My players are starting to hit the higher levels and that means they summon lots of monsters.
I'm using maptools to automate some of the process but with 8 summoned Gibbering mouther each with 6 attacks it bogs down game play for me to check and add up all that damage and check for Grapple.
I have decided that I can trust my players to add damage(I'm not giving them the creatures HP total) to their adversaries, so we've made a macro for them to do that.
How much would it hurt(verisimilitude, fun) to let them know the creatures AC after the first attack?
What about DR(number and bypass)?
What information wouldn't hurt to give the players?
I wouldn't give out DR information unless they pass the relevant knowledge skill for a given creature. Hinting, however, is different. "You hit the gibbering mouther, but your axe appears to have less effect than usual".
AC is different... if you trust your players not to fudge die rolls/lie, then after the first few rounds you can probably tell them the AC if they haven't already deduced it for themselves. I wouldn't tell them the AC right away, because that could significantly influence their first actions and therefore the outcome of the combat. If I know up front that the monster has an AC 30 and the party melee characters only have a +15 to hit, I would start throwing around Bull's Strength, bardic song, greater magic weapon, bless/prayer, etc. right away, which would then make the entire fight easier than it would have been otherwise.
In general, the knowledge skill DC is 10 + the HD of the monster to identify it (read: the name of the monster, very basic non-mechanic information, and type and subtype such as outsider: daemon). Every 5 points above the DC that the player gets on the skill check, they get 1 more "game mechanic" piece of information (such as the monster's immunities, weaknesses, special attacks, etc).
I know about the knowledge skill. This isn't about that.
I get the argument about the AC.
I'm just looking for ways to speed things up.
Damage Reduction (Ex or Su)
A creature with this special quality ignores damage from most weapons and natural attacks. Wounds heal immediately, or the weapon bounces off harmlessly (in either case, the opponent knows the attack was ineffective)
Indeed you should let your players know somethings up.
In the case of AC, it depends on the challenge their up against. If you have a pretty good inkling they are going to duff it, just tell them as they sit there puzzling numbers.
In the case of DR, same thing. Keeping it mysterious and slowing the process down will add some tension to a fight you think is going to be tough. Ask how much damage the first hit does and decide if you want to tell them how much DR it has or not.
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Honestly, in our group the players are just expected to keep track of the entire stats of whatever they summon. It may be a little less realistic but it's a heck of a lot less work. If you're dealing with experienced players they'll usually have a pretty good idea of what the stats are anyway.
Also only one summon spell in effect per player, which limits the number of things on the board.
Are you running the summoned monsters? I usually make my players run their own monsters (my game's primary conjurer has a list of all the summons he uses with stat blocks printed out and the like). If the very large number of summons is slowing down the game, I recommend asking your players not to summon as much.
As for the rest - I don't give AC for several reasons (the most important being so they don't metagame - and some of mine will - based on the creature's AC. Also important is the fact that I make odd adjustments to monsters to provide more of a challenge and keep my players on their toes), and I think giving them the exact number is a bad idea. And really, how much will it speed up your game if they do know it - they still have to do all the adding and comparing. The only difference is the 4 second interaction where the player says "22" and you say "hit".
DR is not so bad, but if you can trust your players to act like they don't know it ahead of time, it can work. I imagine that, subconsciously at least, it will affect how the play their monsters. If you let know play like they know DR automatically at each fight, it will be a much simpler time for them - players that know they can't hurt it easily will use different tactics than normal.
Allow knowledge rolls to let players identify attributes of creatures as combat starts. Not exact stuff like HP and AC (HP in particular in case you need to fudge), but stuff like "Fey are resistant to most weapons, but Cold Iron can get through" with a good check.
how fast do you want to move, how long do combat rounds take right now, and how many PCs are in the party?
If the situation specifically is with gibbering mouthers, and checking the Grapple CMB vs. Player CMDs after every single bite attack, then that can get cumbersome fast. You could always switch out the grapple ability with something equally detrimental.... maybe the gibberings instead could have a "slober" ability that automatically entangles any creature it bites 2 or more times in a round?
You could also house-rule it that any creature with a CR 2 or 3 levels lower than the party is "common knowledge" to the players, and they have encountered sufficient stories and facts about such creatures to already know most of their ins-and-outs. That way if an encounter is difficult because there are ten CR 7 monsters fighting an 11th level party, the players will already know what to expect in-character, and you can let them subtract DR and energy resistance before they give you damage numbers, and roll Spell Resistance checks as part casting ahead of time so you don't have to do the comparisons yourself as the GM. This would be part of the dynamic of PC power vs. environmental difficulty, and the difficulty in that case would be overcoming a large number of creatures instead of having to guess about the proper means of killing a strange new monster.
If the situation is that there are 6+ players in the party and combat rounds take an hour per round, well, that may be a different story.
When I GM and I want to speed up combat against random or normal encounters I will give out the AC's and Saving Throws for the enemies after the first round of combat. This just speeds things up for the entire group. For the BBEG or a big battle, I'll keep that stuff to myself. I also have someone else in the group track initiatives so that I'm not bogged down by that either.
In the end, it's completely up to you how you want to run YOUR game, as long as you and your group are having fun that's all that really matters.
Okay you're using maptools, so am I.
What I am doing is creating tokens with the stats for the summoned monsters ahead of time. Once you have the stats on the token it's easy enough to make some macros for the attacks, saves, skills and hit point tracking. If you put those macros in the "selection" window. Then anyone who clicks the token can see and click the macros.
So you can drop the token on the map and it's ready to go.
That should make things flow much smoother for you.
What I am doing is creating tokens with the stats for the summoned monsters ahead of time. Once you have the stats on the token it's easy enough to make some macros for the attacks, saves, skills and hit point tracking. If you put those macros in the "selection" window. Then anyone who clicks the token can see and click the macros.
So you can drop the token on the map and it's ready to go.
We are already using macros.
The problem is that the summoner summons so many creatures that it bogs down play for me to check each of their attacks and apply damage, Grapple, ability damage.
I should make it clear: "I don't want to give my players any information that they shouldn't have: AC, DR, immunities"
However, if giving them some information can speed up the process by allowing me to delegate some of the work I feel that is worth considering.
When a summoner creates armies to fight, it creates game problems.
You can try to figure out ways to get around them, but fundamentally when summoners create armies, it creates game problems.
If I am running an encounter and suddenly the four humanoids I was fighting turn into four humanoids and six gibbering mouthers, maybe my monsters run away and hide for a while.
Or the BBEG starts throwing illusions.
That many summons is using up a good chunk of resources. That's something you can exploit.
Well, I think I solved some of the problem... he isn't a "Rovagug’s clerics" or an "Irori’s priests"
He's a summoner so he probably doesn't have access to any of the alternative Summoning options.