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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3863351" data-attributes="member: 4937">But even KM didn't suggest that. Does it?  Really??  So you are saying that like a falling boulder, the sea serpant will play out exactly the same way regardless of what the players do to it?  (Tangentally, I thought balance checks would be more obvious and appropriate than reflex saves.)   What happens if the player readies a missile attack for 'When the sea serpent pops up to eat Quegqueg'?  What happens if a player jumps in the water to try to attack the sea serpent directly?  What happens if a player tries to grab ahold of the sea serpent and 'climb aboard'?  What happens if a player summons an aquatic monster to fight the sea serpant?  Of course you need stats for the monster.  It's an encounter with a monster.  That this monster uses terrain and tactics to evade direct combat with the PC's is an example of playing the monster well.  That the monsters presence and attacks effect the environment is an example of DMing adroitly.  But the fact is that the encounter is with a monster and the PC's actions must be judged on how they effect a living creature, not how they effect gravity.It's one thing to have a sophisticated well-thought out plan for running an encounter with a monster that includes appropriate and emersive atmospherics and intelligent tactics by the monster, but its quite another thing to claim that you don't need the monster and that the encounter runs on rails because the PC's can't or won't do anything to effect your plan.  This is like saying, "When the kobolds lob bottles of oil over the wall as a grenade based attack, sure, you could have statistics for the kobolds... but why bother, when the actual stats you'll end up using are for the flaming oil?</blockquote>

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