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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuzzlewump" data-source="post: 4943990" data-attributes="member: 63214">I like the idea, and actually use it already, but a word of advice is to try to avoid making the encounters seem contrived: forced into phases that don't make much sense. If you're fighting a dragon in its layer, it's going to use the best tactic at all times. If that means he can fly up and be immune to attacks, he's always going to be doing it. Like you said, not a polished encounter, but something for everyone to keep in mind in adventure design is to have appropriately intelligent monsters. While it does make designing an encounter more difficult, I think it would be more rewarding in the end.More appropriate for an intelligent being fight, I think, is to have phases arise from things that the enemy didn't expect, whether the characters did or not. Here's my rudimentary example: dragon sees players fights and with full force, sending minions, causing eruptions or whatever, that sort of thing from the get go. It sees a losing battle and tries to fly away. 'Phase 2' is the player's stopping it, which can depend on the adventure. If they are 'monster hunting' maybe they have a harpoon of sorts, or a tethercord, something along these lines in order to hold on to it. If they can't stop it, then it flies away with no trouble. This may seem bad, but it makes it more rewarding when they finally do take it down.'Phase 3' is ripping free of the harpoon, damaging its wings or whatever, and starts bleeding acid/fire/lightning blood everywhere, and goes into a reckless-backed-into-a-corner last stand.In summary, make the phases more fluid, and don't use contrived 'hold-off-on-power' unless maybe the enemy is an incredibly proud Dragon Ball Z character. ("I'm only using 10% of my power right now, blah blah")</blockquote>

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