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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Riastlin" data-source="post: 5668529" data-attributes="member: 94022">As others have suggested, I tend to look at how intelligent the monster is when deciding what tactics it would use.  So zombies generally would not group up on a single target (and might not even fully understand that ignoring the shielding swordmage's mark will mean that they are largely useless).  Highly intelligent critters on the other hand will do what makes the most strategic sense (its one way for instance, to make that relatively squishy spell caster seem more dangerous than the mindless zombie).As for coup de grace, I don't usually do it unless there is a really good reason to.  For one thing, there's usually still a fight going on and the conscious PCs are going to be more of a threat at that point than the unconscious ones are.  More to the point, I'm not a huge fan of killing PCs, so I tend not to go that extra mile unless it really calls for it.  If a PC happens to die during the regular course of combat, that's fine, but I personally don't like to coup de grace all that often.  In 11+ years I can only really think of 3 instances when I did.  On the first occasion, the party rogue had decided to go off and explore the dungeon on his own and ended up getting double teamed by a spell caster and fighter.  Spell caster rendered him helpless and the fighter finished him off.  The second time was when the paladin kept going unconscious in a fight against orcs but kept getting back up (thanks to healing and a nat 20 on a death save).  Finally an orc had enough and yelled "Now stay down!" as he coup de grace'd.  The last time was the Chamber of Works (I think that's what its called) in Siege of Bordrin's Watch.  The party had pretty much been wiped out by the big bad there and the two that were still up bluffed him into thinking they had switched sides and were now his ally.  So he told them to finish off the others as he finished off the third.  The PCs bluffed of course, but he did not.All of that being said, the real question comes down to "what do you and your players want?"  The key of course is to make it fun for everyone.  It need not (and imho should not) be a DM vs. Players mentality.  However, I do think there needs to be a threat of death and even tpk in order to make the game truly fun.  Knowing that the players could lose makes those close victories all the sweeter.  It makes them appreciate the good use of tactics that much more.  If, on the other hand, they ever get the sense that victory is always inevitable, then their decisions really don't matter.  They don't need to be clever.  They don't need to worry about tactics, etc.So I guess my advice, not knowing your party of course but realizing that they are ok with the idea of character death, would be to try to challenge the players, but still make it fair and fun.  Having the monsters always focus fire on the wizard or sorcerer at the start of combat might be effective, but its not all that fun for said player.  Now, if said PC decides to win initiative, then open up a world of hurt on the monsters, AP, then open up another world of hurt, well then, he's kind of asking to get ganked.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

Verification