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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Creamsteak" data-source="post: 1591100" data-attributes="member: 552">As a player, my hat of encounters that would have been harder if I was the one DMing knows no limit. I've probably DM'd too much and written far too many combat oriented encounters, so if I'm fighting a reasonably intelligent opponent, I expect them to use their abilities to the best they can think. If the target is in the "super intelligent" department, they better be able to think about more than just the current round of combat, and consider what they are going to do next round.Maybe it's because I'm used to thinking of encounters from the DMs side, but when an opponent provokes an attack of opportunity that could be completely negated by a 5 foot step or less, I feel cheated a bit. It makes sense for the Troll to attack the nearest target and fail to consider moving into the optimum position for reach, but if it's a 6th level spiked-chain master of sorts, I expect to be tripped and disarmed and attacked to the best of their abilities. And if it's a Mind Flayer with lots of class levels in a casting class, I want them to think before they try to use their tentacles on the fighter when there is a rogue who could flank or a wizard who seems to have readied a spell.Easy fights are fine, as long as they are easy because the enemy fights to it's best and that's not nearly good enough. Easy fights are fine when it's the dice. Easy fights are fine when the players choose to make it easy by expending extra "umph" in the form of resources. However, I don't want a fight to be easy because the DM doesn't realize that an encounter should not always be handled like your bread and butter "orcs attack you" method. A kobold assassin is not a slightly stronger kobold, and a cloud giant is not an ogre.On the other side of the coin, if your "bread and butter" encounter is to ambush the characters or some other method, try something else once in a while. I've played with a group where every single encounter the group has ever been in was someone ambushing the group. The DM was convinced that he should run encounters to their most difficult, which seems to always be to get a surprise round and hammer the group with every spell you can get and attempt to coup de grace characters who are asleep. Sure, every encounter was challenging... but sometimes the reason why it was challenging amounted to "they killed half the party in their sleep, cast a save or die spell on the rogue, and then shot volley after volley of ranged weapons into the campsite until the group finally managed to struggle up the hill and kill the attackers (and most of the time due to DM fiat and fudging).</blockquote>

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