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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amal Shukup" data-source="post: 1404140" data-attributes="member: 6291">In my campaign, most of the 'flavor' is simply non-mechanical. Setting specific stuff mostly, but one can easily change descripitive text of purely mechanical things (spells, monsters, etc.) to give a sense of the unknown. No law says a Bugbear can't belong to a weird tribe where warriors shave their bodies all over, cover their skin with ritual tattooing and decorative scarring, and daub themselves liberally with yellow mud before heading into battle..."What the heck are THOSE!?! Man, the DM musta got a new monster book!" Hee hee.But arbitrarily changing the rules breaks the covenant with the players somewhat, and I try not to do it. Sure the NPC Paladin has some unusually cool abilities - but if they care to investigate, they'll find that he belongs to an order dedicated to eradicating undead and has levels in the Hunter of the Dead Prestige Class... If they want to dedicate the next several levels to qualifying for membership in that order, who am I to deny them?The end result of playing straight is that the players trust me: they know there's a valid reason the Elder Fire Elemental is unusually tough. They don't need to know how, neccesarily (advanced to 48 HD), but they know I'm not just making it up to screw them.So baddies are legit. This does NOT make them predictable or boring. Besides just playing around with flavor/descriptive text, there is an abundance of perfectly balanced Advancement Rules, Class Levels, Templates, Magical Effects and so forth which can be combined to make unique, unpredictable and potentially terrifying foes. Periodically I'll even 'deconstruct' an unusual opponent for my players over beer after the game.I find that a demonstrated policy of honesty makes my players much more willing to get involved in the game - something they don't understand is a potential mystery to unlock, NOT cause to start yelling 'Foul!' at the DM. They also don't assume "oh, he's just playing fast and loose with the rules again  - it's not worth worrying about". It is almost certainly 'worth worrying about'... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />A'Mal</blockquote>

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