[Rant] Playing Monsters Poorly

[Atavar]

Last session I made an embarrassingly bad tactical mistake in the Shackled City campaign I run.

The party was fighting a black dragon in close quarters. The fight was pretty exciting and sapped a lot of the party's resources. However, I forgot to make any use of one of this dragon's key abilities: Darkness. With the dragon's blind sense (coupled with the fact that the players had a TPK in a previous campaign when an enemy cast darkness in close quarters), I think the battle would've been much better had I not forgotten that darn darkness ability.

Anyone else have a story of DM woe like this?

Later,

Atavar

 

[maggot]

I once had an ice devil die to an empowered fireball. Oops!

 

[Oryan77]

Yeah, 2 sessions ago I made the worst mistake I've ever done. Of course the players didn't mind.

It was the last fight in the underwater adventure I ran (Sea of Blood). The PC's had to fight this ancient powerful sea creature that had spent centuries preparing to ressurect a dead god. The very first action of the PC's was that the cleric swam into the room invisible. They forgot about the water displacement and everyone saw him swim in, so he lost the surprise.

One round later, after the PC's wailed on the sea creature and left her 1 round away from dying, I came up with a good plan...she'd turn invisible, take 2 rounds to swim out of range of the sorceress & archer, & then cast dispel on the cleric. She may have had another round to hurt a PC before she died. After she turns invisible & takes her first movement, 2 initiative counts later and the archer says "Wait, don't we see her since the water is displaced?"

The thousand + year old Sea Creature that can cast invisibility & knows all about water displacement died that very initiative because some idiot DM isn't a smart thousand + year old Sea Creature. I'm the one that told them about the displacement rules! That encounter turned out to be very easy when it was supposed to be very hard since I didn't dispel the clerics buffs.

 

[Morrow]

Are you kidding? Not a session goes by where I don't forget a monster's damage reduction, devestating spell-like ability, or vital special attack. My monsters have been the victim of bad off the cuff tactics so many times that I have to write myself round-by-round instructions. Oh well, my players rarely notice and they keep coming back, so it can't be too bad.

If everybody has fun you're doing fine.


Morrow

 

[Hypersmurf]

Regarding Darkness - it does, of course, depend on how you run the spell.

In 3.5, it radiates Shadowy Illumination... so Blindsense won't make much difference, because a/ everyone can still see what square you're in, and b/ Blindsense won't remove the 20% miss chance.

-Hyp.

 

[Beckett]

The party was up against a number of flying dwarven barbarians. The dwarfs were using hit and run attacks, but they kept getting grounded by Dispel Magic. Once on the ground, they'd get surround and the party rogue would tear into them.

It was only after the fight that I remembered barbarians get improved uncanny dodge, meaning they couldn't be flanked, which would have negated all that sneak attack damage.

 

[Aeric]

I'm continually forgetting to use monster powers, much to the delight of my players. SR is something that often gets left out, simply because I'm not in the habit of running games whose level is high enough for SR to be an element.

 

[GwydapLlew]

I always forget about the Will save against inflict spells. Those are the nights where the cleric is hideously powerful...the rest of the time, she's just merely uber.

 

[Immak Antunel]

I've gotten a bit better about this, but still slip up every now and then. I almost never utilize any illusion-type powers a monster might have (excepting invisibility). I've also had trouble with monsters not having powers I'd assumed they did when I began the encounter. For example, when a couple half-fiend spellcasters needed to fight a planar ally demon in a gigantic cavern, the CR 13 one seemed to be the right level of challenge. Unfortunately, the glabrezu has no wings and no magical flying ability. He ended up having no choice but to impotently shake his fist, and teleport away. Stupid demon.

 

[Black_Swan]

I think I'm going to suggest that my DM make an index card for each of the abilities of an important monster. This way he can select abilities at random by shuffling through the cards.

I think even if he's drawing abilities at random atleast it may spark his memory about a useful one..or the monster will do something that he may not have thought of.

I know it's hard to remember this stuff but as a player i'm itching to have my enemies use their abilities..random or not.

I hate winning because of some unthought of ability or option.