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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5668624" data-attributes="member: 4937">The long and short of this is - never intend your monster to be fought without preable in a 30'x40' flat and relatively empty room unless you intend it to just be a fight.But a bit more detail:1) Never intend your monster to be fought without preable in a 30'x40' flat and relatively empty room unless you intend it to just be a fight.  A monster needs to be placed in terrain which challenges the party and which plays to the monsters strength.  A Dire Tiger in a 30'x40' flat, well-lit, and empty room is a fight.  A Dire Tiger in a pitch black tall grass marsh is terrifying if played well and the hazards and difficulty of the terrain is emphasized. 2) In my experience, if the player doesn't know what they are facing, that's worth at least +1 challenge rating.  If the player doesn't know what they are facing, they'll hesitate, they'll make less than optimal decisions, they'll become confused and perhaps panic, and party cohesion will break down as different players adopt different strategies and some players adopt 'better you than me' stances.  This can be accomplished with as little as redressing the stats in a different suit of fluff.  The same dire tiger only gaining the dress and not the mechanics of something from the dungeon dimensions will provoke a much less optimal responce from most parties.3) A horror movie director never throws the hero into a climatic struggle with the monster in the first scene.  And generally speaking, if a monster is expected to frighten, he doesn't even fully show it to the audience until half way into the movie.  If you want monsters to have meaning, build that meaning up over time.  A fight with a random collection of hitherto unseen and unsuspected foes can't really be expected to be anything more than a fight.</blockquote>

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