DMs: how do you decide how critters respond to conditions?

[Pielorinho]

My guess is most DMs have some rules of thumb they use for deciding how monsters respond to the following kinds of conditions:
1) Being marked by a fighter;
2) Being marked by a paladin;
3) Being the target of a riposte strike;
4) Being the target of dire radiance.

Each of these conditions imposes a penalty on a monster that chooses an action that otherwise would be a good choice. Do your monsters suck up the penalty from attacking a juicy target who didn't mark them (or who will damage them if they attack)?

So far I've varied it, but I haven't thought it through as clearly as I'd like. Military-minded critters like most humanoids have so far been pretty easy to control with these tactics: they recognize them and respond accordingly. Animals so far have tended to ignore them, not really understanding what was happening, and have suffered the penalties for ignoring them. Highly intelligent/wise creatures make what I consider to be the best judgment for the situation, which may or may not entail taking the damage. The players so far seem to get a kick out of it when the monster takes the penalty, although I suspect that if that happened all the time it'd grow old.

How do other folks play it?

Daniel

 

[Shabe]

Just mix and match depending on what you think the monster feels like at the time and what will make the encounter fun.
If you think the monsters are getting all bunched up around the defender, and the skirmisher has been marked by the defender let it take the penalty and go diving for the striker if it keeps the party on their toes.
There's nothing more boring than the encounter playing out the same every time, I usually make the monsters avoid the penalty because they all know about it even if they are not intelligent, every now and then if the monster sees a better target the monster will trigger the penalty which lets the PCs utilise their ability and i usually get to hit the warlock or wizard which is a win win

 

[Plane Sailing]

Pretty much like you.

Fighting against goblins, the goblins at first didn't realise that if they shifted away from the fighter they got whacked. They also didn't realise that attacking someone else when marked by the fighter got them whacked (although they knew they would have the -2 penalty from being marked, they didn't "know" about the fighters relevant class feature at that point).

After one survivor got away, news went around pretty quickly amongst the goblins and that influenced their decisions to either (a) not get near the fighter or (b) if they ended up near him, to stick with him until they got rescued!

i.e. most things will risk it the first time it happens, and then after that weigh up the associated benefits and penalties as seems appropriate to their intellect and needs.

Cheers

 

[Danceofmasks]

Yup ... it's even more amusing if more than one PC wears similar gear (scale armour, shield, sword, whatever).
"The fighter" could get confused with someone else, if the word was spread by description.

 

[kouk]

Based on my understanding of the creature in question and its goals.

Frequently I also play animals and low-int monsters as "stupid" and sometimes not really understanding the full ramifications of powers or effects (or they get distracted easily and forget).

Players seem to like it; it makes more sense to them that the purple worm isn't as tactically-minded as the hobgoblin infantry, and there is no point in them having such powers if they never get the chance to use them.


Depending on how a fight is going I may have even "intelligent" enemies make dangerous choices. Not necessarily "bad" choices, but dangerous. The goblin might know that he will provoke an OA for doing a certain action, but because of the desperation of his situation (they usually end up on the losing side) they try to flat-out Run away, or otherwise do something similar. Group-minded creatures might try to take out the target they feel poses the largest threat to them as a group even if it means taking another attack themselves (or maybe they're just following orders).

EDIT: I like to try and have creatures respond to things which happen during a fight as well as the actual mechanical ramifications of those things. One time a player cast an ice slick type effect under a wolf and I had it stop what it was doing (it used a move to stand up but didn't do anything else) because it was confused at the sudden change in environment and temperature under its feet.

 

[Pielorinho]

What y'all are saying makes a lot of sense. It also raises another issue: how aware do you usually consider critters to be about the fact that they've been marked?

I lean toward full awareness: I figure the mark constitutes a defender's laserlike attention suddenly being paid to a particular opponent, and if the opponent is aware of the defender, it's aware of the attention.

It's just some creatures fight in such an instinctive manner that this awareness isn't enough to make them change tactics. For example, last night the PCs fought deathjump spiders as well as a couple of "rat swarms" depicted as spider swarms. The swarms just move in after the nearest PC (if I had it to run again, I'd have them constantly move to swarm as many as possible), and the deathjump spiders constantly jumped down using "death from above" and then took a move action to climb back into the webs. They took a lot of OAs for this tactic, but it made a pretty fun scene, and I figured they weren't smart enough to adapt their tactics to deal with any conditions placed on them.

Daniel

 

[kouk]

I treat "dumb" things as generally aware of the marks and such, but that would still fall within not really "understanding" the full effects.

A spider would get the idea the Fighter who marked him is causing him problems attacking the other PCs, but it may not be able to truly understand what the Fighter's goals are (protecting the team).

A Challenged spider or bug might assume as long as it moves to retreat as opposed to forward or sideways, even if it happens to have an unconscious party member in its mouth, then the Fighter will just leave it alone rather than keep fighting.

Creatures won't repeatedly make such mistakes, but if they have no experience with humanoids that behave similarly to the PCs, then they are likely to make at least one mistake as they initially treat the PCs as if they were just normal animals like it's used to.

EDIT: In a related vein, untrained dumb animals are less likely to fight to the death than perhaps humanoids are, because they are purely thinking of their survival (unless the babies are threatened of course).

 

[James McMurray]

I haven't GMed 4e yet, but when I do I'll do what I've always done: base it on the monster, the situation, and the negative effect.