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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4574755" data-attributes="member: 58197">I say it depends on the monster.  I generally assume that the smarter a monster is, the more of a "big picture" of the battlefield it has.  Dumb monsters tend to pay attention only to what's directly affecting them; they will not, for example, bypass the party's melee fighters in an effort to take down the healer.  Really dumb monsters might not even make the connection between the fireball that just hit them and the enemy wizard over there.  Likewise, their ability to use terrain and traps is limited by their understanding.A smart monster, though, will most certainly use anything and everything at its disposal.  It will lay traps, use magic items, bypass the party tanks in order to target the squishy fellows in the back, and ruthlessly abuse the fine points of the combat rules just the same way PCs do.  Players should fear these monsters as much for their brains as for their brawn.Moreover, monsters have different levels of aggressiveness, which affects how they balance offense versus defense.  Even a dumb monster understands the basic elements of melee combat, like opportunity attacks (and, in 4E, being marked, which I interpret as "you get in its face and make it dangerous to pay attention to anything else").  Most animals are more interested in survival than slaughter, and will generally choose to avoid provoking opportunity attacks or fighter combat challenges.On the other hand, a demon, even a smart demon, doesn't care one bit whether you hurt it or not.  The lust for destruction overrides self-preservation.  Once it picks a target, it goes after that target with savage single-mindedness, and it doesn't care if it provokes opportunity attacks.  A zombie knows only the need to kill; it will go after whoever is closest, consequences be damned.The one tactic I don't generally employ is the coup de grace.  I justify this on the grounds that monsters get their combat experience fighting other monsters and NPCs, most of whom lack healing powers; so even a smart monster is likely to assume that a foe who's been knocked into the negatives is one who no longer poses a threat.  (That's the in-game reason.  The metagame reason is that hitting a fallen PC with a coup de grace is excessively spiteful in a game such as mine, where resurrection magic is heavily restricted and usually involves cutting a deal with something Bad.)However, smart monsters do learn from their mistakes; after the first couple of times a "fallen" PC pops back up to rejoin the fight, the monster may start taking the extra effort to put its enemies down for good.  And there are a few monsters, like ghouls, that will continue to attack a fallen foe.  This provides some incentive for PCs not to let themselves get taken down in the first place.</blockquote>

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