Monsters that you have the hardest time running.

[Squirrel_Dude]

Every player can figure out how to beat a monster. Some are just harder than others. Ultimately, as a player, they're just a big bag of hitpoints with a couple defensive abilities to make them slightly different. As a DM, it's your job to make those monsters and enemies come to life, so that at the very least they don't play like big bags of hit points.

Some monsters are easier to do this with than others. Devils/Demons and other extraplanar creatures come to mind. Hell, some monsters probably work best when they're treated like big bags of hit points (Big T). However, there are other certain monsters are just hard to make interesting.

Personally, I hate oozes. I have no idea what to do with the damn thing, other than watch my players just walk around it or be bored fighting it. Honestly, they feel like a way to make the players wait for a fun fight. They're big, take forever to kill, and aren't much of a threat except for destroying your loot.

So what are some enemies that you guys find are hard to run, and what are some tips you guys have for running oozes.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Beholders. God, I hate running beholds. They take forever, and they have to many save-or-lose abilities. Every turn is "whif-whif-whif-whif-whif-DIE-whif-whif-whif-whif."

[Deathkeeper]

Ugh, I hate oozes. They're ok for new players who don't think of just running away and plinking it, but everything else just makes them hard to be threatening. If you can force them into a space they can't run from that's little better, but even then they're only a huge threat if they get some sneak attacks or are in a swarm.

[Fax Celestis]

I hate hate hate hate with a burning passion of a thousand flaming suns on fire* NPC wizards and clerics. Statting them out takes freaking forever. By and large I just use beguilers, warmages, and other knockoff-classes just because I don't have to do ludicrous bookkeeping for an NPC the PCs are going to knock over in two rounds anyway. At least druids have the "screw casting, I'm going to be a rhinoceros" option.

*the flames are also on fire

[rot42]

The "plinking at the ooze" problem is an excellent example for why I advocate calling an encounter once the dramatic question has been resolved and nothing dangerous is occurring. Once the players have mastered the situation, they can collect their XP and loot without first saying "I fall back, then do just enough damage to overcome its DR" twenty more times. Of course, if they are burning scarce resources to achieve the result or a ticking clock is running down round by round or the ooze is trying to chase them into a lava pit with acid breathing sharks flying in the fumes, then there is still some dramatic purpose to keeping the encounter running.

I have difficulty running anything that increases the complexity of running an encounter more than it increases the fun. Requires significant off-turn action or decisions on my part is a common offender; immediate actions can be okay as long as they apply to a situation very likely to come up, but rare circumstantial bonuses are just a pain. Multiple abilities with relevant durations (add 1d4 to the current round counter for breath weapon recharge, three more rounds of bleed damage unless someone makes a Heal check, and iff below one quarter HP try to fight defensively until the 1/min teleport comes back) tends to be bad, as does mixing abilities that trigger on the monster's turn with those that trigger on each PC's turn. Tactical feats (the "do something this round for a benefit next round" feats) can be made to work, but I prefer to design the encounter such that it gets used right off and then ignored. Running a few NPC Warblades and Swordsages is not really any worse than keeping track of spellcasters or limited-use items and abilities. Running NPC Crusaders by the book, though, would make the game drag so they get a more static array of maneuvers.

Invisible monsters and battlefield traps actually work well together - if the players know about the one, they will tend to move more slowly and deliberately into the jaws of the other.

[awa]

basic (human) zombies annoy me both as a player and a dm.
The obvious thing is a horde of zombies but their accuracy is so bad they can actually hit anything so their not particularly threatening even at low levels. but they have a decent amount of hp (if wearing armor can have an excellent ac) and dr so killing them takes awhile. in many games zombies seem to be ablative walls more then foes.

also any monster where the typical organisation includes monsters to weak to be a threat. if you can kill an 8th level frost giant 20 ogres are not going to be a threat.

[thorr-kan]

The "plinking at the ooze" problem is an excellent example for why I advocate calling an encounter once the dramatic question has been resolved and nothing dangerous is occurring. Once the players have mastered the situation, they can collect their XP and loot without first saying "I fall back, then do just enough damage to overcome its DR" twenty more times. Of course, if they are burning scarce resources to achieve the result or a ticking clock is running down round by round or the ooze is trying to chase them into a lava pit with acid breathing sharks flying in the fumes, then there is still some dramatic purpose to keeping the encounter running.
This...is an interesting thought. Must ponder.

[Squirrel_Dude]

The "plinking at the ooze" problem is an excellent example for why I advocate calling an encounter once the dramatic question has been resolved and nothing dangerous is occurring. Once the players have mastered the situation, they can collect their XP and loot without first saying "I fall back, then do just enough damage to overcome its DR" twenty more times. Of course, if they are burning scarce resources to achieve the result or a ticking clock is running down round by round or the ooze is trying to chase them into a lava pit with acid breathing sharks flying in the fumes, then there is still some dramatic purpose to keeping the encounter running.I love the Angry DM's stuff. For those that haven't read anything he's written about, most of it is at least interesting in how he talks about skill checks and monster encounters.

I'm still not sure there is a dramatic question you can give an Ooze though, other than that it's in your way. That's not really a fun quesiton, though, when the thing in your way is so boring to deal with.

[ArcturusV]

I always had problems with Aberrations/Far Realms denizens. Not because they are necessarily mechanically hard. But because it was hard to "get in their head" properly. I mean an elf, a dwarf, a human, a dragon, a gobbo, etc? I can probably get inside their heads, figure out how to play them, what they'd think, how they'd act, how they'd approach combat, etc. But when something is roughly defined as being from a realm of insanity beyond all mortal knowing... what do you really do with that? So those encounters (the few times I ran them) kinda lacked the usual depth my encounters had. Players didn't like it because it felt like playing a RPG video game (Select Attack until I win or die), and I didn't like it because I'd sit there looking at this twisted abomination and not really know what to do with it.

[Alabenson]

I'd say the hardest monster to run well would probably be the older dragons. They involve all the complexity of statting a spellcaster, with the added issues of planning for tactics that frequently involve both the grapple rules but also the rules for flying with a poor maneuverability rating.

[awa]

for aberrations one way to do it is decide what they do and don't worry so much about why they do it leave some cryptic rantings written on the wall hinting about darker eviler things to come and your good.

you can play up the age of the creatures and the atmosphere. some random magic beast you fight it in a cave when you fight an aberration you should be fighting it in an abandoned cyclopian city, the wall covered in runes of an ancient language that seem to shift in of the corner of your eye, reading which makes your mind itch and your nose bleed. trying to decipher them gives you a hint of the cities age and the dark unspeakable thing that happened here. sleeping in the city gives you nightmares of madness and depravity that cause you to wake screaming or worse yet intrigued.

now if you can create a mindset for your creature that's great don't worry about being a little illogical you can cover it up with a cryptic remark. Also think of it as an alien mind not a random one.

[Nettlekid]

I'd say the hardest monster to run well would probably be the older dragons. They involve all the complexity of statting a spellcaster, with the added issues of planning for tactics that frequently involve both the grapple rules but also the rules for flying with a poor maneuverability rating.

I agree about dragons, but not so much about all their various different functions, but because it's difficult to appropriately play anything so much smarter than you as the DM. We're told time and time again that dragons are incredibly smart, make hundreds of plans and contingencies, and have a very alien-to-humans mentality. All those things make it very difficult to play them as they should be played, as opposed to just another hulking chunk of HP.

[Invader]

Really any creature who's capstone results automatically in a players death if it succeeds.

[Yora]

I never really wanted to run a dragon with their 8 attacks or so.

[Crake]

I never really wanted to run a dragon with their 8 attacks or so.

A dragon large enough to have 8 natural attacks and wasting it's full round action on full attacking with them is being played wrong.

[awa]

it depends on the optimization level of the game and the tactics in play. A dragon spells are innate so there no reason to assume the creature was able to acquire exactly the best spells in fact it's likely that they are fairly suboptimal for example if this were a book and you told me white dragons were masters of weather and ice magic i would find that entirely plausible if you told me they liked fire magic i would be surprised if you told me they were basically wizards with lots of hp and avoided hand to hand combat like it carried the plague i would be rather disappointed.

I could easily see a white dragon cast freedom of movement, solid fog and then land near the party and start pounding using its reach to attack with impunity. Using it magic to augment its iconic abilities rather then simply replacing them.

second dragons never get 8 attacks by raw crush and sweep are not attacks but standard actions.

[ksbsnowowl]

second dragons never get 8 attacks by raw crush and sweep are not attacks but standard actions.

Improved Rapid Strike...

[Jon_Dahl]

Web Golem. It's extremely poorly designed.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by rot42
The "plinking at the ooze" problem is an excellent example for why I advocate calling an encounter once the dramatic question has been resolved and nothing dangerous is occurring. Once the players have mastered the situation, they can collect their XP and loot without first saying "I fall back, then do just enough damage to overcome its DR" twenty more times.

As a player, I've always found this approach to be extremely disappointing. I like the feeling of a hard-fought victory. I'd much rather spend a couple more minutes rolling than have the DM just hand-wave the last half of an encounter. It collapses whatever tension has built up, and makes me feel as if the DM isn't really invested in the game.

And the fact is, the dice can be perverse, and situations can alter radically when you never expected them to. For me, that's part of the whole point of playing at all. Anything else...feels like I've been cheated, somehow.


Originally Posted by Squirrel_Dude
So what are some enemies that you guys find are hard to run....

One of the trickiest bits of bookkeeping I've run into--apart from a series of NPC clerics--was the ever-changing status of the hadrimoi and turlemoi from MMV. Their stats change every time they take damage, and I quickly found out that this causes the DM a lot of extra hassle and scribbling. If I use them again (and I plan to) I'll work out a matrix of variable stats beforehand, and track them through combat accordingly.

[awa]

first okay yes technically a dragon can get 8 or more attacks through feats and or spells but they don't get it by default based on size.

"As a player, I've always found this approach to be extremely disappointing. I like the feeling of a hard-fought victory. I'd much rather spend a couple more minutes rolling than have the DM just hand-wave the last half of an encounter. It collapses whatever tension has built up, and makes me feel as if the DM isn't really invested in the game."

I feel the opposite becuase in general when you have the monster completely dominated movement wise and it cant touch you there is no tension. I once fought a roc as a flying mounted archer i was faster more maneuverable and had more arrows then it had hp. the fight took hours becuase between ever rnd there was 5-10 min of trig to prove that it could not catch or escape me i practically begged the dm to just let me kill it and in the end i let it get away becuase the other players were about to mutiny.

I have fought other less extreme fights that were just incredibly tedious becuase we weren't in any danger there was no tension it was just rolling over and over again trying to chip away at their ludicrous numbers or hp. I have literally fought battles that lasted hours with out taking damge where every round the only viable option is to say i do what i did last turn then roll some dice.

[ksbsnowowl]

As a player, I've always found this approach to be extremely disappointing. I like the feeling of a hard-fought victory. I'd much rather spend a couple more minutes rolling than have the DM just hand-wave the last half of an encounter. It collapses whatever tension has built up, and makes me feel as if the DM isn't really invested in the game.

And the fact is, the dice can be perverse, and situations can alter radically when you never expected them to. For me, that's part of the whole point of playing at all. Anything else...feels like I've been cheated, somehow.


My players generally feel the same way. If I have a monster with less than 10 hit points left, and he just failed a save versus some 15d6 damage effect, I just state "he's dead, and crispy." But every time, without fail, my player still scoops up the handful of dice and rolls it. He likes doing fistfulls of d6's of damage.

The things that snag me the most? Monsters with lots of SLA's, that I invariably forget about in the midst of combat. "Oh wait, that monster had mirror image up; I know I forgot to mention it, you can retcon your action," has happened quite a bit at my table of late.

[Kudaku]

I typically use ooze (and other brainless hungering slow monsters, come to think of it) as terrain obstacles, traps or hazards instead of solo monster fight. By themselves they're typically trivially easy to kill, but if you introduce a few ooze into an otherwise normal fight they become tactical elements the players can take advantage of. Bull rushing the enemy spellcaster into the gray ooze pit trap, or positioning yourself so that the hobgoblins are between the gelatinous cube and you etc.

The hardest monsters I run are typically old dragons, aboleths, liches... Creatures that have lived for centuries and have intelligence in the mid 20s to high 30ies. Trying to roleplay that kind of life experience and mental prowess is pretty daunting.

[angry_bear]

I have a difficult time building the right kind of Kobold dungeon... I go with the standard poisoned arrow traps, Ooze in a pitfall traps, signs marked with exploding runes that detonate anytime a non kobold reads them, but... I dunno, I can never get it quite right it seems.

[Mnemnosyne]

I agree about dragons, but not so much about all their various different functions, but because it's difficult to appropriately play anything so much smarter than you as the DM. We're told time and time again that dragons are incredibly smart, make hundreds of plans and contingencies, and have a very alien-to-humans mentality. All those things make it very difficult to play them as they should be played, as opposed to just another hulking chunk of HP.As a DM, I actually find this kind of enemy easy to play. After statting them out, I give them a specified number of changes I can make on the fly to their build, to represent them thinking of things I didn't think of. The number of changes is strictly limited and usually based on int and wis; my favorite choice is the total modifier of both int and wis added together.

This way, when I'm playing the monster and the players do something I failed to plan for, I swap in an ability or item or spell to deal with that and mark one off from the number of adjustments I'm allowed to make. It's cheating, in a way, but I make sure to follow specified parameters for it, and I think it allows playing characters with extremely high mental stats better. Sometimes I even allow players to make similar swaps if the situation seems appropriate and they have adequate stats and reasoning for it.

As for monsters I hate to play, I rather dislike things that are explicitly stated to use foolish, suboptimal tactics. Like a lot of fiends are explicitly stated to prefer to rush into melee when clearly using some of their spell likes would be more tactically advantageous. I also agree with not liking to play a lot of aberrations, because I find it difficult to get into their mindset due to it being explicitly described as insane and incomprehensible. However I play them, I'm obviously doing it wrong, because I understand what I'm doing. If I was playing them right, I wouldn't be able to understand myself.

[Phaederkiel]

A dragon large enough to have 8 natural attacks and wasting it's full round action on full attacking with them is being played wrong.

depends.
Maximized quickened breath as a swift,
Then a blood wind enhanced full attack... this probably will kill your party.
Mine only survived coz they luckily got very high energy resistances up.
and were able to dispel the blood wind asap

[some guy]

I probably have the hardest time running level 7 or higher casters. Or creatures with spells AND sla's. Especially when they have an high INT. Usually it goes like this: "Alright, the creature dies." 30 min. later: "Oh, gorram! Could've used that ability!"



Maximized quickened breath as a swift

Quick nitpick; maximize breath and quicken breath don't work together.

[DeBasilisk]

Oozes are cool when an invading army uses them as exotic weapons by using catapults to fling containers holding gray oozes into a besieged city, but even then running the actual battle is a headache.

When I run truly alien aberrations I like to have them periodically break off combat but stay in the PC's vision to go do something cryptic and odd. Basically make the PCs think they're up to something beyond their comprehension. I ran Far Realm grells that would abruptly run out of combat range and start humming, having spasms and casting pyrotechnics, then fly back down and resume the fight. One of them started digging a hole and vomitting into it, then started pouring alchemist fire in a pentagram around the hole. The PCs were convinced it was a strange ritual to open a portal to the Far Realm in the middle of the fight.

PC 1 - We've got to focus our attacks on the one that's vomitting in the pit!
PC 2 - What about the ones having seizures in the air?
PC 1 asking Me - Which ones seem to be closest to completing the ritual?
Me - Did I say it was a ritual?
PC 1 - They wouldn't be doing it otherwise!
Me - :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

When the did win the combat they were weirded out but convinced they saved the universe as we know it. :smallwink:

[rot42]

I love the Angry DM's stuff. For those that haven't read anything he's written about, most of it is at least interesting in how he talks about skill checks and monster encounters.

I'm still not sure there is a dramatic question you can give an Ooze though, other than that it's in your way. That's not really a fun quesiton, though, when the thing in your way is so boring to deal with.

The Angry DM (http://angrydm.com/): words worth reading, including the nice accessible phrase "dramatic question" for encounter design.

I have had fun hamming up an encounter with a Gelatinous Cube: hallways precisely 10', square cross section, suspiciously clean, acid proof gear just lying around for no obvious reason ... stoke the tension just a bit, and then hit them with a skeleton at eye level. Like a shaggy dog story with a brief encounter at the end.

In terms of actually using oozes for themselves - yeah, they seem to work better with other stuff going on. Mobile terrain, herding the PCs, or very squelchy armor. Next time I have a lower level party, I want to try an encounter where an ooze swallows the mcguffin and starts to crawl off with it after the party is thoroughly engaged with hated rivals on the far side of the cavern.



As a player, I've always found this approach to be extremely disappointing. I like the feeling of a hard-fought victory. I'd much rather spend a couple more minutes rolling than have the DM just hand-wave the last half of an encounter. It collapses whatever tension has built up, and makes me feel as if the DM isn't really invested in the game.

And the fact is, the dice can be perverse, and situations can alter radically when you never expected them to. For me, that's part of the whole point of playing at all. Anything else...feels like I've been cheated, somehow.


If the possibility remains of perverse dice turning an encounter, it might not meet my definition of "solved". Calling an encounter is not for when the tide has turned and the PCs are on the cusp of smashing their way to victory, but for when the wave has crested and crashed and fallen into the sea leaving a single section of sandcastle wall to be inevitably claimed by the next wave. Then again, people sometimes disagree on the desirability of claiming a game of bridge once someone can prove how the remaining tricks must play so we can move on to the next exciting round - if it works at your table, more fun to you.