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<blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 3493013" data-attributes="member: 15538">My players would probably never be so bold as to know exactly what they are fighting. One of my players has made jokes about dire rats with rogue levels, but actually, most of my foes are pretty vanilla... just kept well behind the DM curtain, and I make no apologies for any custom work. Assumptions are dangerous. In other words, any player who believes they know more about the monsters than the DM is by definition wrong, and one of the most important aspects of being the DM is realizing that what is, and what the players might want or believe, are two different things. Just as an example, I set up two ogres and two ogre barbarians as guards (both right out of the the MM). This resulted in a near TPK, despite the low EL, simply because the PCs treated the encounter as though it were simply two ordinary ogres. They did not examine the ogres' equipment, despite ample opportunity to do so, did not bother to detect magic, and opened up the fight with a shot from a wand of fireballs, despite packing more powerful spells. The barbarian, who was not raging, died in one critical hit. With just the barest caution, they would have mopped the floor with these guys, who were intended as nothing more than a speedbump. Conversely, they aced the CR 15 lich, carefully probing him for SR, gauging his DR, and so forth, even after being lured into attacking a decoy (an undead skeleton in a robe carrying a magic wand).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pawsplay, post: 3493013, member: 15538"] My players would probably never be so bold as to know exactly what they are fighting. One of my players has made jokes about dire rats with rogue levels, but actually, most of my foes are pretty vanilla... just kept well behind the DM curtain, and I make no apologies for any custom work. Assumptions are dangerous. In other words, any player who believes they know more about the monsters than the DM is by definition wrong, and one of the most important aspects of being the DM is realizing that what is, and what the players might want or believe, are two different things. Just as an example, I set up two ogres and two ogre barbarians as guards (both right out of the the MM). This resulted in a near TPK, despite the low EL, simply because the PCs treated the encounter as though it were simply two ordinary ogres. They did not examine the ogres' equipment, despite ample opportunity to do so, did not bother to detect magic, and opened up the fight with a shot from a wand of fireballs, despite packing more powerful spells. The barbarian, who was not raging, died in one critical hit. With just the barest caution, they would have mopped the floor with these guys, who were intended as nothing more than a speedbump. Conversely, they aced the CR 15 lich, carefully probing him for SR, gauging his DR, and so forth, even after being lured into attacking a decoy (an undead skeleton in a robe carrying a magic wand). [/QUOTE]

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