Messing with the basic assumptions of the system

[Jack7]

14 No Standardized Monsters and no standardized "monster fights" - One other thing I thought of, that another thread reminded me of. Arcane magic mutates creatures and animals as a by-product of its' use and so every monster is unique and most all of them have been created by magic in some way. All have different powers and abilities in at least some respects from normal game monsters, and most monsters are terrifically lethal or tough or bizarre or hard to kill. This prevents the players from simply "learning beforehand" monster traits and characteristics. (Usually they learn something of how the monster behaves and operates from hearing rumor, or if they can, by advanced surveillance. If my players can they will never operate "cold bore" against any monster, because that is too dangerous.) Most of the encounters in our games will be against pirates, enemy soldiers, criminals, cult groups, brigands, mercenaries, rogue operatives, traitors and political opponents, etc. But about once or twice every game (usually) the players will encounter a monster. When they do they know for a fact that monster will be deadly, or at least likely to be extremely dangerous. This makes most monster fights not just a simple matter of knowing the type of monster, but every monster is new and filled with unknown and unorthodox capabilities, and so most monster fights are fights for survival. Most monsters are extremely intelligent or at least extremely cunning. And almost no monster will fight to the death if they can escape, and the vast majority of monsters prefer to stalk and ambush the party, rather than the other way around. If they can help it at all then they will not fight the party's fight, but will seek to make the party fight their fight.

And of course the same holds true for the way most enemy NPCs operate as well.
That puts the fear of God back into enemy and monster encounters cause you're never really sure what they will do, or even what they can do.