Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Prism" data-source="post: 1638391" data-attributes="member: 9501">One of the best things you can do in an encounter situation is to increase the players uncertainty of exactly what they are fighting and how difficult it will be. One technique you can use is min/maxing the players opponents. This takes a reasonable amount of effort to do well and is probably best for the important class based NPC bad guys. Just to comment on Thanee's statement on min/maxing, a well min/maxed PC or NPC maximizes their strengths while minimzing their weaknesses rather than neglecting areas of their character. A simple example would be to give a wizard NPC their second best stat in CON to increase their obvious weakness rather than lets say WIS to incease their already good will save. Go over to the wizards D20 character optimization board for lots of good ideas. Remember your back ground too though. I would certainly not optimize every NPC, just the main onesAnother good tactic is to play about with location and situational parameters. Varied use of corridors, ramps, ledges, obstructions, ambushes can make what would be an easy encounter into a difficult one. Don't use this every time as it becomes unrealisticTemplates and monster advancement are great ways of increasing an encounter level without always looking for high powered monsters and it always keeps the party on its toes as they are never quite sure what they are fighting.Some of the more interesting/challenging encounters that our group have faced recently are:-Spellstitched (MM2) undead - skeletons who cast mage armour, advanced ghasts and ghouls who cast vampiric touch, ray of enfeeblement, stinking cloud and finally a spellstitched advanced mummy who was a nightmare to take down. The hit dice were high which makes turning difficult and the spellstitched template even better.Werewolf gnolls rangers led by a fiendish werewolf gnoll ranger. This really caught out the party at first when they simply thought they were fighting normal wolves and the gnoll slant kept it interesting and made them that much stronger. Remember the support characters - there was a druid and his companion at the back casting battlefield control spellsDark boar - a simple hunting mission became that much more difficult when we discovered that the boar was advanced (we expected this, it being a boar of renown) but also had the shadow creature template from Manual of the Planes (this we didn't expect!). You would be amazed how hard a CR8 dire boar can be with additional hit dice and all the shadow powers.A yuan-ti tainted one psion protected by a mix of human crossbowmen and yuan-ti broodguard. What made this difficult was the fact that the enounter took place inside the central hollow column of a tower, the psion was levitating and the guards were sniping down as the party circled up the sides of the tower. This was ECL7.All of these encounters were interesting and challenging because they presented the unexpected. Gnolls are easy until they can only be hit with silver weapons - 1st level warriors are weak until you give them crossbows, spread them out, give them cover and make them hard to get to</blockquote>

Verification