Whenever my NPC's have the intelligence of a human they figure out who's the softest target and try to kill that SC. Everything else would be metagaming that helps SC. My NPC's always do their best (as long as its plausible) to kill their enemies. If my SC play bad and unorganized they just die. This is a game and not just story telling.
I'm familiar with parties that assume they don't need to prepare. My group is like that, but I intend to change it (from the players' side).
A very effective way to teach them to prepare is to give them encounters that are incredibly hard or impossible to beat, except for some item that one player brought along. We encountered shadows or something (incorporeal strength-drainers), and we had practically nothing that could hit them. Fortunately one guy had some holy water on him, which saved us. Next time, we'll bring tons of holy water.
Ability-draining attacks are incredibly effective learning tools. They don't kill your party, but they are unbelievably annoying and hard to cure.
As for your actual question: yes, have your human opponents be intelligent, but give the players a warning. If they don't heed that warning, give them an encounter that will seriously screw but not kill them because of clever tactics of the opposition. Then they will adapt. If they don't, don't be afraid to kill some of their characters. As always, communicate. Explain that preparation and better tactics could have helped them a lot.
New players have to learn too. When I was new (back in the '80s), lots of my characters died early. The ones that survived stuck.
Having your character die may not be a happy occasion, but being stuck to a sucky character isn't fun either. My advice: let him find some problems with his build choices so far. Then the death of his PC hurts less.
Use tactics that you feel that your NPCs would use. The players adapt or die.
|
It depends not only on intelligence, but on the monster's general tactics and emotions.
Ghouls are more intelligent then average humans, however they tend to use only melee tactics and wouldn't know what spellcaster is most of time.
Even goblin's can be dangerous, not because of their minor intelligence, but because of their unorthodox way of making ambushes and everything else.
Have an out of game discussion with the party first, explaining some of the guidleines you follow. For example, "to low intelligence creatures, physical stature is taken as a good guide to level of threat, whilst highly intelligent will be able to judge the threat level based on more than physical stature, [and here be pointed] for example a group of bandits who are aware of wizards and spells like fireball may well decide that they should focus their initial attack on people who appear to be wizards to avoid the spells."
You may also want to ask for various marching orders and standard positions for opening doors etc in advance so that they think about it, you may also be kind by pointing out obvious flaws so that they are better prepared in game. Remember the characters may be professional adventurers with a lifetime of experience, but the players are not.
Punish them. Punish them with the might of 1000 raging barbarians. I have a party that I'm running Rappan Athuk with, and they decided it was a good idea to shoot a burning hands into a hole that centipedes had been crawling out of only a round ago. I then proceeded to fill the room with 40 giant centipedes. They learned.
Send them up against one encounter with some seasoned bandits, and let them be crushed and captured. If they don't learn after one good thrashing, then keep sending them up against stuff that will overpower an unorganized party.
That being said, encourage them to think up tactics with the resources they have. I was in a party that had a glaive fighter that used blind fight with out sorceress who would drop fog cloud on the enemies. He could hit the enemies no problem, and the enemies couldn't see him at all.
Reward your party for being organized and resourceful, punish them for being unprepared and uncoordinated. That's how it should be.
|
"Gank the Mage" is a time honoured tactic, but make sure not to run your NPC's like they can see the players' character sheets. Baring someone under the affects of something like Arcane Sight things in the world should react like they are in the world and don't get to automatically include things like classes and class abilities based upon appearances in most cases assuming they haven't actually done some studying of the group specifically.
A lot of good stuff has been brought up here! I feel the most important point is that you try to tailor your encounters to your player's abilities (not necessarily their characters, but your players). The GM I had when I started the game could have wiped the table with our group, tactically (we were a bunch of excitable kids), but he taught us good tactics through encounters and explained why the bad guys took up positions the way they did afterwards, out of game.
If your players are still rather new, I'd suggest slowly ramping up your tactical briliance, giving them time to suss out what's an effective tactic by themselves, and maybe offering some gentle reminders (remember the value of flanking here, people, and protect those squishies!) if they don't seem to be catching on as quickly as hoped.
Just a random addendum: I think it's great fun when I get to match wits with a clever opponent, but I do get a little irked if meta-gaming enters the equation, on our side (Bob! Don't tell everyone to back up! How on Golarion would you know a Clockwork Gotliath asplodes when it's a bout to die? You've never even heard of one!) or the GM's (Um... How again did the Paychcephalosaurus know to step around that particular square? The one I had placed a symbol of sleep on? Oh! He's drunk, and therefore incapable of walking in a straight line? I see).
What Atarlost said (much more succinctly than my draft)
If the bandits team up on a martial, they may steal his only weapon, now what? Maybe a snare trap in the road has your barb dangling by his ankles 6 feet high and you all have blunt weapons useless against rope while the bandits use him as a pinata? Maybe a pit trap in front of the bandit so the PC charging takes a pike through the foot and leads to reduced speed for a few rounds? The bandits could be flanking, using maneuvers and some equipment, like dropping a smoke stick then lobbing tanglefoot bags at the party as the bandits flee into the woods with their loot.
If things go really badly, once the PCs are beaten up, and feeling defeated (like the fighter lost his weapon, the wizard can't cast spells with a verbal component because his jaw is swollen, and the ranger's bow is snapped in half), you can have a detachment of nearby guards come by and save them, then the guards can chastise them for the amateur mistakes and drop the line "We won't always be around the save you". This way, it's an encounter that makes the PCs feel challenged, there is a risk of defeat, and maybe death (they don't know the bandit's motivations). If the PCs lose, they know they're defeated, but this is their freebie.
It'll also help if you verbalize the math to highlight the usefulness of the tactics:
DM: "So Bandit 5 attacks, he rolled a 10 and has an attack bonus of 5"
Rogue: "My AC is 19, no luck"
DM:"Well that's great, but you lost your -4 dex to AC due to being entangled by that tanglefoot bag, and because you're flanked he's getting +2 to hit. so that's 17 against your AC -4. He hit you for 7 damage"
Rogue: "Wow, that would be handy, maybe I should grab some of those next time."
Sorry, it's long, but hopefully it's helpful
When they are facing multiple opponents, flanking is almost a given, but don't forget things like the Aid Another option when the party is fighting mobs individually weaker than the party members. If some of the enemy have reach weapons and stand back a bit, it is easy for them to create bonuses (possibly sizable) to hit for the ones at the front line. Obviously that goes double for grapple attempts. Aid Another can also be used in Stealth attempts (if the 1st creature trying to sneak up on the party makes a halfway decent roll, following creatures can use the same path).
Weak poisons should be a relatively common type of treasure found on orcs and goblinoids, used by them mostly on their ranged weapons. Addictive but possibly combat useful drugs could also be relatively common.
Nets. Weapons that require only a touch attack that entangle on a hit, no save? Any kobold or goblin tribe should have some net-wielders. Even one round of entanglement on a PC is a big deal.
Pets/mounts.
At night or in the dark, when the enemy CAN charge and there are a lot of them or when most of the party is asleep, they SHOULD charge once they are close enough to do so, unless they have those in their number who have Stealth skill sufficiently high that they might believe they would have a reasonable chance of sneak attacks on guards or coups de grace on sleeping PCs. This is why all PCs given a watch should have maxed Perception and why a party should at least consider employing dogs and/or Alarm spells before they get Rope Trick and/or Secure Shelter spells later on.
Traps and snares.
If a PC is downed, unconscious, or otherwise helpless, an adjacent enemy can ready an action to attack that PC and threaten to do so if the party does not throw down weapons and surrender. This is perhaps more common when fighting enemies from PC races, but could happen in an encounter with almost any intelligent foe.
Teamwork feats. They were clearly created more for monsters than for PCs. Take advantage.
give them a alchemist fire in the loot - introduce them to a swarm. Even if they didn't use it they might think about what they could have done later...
And intellegent monsters still have feeling - the big bad barbarian PC just dropped one of the NPC's, thanks to the haste from the wizard PC- even if the NPC didn't dump int he might still want revenge - and in the heat of battle might just attack the barbarian instead of the wizard.
- point? Intellegent NPC's shouldn't metagame.
I recently ran a combat encounter where an enemy cleric cast a fog cloud to hide himself and failed a will save against an illusory sound he heard to his right, he immediately wasted a casting of burning hands on an empty location that also effectively wiped out the fog cloud. I was hesitant to do so since it would've been bad for the cleric but decided to have him act in a way he believed to be reasonable.
I always think it's super cool when players/GMs do things like this! Kudos!
What would an intelligent foe do in a fight that is level appropriate for the PCs? Run for his life -- the odds are actually stacked against him.
Since you don't want the foes to run away as soon as they see the PCs, they should just slightly underestimate them and use tactics that would take out foes who are level appropriate for them. If that kills any of the PCs, then they have failed to learn some adventuring basics.
All this will turn into is an adversarial campaign where your party is just trying to roast your ding dong while your try to roast their ding dong in return, over and over.
They win, they survive. You win, well, TPK and a new campaign.
I play in one game like this and it's like we as players all do a synchronized touchdown dance every time we survive one the GM's rigged encounters, while he glares at us and mumbles about overpowered characters. There are high fives and some boo yahs.
Or, he kills a bunch of us and gets all smirky and smug while we all cry for our mommas.
I like competition a whole lot but this is not my favorite game that I currently play in.
It would be rad to just teach them by teaching them rather than handing them their teeth in a ziploc bag each time you introduce something new.