Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 5138497" data-attributes="member: 15470">Yeah, I'm with korjik, et al, in the way I tend to play this.As I said in that other thread - thanks for the link, Mort - I tend to divide my monsters, mentally, into about four categories. (* - in the other thread, I said three, but DracoSuave convinced me there's a fourth.)1. Wise, experienced. That dragon? Yeah, he's faced a fighter before. Not only does he know how Combat Challenge is going to affect him, he may even have a plan for dealing with it pre-emptively. (Mmmm, must make sure to Daze that pesky fighter so I can get to the crunchy snacks behind him.)2. Tactically savvy. A regiment of hobgoblins with a leader? They're probably likely to stand toe-to-toe with their marker, unless the leader orders them to ignore the mark and press on into the back line .. which he may have to do if the back line consists of strikers and controllers that are tearing his troops up.3. Smart but inexperienced. That pack of wolves? They don't know the rules, they don't know what you can do on a mark .. but after triggering it once, they learn, and get a whole lot more wary of you. Depending on the level of intelligence, they may learn from their partner's mistakes or not: wolves would, but other animals might need to experience the pain personally to learn from it.4. Dumb brute. My horde of mindless skeletons? They don't get the concept of a mark, they aren't smart enough to figure out that ignoring the paladin is hurting a ton because they're vulnerable to radiant, and they aren't going to learn from their mistakes. In general, they're there to make the paladin shine. Pun intended. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />IMHO, that's a bad DM. The DM has got to be able to separate "what I know" from "what my monster knows", and needs to play monsters with differing personalities. Emphasis mine, and added - I wonder, seriously, if half of the complaints about "grind" come from players whose DM allows things to degenerate into a static toe-to-toe tough-it-out. Letting monsters trigger OA, CC, etc, really should quicken combats .. and monsters may well change their goals during the course of a combat.Oh .. oh that's too beautiful. I may have to set up an encounter that's essentially Level-minus-2 guards in the guard post trying to hold on until the Level-plus-2 reinforcements can arrive, which ought to be right about the time the few remaining guards are on their last hit points ...Maybe guard minions using Total Defense and Aid Another to defend each other ...<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" />Thanks for the idea!</blockquote>

Verification