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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6593905" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Bolded the important part. Yes, even in combat as war, the DM sets the monsters up to fail. When my PCs were 3rd level, I sent them to investigate a vanished village, which led to them realizing that there was a group of neogi slavers (between 8 and 15 neogis, according to the lone witness, and a similar number of umber hulks) who were going to be coming back for their neogi babies when the moon was full next. It was 64,000 XP worth of enemies when the deadly threshold was 1200 XP. The PCs had the option of just reporting the results to the king and closing their investigation (letting the neogis get away), but they opted to go back for reinforcements (12 archers and 6 spearmen IIRC) and took them on. The enemy had catapults and an 8th level wizard with Fireball, and I honestly thought the PCs were all going to die, but between the traps they had laid for the neogis, the fact that they caught them in a dispersed formation, the ground the PCs had chosen to fight on, and a healthy dose of pure luck (the neogi wizard/leader was about to lauch a Fireball that would have wiped out half of the PC combat power, but something happened, I forget what, to make it illegal for him to do so)--between all those factors and a smidgen of DM mercy (declaring morale failure for the neogis after several of them were down, so they just broke and ran instead of continuing to fight smart), the PCs triumphed. So yes, I set the PCs up to succeed by giving them intelligence in advance instead of just, "boom, a hammership lands and suddenly you're surrounded by 15 umber hulks and then a Fireball roasts you to death," but they had to do all the rest of the setting up themselves, and if they hadn't done that they would have died horribly, and they might have died horribly anyway if things had gone just slightly different. I anticipate something similar in Celtavian's case. It's fairly unlikely they they just straight-up fought all of the gnolls in a giant melee of dice-rolling; that's just a death sentence at that level, and it's boring besides.Strategic initiative, mostly. In my campaign, the PCs are pretty insignificant still, and all the evil guys are mostly focused on each other and stealing as much land/gold/iron/slaves/brains from each other and the nice guys as they can. (My campaign is inspired by the strategy game Dominions 4, BTW.) If the neogi had somehow known the PCs were there, or if they'd managed to escape at the end and then take off without being wiped out by the PCs, they would either have avoided the place entirely or just "nuked the site from orbit" using the ballistas and catapults attached to their ship. Result: dead PCs. It didn't work out that way, but it could have. Again, the advantage I gave to the PCs was mostly about telegraphing the threat level, and I didn't give that advantage to the bad guys because I've set up my sandbox so the PCs have a high probability of being the heroes at the end of the story. Because it is also a game as well as a gameworld, and I want smart play to be rewarded with (a high probability of) success.</blockquote>

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