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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mal Malenkirk" data-source="post: 4692266" data-attributes="member: 834">The PCs know how to fight but the players don't.   What they do know is how to interpret game stats.  Therefore for the heroes to behave as competently as possible, the players needs as much information as possible.  The less the players know, the more the heroes behave like red shirts.Typically in my games, the PCs learn what a monster does one trick at a time.  The first time the monster attack them, they learn the defense that the attacks targets, the exact bonus and the damage.  Then the wizard shoots him with scorching burst and immediately learns the reflex defense.  Before long, they learn the HP.  They better, I always task one of the player with keeping track of the bad guys HP!  Even the first time they meet a monster, learning when he becomes bloodied (which of course I state or the tiefling gets annoyed!) gives a fair approximation.  When a monster of a type dies, I finnally state the exact HP so they take that into account for the next monsters of the same type.  After a few round, they know pretty much everything there is to know and start acting, unsurprisingly, like very competent heroes!  This further pays off because in any themed adventures, the same type of monsters will show up a bit over the day so that knowledge carries over.  From that point on, they do cool things like focus on the weak defense or avoid making a direct attack against a monster they know has 4 hp left and let splash damage from another attack kill him (i.e cleave). The end result is they tend to punch above their weight class, so to speak.  And as a result I run tougher fights, I expect, than in a game where players are kept mostly in the dark about game stats.</blockquote>

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