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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5780020" data-attributes="member: 4937">Which is a good example of why I say that the problem is one of encounter design and not of system.  In order to have goblins that eat people, it's not enough to tell, you have to show.  Goblins have to be seen by the players as things that eat people, and not merely, things that go down easily to sword swings.  I think most people in the thread are focusing on the wrong end of the problem.  They think that the problem is, "Goblins are percieved as things that go down easily to sword swings", and are looking for mechanical solutions to that problem.  So you are seeing lots of suggestions about mechanically amping up monsters with immunities or attacks that by pass defenses or what not.  That's not what makes them scary.What makes them scary is being seen eating people and engaging in other acts of horror.Likewise, the way you make players panic and afraid isn't by having them know that X monster is immune to Y, or has a potentially lethal attack form.  The way you make players panic and afraid is by having them NOT know what powers and immunites the monster has.  You take players out of their comfort zone when they don't know what the rules are here and you force them to deal with the encounter not at the metagame level but at the in game level.</blockquote>