D&D 5E Intelligent creatures: DM vs Players inevitable.

[jgsugden]

The danger with smart NPCs is that a DM tries so hard to make them be smart that they make them all similar... and all of them are blandly veiled versions of the DM. The smarter the NPC, the stronger the personality needs to be to preserve the felling of PCs versus NPCs. The players need to feel like different smart monsters would do different things in similar situations.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

This is a topic that has come up in our 5th edition games and I know it's something you try and stay away from but I find that it is inevitable when it comes to playing intelligent creatures. Their strategy is limited to what I do with it and if they are playing creatures that are highly intelligent then I will play them to the best of their abilities. I've always hated the stereotypical dumb, super genius who makes all these dumb mistakes.

I will be the first to admit that it does become a little adversarial but I don't see how it can be avoided.

Any of this happen in your games?

I'm curious what sort of things you include under "to the best of their abilities". Are you talking about tactical level stuff like hobgoblins building a glacis with an abattis and a berm around their day camp? Yes, absolutely, I do that for intelligent opponents. Are you talking about larger-scale stuff like a villain employing overwhelming force against the PCs instead of sending his minions to get whittled away in bite-sized chunks? I try to avoid doing that, but the best way I know of to avoid doing that is to avoid letting the PCs make enemies of powerful, malign creatures with lots of resources and intelligence--when they do acquire powerful enemies, it turns into a cat-and-mouse game of the players hiding from those enemies during or between adventures. (Think of the A-Team here, on the run from the law.)

I don't let enemies know things they couldn't know, and I try to avoid giving them superintelligent powerful enemies, because the reality is that if I do I will glass them. The DM's job is not to kill the PCs, so I try to avoid putting them in a position where I'm going to do that. I suppose if I did kill them all, unavoidably, through no fault of their own, I'd probably give them the option of becoming revenants...

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6776548]Corpsetaker[/MENTION] There's adversarial as in "involving or characterized by conflict or opposition," which is the positive kind of friendly one-upsmanship that characterizes team sports or any team event. It's mischievous and the DM might put on his or her best cackle, but it's all in good fun.

And there's adversarial as in "opposed, hostile," which is the bad kind of game pitting DMs vs. players in some sort of distorted arms race that often involves lots of unhealthy dynamics at the table. It leads to hurt feelings, the game imploding, diatribes on the internet, etc.

If you're talking about the first category, I don't see how you can go wrong

 

[Corpsetaker]

I'm curious what sort of things you include under "to the best of their abilities".

What I mean by that is using any kind of ability they may posses creatively. For example if the villain is a magic user then I will use a very creative spell selection. I may also use scrying or even a spy network to learn about the PC's abilities they may posses and have spells ready to counter them. My villains always try to cover their tails in any way they can.

 

[SingleCelledPsyk]

The most intelligent people in history were brought down by sentiment and personal grudge. The question you need to ask yourself is how well designed is your villain? Does he have a past that doesn't allow him to, say, kill elves. Or did an event in his past give a rampant fear of fire? These little quirks about the villain will make for a much more interesting battle. Plus when it does come down to DM vs Player, that is totally fine. Just do this, roll a d20 + the villain's perception modifier. If it is above 16 the villain can predict their actions just a little bit and prepare for them. If not the villain makes a mistake or takes the action though it's detrimental to him/her. The best way is to get better at roleplaying and setting yourself in someone else's mind set, then DM vs Player won't be a problem.

 

[Celtavian]

If you're playing the monster as an intelligent creature trying to achieve its desires which often include killing the PCs, it's going to get adversarial. As long as the players don't feel it's the DM as adversary, then it should be fine. You want to make them feel like the monster is their adversary. When the players feel like the monster is a dangerous adversary they want to defeat, you've done your job as DM.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

What I mean by that is using any kind of ability they may posses creatively. For example if the villain is a magic user then I will use a very creative spell selection. I may also use scrying or even a spy network to learn about the PC's abilities they may posses and have spells ready to counter them. My villains always try to cover their tails in any way they can.

Using spells creatively is 100% okay. Spying on the PCs... that gets into the territory I mentioned earlier, along the same lines as throwing overwhelming force at your enemies. It's good tactics but a crummy game, so I try to avoid giving them enemies who are smart enough to do such things. I've found them unsatisfying in the past. If I were going to do scrying enemies again, I'd think long and hard about ways to construct the game in such a way that players are aware that they are being spied on (even if their PCs aren't) and have some possible ways to respond.

The fundamental principle I have in mind is that the game isn't fun when 90% of the action is happening in the DM's head and not at the table. You can imagine a hypothetical scenario in which the PCs invade the BBEG's fortress and find it totally empty at first. They spend an hour or so tearing open secret compartments looking for treasure... and suddenly they're all hit with 200d6 +200 of damage during a surprise round. Wham, you're dead without ever seeing the threat! Even if the DM played it totally straight and by the rules, that's an unsatisfying experience because the DM is the only one who gets to see the bad guy's moves. I've thought long and hard about ways to allow D&D to be more of a game of partial information (like Kriegspiel) but I don't have a good solution yet, so my interim solution is just not to build those kinds of intelligent archwizards/liches into my sandbox or at least to make them apathetic towards the PCs by default instead of actively hostile.

If I wanted to have that kind of enemy anyway, my current solutions would be limited to (1) change the way scrying works in that campaign so the scried-upon has a chance of sensing the scry attempt and gains some information about the scrying, which guarantees over time that the PCs will realize what's happening; or (2) send them an incredibly realistic dream from an unexplained source that just happens to clue them in on the information I want them to have.

Yes, D&D is a fantasy world, but it's also a game played by real live people. You want them to have a good experience, and if that means changing the rules of the game to make it better, or constructing your campaign in a certain way in advance to avoid un-fun scenarios, so be it.

 

[Jediking]

I play to the monster or villain's established goal and I play as hard and fair as I can to have the monster of villain achieve it. It's on the players to stop that monster or villain.

This is how I generally try to do it. Something that has helped me is look at how Dungeon World gives each creature goals. Jotting some quick bullet points and looking at their Special Traits (ex. Hobgoblins and Orcs will attack differently even with similar goals) helps me think of the creature as more than a stat block.

 

[Rhenny]

And remember, so often, the downfall of those that know they are smarter or superior is that they actually become too arrogant or they underestimate their opponents. Sometimes it is a curse to believe oneself superior to others.

In my PotA campaign, the 4th level party were able to take Aerisi, the air prophet, prisoner because she was overconfident. I really like how many people have said that they play their villains more by their personalities and goals than their intelligence. I think that's really how people behave anyway. They have personality traits, goals, desires, and often it doesn't even matter how intelligent they are.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The most intelligent people in history were brought down by sentiment and personal grudge. The question you need to ask yourself is how well designed is your villain? Does he have a past that doesn't allow him to, say, kill elves. Or did an event in his past give a rampant fear of fire? These little quirks about the villain will make for a much more interesting battle. Plus when it does come down to DM vs Player, that is totally fine. Just do this, roll a d20 + the villain's perception modifier. If it is above 16 the villain can predict their actions just a little bit and prepare for them. If not the villain makes a mistake or takes the action though it's detrimental to him/her. The best way is to get better at roleplaying and setting yourself in someone else's mind set, then DM vs Player won't be a problem.

I don't remember Einstein or von Neumann being brought down by sentiment or personal grudge. In fact they seem to have done pretty well for themselves.