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="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 6698744" data-attributes="member: 53980">Remember that it's not simply a matter of Int, but also Wis. To paraphrase the 1e DMG, Intelligence is knowing that smoking is bad for you, Wisdom is quitting. So a high Int, low Wis enemy might recognize the risk the PCs pose, but also might not be able to resist the urge to keep them alive for torture. Monsters are typically flesh and blood, rather than emotionless killing machines like the Terminator. They don't have to be Bond villains in order to make mistakes that lead to their own downfall (such as capturing PCs rather than executing them). I think that if enemies don't always prioritize killing PCs, it makes the PCs less of "special snowflakes" than the converse. For example, a while back in my current campaign the PCs acquired a lich's phylactery without recognizing its significance. The lich was aware of this fact, so he sent his minions (an undead mage and three helmed horrors) to retrieve it. The enemy might have been able to TPK the party but that wasn't the mission. Once they were able to grab the phylactery, they made a fighting withdrawal. Because, to the lich, the PCs were nothing special. He didn't care if they lived or died. But he very much wanted his phylactery out of their hands. If the lich had realized how much trouble these relative nobodies would cause him in the near future, he'd undoubtedly have tried to finish them off, but he didn't. The PCs lived another day because they weren't important enough to kill.As long as you run a monster as a living being with emotions, desires and flaws (rather than a walking, talking calculator with giant fangs) there's a good chance that you can find a justification to "spare" the PCs. Not that it's necessary in every case. In that same campaign, the rogue was turned to paste when she triggered a pair elementals bound to guard the prison she was breaking into.</blockquote>

Verification