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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6985881" data-attributes="member: 6787650">I've been thinking a lot about recently about doing a different kind of monster progression: instead of fighting tougher and tougher monsters as you go deeper in the dungeon/adventure/whatever, fight smarter and more disciplined monsters. I've done this before in an ad hoc, pedgagogical fashion (tell the players up front that each wave of pirates is going to be using new and different tricks), but it might be fun to integrate it into the story somehow. "Eric the Red, the Frost Giant Warchief, is forging his band into a new kind of weapon to take back the land that is 'rightfully' theirs. There are rogue Frost Giants who reject his leadership and continue their old ways as 'warriors' instead of 'soldiers', and they've been raiding your community in haphazard fashion as they do every few decades, but still somewhere up in the highlands lurk Eric and his New Model Frost Giants, and a reckoning looms."(Yes, to those who were wondering, that scenario description is in fact heavily influenced by David Drake's Northworld trilogy.)All the Frost Giants would pretty much use regular frost giant stats, although I might go with tradition and give Eric himself some unusual abilities (Everlasting One?) or a shaman with spells like Hypnotic Pattern--but for the most part, the difference you'd see as you faced Eric's front-liners is that they'd be more and more focused and coordinated; they'd be less prone to defeat themselves in detail by dividing into tiny groups; they'd make better use of mobility and cover and difficult terrain; they'd be more willing to rotate in and out of combat to spread damage around even if it means not getting in a full round of attacks on some rounds; they're make better use of equipment like traps and caltrops and bear traps and spiked pits; they'd make better use of auxiliaries like winter wolves; they'd be better at estimating the PCs' actual capabilities based on scout reports; etc., etc. I don't normally play creatures near their full tactical capability on the grounds that six seconds in the middle of a chaotic fight isn't a lot of time to develop a new tactical doctrine (PCs are are different--they are allowed to think in bullet time because they are attached to players who think in table time; and many PCs are also professional troublemakers who spend a lot of time thinking about how to kill things more efficiently) but for trained soldiers I can and will raise the bar a bit.There would still be plenty of opportunity for the PCs to fight back with illusions, ruses, flanking movements, and other forms of counterplay; but the players will (hopefully) feel a distinct ramp-up in difficulty that requires them to apply/develop more skill at 5E, instead of just more power.</blockquote>

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