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<blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 2809653" data-attributes="member: 2011">Although the Great Wyrm Gold Dragon does not need to worry about disarms, sunders, trips, or grapples.He does have to worry about touch spells/powers, some of which have no saves and/or no SR.Does the DM just automatically assume that:1) The opponent knows what Combat Expertise is (if he does not have the feat).2) The opponent knows that Combat Expertise lowers your ability to protect against certain attack forms.3) The opponent knows that you are actually using Combat Expertise.There should minimally be a Spot check to see that Combat Expertise is being used and an Int check (if the opponent does not have the feat) in there somewhere to know all of this, instead of auto-knowledge by a &quot;smart opponent&quot;.Personally as a DM, I would not let my players know that an NPC is using Combat Expertise. I would just let them know if they hit the NPC's AC or not. It's up to the player to figure out how to take advantage of a hard to hit NPC.With regard to NPCs, most NPCs would just use their normal attack modes and might after a few rounds of having a tough time of hitting a PC, switch over to other attack modes if the normal one is failing. But, they would only do this if they were skilled in a non-standard attack (had the Improved Sunder feat for example).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="KarinsDad, post: 2809653, member: 2011"] Although the Great Wyrm Gold Dragon does not need to worry about disarms, sunders, trips, or grapples. He does have to worry about touch spells/powers, some of which have no saves and/or no SR. Does the DM just automatically assume that: 1) The opponent knows what Combat Expertise is (if he does not have the feat). 2) The opponent knows that Combat Expertise lowers your ability to protect against certain attack forms. 3) The opponent knows that you are actually using Combat Expertise. There should minimally be a Spot check to see that Combat Expertise is being used and an Int check (if the opponent does not have the feat) in there somewhere to know all of this, instead of auto-knowledge by a "smart opponent". Personally as a DM, I would not let my players know that an NPC is using Combat Expertise. I would just let them know if they hit the NPC's AC or not. It's up to the player to figure out how to take advantage of a hard to hit NPC. With regard to NPCs, most NPCs would just use their normal attack modes and might after a few rounds of having a tough time of hitting a PC, switch over to other attack modes if the normal one is failing. But, they would only do this if they were skilled in a non-standard attack (had the Improved Sunder feat for example). [/QUOTE]

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