Surprise or tactics

[fba827]

As a player, I am fine with "finding out the hard way" as long as by virtue of itself it isn't an insta kill (causing enough damage or an effect that alone is enough to kill me outright). Though in 4e they give the monster knowledge check info so some subtle clue might be in that.

As a DM, I do try and give some subtle clue based on monster knowledge info checks. But I won't usually say outright "this skeleton will explode when you kill it" I do try and be flavorful/thematic about it... only undead/golems or such might actually explode. if it's a humanoid (though i haven't seen one yet that explodes) then it might be more like his last minute fireball centered on himself ("if i'm going down i'm pulling the grenade pin and taking you with me" type thing rather than his body saying it will explode)

 

[Jhaelen]

Well, I've used a Frost Worm in a random encounter a while ago. It was easily defeated in the first round but the blast killed the wizard pc.

Was it fun? I dunno. Not really, I guess.

I assume the next encounter might be more fun, since the pcs will probably try to avoid killing it while they're still close. They may also feel they need to use different or suboptimal tactics since they believed the frost worm only exploded because they used tons of fire-based damage to annihilate it.

In other words:
Having a 'vague' idea about the 'explodes on death' power might make for a more fun encounter.

Unfortunately, noone made the knowledge check - which I might have used to tell them about rumours that killing frost worms might be more dangerous than trying to evade them...

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I tend to run games using elements of the Dragonlance setting, and I really like Draconians. Most of them do nasty things when they die.

In general, let them find out the hard way, but do so when they are in a position where death is unlikely from the death throes. Its ok to drop someone from the blast, but hopefully you leave someone standing to bandage the others.

If you have concerns, have them encounter one by its self before throwing a group at them.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[SKyOdin]

I think it is better if the players get some kind of warning signal. For example, an exploding monster might swell up like a balloon and glow the round before it explodes. Even if the player's don't know what that means, it can give them the forewarning they need to prepare for a big attack.