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Lord Tataraus
2007-11-12, 12:00 AM
Ok, the title is more of a catching name that only indirectly applies to this question:

What kind of enemies do you put up against the PCs?

This has a few categories:

Random encounters
BBEGs
Scripted encounters
Re-occurring villains

I just want to see what the norm is for enemies of the PCs. As DM I rarely put the players up against monsters. BBEGs, re-occurring villains and most scripted encounters are player races or monster races I've advanced by level. The only monsters I use are random encounters and a few scripted encounters like generic dire wolves attacking a town.

So what about you? Of course players can answer to what they nromally face as well, I'm just a DM so I posed the question from that angle.

Drider
2007-11-12, 12:14 AM
dragons, giants, and goblinoids. Because the first 1 is a classic, and the second 2 make good "bandits"
+BBEGs and rival adventuring groups ALSO

osyluth
2007-11-12, 12:17 AM
Kobolds. Tucker's Kobolds. Bwahahahaha!

Zincorium
2007-11-12, 12:29 AM
Normally, I have two categories for monsters:

1. Plot points. These are intelligent monsters who have a reason for being there and can, if properly approached, be less than hostile. They do default to intelligent tactics if attacked, however, and tend to be more than moderately dangerous.

2. Resource sinks. Unintelligent (or nearly so) these monsters are intended to make the party use up resources like spells, hit points, and expendable items. While a valid part of any campaign, they do not figure much into the plot. A useful way of gifting the party with incidental treasure and odd magical items.

AslanCross
2007-11-12, 12:40 AM
Because of limited time, I haven't really put any random encounters into my campaign (and I'll probably be avoiding them unless we play during more relaxed schedules aka the school fair).

Common enemies so far:
1. Player races, mostly humans.
2. Goblinoids. Hobgoblins will appear a lot throughout most of the campaign, while bugbears will appear here and there later on.
3. BBEG: Half-Fiend Ogre Mage with class levels.

Stuff to come:
1. Drow. I'm not using Underdark drow, but the surface-dwelling Vhaeraun drow from FR. I needed a smaller-scale operation, not a vast, powerful city.
2. A blue dragon and his half-dragon children.
3. Recurring Villains: Both of them will be human. One of my players want to have a romance with the cleric of Bane, and the PC is human, so. (Detects incoming comment about humans thinking everything looks like a girl.)

Those are the most common things they'll be encountering. Constructs are very rare, while undead will only be in a few encounters in the latter half of the campaign. Early on, undead will be mostly summons.

PnP Fan
2007-11-12, 12:41 AM
Used to be I only used scripted encounters and BBEG's.

Turns out my players also like the occaisional random encounter, especially if the evening is mostly spent on RP and plot points. They still like to get their game on with a random encounter that is completely unrelated to the plot. So I've started throwing a few in here and there.

I hardly ever use re-occuring villains. I find that my players are very good at picking out the true villain in the group at the final encounter, and so they leap at him first, and they rarely survive. So instead, My BBEG's tend to take on a more mastermind feel to them, with the players maybe knowing of his existence, but not knowing where or when he will strike.

Jack Zander
2007-11-12, 12:50 AM
It depends on the campaign and the flavor of my world.

I ran a campaign where I used every monster I could out of the MMI and threw in a good bit of NPCs too. It was a standard collect the 15 magic crystals to either save or destroy the world with them campaign, and each dungeon had it's own unique flavor, challenge, and enemy types.

I ran another campaign that was basically a long journey across the world where goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs were the major threats, along with undead rising out of the ground at night.

My PCs almost always know the BBEG on a personal level, but do not actually know he is a BBEG. Think Palpatine.

Soups
2007-11-12, 12:53 AM
It depends on what you meanby scripted. Alot of my campaigns take place in or near metropolitan areas. So there is a "monster roster" so I don't have to make up new mobs every time. I try to make my PCs fight a certian group, it gives(at least me, as the DM) meaning to the groups goals instead of fighting random crap. I treat em all like how it would be in a movie or real life.

If the group is trying to recover the item, its either in a lair/den/house. This means average people/things who live there. might hit a unique person or "boss".

But if they are after something, and some other party is, they can expect to be in high risk, as they are competeing against someone else. Usualy NPCs with fighter and caster levels.

I try to have them fight things that would make sense for the mob to be there.

deadseashoals
2007-11-12, 01:14 AM
It's my opinion that the system seems to be biased towards including monsters as a significant percentage of your combat encounters. When I've tried running NPC-only adventures, I've found that I can only sustain a stream of NPCs to challenge the PCs for so long before things start getting... strange. Some of the potential consequences include:

1) Not enough resource expenditure. Monsters have more HPs, and tend to do more damage in melee combat.
2) Accelerated wealth acquisition. Everyone knows that NPCs haul more loot than monsters, as it's an integral part of their CR.
3) Accelerated experience acquisition. NPCs tend to be on the weak end of the power spectrum for their CR - this is especially true for non-spellcasters, and less true for spellcasters. As a result, to provide the same level of challenge to the party with NPCs tends to require higher CRs, which means more experience.
4) Suspension of disbelief shatters. At some point, you have to wonder where large numbers of high-powered NPCs are coming from, and why they haven't taken over the world yet. The PCs are supposed to be special, particular individuals, and introducing a lot of similarly-leveled and equipped NPCs with PC class levels detracts from this.

Back on topic...

Random encounters kind of bore me. I don't really like writing the tables, and I don't like statting out the encounters knowing that there's only an X% chance that such-and-such encounter will ever occur. When they do happen, it's purely a speed bump to the actual game.

I prefer scripted encounters - the majority of such encounters are site-based, where the PCs will encounter the enemies during the course of exploring or infiltrating some physical site. Occasionally, I'll run a scripted encounter where the enemies are the aggressors and the PCs minding their business, but it tends to be a curveball. After all, D&D is really all about the players breaking into peoples' homes, stabbing them in the face, and stealing their belongings.

Tor the Fallen
2007-11-12, 01:39 AM
Scripted encounters and random ones.

For random ones, I let the players roll their own loot. For the scripted ones, I plan out everything meticulously and the monsters almost totally kill the party, or get wiped out in a single save or die from the wizard.

SeeKay
2007-11-12, 02:01 AM
Ok, the title is more of a catching name that only indirectly applies to this question:

What kind of enemies do you put up against the PCs?

This has a few categories:

Random encounters
BBEGs
Scripted encounters
Re-occurring villains




I put all sorts of things against the PC's. The only thing that is sort of set that I use lots of "Player Races" (ie:Humans, Dwarves, Elves, etc) for my Re-occuring villians. Everything else is more of just looking at what fits. This has let to some strange things and a few "Are you REALLY sure, you want to do that" questions, but the campaigns I run usually are the most fun for everyone in the group I'm in.

Case in point, I had a low level party run into a black dragon in a swamp they were exploring because it lived there. It was rather involved in it's 6 horse meal to chase after 5 scrany snacks, so I decided that if they were dumb enough to stick around after it's nap, it would chase them down, otherwise, there was better food in front of it. Thankfully, this party had already learned I'll kill off a group of PC's for stupid behavior, so they moved on to a different section to explore. They also ran into a few "friendly" Lizardman Tribes before they moved to where they were supposed to go (after a group of Bullywug bandits). Stupid me thought they'd actually read the papers (with a map) they found instead of selling them the first chance they got....

RTGoodman
2007-11-12, 02:13 AM
When I DM, it's usually out of a pre-written module, so I go with what's there (goblinoids mostly, but also dragons and the like in "Red Hand of Doom").

If not, I like using the monsters from MMI that never get any sort of love (like that cat thing that can pull its face-skin back and, on one occasion, a destrachan (http://systemreferencedocuments.org/35/sovelior_sage/monstersDtoDe.html#destrachan)).

Of course, I'm currently writing a short adventure inspired by the (Divine) Pseudonatural Paragon Damn Crab thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57301), so you can bet that it'll include some vermin (i.e., That Damn Crab), animals (specifically, sea critters), and probably a few aberrations (or whatever Yurian are - I know they're crab-people from Fiend Folio, but that's all I know since I haven't gotten my copy of it yet).

The VP
2007-11-12, 02:37 AM
Apart from a few random encounters (ala Zincorium's Resource sinks), I primarily use scripted encounters and the occasional BBEG fight. I have two potential reoccurring villains waiting in the wings, but my PCs don't know about them yet.