Hello friends,
I wanted to weigh in for feedback and advice on how far you as DMs go in playing enemies intelligently without frustrating your players. For the purposes of this discussion, let us take an intelligent and rational being such as a dragon, wizard, lich, or really anybody with something to lose. These intelligent and rational beings might be long-lived or hold a position of power that would prompt them to do everything in their power to end the PCs or flee when it became evident the odds were against them.
How have you handled this situation? Did you award XP and loot for defeating them anyway (which I am leaning toward)? What happens when the villain is carrying all the loot with them? How did your players react? Were they frustrated, or happy to defeat them, or did they look forward to meeting them again?
Any constructive advice appreciated, thank you!
It is a problem, compounded to by the fact that the DM is nigh omniscient, knows the pc's are coming, what their goals and capabilities are, etc.
However, in fantasy literature, the Evil Overlords often have several large blind spots, such as over confidence, etc. play to those.
If you feel your players would miss out on valuable loot (and not be happy about it), give the villain a treasure hoard. Just roll or write one up and keep it in your pocket just in case. If they kill the BBEG, high fives all around and they take his stuff. If he gets away screaming, "Curse you, you meddling heroes! CURSE YOU!!!" then they find his stuff in a treasure chest.
Also, make his stuff cursed. HEROES NEVER EXPECT THAT
Good idea with the backup loot.
I worry sometimes that players equate success with a corpse.
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A big thing you have to understand is, where are your PC's meeting their arch-nemesis? Are they aware the PC's are coming, have they been hewing their way through his castle finally meeting him in his tower? If so that guy is gonna be buffed as hell and hopefully has a guard or two posted outside the door for no other reason than buy him a round or two to cast some spells.
like @DrDeth said, over confidence is a big issue, some bosses are so over confident that they'd never even account for the possibility of needing to retreat. Play on that, the emotion of "I am so powerful, how could I ever possibly lose?".
I really irritate my players with ambush scenes, if the Big bad boss guy knows they are coming to his castle to hew their way through, he might try to end it before they get there or at least weaken them before they arrive. Set up an ambush, a well thought out and incredibly frusterating ambush scene.
The players should expect an ambush but the ambushers should anticipate the PC's are expecting an ambush. Be clever, one of my favorite ways to open an ambush is with Obscuring Mist, easy first level spell, any rogue can UMD it easily enough if their isn't a caster in your ambush party. Nothing says chaos as suddenly being unable to see more than 10 feet infront of you, also a perfect time for the snare traps to be sprung. The ambush is the great scene for the Big bad evil guy to try and deal an intelligent blow before retreating back to his castle. This makes the party have to decide if they want to press on, injured knowing its the right thing to do or do they wait and lick their wounds and let him get away.
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You can award XP once for "defeating" a villain, but if he comes back, you wouldn't award twice. Recurring bad guys aren't bad, but if you plan for the bad guy to stay away, award loot in some other way (maybe the grateful peasants give up an ancient heirloom, or the merchant's guild pools together for a reward).
But as far as intelligent enemies, unless they're diagnosibly arrogant and supremely confident in their abilities, running is always an option. A dragon might not ("a teeny tiny human is no threat"), but certainly a lich would flee (after all, they've worked so hard for eternal life to just throw it away).
I am of the opinion that any intelligent villain worth their salt has a bugout plan. Now, at what point do they actually enact that plan is where overconfidence might come in. "I'm still ok, I....oh....that's a fireball....."
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I am of the opinion that any intelligent villain worth their salt has a bugout plan. Now, at what point do they actually enact that plan is where overconfidence might come in. "I'm still ok, I....oh....that's a fireball....."
The only problem with this is appeasing the party, eventually that guy has to run out of ways to escape but as you ascend in levels the available ways to escape greatly increase. If that is your adventure though, chasing a villian across the world playing a magic and sword filled game of cat and mouse, by all means it sounds fun and I know some parties might like that.
You can award XP once for "defeating" a villain, but if he comes back, you wouldn't award twice.
Isn't the villain going to employ different tactics? Won't he be prepared the second time to deal with the heroes now that he knows their strengths and weaknesses? "The game has changed!" he'll boast (in a cool Sean Connery accent). It'll be a completely different fight. A completely different... experience.
The heroes get XP twice. They'll even get more XP the second time since the challenge will have increased.
Most players set their own challenges to overcome. Sure, we're populating the world and control the XP reward, but players decide "We must stop the demon army!", "We have to rescue the princess!", "We want to cross to the other side of this kobold warren!"
Even if we throw a monster directly at the players, unprovoked, they are pretty much deciding that the challenge has become "Survive" and we are just awarding the XP value appropriate to how challenging the task is.
With this mindset, it's a tad bit easier to figure out how to award XP-
Did the players meed their goal, in whole or in part? XP.
Was it harder than expected? More XP.
Was it easier? Less XP.
Did they fail completely? No XP for that, but make sure they didn't create challenges along the way you should have awarded for.
Also, it's noteworthy to mention that I've had players who "defeated" the villain, without combat, and counted the villain as "loot" for the challenge. I award full XP if the clever players figure out how to turn the villain into an ally or asset without drawing a weapon.
I am of the opinion that any intelligent villain worth their salt has a bugout plan. Now, at what point do they actually enact that plan is where overconfidence might come in. "I'm still ok, I....oh....that's a fireball....."
I can think of, and have run scenarios where very worthy villains had various contingencies, but not always necessarily a means for escape.
See, when you say all intelligent villains act a certain way, what you are really saying is that YOU would act that way. But you don't play yourself when you play a villain. Really, there are many different villain types, and use of as many of them as possible is going to take you farther. Yes, some villains have escape routes and try to flee, or turn out to be somewhat pragmatic, or even cowardly, and try to beg or negotiate when cornered.
Some villains are full of bloodlust, and when the urge takes over, refuse to stop fighting. Some might find defeat dishonorable and feel forced to continue until the end. Some are unemotional psychopaths who do not fear death, or are curious about it. Some welcome death because they believe-in or have contracts with outsiders, to bring them back. Some people really do just have a death wish. These can all be intelligent and highly motivated individuals, whose nature simply varies based on philosophy or goal.
I could go on and on. In the end, I have found most parties do expect a corpse whenever possible, so one should have many villain types to accommodate that expectation. Yes, there's plenty of time in a long campaign to have the villain escape a couple of times, but that can't go on forever, and if you make every villain that way, your players will quickly come to expect it (and some of them will try to outwit you next time by any means necessary).
Mix it up.
My players get the full intelligence of my creatures/villains. They use the environment, if they have the intelligence, they start using tactics, and said tactics get more and more vicious as their intelligence stats go up. I had the party fight a coven of a 12th level witch, three 10th level sorcerors (with a homebrew feat to join a coven), and three Witchfires. There were clouds, flying, invisibility, escapes (that the PCs cut off), and the bad guys had been messing with the weather for several hours before the combat started so they had some nasty stuff happening with that. It was almost a TPK, and they rose to it like champs. My players know that they need to bring their A game and there will be no punches pulled. I expect the same thing when they DM for me. The enemies are real creatures with motivations and lives that they want to keep living and I run them as such.