Of course, there is no bona fide "right" answer. Anyway, here goes...
I want to reward smart play. And at the same time I want to avoid metagaming. Their CHARACTERS need to discover the information, not the players.
I am thinking of not making it immediately obvious what the name of a creature is when characters encounter it (this might actually mean setting aside the pawns temporarily). I am not allowing the Bestiary to be referred to in the middle of the battle, so one of my dear (11-year-old!) players is now visiting the local library to look up information on creatures they encounter and expect to encounter. I let him. Also, I had them encounter what looked like a giant spider, but switched in a variant spider's stats.
What do other people do?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Lots of techniques to deal with this.
1. Reskin - Use the monsters as they are written, but give the players a completely different description. Turn an otyugh into a fungal beast with tentacles and a huge bulbous purple head. Turn a stirge into a bloodsucking iridescent hummingbird. No limits here but your immagination.
2. Customize - Take exsiting monsters and swap out feats or abilities with other feats or abilities with similar game impact but different flavor.
3. Create - Make up your own monsters. I do this a lot. I even create custom miniatures so that I can put it on the board and the players will say "what the heck is THAT?"
Remember though, even when you are doing these things to disguise monsters, give the players all the proper knowledge checks to figure them out. The goal is to stop the metagaming, not to gimp the PCs.
|
Templates. Illusions. Shape shifted, shape changed creatures that resemble other creatures.
Have a talk to your players about character knowledge verses player knowledge if you want them to play that way.
Reward your players for having their characters discover the monsters' weaknesses. Remember it takes a knowledge check to identify monsters your group hasn't encountered previously.
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Seconding talking to the players to ensure they are playing their characters. A 1st level former militia guard turned player character is unlikely to know the weaknesses of a caryatid column. As a joke, you could insist that if players are going to substitute what they know versus what their characters know, they should have to make the climb and acrobatics checks as well or their character fails them. Hopefully they'll get a laugh and see the point.
I've been playing this game a long time with a lot of very good players who really try to separate player and character knowledge.
But when a beholder or a vampire shows up.... fuhgeddabout it.
Yeah, it helps when your players acknowledge the need to separate player and character knowledge. But having the players actually NOT know takes that little issue right off the table.
All helpful stuff, thanks. This is a good time to have that discussion about player/character knowledge. Just during the last session, one player scouted ahead and saw an enemy at the bottom of the stairway, and shot it. Of course, the characters who had stayed behind had not seen the enemy and so didn't know what to make of what was going on yet.
And this person IS a budding GM and is the only kid I've had this problem with, so far. And he's immediately jumped onto the idea of having to find stuff out in-character (by visiting the town's library, for example).
As for the town library, I'm thinking I should have them do an Intelligence PLUS Knowledge check (adding the two mods together), plus Intelligence reflecting their ability to research. Oh but wait perhaps I'll see if there's Pathfinder Society "crunch" rules about assisting Knowledge checks actually, since their characters are in the Pathfinder society. (I'm running the Shattered Star AP and I seem to recall something in the Player's Guide about this.)
Some creatures even townsfolk are going to know about. I would put the big bad monsters in that category - at least a simple idea that a beholder has a bunch of eyes that can vaporize you, not the individual rays. Likewise, vampires and their charms, blood drinking and sunlight destruction. They all know that dragons breath fire, etc.
But they wouldn't necessarily tell the difference between a wartroll and a troll. Undead fall into: Ghost, Zombie, Skeleton, Vampire.
Out of curiosity how old are you and the rest of the players. At just age 11, I think that this kind of thing should be encouraged - reward a child for A) reading up on any subjuct, B) actually going to the library to do real research and learn things. These are great skills that will stand him in good stead as he grows up. Deffinately something to be encouraged! Perhaps getting him to make an appropriate knowledge skill check before he uses the knowledge in game and shares it with others. I would give him a bonus to the check as well. But then if he fails the check and uses the OOC knowledge - penalise his exp and explain to him why.
Don't be too hard on them. :)
My son started playing when he was really young, I overheard him run his first game when he was about 6 (for a bunch of kids we met on holiday). Sure it was a bit random, BUT it kept the kids occupied for ages. My mate and I sat and listened outside the tent for about 40 minutes.
As he grew up (he is 21 now) he used to take the various monster manuals to bed an light night time reading! Strangely, he never woke up from nightmares afterwards either. But he has read every single monster a few times over.
I don't get to play with him much any more (he is at the other end of the country studying Law) but when he does get down for a game - he plays some outrageously good characters.
And as Adamantium Dragon said earlier - all us old players know tons of stuff OOC, and we all strive to separate IC and OOC knowldge.
BUT - we are all quite good at making our characters make the 'better choices' when we need to. Don't penalise a youngster for getting 'experienced' :P
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
I think a lot of GMs forget that "player knowledge and character knowledge are two different things" needs to work to the players' benefit, too.
There are a whole lot of situations where the characters should know things that the players don't, especially as you get new players running characters beyond the low levels or players running new spell caster classes that they don't have experience with.
For example, the player might not realize that a spell is a melee touch attack instead of a ranged touch attack, but even the first level wizard who has studied that spell would certainly have to know that. I've run across a lot of GMs who would force the character to lose the spell or the action for that mistake, because it's the player's responsibility to know the spells or the player should study the book more.
Not only is that frustrating for a player, it actually sets the rule that player knowledge trumps character knowledge--which then sets the precedent for players acting on knowledge their characters can't possibly have. Like seeing the room behind a door on the map or knowing about a scenario from conversations and spoilers, or pulling out the bestiary in combat...
As a GM, I'm trying to adhere completely to the rule that characters are not the players, even (and especially) when the players get the benefit: "Your character, as a wizard, would know that he can't charm a swarm of rats" or "Your character realizes that moving there will provoke an attack of opportunity--is that still what he would do?"
I'm hoping that once the players realize that character/player separation can help them instead of just punish them, they'll be more inclined to maintain that wall.
I believe this kid DOES read the books religiously! A new player tried to use Summon Monster I yesterday to summon a giant ant, and I said I thought it was a Summon Monster II spell. The 11 year old shot out, "IT IS."
I am 35 years old and the kids are all 11 to 13 years old. I think there's nothing I can do to make this particular kid read the books more than he already is. :) But his contributions so far have already helped the group and he is being spurred on by the experience!
I use the XP Stick with caution, currently using it to penalize people who don't pay attention or explicitly disobey me! Those are Enemies #1 and #2 for my table at the moment! I will try to teach them the IC/OOC divide as we go on, and for new rules like that I'll give them fair warning. For example, "If you do this thing right now that I just obviously discouraged you from doing and said you would lose XP if you do it but you do it anyway, then well you can't complain." :D
JohnB, your son reminds of this budding GM. When he GMs (for the afterschool Pathfinder class I teach), he doesn't follow all the rules correctly, but I kind of give him (relative) free reign. He stands up at the table, describes all the action very dramatically, and is one of my best GMs for keeping all the kids engaged (which, again, is Enemy #1).
And a lot of common monster types in the area everyone will recognize. Most people will have heard kid stories of trolls, vampires, orcs, and giants (or maybe satyrs, centaurs, and medusas in a more Greek background). Let the players enjoy picking up the clues.
If you want something they don't know about, homebrew a monster, or alter one somehow (level up, different feats, snow ability instead of fire ability, whatever). Or use a monster that isn't from this area so nobody knows about it here.
Or have someone fool them periodically. "Hah! Just because I made sure to ban garlic from my court, leave a lot of plush coffins lying around, and broke all the mirrors at the scene of the crime, you THOUGHT I was a vampire! Now, behold as I use my terrible efreeti powers to laugh at your puny holy water and burn your wooden stakes to ash!"
Don't pull the last one too often; it takes effort to keep it up, and if you do it all the time players will just give up in frustration as no clue is ever rule. But pulling it even once a year or so will keep them on their toes.
I have local folk give often misleading information about monsters, this is often as simple as calling any scary looking creature a demon or describing a creature they encounter to be much bigger. Also you can tell them stories that sound exaggerated but are actually close to the truth or spot on.
I often create my own monsters they actually really haven't heard off, switch around the colors of chromatic dragons or fairly random, a 'red' dragon can be either dark green, dark red, black or (rarely) albino, sages do not call them red dragons but firewyrms or the like.
I personalize the description of a creature, since they are looking for marks of identification some random elements might throw them off or even mistake them for other creatures.
Have creatures encountered in darkness, heavy rain or otherwise poor vision might make identification hard for at least a round or two.
Golems can take just about any shape, I also give my golems hardness instead of DR which confused at least one of my players.
Templates and class levels can change a creature radically enough, to be an entirely different encounter even if they do not appear different much.
Many of these actually enhance the roleplay experience, in my experience immersion prevents a lot of metagaming also do not forget to reward proper roleplay.
|
Using monsters from Bestiary 2 & 3, and ocassionaly from an adventure path bestiary, has worked wonders so far, though I do have only 1 experienced player.
His expression when encountering a vampiric mist was pure gold (you know, that horrified, "wait a minute, I don't know what this is! never fought it yet! uugghhh!" face :D ).
Also... there IS always the option of designing more encounters against NPCs with class levels. harder to predict what they are capable of.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
You know, since they are 11-13 year olds, I wouldn't really care. Maybe say something like, "Well, your character really wouldn't know that..." or something, but at that age, I'd reward them for their research. Especially if we are talking about relatively common monsters.
In other words, I'd never fault a player for using a mace against a skeleton when his character usually uses a sword, or one who carries a silvered mace in Werewolf country.
If you are talking about more specifics, make 'em roll, but especially at this age, reward them for their player knowledge (while teaching them the difference between that, and character knowledge). Eventually, you may want to start calling them on it, but that'd be a long ways down the path.
Things would be VERY different in a PFS game, or even one of my home games. In these games we are dealing with adults (or at least the assumption that the players act as adults... not always the same thing).
Since they're kids, encourage reading the Bestiaries, and then use that research through an appropriate Knowledge check. They are young, and the line between "what I know" vs "what my character knows" is thin if existent at all.
Adjust the Knowledge DC lower for someone genuinely interested- it will allow them to give (on your count) several specific traits of the enemy. That kid will be very proud to give the party an account of a chimera's ecology, or what to expect from a ghoul.
Reward them, they are kids and that's part of the fun for them, absorbing and expounding information.
My baseline is this- "You are adventurers for one reason or another. In your travels/sedentary lives, you've heard/read/experienced stuff about monsters. There's a chance [Knowledge] you might have a snippet of info about this beastie."
Knowledge is power! I assume that an adventurer's downtime is taken up by many things, one of which would include gaining a perspective on the world.
Encourage your inquisitive players, they will likely be able to see, test, and respect that gray area better than others.
Since they're kids, encourage reading the Bestiaries, and then use that research through an appropriate Knowledge check. They are young, and the line between "what I know" vs "what my character knows" is thin if existent at all.
Adjust the Knowledge DC lower for someone genuinely interested- it will allow them to give (on your count) several specific traits of the enemy. That kid will be very proud to give the party an account of a chimera's ecology, or what to expect from a ghoul.
Reward them, they are kids and that's part of the fun for them, absorbing and expounding information.
My baseline is this- "You are adventurers for one reason or another. In your travels/sedentary lives, you've heard/read/experienced stuff about monsters. There's a chance [Knowledge] you might have a snippet of info about this beastie."
Knowledge is power! I assume that an adventurer's downtime is taken up by many things, one of which would include gaining a perspective on the world.
Encourage your inquisitive players, they will likely be able to see, test, and respect that gray area better than others.
I thoroughly agree with this. Maybe I'm in the minority, but when I was a kid the "what would my character know" consideration was completely irrelevant. The first time our party met a troll, we got out the flasks of flaming oil.
Gradually, we came to enjoy the distinction between what we know and what our characters know, but I dont think it would have worked to have someone force us to come to that enjoyment. We used to love having super powerful characters with absurd abilities too - the concept that restrictions add to the fun came after a few years of playing. I think you should allow (and expect) them come to that realisation in their own time.
A personal favorite is to use the metagaming against them. My players encountered a rock troll. I only described it as a troll and they had not met one before with these characters. They immediately started pouring fire on it and burned through a great many spells and items before it regenerated, got back up and then they rolled a knowledge check.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
|
I agree with the mixing things up. IT also helps if you describe it indistinctly or wrong. How much does a hill giant for example look like an ogre?
Also there's a difference between knowing what an X is and acting on that knowlege.
Frex: I was playing <redacted> saturday and we reached the bedroom, which reeked of vinegar. Because I have an edictic memory for useless knowlege I blurted out "Oh #$^$#^#$^ a Penangalan." (Yes I said 'PEnangalan' I can never pronounce it right.) The GM was a bit upset and wanting knowlege religion checks. Well Talyn doesn't have knowlege (religion) yet, so I knew he didn't know what it was, so I wasn't going to go breaking jars of vinegar to keep it from reattaching. I can't help it that I've known the critters since 1e AD&D.
The players casually reading the Bestiary is one thing. acting on that casual knowlege is another.
|
|
There are knowledge skills that are supposed to allow PC's insight into the beasties they encounter so sifting through a book at the table can be construed as cheating. I had a high school teacher that dealt with cheating students like this: people who collaborate on a grade when they're not supposed to get to share the points. If two did it, he cut their marks in half. Three, in thirds. He let us decide for ourselves if that was acceptable to us and allowed us to cheat all we wanted!
I subscribe to this philosophy. They can reduce the challenge for a reduced reward. Warn them ahead of time and your problem is suddenly their problem. Now its in their hands.
|
Had a fun case last Saturday, not of them looking up bestiary stats but of metagaming monster knowledge. The party was told they needed to deal with a merrow, and without rolling Knowledge checks decided it was a sea troll. They were quite concerned the whole battle about dealing with its regeneration, then rather nonplused when I pointed out after it was dead that it was actually just an aquatic ogre, not a troll. :)
I agree with the suggestion that using Bestiary 2 & 3 is a good idea -it's almost impossible to memorise that many monsters. I wouldn't discourage players looking in Bestiary 1 between sessions - without knowing something about the type of threats you might have to face, it's hard to make sensible character build decisions. Also, anyone who can summon monsters needs access to their stats.
In real life, if you suddenly encountered a vampire, you'd likely grab a cross, holy water, garlic, and a wooden stake or two. If you encountered a werewolf, you'd try to acquire some silver bullets.
The game world has myths, legends, folk tales, and rumors just like the real world has. How is it our characters, who are assumed to be roughly early adults, not supposed to know stuff like how to deal with a troll?
Reskin stuff as appropriate.
|
Also, some monsters are common enough that the information should just be a gimme, no knowledge rolls required. What adventurer doesn't know that trolls should be burned? If a character has over a 6 for INT, then he should realize that piercing weapons aren't gonna be the best way to attack a skeleton.
I would chime in with the following:
knowledge for monsters is typically DC 10+HD - but don't always just use that as a basis - take into account how well known monsters are as well.
Consider that almost every culture on our own world has some kind of vampire legend - so finding a bloodsucker shouldn't be cause for 'I have no idea what this could be' - you can even have fun with it and make weaknesses that mold with local legends (weak against silver here, but only cold iron in this region... etc)
I tend to give away mook monsters (goblins, orcs, etc.) and try to take into account how well known a monster is in the area or how well talked about it might be.
Play up local legends and let the player research a bit to help them out also :) A party that takes time to look up what they are fighting shouldn't really even need to make a check.
That being said in your specific case I would have the balance how strict I want to keep the game with the idea that your 11 year old is so excited he's going to the library to do outside the game research on what they are fighting - honestly do the positives (getting your kid engaged and into the library and learning research skills that will be *very* helpful through his life) outweigh the game concerns here?
I know what I'd do - but it's your kid and your game so I'm not going to presume :)
|
I have a group of players which I trust. Even if they know monster's abilities, and they usually do for regular types of monsters, I simply learned to trust them and it proved fine.
So far I only met few people in PFS that metagamed hard across this and most of time people don't do it, at least not in large amounts.
I often make some stuff clear like, if any player manages to identify monster, then all players have that knowledge. It just becomes too bothersome to look at them as they struggle trying to separate that information so I simply removed that limit.
Reskining monster works fine in general if you ask me.