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Message: <blockquote data-quote="shilsen" data-source="post: 3341829" data-attributes="member: 198">Agreed.Actually, with most NPCs I've used, I haven't used the perfect tactical choices, because they aren't geniuses and because of personalities involved. In most of the fights that the PCs had a hard time with but won, doing the most optimal tactical choices would have been a TPK. For example:* The fight against the River Snake clan in the Shadow Marches - They didn't know how good the PCs are, so they launched their attack when they could reach the closest PCs, rather than being in a position to reach all the PCs. If they had, Nameless would have gone down in a round or two and without his Solid Fog slowing them down temporarily and eating up some spellcasting from the bard leader, the PCs would have been toast.* The fight vs. Little Red Riding Hood in the ruined tower in the Demon Wastes - She popped out of the ground after temporarily retreating, well before she'd completely healed up, simply because she had never been beaten before and was fairly cocky. Since the PCs couldn't get out, if she'd just stayed underground till she totally healed and the Faerie Fire on her was gone, it would have been a TPK.The closest I came to running NPCs with totally optimal tactics was in the final fight vs. the rakshasas, because one of them was actually a real genius, and even then I took into account some mitigating factors (the focus on freeing his master, partly underestimating the PCs since he didn't know they'd been infused by the Flame and was also counting on the demon in Gareth's sword to do more than appear and be sucked into the lava, etc).Believe me, I've never used my 'A-game' <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" />You just need to emphasize the role of tentacles and a nice Chianti in Nameless' life.True. You don't need to be a real paladin to have a stick up ... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />BTW, I'm in the middle of the joys of grading papers, but I'll try to have an update by the weekend. We're playing on Saturday and I've promised the players a bit of a workout for their PCs. No A-game yet, but I'll strive for something in the B+ range. So there will be pain. Lots of pain.</blockquote>

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