Conflicted DM seeks advice

[ScrambledBrains]

So, I just got back from DMing a game for my friends, as I have been for the past few weeks. This thread is not about them specifically, as I have no issues with them or their characters.

Rather, this thread is about my conflict with my monsters. I keep using my monsters like mindless beatsticks against my party, and I'm starting to grow bored with it as a DM. However, were I to play these creatures intelligently, I'd confront a very large issue about my group...their no-to-low op status. I have three players with no real grasp of optimization, and one who know the term but thinks Weapon Focus applies, and a LA+3 race with only pure physical pluses is overpowered...I do not wish to malign my friends, or indeed any group that likes their games low op. I only wish I could use my creatures to their fullest without fearing a TPK. If anyone has any advice, I'd be glad to hear it, but if not, then please excuse my lament.

:smallfrown:

[RndmNumGen]

You could always just throw lower CR monsters against them and play those intelligently. With lower numbers, you can employ more strategy and tactics from the monsters and have it translate to roughly the same challenge level for the PCs.

[TuggyNE]

You could always just throw lower CR monsters against them and play those intelligently. With lower numbers, you can employ more strategy and tactics from the monsters and have it translate to roughly the same challenge level for the PCs.

I second this suggestion, as it's probably the simplest way of getting what everyone wants.

You might also throw in some additional sources for resurrection, special healing, status condition removal, or whatever, to compensate for increased danger.

[Shadowknight12]

Start slowly. The reason they haven't bothered to OP is because they haven't had the need to, yet. Start slowly but surely scaling up the intelligence of your monsters, making things slightly more difficult for them with every encounter. The idea here is much like incrementing the intensity of physical exercise when you can no longer feel the burn. Once they've adapted to the new tier of difficulty, up the scales again.

Make sure you offer easy ways for them to retrain anything about their characters if they start becoming interested in optimisation.

It goes without saying that if they stop having fun, stop and try something else, like creating very intelligent and capable villains that are just as bad as optimising like them (create a half-fiend fighter/bard, for example) but played as smartly as possible. In short, create challenges for yourself. Or make someone super optimised but dumber than a bag of hammers, if you ever get tired of smartly-played no-op villains.

[Gensh]

I second this suggestion, as it's probably the simplest way of getting what everyone wants.

You might also throw in some additional sources for resurrection, special healing, status condition removal, or whatever, to compensate for increased danger.

If you take the second suggestion, though, you'll probably want to make the PCs feel special about it. A secret order of priests capable of casting true res without material components (or that has a diamond mine nearby), dedicated to saving the world needs their help because they've all taken an oath of nonviolence or something - apostles of peace, possibly. If you're giving them free resurrections, there's a problem of needing high level characters to cast the spell, and AoP or healer would help ensure they don't really outshine the party.

[Voyager_I]

You could always just throw lower CR monsters against them and play those intelligently. With lower numbers, you can employ more strategy and tactics from the monsters and have it translate to roughly the same challenge level for the PCs.

I'd go with this one, too.

Pick enemies that aren't terribly dangerous, but play them with some intelligence and will to live. That second bit could be especially handy, because it means your monsters will value their own survival over simply killing the players and will be appropriately risk averse. This lets you use tactics where both parties have the potential to withdraw from a losing encounter, reducing mortality rates on both sides. The PCs still get full XP for defeating an enemy, even if they don't slaughter them to the last man, and it means they might not get butchered by a fight gone wrong.

For example, the enemies could suicide charge the Wizard, but they won't because they know they'd die before their next turn and they are more concerned with their own survival as an individual than killing a PC or winning a fight.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Or, you could do what I did with my new group, and run them through the gauntlet, where the session isn't successful unless two or three people have dropped to the negatives that night, and they start to learn on their own. (Thankfully, nobody has died, because they're very smart about getting someone into the fray to save a dying comrade.)

It's not advised, though. :smallsmile:

Perhaps you could take the Tucker's Kobolds approach to this? Where you play out a group of CR 1/4 monsters, who basically die in the first hit every time, and then play them doggedly and intelligently enough where they make that hit as difficult or as possible to get in? (But scale it back as appropriate for your group?)

[TuggyNE]

If you take the second suggestion, though, you'll probably want to make the PCs feel special about it. A secret order of priests capable of casting true res without material components (or that has a diamond mine nearby), dedicated to saving the world needs their help because they've all taken an oath of nonviolence or something - apostles of peace, possibly. If you're giving them free resurrections, there's a problem of needing high level characters to cast the spell, and AoP or healer would help ensure they don't really outshine the party.

These ideas are a good moderating influence, yes. You don't really want them to feel like you're taking pity on them, so much as amping up the risks, rewards, and remedies all at once.

[Rubik]

I'd try to play with the low-CR monsters that are nonetheless out for the party. However, they want to catch them rather than kill them. Use tanglefoot bags with hit-and-run tactics, along with thunderstones to deafen them to stifle communication (and disallow metagaming), and have them use brown mold and fire arrows to deal nonlethal cold damage to them while low-level AoE battlefield control spells hamper movement and the ability to retaliate. Have them use trained animals with various abilities (such as tremorsense, flight, and burrowing) to expand their ability to move and collect information. They should make intelligent use of cover, higher ground, and other forms of terrain to their advantage. If the players complain show them that it was a bunch of level 1-3 kobolds that took them down, make sure you explain (during the fight) what they're doing and why, and make it sound like their characters know what's happening, and give hints about how to counter such things.

Teach them how to play on a higher level. Show the players how smart play and using their surroundings to their advantage came make the game more interesting and help them take out their foes with less danger to themselves. Include bottlenecks and such. Flight and ranged attacks. Bags of marbles and flammable oil traps. Lay ambushes. Make things interesting, but use enemies of low enough level that they're only threats because of nonstandard tactics.

Basically play Tucker's Ambushers.

[crazyhedgewizrd]

This like hack and slash combat encounters, how does a typical encounter go? do they always win combats? it is the same tactics always?

[bloodtide]

The easy way to go: Dump the whole challenge rating system. Just make the adventure fun for both you and them.

And once you dump the system, you can do fun stuff like:

-Super charge your players. Give each of them a spell like ability, artifact, or whatever. Once the players are super enough, you won't need to worry much.


If you do what to keep the system, there is a great way to 'teach' the players. It's easy enough:just beat the characters down to dirt(but don't kill them). Just make life tough for them. Have them lose almost all of their equipment, spells and such and get them lost or locked up somewhere. Then let them do the slow, slow process of rebuilding.

Though, WARNING! This will not work for all players. Some players just can't take the 'character beat down' and they will want to be a 'super hero' at all times. So be careful.

The beat down can and does work. I've taken 'average players' and built them into at least 'good players'.

[Suddo]

Tucker's Kobolds (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tucker%27s_Kobolds).
Do that. Invoking emotion of fear in your Players is something you should do and playing a swarm of creatures intelligently can do just that.

Also I'd suggest easing into it would probably help.

[pffh]

I'm in a similar position (one of my top players thinks daring outlaw rogue/swashbuckle asimar (with the LA) with a single rapier using his feats to glow in the dark is the best thing ever) and what I did is play most of them stupid but throw in occasional smarter enemies of lower CR or my favourite a blue dragon trickster illusionist that wasn't out to kill them himself but making them hate and distrust each other enough to fight amongst themselves.

So you can use smart monsters but have them be the leaders and bosses. It can also be fun to have a boss that's a tactical genius giving out orders to his stupid minions and figuring out how the minions can screw that order up.

[dsmiles]

You could always just throw lower CR monsters against them and play those intelligently. With lower numbers, you can employ more strategy and tactics from the monsters and have it translate to roughly the same challenge level for the PCs.

Two words:

"Tucker's Kolbolds"

:smalltongue:

[Phaederkiel]

Employ an overarching plot-villain of about their own power. Have him attack. Then, after doing some damage have him flee.

"now that you are weakened / i have reached my objective / I have what I need, Face your doom while i take my leave..."

This works nicely if they have to tackle something else afterwards - a dungeon comes to mind. Or if he just wants to steal something - a spellbook comes to mind, or anything else which has them improvising for a while afterwards.

Make him recurring. Attack - flee if he can.

This should make even the most stupid player employ tactics to make sure that next time, he stays.


edit: chance has it that the topic
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=234873
dscusses such a villain a the moment.

[Rubik]

"Strike me down and I shall become more powerful than you can imagine."

GHOST!

[FMArthur]

I actually found that making heavy use of the ToB maneuver-granting items in encounters provides a smooth progression into more tactical play. It worked on one group I've recently been DMing for at least. Party encounters an enemy -> enemy uses surprising and cool trick on them -> enemy drops that trick for player use when slain.

Other 'active' items have the same effect but the ToB maneuver items are cheap GP-wise and provide a very diverse selection of more significant actions than most items that aren't wands and scrolls. They seemed to change the way the game was played, especially for the melee party members, and gave the impression of being new skills being learned through the items rather than separate item and character abilities.

Just getting players to use ToB classes can have the same effect, but I'm sure everyone's familiar with players stubbornly clinging to terrible old melee classes so it's not a dependable solution. And if only one of them adopts it and the rest monkfighter it up... well, that's causes a familiar problem for many here, too. :smallfrown:

[Hiro Protagonest]

Kobolds (not Tucker's kobolds) with crossbows in a relatively open area who shoot, move, reload? Change feat to Rapid Reload (Light Crossbow). Make them spread out across the area. This'll give them decent protection against melee and AoEs, and it won't be too powerful. It'll mostly just annoy the players, who have to search for the sneaky kobolds in the caverns with the deep shadows. Maybe put them in an elevated position to make it even harder to reach them without a ladder. But only put a few, and make sure they're not very well protected against arrows (this is only semi-intelligent, anyone putting thought into this would set up a makeshift wall, but it's better than them just charging in).

This is to make the players only minorly wounded, but realize that with halway decent terrain and okay tactics, the monsters can make them resort to plan B. It can also make them realize they don't have enough rope. Or a grappling hook.