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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 355152" data-attributes="member: 2">DoctorB, I was just thinking about you and Joy. I'm sitting on the back porch in the fall sunlight, drinking coffee and procrastinating. Miss you guys! (FYI: DrB and I have been good friends for... what, 6 or 7 years? Distance is no obstacle!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )  Anyways....>  I MUST have my idea notebook with me or closeby or I will lose 3/4 of my ideas.This really is a good idea, I think. My sneakiness has gotten worse since my Palm Pilot broke.>  My tactical combat abilities are not the best, and I am not sure how to get better.  Trick number one: use the environment. The DMG mentions that if a normal fight is exciting, a fight on a narrow bridge over lava is REALLY cool. Use this to your advantage. Add movement penalties for mud, or balance checks for rough ground. This is especially crucial for high level PCs, who are used to commanding the battlefield.  Then occasionally use this to the monsters' advantage. Hard to hurt something if you can't reach it.I have this image of a red dragon swimming in lava, just surfacing long enough to breath on the PCs before re-submerging, using the lava as partial cover.Trick number two: don't let your players metagame. Take a monster's normal stats and completely change its appearance. Add abilities they won't expect - long tongues, pouncing attacks, that sort of thing.  Keep 'em guessing, and you keep them excited.Trick number three: Learn from the players. Have your enemies flank, use buffing spells, retreat, heal each other.  Have retreating enemies lead PCs into ambushes or traps. Separate the PCs with spells or traps and attack partial parties. When appropriate, use disposable potions and scrolls ("Hey! Stop drinking that; when we kill you, it would have been ours!") to give enemies fun abilities that don't introduce permanent game-inbalancing magic items.> Do you study the bad guys' special abilites before a session or do you just know them well enough to wing it.  Do you have combat actions planned out ahead of time? When they're complicated, I'll study them to look for synergies. I try to only plan out specific combat techniques when the bad guys are expecting a battle. Otherwise, I'm more likely to wing it.</blockquote>

Verification