CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing
There's a lot of chatter on EN World about "metagaming" players, but I don't see it as a bad thing. In fact, toying with the players' expectations is a big part of the fun for the DM.I know this was an old thread post, but I hadn't seen it before.
The vampire will get really excited when the heroes are slaughtering the child he kidnapped and set loose on the 8th level of the dungeon.
Oooh! Oooh! A vampire bard who likes being a director of a production, directing his spawn to act as if they worship the child as a terrifying vampire lord and call them "My Most Sanguine Master." That would confuse the players to maybe even cause them to off the apparent vampire lord.
Hey, my players... ignore ever reading this.
I am not a Psychopathic DM!
The party is heading to Troll Canyon? Excellent. Now the party can finally burn up (rimshot) all of those potions of fire-breathing, vials of alchemist's fire, scrolls of fireball, etc. that they've been hoarding. The big surprise comes later, after all the other trolls are burned up and all those resources are depleted---that's when they lean that the leader of the trolls is actually a red dragon in disguise.
I actually don't mind the "Helpful" metagaming (like predictable AC), but if it ever bothers me, I can just give each goblin a different type of armor, give each ooze a different Dex score, etc. "Wait a minute, I thought we needed to roll a 14 to hit...oh right, this one has a shield."
As for the vampire example? That one really bugs me. Vampires--like dragons, liches, and other legendary monsters--are not supposed to be expendable throw-away encounters!
If you're gonna use Claudia as the "boss vampire," you're gonna have to hide her better than that. At the very least, the party should be meeting all of her thralls and captives as they explore the whole dungeon--all of them would be other children, classmates, babysitters, teachers, and everyone else that a child might come in contact with. By the time they reach 8th level of the megadungeon, they should have met and freed a dozen captured townsfolk and defeated a dozen more thralls, and it should never be readily apparent which ones are threats and which ones are innocents, or which threats are thralls and which ones are The Big Bad.
CR 13 Legendary Vampire?
sorry if you posted it already.
