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<blockquote data-quote="Elric" data-source="post: 4648315" data-attributes="member: 1139">All that matters is the monster's expectations.&nbsp; Just because the monsters have no information about the party doesn't mean they think they'll win.&nbsp; If the monsters have approximately rational expectations, then they'll sometimes be overconfident and will sometimes be underconfident, but those will average out so that they're approximately correct on average.&nbsp; So the monster's actual chance of victory might be 1%, and sometimes the monsters will think it's higher than this, and sometimes they'll think it's lower.The monster is systematically overconfident if it tends to think it will win fights more than it actually does.&nbsp; Now, PC groups might happen to all be set up in such a way that the monsters all tend to be overconfident against them, even though they wouldn't be overconfident in general.&nbsp; For example, there are lots of identical groups of PC Level-6 characters in the world going around (stupidly) attacking the Shadowfell Keep that the PCs are currently attacking; the monsters win those fights almost every time without needing backup.&nbsp; When the PCs come in, the monsters assume it's the usual truly wimpy dudes, and don't want to split the treasure, so they charge at the PCs.&nbsp; You can see that explanation is a little strained, because while the monsters had reasonable expectations, this require many other adventurers out there to be incredibly dumb.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Elric, post: 4648315, member: 1139"] All that matters is the monster's expectations. Just because the monsters have no information about the party doesn't mean they think they'll win. If the monsters have approximately rational expectations, then they'll sometimes be overconfident and will sometimes be [I]underconfident[/I], but those will average out so that they're approximately correct on average. So the monster's actual chance of victory might be 1%, and sometimes the monsters will think it's higher than this, and sometimes they'll think it's [I]lower[/I]. The monster is systematically overconfident if it tends to think it will win fights more than it actually does. Now, PC groups might happen to all be set up in such a way that the monsters all tend to be overconfident against them, even though they wouldn't be overconfident in general. For example, there are lots of identical groups of PC Level-6 characters in the world going around (stupidly) attacking the Shadowfell Keep that the PCs are currently attacking; the monsters win those fights almost every time without needing backup. When the PCs come in, the monsters assume it's the usual truly wimpy dudes, and don't want to split the treasure, so they charge at the PCs. You can see that explanation is a little strained, because while the monsters had reasonable expectations, this require many other adventurers out there to be incredibly dumb. [/QUOTE]

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