[Rant] Playing Monsters Poorly

[satori01]

With something like a Dragon, or even worse a Dragon with a Template and class levels, you are going to forget some ability.
Be it Dragon Fear, or the Cha damage that a Ghostly Dragon should do.

It is ok to forget the Darkness ability of the Black Dragon...but never forgot the Corrupt Water power....if good old Black is not destroying potions there is a problem

 

[KrazyHades]

I always have to write notes to myself such as "Don't forget he has blind fight!" or I'll forget. I also often come up with loose battle plans ahead of time (for intelligent creatures) or else I can end up with a mess that doesn't take full advantage of the monsters' abilities.

 

[LordVyreth]

I'm bad with poisons. I remember to ask for the initial fort save, but unless it's a really long fight, I sometimes forget the second volley of saves some undetermined time after the party starts mopping up. Meh, poison's overused by monsters anyway.

 

[Hussar]

Chalk me up for that second poison save too.

I tend to forget spells from creatures that have good attack abilities. Sigh.

 

[GlassJaw]

If you have an uber battle planned with some complex foes, make a tactical outline beforehand. Write out what each combatant will do in the first few rounds. If you know your party and their tactics, make notes of things that might come up in the battle - SR, DR, immunity to crits, see invisibility, etc.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

That's all not so bad.

It's worse when you overlook a major ability, spring the critter on your party, then notice he has it, and obliterate the party (or at least a number of characters) with it.

A DM of use did that once: Used a frost worm not noticing the death burst at first. Then he saw it, and rather than just ignoring it, he used it. That was after the thing used its breath weapon on the whole party already. My character and the arcanist died when the thing exploded. (The wizard never had any chance of surviving, and noone knew about the death burst, so we couldn't even tell the less robust characters to get out of the way!)

 

[Garnfellow]

Yeah, there's nothing more frustrating than realizing, after the fact, that the monster had a crucial special ability that might have changed the outcome. I find it happens far less often with the new monster/NPC format, but it still happens.

It certainly does pay to develop a strategy ahead of time, optimized for the terrain and against the PCs, in anticipation of a big battle.

I particularly like to do buffed versions of spellcasters: it really makes a huge difference. I recently ran two sessions featuring an attack on two separate 13th-level clerics. For one cleric, I took an hour and optimized her spell list and adjusted her statblock for likely buff spells. That encounter nearly resulted in a TPK. For the other encounter, I just played the cleric as-written -- it was a cakewalk for the PCs.

 

[Koewn]

DR is usually my bad thing. Had a fight with some low-level wererats (party 8th, rats ~2), just an introductory thing.

Yea, DR/silver. Much quicker fight, eh?

I reprinted my monster cards and now the DR is in HUGE BOLD FONT right next to their AC. I'll still forget it.

Koewn

 

[shilsen]

I reprinted my monster cards and now the DR is in HUGE BOLD FONT right next to their AC. I'll still forget it.

That's how I deal with it. I use my own stat blocks for everything, and I always bold things I absolutely need to remember, like SR, immunities, some special attacks, etc.

 

[KB9JMQ]

Here is how an end of session wrap up usually goes:

DM: Aww man, I could have killed you guys if I had remembered this.
Players: Aww man, we could have killed that monster if we had remembered that.

I figure it's a wash. SR and DR are the ones I forget the most.