Bad guys have brains, too!

[jcbdragon]

I'm curious, what sorts of things have other DMs here done to make bad guys more effective without having to use ten times more of them, or artificially inflate their AC/HP/etc?

Let's face it, in a "straight-up" encounter, the winner can be reasonably predicted by simple statistics. This means that as your PCs progress in level, it requires more and more powerful monsters/NPCs to provide them with any sort of a challenge, and even then it can still be reduced to an exercise in statistics. Why even bother with encounters with lower-level creatures, when it's a foregone conclusion that the party will just wade through them?

For example, in the classic adventure G1: The Steading Of The Hill Giant Chief, the giants have orcs and ogres as servants/slaves. If the party is high enough level to stand up to the giants, then ogres are a minor nuisance, and orcs don't even qualify as a speed bump. Why bother sending them against the party at all? And how are you going to GET them to go against the party when they've already seen you fighting their giant masters?

Granted, a Hill Giant isn't the sharpest knife in your back, but one of the current inhabitants of the Steading is a Cloud Giant -- a race known for its intellect, even as military geniuses.

Once the party's presence became known, he started organizing their forces into something that would give the characters a FIGHT. For example, the party opened the door into the Great Hall, only to find a shield wall right in front of them preventing them from going in. Crouched down behind those shields were ogres, whose sole job was to hold that shield up and not expose themselves (i.e. full cover, so very hard to hit). On the opposite side of the room, the giants had turned over the tables and were throwing rocks from behind them.

Now the party is getting bombarded by rocks, and can't get into the room until they find a way past the shield wall, and the giants are out of range of anything but missile attacks.

Unfortunately, my players invoked an old adage that says that the players will always do something you don't expect. After a few rounds of this, the priest realized that they were getting pummeled with stones, and that he was carrying "Transmute Stone To Mud" that day, after which he destroyed their pile of "ammunition"! LOL



What about you? What particularly clever tricks are you most proud of?

 

[Sekhmet]

Even Hill Giants are smart enough to use their preferred tactics (Throwing Rocks).
Trolls are typically skirmishers.
Ogre Magi can destroy just about any group of it's CR (Invisibility, Fly, Cone of Cold at will).
Dragons have great Grapples and can use Natural Attacks in a Grapple.
Anything with Alter Self or Polymorph can infiltrate a group of PCs as an innocent.

Range is pretty much key in all areas.

 

[jcbdragon]

yes, Hill Giants will use their preferred tactic of rock-throwing. But how many of them would have thought to use the ogres to create a shield wall and *hide* behind it, not attacking?

As for a dragons grapple attack, that's still just a straight-forward physical attack. It has all the strategy and intellect of arm wrestling.

I want to know what sort of CLEVER things the less-powerful creatures have done, to make life difficult for the higher-level characters.

 

[Mirror]

in a campaign I was in, the DM stated that the Orcs aren't stupid. First battle against them we found out all of them had a ring of greater invisibility. At level 6. With class levels. Glitterdust was our raining MVP spell that day.

 

[PureGoldx58]

I liked my strategy I came up with using feats from all over the place to create a spartan moment of glory. 15 foot wide dock, 3 soldiers with phalanx shields and feats. AC=Insane. I made them melt the docks to almost nothing and try their hardest to separate the soldiers.

They all almost died. It was a good first fight.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What about you? What particularly clever tricks are you most proud of?

1) had a huge ancient blue dragon attack the party's sky-ship in a cloud. They couldn't see it at first, and of course, it attacked from all kinds of angles, including from above and below. Eventually, it latched onto the underside of the airship, attacking from various points. It used its tail to sweep the deck from aft, claws from port & starboard, and bites & breath from the prow.

2) another dragon, same party. They attacked it in its lair. They thought it was sleeping, but it had heard them and decided to feign unconsciousness. When they started climbing the hoard in order to attack, it swept a pile of treasure over them, trapping some of them, slowing all of them. Then it breathed fire, melting some of the hoard around them. Standing in superheated gold is NOT comfy...

Then things got serious.

3) same party, dragon #3. This one they spotted on the horizon, flying towards them in the sky. Confident in their abilities, they stood their ground, preparing their nastiest attacks. As it swooped down for a strafing run, they unloaded on it...and were struck from behind by a firey breath weapon, delivered by the REAL dragon as they struck the illusion that had their eyes glued forward. The next strafing run included the realease of a boulder rolling through their formation- the boulder didn't kill anyone, but it certainly didn't feel nice! Then, after it had regained some altitude, it produced another one as it turned for another run. They scattered to either side of the road as it came through, catching it in their crossfire...but instead of dropping it's boulder, it breathed on the group on the left. It climbed into the air again, then did a sharp turn & dive, NOW dropping the boulder on the right-side group.

Only 2 PCs in the party could fly that day- the Mage and a Ftr/Th with a winged cloak- so the party decided to retreat, regroup, and fins another way to take down the drake.






That group hates my dragons.

 

[Sekhmet]

yes, Hill Giants will use their preferred tactic of rock-throwing. But how many of them would have thought to use the ogres to create a shield wall and *hide* behind it, not attacking?

As for a dragons grapple attack, that's still just a straight-forward physical attack. It has all the strategy and intellect of arm wrestling.

I want to know what sort of CLEVER things the less-powerful creatures have done, to make life difficult for the higher-level characters.

Point the first, they'd probably have the intelligence to do the first with a small group of Hill Giants while the rest battered them from the far rear.

I've never had a DM try to make a Dragon Grapple me.

For less powerful creatures, I remember once that my first DM threw a horde of Orcs at us. Now, don't get me wrong, we thought we were going to step in, Fireball, and walk away... but that didn't quite work out as planned.
None of them had weapons. They merely swarmed over us, pinned us to the floor, and knocked us unconcious from repeated blows to the head.

With no spell components, no weapons, no armour, and no items, our company of 6th-8th level characters were effectively useless for quite some time in that campaign.

During which, we were assailed from below by Earth Elementals trying to pull us into the ground where we would suffocate (got the Thief), a group of Hill Giants moved massive boulders to the side of a hill and toppled them onto us (I lost an arm), a Rakshasa infiltrated our group and killed our Wizard's familiar in the night, and after a myriad of mishaps and trials, our group was TPK'd in a cavern that had been shaped by illithids to magnify their Mind Blast with acoustic properties. Two Mind Flayers managed to kill four 10th-11th level characters. It was a dissatisfying end to the campaign, we were so close.

 

[PureGoldx58]

Point the first, they'd probably have the intelligence to do the first with a small group of Hill Giants while the rest battered them from the far rear.

I've never had a DM try to make a Dragon Grapple me.

For less powerful creatures, I remember once that my first DM threw a horde of Orcs at us. Now, don't get me wrong, we thought we were going to step in, Fireball, and walk away... but that didn't quite work out as planned.
None of them had weapons. They merely swarmed over us, pinned us to the floor, and knocked us unconcious from repeated blows to the head.

With no spell components, no weapons, no armour, and no items, our company of 6th-8th level characters were effectively useless for quite some time in that campaign.

During which, we were assailed from below by Earth Elementals trying to pull us into the ground where we would suffocate (got the Thief), a group of Hill Giants moved massive boulders to the side of a hill and toppled them onto us (I lost an arm), a Rakshasa infiltrated our group and killed our Wizard's familiar in the night, and after a myriad of mishaps and trials, our group was TPK'd in a cavern that had been shaped by illithids to magnify their Mind Blast with acoustic properties. Two Mind Flayers managed to kill four 10th-11th level characters. It was a dissatisfying end to the campaign, we were so close.

I personally would like the end of that campaign. You fought heroically, you fought insane odds, and at some points you finally came out on top. Until you didn't and died. It reflects real life where heroes die.

 

[xigbar]

Alot of times, enemies can be especiallty effective in a certain environment. I made a forest for a dungeon, where the group had to track one of the more powerful members of a global-scale crime syndicate, and the guy was a Teflammar Shadowlord, and kep teleporting to a different tree top each turn. The point was to cover multiple areas, and force him to the middle, where he would go to "reload," and get pummeled.

 

[Madeiner]

I got two boss fights that i'm most proud of.

1) Blue dragon. Actually disguised as black dragon to confuse the PC's.

They had to summon it using a stone, and then defeat it. This was staged in Dragonfall (pathfinder module). There is a big central tower inside a desert crater.

PCs have stationed around 300 dwarves as an army against the dragon.
They have ballistas and have built stone domes with magic to hide the dwarfes in for cover.
They summon the dragon.
It starts to swoop from the sky, taking damage from ballistas and PC's alike. Undead dragons and vermins rise from the sand and attack everyone. Eventually, the dragon crashes into the tower. The dwarves cannot help and have to take care of the other creatures, so the PCs go in alone. They enter from the bottom, while the dragon pelts them with rocks from above.
Eventually the reach the big pillar where the dragon is throwing rocks from. Spiders climb the pillar and begin to assault the PCs, while they have to defend from the dragon overhead. They manage to kick most of the spiders down and kill many others. Eventually they stagger the dragon, he fails a Fly check, and comes down crashing, breaking the pillar where the PCs were standing, so everyone is falling down. Both the dragon and the PCs have feather fall, so the final fight is back at the bottom of the Tower, which is now collapsing onto itself. Every round, rocks fall (but not everybody dies). The dragon is unable to fly, cornered and low on hp. Eventually they are able to defeat him and escape the collapsing tower. The number of killed dwarfes is exactly as a prophecy said, minus 1. When they reach the city, a old dwarf woman dies of heart attack as he learns his son has died in the battle. Prophecy is complete.


2) The PC enter a big storage room. On the far side, there is a bomb launching undead gnome tech-wizard riding a mecha-spider machine. He is hidden behind a completey closed gate. Small round metal tunnels from the gate allow him to throw bombs to the chamber below, where the players dwell. The bombs are actually animated and follow the PCs around for a few rounds before exploding. They are high damage, so they have to run around before they reach them.

The chamber has a lot of barrels. Each time a bomb explodes near one, the barrel releases corrosive acid that is also extremely slipper. This adds a lot to the difficulty, as they have to time for the bombs to explode away from the barrels.

Evil gnomes are also stationed inside cages near the boss. They are armed with ballistas that shoot the same acid inside the barrels.
When the boss is hurt, he can raise his tail and then slam it down, for a lot of electricity damage. He is healed by it. His minions are unaffected, because they are inside Faraday cages.

Eventually he lowers the gate and jumps down, attacking PC's. When they see him see raise his tail, they have to run away or be incinerated by lightning.
When he is low on HP, he activates electricy rods that rise from the floor, healing himself. The PC's notice that there are two of them, so they smash the other while the gnome is fully healed again.
Tank and spank, while falling to the acid, and eventually the boss comes down.

My bosses are pretty epic But most of them release a special energy that joins a random PC and grants a feat.