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<blockquote data-quote="Croesus" data-source="post: 6990064" data-attributes="member: 35019">First, use tactics appropriate to the creatures. Animals will use individual or pack tactics. Semi-intelligent creatures may become distracted and attack everyone around them (splitting their attacks) or focus on whoever last injured them. Intelligent creatures may focus-fire or use battlefield control effects to split the party, or other such tactics. Using varying strategies based on the opposition will add verisimilitude and keep the players on their toes.As for your concern about dropping PCs...what's the issue? In my game, almost every tough fight results in at least one PC going down at some point. The players have adapted their tactics, for example by the Life cleric saving his Channel Divinity ability to use Preserve Life (a really useful ability in combat). Everyone has at least one healing potion, so others can use it on a downed character. Some of the most tense encounters are when someone goes down, the enemy are trying to drag him away and the party races to get him back. Of course, dropping some characters is okay. If the battles are regularly dropping all or nearly all the PCs, then either the players need to act smarter (scouting, ambushes, better tactics) or you're throwing too much at them. But dropping the occasional character because the villains are, you know, villains...go for it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />One last thought: players may react badly if this comes out of the blue. If you change your style to use better tactics, you might give them a heads up. Something along the lines of &quot;As GM, I'll never try to kill your characters. But your opponents - the NPCs and monsters - will.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Croesus, post: 6990064, member: 35019"] First, use tactics appropriate to the creatures. Animals will use individual or pack tactics. Semi-intelligent creatures may become distracted and attack everyone around them (splitting their attacks) or focus on whoever last injured them. Intelligent creatures may focus-fire or use battlefield control effects to split the party, or other such tactics. Using varying strategies based on the opposition will add verisimilitude and keep the players on their toes. As for your concern about dropping PCs...what's the issue? In my game, almost every tough fight results in at least one PC going down at some point. The players have adapted their tactics, for example by the Life cleric saving his Channel Divinity ability to use Preserve Life (a really useful ability in combat). Everyone has at least one healing potion, so others can use it on a downed character. Some of the most tense encounters are when someone goes down, the enemy are trying to drag him away and the party races to get him back. Of course, dropping some characters is okay. If the battles are regularly dropping all or nearly all the PCs, then either the players need to act smarter (scouting, ambushes, better tactics) or you're throwing too much at them. But dropping the occasional character because the villains are, you know, villains...go for it. :) One last thought: players may react badly if this comes out of the blue. If you change your style to use better tactics, you might give them a heads up. Something along the lines of "As GM, I'll never try to kill your characters. But your opponents - the NPCs and monsters - will." [/QUOTE]

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