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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 7144789" data-attributes="member: 5890">It's the DMs job to NOT be opaque. The guy hits you with a 25 ac? If he needed a 19, then he 'only just caught you with...' if he rolled a 13, he 'struck you with relative ease'. I also just straight out tell players AC - if that's jarring to you, follow the same scheme above. Hitpoints... I brought back 4e's bloodied status. Hit him for 40 points and he's not bloodied? Well, he's got at least that many still left.Even before they enter combat, you should be getting a feel for how strong, dextrous and tough a monster is before combat starts, and with enough observation you should get intelligence, wisdom and potentially charisma too. There are some misleading wolf-in-sheeps-clothing type monsters, but most things are what they seem to be. Hit points are probably the hardest to telegraph, but IMO that's only a problem when they're out of line with the rest of a monster's statistics.If you routinely set your PCs up against things they need to flee... then they should have a plan for fleeing.Also... MOST enemies won't chase or can be persuaded not to chase. Almost anything defending it's home (or anything else) simply won't chase you. Almost anything hunting for food won't waste time running down prey that fights back.So... you're down to intelligent foes that want the PCs dead for some other reason, basically. "fights where I don't know the capabilities of my foe, but they really, really want me dead" should be fairly rare.As a DM, you should telegraph how bad-ass things are, monsters should only chase when it makes sense for them to do so, and the PCs really should have an exit plan and make some effort to scout out fights ahead of time.Make sure that you're not thwarting those scouting efforts. A lot of DMs frown on PCs 'scouting out the dungeon' and 'being prepared for threats'. That shouldn't be a cue to shut down the scouting. It should be a cue to make that scouting necessary.</blockquote>

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