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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Revinor" data-source="post: 4106408" data-attributes="member: 25037">As 4e seems to have very tactical board game combat, I'm wondering how smart DM should play the monsters.In pure board game, there is no question - everybody plays his side with the best of his skills, misusing all available rules and having full awareness of global situation of his units.  Problems start when we want to pretend it is RPG - we would not expect same kind of organization from bunch of mindless zombies and groups of highly-trained, telepathic warriors. Same encounter can have very different difficulty depending on the way monsters are played. I would even risk saying, that good versus bad tactics on monster side can be easily worth 2 levels of power (if not more). I'm wondering, what level of tactics are expected from DM for monsters to be 'fair' according to default rules.Should single monster try to use his abilities/movement to the best effect? Even if his Int score is 3 ?Should multiple monsters cooperate perfectly? Flanking is easy, but what about coordinating push/slide with some special abilities of your allies?Should monsters see through walls a bit? Be aware of board situation behind a corner where their allies are? Knowing layout of PCs behind a corner even if all their allies there got killed?What about sacrificing a monster (by jumping in middle of PCs for example) when it gives tremedous advantage to the monster allies? I'm not talking about special case of minions here.Should unrelated group of monsters help each other? (you are attacked by rabid rats while fighting kobolds, should rats try to flank you to help kobolds getting combat advantage)In case of pure boardgame answer to all those questions is simple. I'm not going to worry if my 30 points zombie is smart enough to outmaneuver 20 Int wizard, it is my miniature. In case of 'RPG', it becomes quite shady. First - players for sure will not dumb themselves down tactically just because their Int is not that high. I also don't expect them to jump from behind the corner for sure death just because their character is 2 squares away from seeing what has killed their friend. Second - trying to emulate 'real' behaviour of monsters will result in quite painful exercise in simulationism, with tens of perception rolls, int checks, line-of-sight checks etc.Boardgame geek in me says there is no way I will dumb down my encounters by pretending monsters are stupid - less fun for me, less balance in encounters. RPG guy says that difference in smartness of tactics can be best way to show the difference between different opponents/organizations (better than abilities 'difference' between 1d8+3/push 1 square and 1d6+4/pull 1 square).Coming back to the title. It is obviously pun on all the Emotional/Social/Sporty Intelligence/Quotient ideas. Should monsters have some kind of TQ statistic which will indicate how much of the brain DM is able to use? I could see it applied on two orthogonal aspects - individual smartness and teamwork. Probably none of them should be directly related to Int stat (wolf pack can be quite smart tactically in both individual and team aspects while still having Int stat below the radar). 3 levels should be more then enough:Individual:Low - advance and hack using your abilities; follow the enemies through simple path; if you get marked, attack guy who marked youMedium - DM is allowed to use full brain, but trying to limit knowledge to what monster knowsHigh - DM can anticipate PCs powers, look behind a corner etc (more or less, same level as players will be using all the time), simulating genius-intelligence of the monsterGroup:Low - Monsters move on it's own during single turn, not moving in anticipation of movement of next guy; small shift to give flanking to the friend and yourself is ok, pushing PC next to the monster which happens to have defender AoO is not okMedium - Monsters move as a group, but still some 'realism' should be preserved - no suicides to get +1 to hit for other guy, no coordination with the guys on the other side of the wallHigh - Full teamwork and telepathy, coordinated ambushes from different sides of the wall, all possible use/misuse of all team abilities, omniscience as far as group tactical situation on entire board is concernedOne immediate idea for enounter follows - bunch of zombies controlled by necromancer. Zombies have high/high TQ, if you kill/incapacitate necromancer they become mindless hack machines, with low/low behaviour.What level of TQ do you plan to use for your encounters? Do you plan to vary it depending on situation/type of monsters? Will you adjust 'challenge rating' for that?</blockquote>

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