM), and I won't let him rage so he won't have resistance. Since my spell DC is 18, and he's probably got +0 to his Cha saves (I deliberately avoid learning my PCs' stats in detail so I'm not sure), there's a pretty good chance I'll be able to severely damage him or kill him without even getting my hands dirty. He'll take 140ish points of damage on average before breaking free, which is better than I could do to him with my claws.

I don't want him to run away--he's become a threat to my political plans, so I want him in prison and/or "missing" (dead).

How does the Rakshasa know about GWM? And even if he knows and has the Barbarian do it, chances are the Barbarian is not going to be doing 140ish points of damage without raging and with -5 to hit.

Rak: Dominates. One save. (15% out)

Assuming that the Rakshasa does not attack itself for fear of negating the spell, the rest of the spell ends up being:

hit 1 time: 26% out, 23 damage
hit 2 times: 39% out, 46 damage
hit 3 times: 48% out, 69 damage
hit 4 times: 54% out, 92 damage
hit 5 times: 62% out, 115 damage
hit 6 times: 68% out, 138 damage

The odds of him saving before taking 140 points of damage are greater than the odds of him saving after taking 140 points of damage.

And if the Barbarian criticals himself, he takes the damage, but also gets 10 temp hit points. So, a critical with a Sword of Lifestealing drops a few hit points from future hits.

But when the Rakshasa telepathically tells the Barbarian "attack yourself, using your strongest attacks possible", how does the Rakshasa know about raging, and damage resistance, and the sword of life stealing, GWM, etc.? Dominate Person does not give the attacker telepathic clues about the capabilities of the target.

These seems like some metagame knowledge by the DM. Either the Barbarian should be going all out, or just doing normal attacks. The Rakshasa knowing the best combo for the situation should not typically be allowed. Granted, the Rakshasa could ask the Barbarian questions before having the Barbarian attack himself, but I wouldn't have him express the answers in metagame terms. For example, would the Barbarian offer up info on "damage resistance" (or in character terms, "ignore pain when raging") when the Rakshasa asks him what his best attack is?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

How does the Rakshasa know about GWM? And even if he knows and has the Barbarian do it, chances are the Barbarian is not going to be doing 140ish points of damage without raging and with -5 to hit.

Rak: Dominates. One save. (15% out)

Assuming that the Rakshasa does not attack itself for fear of negating the spell, the rest of the spell ends up being:

hit 1 time: 26% out, 23 damage
hit 2 times: 39% out, 46 damage
hit 3 times: 48% out, 69 damage
hit 4 times: 54% out, 92 damage
hit 5 times: 62% out, 115 damage
hit 6 times: 68% out, 138 damage

The odds of him saving before taking 140 points of damage are greater than the odds of him saving after taking 140 points of damage.

And if the Barbarian criticals himself, he takes the damage, but also gets 10 temp hit points. So, a critical with a Sword of Lifestealing drops a few hit points from future hits.

But when the Rakshasa telepathically tells the Barbarian "attack yourself, using your strongest attacks possible", how does the Rakshasa know about raging, and damage resistance, and the sword of life stealing, GWM, etc.? Dominate Person does not give the attacker telepathic clues about the capabilities of the target.

These seems like some metagame knowledge by the DM. Either the Barbarian should be going all out, or just doing normal attacks. The Rakshasa knowing the best combo for the situation should not typically be allowed. Granted, the Rakshasa could ask the Barbarian questions before having the Barbarian attack himself, but I wouldn't have him express the answers in metagame terms. For example, would the Barbarian offer up info on "damage resistance" (or in character terms, "ignore pain when raging") when the Rakshasa asks him what his best attack is?

Glaive of Lifestealing deals an extra 10 necrotic damage on a hit, which would cancel out the ten temp HP.

RE: "how does he know?" The barbarian and friends are somewhat notorious at this point, so the Rakshasa (Lord Waldemar) has at least basic intelligence on them. Remember that the Rakshasa has also habitually been gathering information about everybody via Detect Thoughts. (BTW, I've ruled that "no material components" for monsters with innate spells is "no components" so that he can re-cast Disguise Self as needed; this would also apply to Detect Thoughts.) He may not know precisely about GWM, but if he orders the barbarian to "hit yourself as hard as you can" it doesn't matter. The fact that the glaive is magic is obvious to him since he knew the wizard who owned the magic sword which was rebuilt into the glaive--in short, he knows this weapon already, and he's interacted with the PCs extensively, and he's prime chancellor and spymaster of the kingdom they are from. I don't believe in metagaming against PCs (again, I don't even know the barbarian's exact stats!) but I don't have a problem with the barbarian knowing things that are relatively common knowledge, like the fact that the barbarian hits things really hard with his magic glaive. Lord Waldemar could have gotten that from talking to any of the sailors on their spelljamming ship, and they wouldn't have even thought there was anything wrong with letting him know.

This isn't just some random Rakshasa that they are meeting in a dungeon cell. And again, this thread is for discussing what can be done to PCs by monsters, not what should be done. Let's stay on-topic and share some more ideas please.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I was disappointed with the Rakshasa. Hopefully you've powered him up some. I saw that vulnerability to magical piercing weapons and thought "this creature is asking to die."

The only change I've made to the Rakshasa is to allow him to cast his spells without components of any kind, and that was done mostly for aesthetic reasons and nostalgia for AD&D "spell-like abilities." It wouldn't really change anything about my campaign if Lord Waldemar had a reputation for ducking out of meetings frequently (ostensibly to attend to urgent but routine business, but really to refresh his Disguise Self spell).

Well, the other change I've made is actually a power-down, not a power-up: Rakshasa immunity to magic weapons is bypassed by weapons sprinkled with salt. I doubt that will become relevant but it might, if the barbarian dies.

 

[iserith]

These are all wonderful, and I hope to see more, since I'm not the most tactically-oriented DM. This is really helpful. One thing I would say, though, is that unless there is a reason, monsters should be played generally according to their known traits and behaviors. For example, dragons are legendary not only for their prowess but also for their arrogance. I don't imagine a "typical" dragon would look to take hostages or play a defensive game until the PCs demonstrate that they are undoubtedly a match for the dragon. It would take the dragon some time to realize it has to fight smarter, by which point a well-matched and tactically-minded party could easily already have the battle in their favor. If the PCs are famous, if they have a history with the dragon to the point that the dragon knows they are no typical adventurers, or if they have been going around slaying dragons in nearby areas, then probably the dragon would go into the fight much more carefully.

Similarly the teaming up on a single character (the closest in many cases) makes sense and could easily bring a PC down (and if it's zombies or ghouls, kill them by attacking (eating) the unconscious), but if the nearest is a knight with magical breastplate, or a wizard with initiative who readied his action for when the monsters step en-masse into melee range then thunderwaves, so be it... the battle will likely go better for the PCs than if the monsters had done otherwise.

I guess my point here is that tactics shouldn't be the first thought on the DMs mind unless the monsters are of a nature or disposition that it would be the first thought on their own minds. Still there are plenty of cases where that should be... and no doubt, as with the rakshasa example, spell casters should be able to use their spells to good effect, which generally means the DM should take some time to think about all these spells, and how they might be best used, so that they can be prepared to run the casting monster as if it were highly experienced with its abilities, as it would be. But then, maybe a caster who has gone over into the political game and has not needed its magic for many years could be quite rusty with it, too. It depends on the situation.

Another way of looking at it might be that it's pretty easy to come up with fictional justification and context to explain why a particular monster behaves in a given tactically-advantageous way. Approaching it in this way means the DM can "bring it" challenge-wise and still have it make sense in the fiction.