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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kigmatzomat" data-source="post: 2343716" data-attributes="member: 9254">Everything with an Int score is bright enough to target the smallest/weakest creatures first.   The exception are territorial animals, who may charge the largest member of the invading "pack" to establish dominance.   Weakest may include creatures moving slowly, appear to be crippled/smell of blood, or that show signs of being diseased/poisoned (scent is a handy ability).  Typically, only brainless monsters like insects grab the first creature to approach. Attacks are made on the rear and preferrably along the line of travel.  This keeps attention focused away from the attacker until too late and some degree of cover from intervening creatures.  Creatures that naturally occur in groups will use basic pack tactics, which boil down to "dogpile on one guy until he stops moving, lather, rinse, repeat."   The eternal goal is to cut down the number of foes as fast as possible.  With raw damage that means focusing on one creature.  Conversely with attacks that can incapacitate foes regardless of health (poison, stun, etc)  you want to hit as many people as possible.  The encounter should have a purpose and the simpler you keep it the better: "get food", "protect young", "defend territory", "take shiny thing," etc.   Most of these will result in the creature fleeing if they take any noticeable amount of damage.  Dead things don't breed so genetics favors discretion.  Look at the Special Attack/Special Qualities/Feats lines.  These are the tricks and unusual maneuvers that make the creature something other than a wall of meat.  If those lines are blank then hey, wall of meat.   Crush, kill, destroy.  My personal standards are:Regen/Fast heal: these creatures use hit & run tactics.  You can afford to bleed people to death if you heal ten times faster than they do.  IMC trolls make their attacks and if they start taking any significant damage, they retreat, wait 2-3 minutes (20-30 rounds) and do it again.  If their foes appear to fast heal as well (aka "cleric") they may give up but with a high enough Int (8+) they will be able to tell the difference between natural fast healing and magic.  Damage reduction: tend to be highly confident since they ignore many creatures' attacks.  Things with very high DR may use incredibly unconventional tactics, like an ambush involving a leap from a cliff.  (1d6/10' = 3.5 hp/10'.  DR10=30' leap)Improved grab: the creature will understand the strength & weakness of grappling.  They will likely go for the smallest, easily trounced foes so they minimize the time they lose their dex bonus.  Improved trip: are not stupid enough to trip things significantly larger than themselves.    They will gleefully try to trip things smaller than them or that are the same size with fewer legs.  Much like stun & poison, trip as many creatures as you can since it cuts down their number of attacks without reducing your own damage output. Pounce: the opponent can attack from a fairly great distance and still do a sizeable amount of damage.  The creature will likely retreat to evaluate success.  After all, the dead thing will still be there when the others leave.  Besides, wounded creatures are easy to track.  Rend: creatures with rend tend to avoid power attacking the first round or two to ensure they land enough hits to pull off a rend.  Renders will try to trap their foe so they don't have to worry about chasing them down.  Stun, Poison, Fear: the preferred opening salvo, soon and often.  As many different creatures as possible should be targeted to incapacitate as many foes as possible.  In the case of stun, attackers should try to position themselves so that they can try to stun a foe with one attack and have the option of using their other attacks on allies' stunned foe.  If a creature shows no particular reaction to being poisoned, the attacks should shift to one that is.     Area effects should be overlapped if possible to increase the odds of failed saves.</blockquote>

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