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"My X is underpowered compared to Y." So?
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6638220" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>I don't think this is true in general. The MM is packed full of stuff that is all about exploration: umber hulks, purple worms, giants and their ordnung-or-whatever-it's-called, dragons and demons. It only turns into "combat" if the PCs have the expectation that these things are there for them to fight, and that only happens if you deliberately design the world to be one-dimensional. My campaign has had a Rakshasa all along among the king's circle of advisors, and the PCs have only just barely tumbled to the fact that he's a bad guy at all--they still don't know he's a Rakshasa, and last session ended with the barbarian about to start a fight with the Rakshasa and four guards trying to arrest him. That is, when the Monstrous Manual says, "Rakshasas can cast Detect Thoughts and Disguise Self at will, and Suggestion 3 times per day," you don't have to view that through the lens of "combat" per se at all. It's just something that monster can do, and it affects exclusively non-combat actions up until the very point where the players decide to turn it into a combat.</p><p></p><p>Umber Hulks burrowing through the ground are the same way. So is a vampire who offers them an alliance of mutual convenience against a common foe, or a Slaad who occasionally joins their party and then Plane Shifts away when he gets bored. (My Grey Slaad got dismembered by umber hulks last session; the players were sad.)</p><p></p><p>Even a straight-up boring "combat" encounter becomes more exploration than combat if it's simply too big for the PCs to tackle in combat. A small village of 80 orcs isn't a combat encounter for 4th level PCs; it's a chance to hide in the huts, maybe murdering the occasional orc, while trying to avoid getting detected and slaughtered by the other 79 of them. This places a lot of burden on the DM of course to come up with an orc ecology and social structure, and admittedly the MM isn't much help at that... but your players won't mind if you just base orcs on the Mundugamor of Papua New Guinea.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6638220, member: 6787650"] I don't think this is true in general. The MM is packed full of stuff that is all about exploration: umber hulks, purple worms, giants and their ordnung-or-whatever-it's-called, dragons and demons. It only turns into "combat" if the PCs have the expectation that these things are there for them to fight, and that only happens if you deliberately design the world to be one-dimensional. My campaign has had a Rakshasa all along among the king's circle of advisors, and the PCs have only just barely tumbled to the fact that he's a bad guy at all--they still don't know he's a Rakshasa, and last session ended with the barbarian about to start a fight with the Rakshasa and four guards trying to arrest him. That is, when the Monstrous Manual says, "Rakshasas can cast Detect Thoughts and Disguise Self at will, and Suggestion 3 times per day," you don't have to view that through the lens of "combat" per se at all. It's just something that monster can do, and it affects exclusively non-combat actions up until the very point where the players decide to turn it into a combat. Umber Hulks burrowing through the ground are the same way. So is a vampire who offers them an alliance of mutual convenience against a common foe, or a Slaad who occasionally joins their party and then Plane Shifts away when he gets bored. (My Grey Slaad got dismembered by umber hulks last session; the players were sad.) Even a straight-up boring "combat" encounter becomes more exploration than combat if it's simply too big for the PCs to tackle in combat. A small village of 80 orcs isn't a combat encounter for 4th level PCs; it's a chance to hide in the huts, maybe murdering the occasional orc, while trying to avoid getting detected and slaughtered by the other 79 of them. This places a lot of burden on the DM of course to come up with an orc ecology and social structure, and admittedly the MM isn't much help at that... but your players won't mind if you just base orcs on the Mundugamor of Papua New Guinea. [/QUOTE]
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