Handling Monster Information

I wanted to share this experiment I'm currently running with my players:

Easy DC:
- You tell the player the monster's role (or describe the role if you don't want to tell it explicitly)

Medium DC:
- You tell the player the tactics the monster/s will use
- You tell the player all the useful powers the creature has that will interact with the terrain or other combatants (i.e. all nasty tricks it will pull)

Hard DC:
- You tell the player the defenses and resistances/vulnerabilities

Twist:
The player CAN'T tell the other players this information, he can only shout orders or advice of what to do/not to do

Why all this?
Since 3.5 I was always bothered/upset that whatever I told the player that made the check was repeated verbatim to the others.
That didn't feel right.
Worse still, it didn't convey the feeling that the character was wise or intelligent.
It felt more like a robot puking information, or a talking monster manual entry.

The Twist forces the player to think a bit more: "What orders/advice should I tell my teammates that make use of this information?" and the other players/characters tend to listen to what the other players has to say, or delay or ask him what to do.

So far, it worked, but there are some tweaks and considerations for using this.

I'll give an example of how we used it yesterday.

The party was combating 4 Large elementals: two brutes and two skirmishers.
All of them could teleport 5 once per encounter.

Brutes:
- Typical basic attack with high damage
- Could Slide 2 + prone with a recharge 4-5-6.
- At-will charge attack that would push 1 and prone

Skirmishers
- Typical basic attack that does only damage
- Standard at-will: hit and shift 1
- Standard at-will: move speed + basic attack at any point + no OAs when leaving

The combat took place at a road with burning bushes at the sides.

So, when the player succeeded at the Medium check, I told him the following:

Tactics:
- these two are brutes, they will wade into melee at the core of the group
- these other two are mobile combatants who will jump in, strike at the outer member of the group and then fall back. Into the fire woods if possible
Note: "the outer member of the group", means the one you first become adjacent to.
Powers:
- all can teleport once per encounter
- the brutes can throw you 2 squares and leave you prone

Note that I left out a lot of information.
Not because of cheating, but because players during a combat can retain and process little amounts of info.
So I resumed the information they needed, rather than dumping it in raw form.

The tactics section should cover the basic attacks and at wills of the monsters.
It doesn't matter how the Skirmishers move, strike and get out, they will do it anyway, and the first time they do it, everyone will see and it will be obvious.
The brutes are also straightforward. I didn't tell them about the charge power, because there's not much you can do about it. And if it is the push + prone that worries you, I got it covered by telling the player about the other power.
So, what is the tactics piece of information useful for?
The PC can suggest the tactic of surrounding the waker members of the party with defenders (I know, something obvious and intuitive, but hey, at least you know that tactic WILL be useful)

So, this left me with only two powers the creatures could pull of and surprise the PCs and change the dynamics of the battle.

The slide 2 + prone was the more critical, since this could be used to not only damage and get out of the way a PC, but to also throw it into the burning bushes.
This is something the PC can use to tell the other teammates to stay away from the bushes.

The teleport was a tricky thing.
Because teleport can be used offensively, to bypass the defenders and reach the softer side of the party, or to escape a defender or flank or bad position.
So there's no one directive or tactic that could be shouted out.
What's a good advice for this?
In this case, I let the player just tell the others that these guys could teleport once.


Well, that's it. Sorry for the length.

Not allowing the PC to speak freely feels a lot less right than simply regurgitating monster abilities. I can't think that even saying "stay away from the burning bushes" is necessary. Stay away from magically burning bushes? Really?

Everything else you came up with is fine, though.

If you really want to try and restrict what a PC can relay each round, then maybe allow only each 'level' of information. So, the first round, the PC can relay the Easy DC worth of info, the second round he can relay the Medium, etc. Maybe restrict it to per monster type. Of course, this means that the combat might be over before he relays all the info, which may make the knowledge check useless, frustrating the players.

Infiniti2000 said:

Not allowing the PC to speak freely feels a lot less right than simply regurgitating monster abilities.

Click to expand...

You can think of it not as "you cannot say it" but more on the line of "this is something that it isn't easy to communicate".

Because there are lots of words and concepts we have at the game level that make much easier to transmit certain concepts, that characters wouldn't have.

Infiniti2000 said:

I can't think that even saying "stay away from the burning bushes" is necessary. Stay away from magically burning bushes? Really?

Click to expand...

LOL

The bushes had an aura of fire damage, that was obvious for all of them.
But what was not obvious is that been 2 squares from a bush was dangerous because of the elemntal's power.
They where in a 6 square wide path, so the central 2 squares where the safest.

Infiniti2000 said:

If you really want to try and restrict what a PC can relay each round, then maybe allow only each 'level' of information.

Click to expand...

I don't want to restrict the relaying.
But I don't want just information to be transmited.
I want everyone to feel that the character who has the knowledge of the creatures, knows what has to be done to deal with them.

Infiniti2000 said:

Of course, this means that the combat might be over before he relays all the info, which may make the knowledge check useless, frustrating the players.

Click to expand...

Right, that's another thing I try to avoid.
I want the players to handle the least amount of information possible, as well as the more valuable possible.
That's why I think giving orders or advice is better than just handling out info.
(of course, assuming that the orders/advice is a decent one)

I definetely want the knowledge check to be useful, so that's a priority.
If I can't come up with something cool, I prefer to err on the side of giving too much information.

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The "you can't say this" is the part that was the most problematic, for me at least. My players where nice enough to give it a try, and they haven't complained yet.

But note that the main intention here is to make the player who has the info the one that can make it useful or not.
And in addition, make the group feel that the one that has the information, is the one that can guide or give advice.

Of course, I can fail miserably in my intentions with what I proposed, but hey, that's why I posted it here
(so far, it worked with my group, but we are still testing)

I can understand the desire to keep game mechanical information out of in character speech. So I wouldn't have a problem with this. If you learn a creature is a controller, you don't yell out "hey guys, the dude in purple robes is a controller," you say something in the lines of "spread out, watch out for blasts."

Or if you learn everything about a chillborn zombie, yelling "it has vulnerable 5 fire and radiant and AC 22 Reflex 16" is no good. However something like "Use fire and holy attacks on them. They have tough hide, but don't dodge too well" would relay the same information in a more believable fashion. I think that's all the OP is asking for. He wants to disclose the game mechanical information to the person with the knowledge, but wants the information transfer to be in character.

I, personally, have fallen to describing abilities in flowery, poetic language up front and then only giving them the numbers when they're interacted with.

They still have all the information at their disposal, but it leans them ever so slightly towards the whole talking in funny voices thing.

This seems like a fine system if it works for your group, but to my mind, this mechanic would add another layer of time-sucking to an already bogged down combat system (and my players have fun with the meta-game):

1) DM has to take time out to tell the player what they found out from the roll
2) the player then has to figure out how to use that information
3) then the player has to impress on the others s/he knows what actions their characters should take

The point of monster knowledge checks are to speed up the encounter by giving the players an edge when it comes to devising optimal strategies and tactics (eliminating the trial and error)

I like to give out as much information as possible and let my players discuss/share strategies for a minute or two, but I put a cap on the amount of time that can be spent discussing (if they want to discuss at all, often they go "huh... my initiative is... XX"). This allows my players the opportunity to coordinate their actions, choose optimal targets and identify good powers to use or stay away from using on certain monsters. But also keeps combat moving by getting it all out of the way ahead of time.

Additionally, I use a few house rules that speed up combat:

1) when a player succeeds on the easy DC of a monster knowledge check I throw in a the monsters relative level
2) when a player succeeds on the hard DC of a monster knowledge check I throw in the mobs lowest defense (AC, fort, ref, will: but not the number)
3)if a players modified attack roll hits a defense exactly, I tell them so (this is really just a time saver that lets my players do the math themselves)