Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6730552" data-attributes="member: 6787650">I'm not sure how you mean the bold above--there are a lot of DMs out there who run monsters as smarter and more bloodthirsty than they actually are, and when in doubt it's better to err on the side of making the monsters something other than tactical battlecomputers whose primary interest is inflicting death on the PCs.That said, there are a lot of nasty tactical tricks you can play on the PCs, everything from Dodging to Hiding behind cover instead of charging blindly to punting PCs off cliffs (Stone Giants have +12 to Athletics! they rock at punting PCs) to ye old grapple-a-PC-and-fly-off-with-it trick for dragons/gargoyles/air elementals. I find that running solo combats against notional parties is a good way to develop that tactical skill. Once you know what the bad guys can do, you can then filter for stuff that they would do. E.g. recently it occurred to me that kobolds in a mixed group of monsters can employ nets as weapons to restrain enemies for their bigger buddies (since pack tactics cancels out the normal disadvantage for using nets). Maybe a dragon plus two kobolds really is harder than just a lone dragon. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-P" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :-P"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":-P" /> Not only does this work mechanically, it seems perfectly appropriate for the kobold flavor. One thing that I don't do often enough and should do more is to have enemies who fail a morale check drop and play dead when hit. Since HP loss is usually narrated as &quot;okay, he's down!&quot; the players would often believe it. It serves the dual purpose of increasing verisimilitude in the game universe and quickly ending a fight that is clearly well in hand. (Yes, I know that you can &quot;close the scene&quot; before everyone hits zero HP, but sometimes I forget.)I should also have monsters use caltrops more often.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6730552, member: 6787650"] I'm not sure how you mean the bold above--there are a lot of DMs out there who run monsters as smarter and more bloodthirsty than they actually are, and when in doubt it's better to err on the side of making the monsters something other than tactical battlecomputers whose primary interest is inflicting death on the PCs. That said, there are a lot of nasty tactical tricks you can play on the PCs, everything from Dodging to Hiding behind cover instead of charging blindly to punting PCs off cliffs (Stone Giants have +12 to Athletics! they rock at punting PCs) to ye old grapple-a-PC-and-fly-off-with-it trick for dragons/gargoyles/air elementals. I find that running solo combats against notional parties is a good way to develop that tactical skill. Once you know what the bad guys [I]can[/I] do, you can then filter for stuff that they [I]would[/I] do. E.g. recently it occurred to me that kobolds in a mixed group of monsters can employ nets as weapons to restrain enemies for their bigger buddies (since pack tactics cancels out the normal disadvantage for using nets). Maybe a dragon plus two kobolds really [I]is[/I] harder than just a lone dragon. :-P Not only does this work mechanically, it seems perfectly appropriate for the kobold flavor. One thing that I don't do often enough and should do more is to have enemies who fail a morale check drop and play dead when hit. Since HP loss is usually narrated as "okay, he's down!" the players would often believe it. It serves the dual purpose of increasing verisimilitude in the game universe and quickly ending a fight that is clearly well in hand. (Yes, I know that you can "close the scene" before everyone hits zero HP, but sometimes I forget.) I should also have monsters use caltrops more often. [/QUOTE]

Verification