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Message: <blockquote data-quote="devincutler" data-source="post: 6743265" data-attributes="member: 6684551">I agree with this partially. Yes, DMs often need to better consider the motivations of the PC enemies, lest they feel more like props set up for the PCs to knock down rather than living, breathing creatures with lives of their own.That said, I am usually quite loathe to handwave a fight. If you are putting a large group of skeletons against a group of PCs that can easily decimate them, then that seems to be a design issue to me. I don't know enough about 4th edition to comment on it, but in 3.5 given the lack of bounded accuracy, there are probably time you can handwave it. A good guideline is if the creatures cannot provide the PCs with XP.But in 5th edition, with bounded accuracy, a couple of lucky criticals can do some damage, and since the PCs are getting XP for the critters (assuming you are not using milestones) they should have to earn them.One behavior I often see in some games is creatures attacking downed and helpless PCs. This is almost never appropriate. And I mean for logical reasons. The fact that it also serves to keep PCs alive is an added benefit.Think about it. Put yourself in the place of an orc. An orc who doesn't actually know what hit points and levels are. You and your 3 mates are attacking some elves and one of the elves goes down. Are you really going to take the time to coup de grace the elf, thereby taking yourself out of the combat for 6 seconds and put yourself and your orc friends in danger? Or are you going to immediately go after the elves who still threaten you? With the added bonus that if you win the fight, you can take captive the elf and then torture him and eventually eat or sacrifice him at your leisure.Captives are almost always preferable to corpses. Whether to ransom them, torture them, sacrifice them, enslave them, or just eat them later.Even non-intelligent creatures would act this way. No beast is going to stop to consume a meal while it or its packmates are being attacked. Beasts tend to prefer to eat a meal in safety, as satiating oneself is not conducive to being in fighting trim.</blockquote>

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