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Message: <blockquote data-quote="azhrei_fje" data-source="post: 4777121" data-attributes="member: 12966">I've always played the monsters appropriate to their Int and/or Wis scores in my campaigns.Every once in awhile when the party is up against a bad guy, I'll mumble something under my breath about, "oh hey, he could do such-and-such.  No, wait, he's not smart enough for that.  okay he'll just keep using full attack."  My hope is that my players learn that some opponents are intelligent and others are not.In a recent game, my enemy spellcaster was flying around a room and casting Will save spells against fighters and Fort spells against arcanists.  But in almost every round, when it was the NPC's turn, I would ask the players what their PCs were wearing or what they looked like.  If a PC was not wearing armor, they got a Fort save spell (usually), if they were wearing armor and didn't have any visible holy symbols, they got a Will save spell.  And so on.  The NPC made a couple of mistakes in the first round or two, but the players took it all in stride and were quite happy to have achieved success against an intelligent opponent.So my advice?  Don't hold back.  A creature with a 20 Int should be played with a 20 Int.  My players know that I'll do the same for them -- if the mage with a 20 Int doesn't notice something that I think they should, I'll tell them and say, "You'd notice such-and-such."In any case, I like your list of things a RBDM might do.  However, I don't have any hard-and-fast rules about such things.  For example, I won't sunder PC equipment unless they try to sunder the BBEG's equipment.  I won't use save-or-die spells on the PCs unless they use them on the BBEGs.I did have a beholder who gained surprise on the party, though, and I had to hold back:  the beast also rolled a 20 on its initiative after the surprise round and 20 eye rays while the party was flat-footed would've been a TPK.</blockquote>

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