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Sep 13, 2012 -- 3:24PM, Centauri wrote:

Dang, based on your last post I thought we were more sympatico. I can't recommend "gotcha" tactics like that.

I suppose they could be considered "gotcha" if you do something completely ridiculous (ie, when facing four goblins and a bugbear, one goblin in a loincloth randomly has the stats of an ogre), but I consider it on the table for a few reasons.

For one, I feel little obligation to hand over a label in lieu of a compelling description of the ongoing scene. There was a great example in the 2e DM's guide about two encounters with ogres, one where the ogre label was explicitly used and one wasn't, and showed how just by leaving the name ambiguous the tone seemed much more uncertain and threatening (What are those things blocking the bridge?). That example stuck with me all these years and is one I love to invoke at the table whenever possible. 

On a second, more practical matter I find it unnecessarily constraining from a mechanics standpoint if I am running a gnoll-themed adventure and want to cap my story off with a showdown against the gnoll warlord, only according to the numbers I ought to be pitching an EL 11 at the players and there aren't a lot of good gnoll options at that level. I'm perfectly amenable to slapping an ogre warhulk's stats into the gnoll warlord so that I'm not having to fill the encounter with loads of other monsters to meet the appropriate challenge. It saves me from having to build a custom monster from scratch while also throwing a curveball to the guy who assumes "Ah, this must be just another Gnoll Demonic Scourge, this is going to be a cakewalk".

My argument against randomly sprinkling in crazy traps is that it turns players into paranoids and slows the action to a crawl. Not outright saying "Monster X" should just cause a character to pause and size up the foe, which is what most people do naturally when facing something that could potentially cause you grievous harm.

@ Kerapalli: I'm probably a bit more "transparent" a DM than you are, but you have some good ideas. Please post more often!

Sep 13, 2012 -- 4:08PM, iserith wrote:

@ Kerapalli: I'm probably a bit more "transparent" a DM than you are, but you have some good ideas. Please post more often!

Much appreciated!

To change tack a bit, another way to keep players on their toes isn't just to have alternative goals in an encounter, but also to have dynamic goals. Have things change on the fly that force them to rethink their strategy. It's pretty easy to do with a simple pass-fail dynamic (which you can expand significantly to fuel further encounters / skill challenges / adventures).

As an example, let's say our evil overlord is trying to open a portal to somewhere bad. The encounter goal is to Stop the Ritual (and construct the setup so that a player with a good Arcana or Religion check can tell that time is of the essence, forcing them to hurry / accept attacks of opportunity / use suboptimal positioning to stop it). If they win (pass), the overlord attempts to flee as the temple collapses, creating a Cross the Room goal (with lots of fun traps / hazards etc). If they lose (fail), the portal opens and blood-crazed vampire spawn start spilling out, eager to feast on the nearby lands. The spawn are so eager to break free that they mostly ignore the PCs in their rush to the greener pastures, forcing the PCs to trade off between preventing the spawn from spreading (Hold the Line) and shutting down the portal (Disable the Device). Since they already failed once you can assume that the overlord gets away to cause havoc another day, and if they fail the Hold the Line goal then they have to deal with a vampire infestation later in the campaign. Integral to the setup is that one encounter flows seamlessly into another, creating what is essentially one big encounter with two "phases" depending on their performance in the first phase.

Sep 13, 2012 -- 3:43PM, Kerapalli wrote:

For one, I feel little obligation to hand over a label in lieu of a compelling description of the ongoing scene. There was a great example in the 2e DM's guide about two encounters with ogres, one where the ogre label was explicitly used and one wasn't, and showed how just by leaving the name ambiguous the tone seemed much more uncertain and threatening (What are those things blocking the bridge?). That example stuck with me all these years and is one I love to invoke at the table whenever possible.

I see this as a problem for the same reason I see random traps as a problem. Instead of just dealing in a straightforward manner with a straightforward monster, they act overly cautiously as they try to work out what they're facing. In addition, my experience has been that even good description can fall short. My PC was once told he was facing a dog-faced humanoid. I assumed it was a kobold (which is mainly my mistake, as I don't think they were ever dog-like except in their yippy language) but it was actually a gnoll and much tougher than I expected. I wound up taking an action that someone who was actually in the scene probably would not have taken. I think description is important, but sometimes labels and mechanics are needed to augment it.

Sep 13, 2012 -- 3:43PM, Kerapalli wrote:

I'm perfectly amenable to slapping an ogre warhulk's stats into the gnoll warlord so that I'm not having to fill the encounter with loads of other monsters to meet the appropriate challenge.

Sure, I'm all for that sort of thing

Sep 13, 2012 -- 3:43PM, Kerapalli wrote:

My argument against randomly sprinkling in crazy traps is that it turns players into paranoids and slows the action to a crawl. Not outright saying "Monster X" should just cause a character to pause and size up the foe, which is what most people do naturally when facing something that could potentially cause you grievous harm.

What options do you give them in terms of "sizing up"? Just monster knowledge checks? Me, I figure defenses, damage output, attack bonus, and hit points are more or less visible, so I provide those if asked. I generally don't dump that all on them, except to bracket the defenses, which speeds up attack resolution.

Further discussion should probably should go in another thread.

Wow Iserith, this is just incredible. Thanks so much for spending the time and effort it took to come up with it, and the formatting is pretty too! I'm certainly going to try and run this, hopefully the PCs will progress far enough tonight to get to where i plan to drop it into the campaign. Not only that but it pretty much fits perfectly with the campaign fiction.
I like the mass mark effect of the skulls and the whirlpool effects. The lgiht and dark tiles make positioning a lot more important, and should make them think twice about their normal flank and swarm tactics. Also, one of the players is an aquatic elf, which is nice because the whirpool should give her a chance for that aspect of her character to shine. Hopefully they'll take the route of disposing of the skulls, these characters ten to favor direct combat over skill usage normally. And I know at least the battlemind is going to go straight for the aboleth, as she has a bit of a bone to pick with the far realm. Thankfully though, the artificer in the party likes to arcana check everything that exists, so he should be able to provide the party with the information that they need to focus on the skulls or removing the aboleth from the whirlpool or both. 
In any case though, my game is tonight at 6 central time zone, so i'll be on to post the results of all the advice and ideas I've gotten from this thread either tonight or tomorrow morning. (Borderlands 2 happens at midnight, so i may be a little tied up until my supply of energy drinks and cheetos runs out.) Thanks again to everyone who posted ideas. I'll admit, I've been a lurker on the forums for a couple of years, and hadn't gotten up the courage to post until a little while ago. Thanks to such an awesome community and the great and helpful responses i got, I plan to become as active of a member as possible. So until later friends. Happy gaming.