But here's what many are missing. Getting the PC's not not attack the Hugely overpowered foe is one thing. Getting them to run away shouldn;t be hard, either.
Getting them to just give up and surrender is another. That's what the Op wants.
I'd go down fighting no matter the odds.
But here's what many are missing. Getting the PC's not not attack the Hugely overpowered foe is one thing. Getting them to run away shouldn;t be hard, either.
Getting them to just give up and surrender is another. That's what the Op wants.
I'd go down fighting no matter the odds.
Concur. The PCs actually surrendering is something I'd never seen in a game, and something I probably never will.
Though it would help if you had a scenario where the consequences of surrendering weren't obviously horrible. I.e., the opponents are actually reasonable people with a conflicting interests, as opposed to something that clearly wants to kill the party at its leisure.
But here's what many are missing. Getting the PC's not not attack the Hugely overpowered foe is one thing. Getting them to run away shouldn;t be hard, either.
Getting them to just give up and surrender is another. That's what the Op wants.
I'd go down fighting no matter the odds.
Concur. The PCs actually surrendering is something I'd never seen in a game, and something I probably never will.
Though it would help if you had a scenario where the consequences of surrendering weren't obviously horrible. I.e., the opponents are actually reasonable people with a conflicting interests, as opposed to something that clearly wants to kill the party at its leisure.
Sure, like to the Town guard.
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Ive seen my players surrender against odds they were perfectly able to steamroll. It wasn't a political ploy on their part, they were honestly afraid for their lives.
I've seen them admit defeat and retreat from hostile territory in face of terrible odds.
I've seen them sit down next to the BBEG to have tea, watching as he mutilated enslaved servants. Perfectly able yet unwilling to intervene out of fear.
This I accomplished by making sure they knew that my stories will inevitably have characters far removed from their APL. Every character with a name and description is worth scrutiny, in case they hide some deadly skill.
I'm also known as a bit of a character killer (which I advertise to all new players even in stories with low difficulty planned).
The two facts above combine to help me keep the players in check and properly fearful of the world.
In my latest finished stóry, I told my players that it was just for giggles, instantly leading them into the though pattern "how can I take this guy?". Even background foes 7 levels superior.
It lead to some hilarity where an optimizer fighter murdered everything he touched.
Once in a home brew game we were low level. The GM mentioned a green dragon landed before us. I looked across the table and screamed "Run, run for your lives. Dragon!!!" This prevented us from facing the dragon till the far side of a dungeon. With no escape we had to fight this time around. We handled the dragon with a little work. Apparently it was not that powerful of a dragon. After that we always asked how big is the dragon.
If legendary status, and anecdotal account of an opponents power don't send them packing they can always reconsider after they realize who has to get which corpse before they flee.
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If it's not a combat encounter, don't dress it as one. No dice, no initiative, no battlemat and minis. Just pure narrative.
If it's not a combat encounter, don't dress it as one. No dice, no initiative, no battlemat and minis. Just pure narrative.
Good point.
"Guys this is more of a story encounter and you literally can't win the fight."
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A bit of story time: When in college, I was GMing for a small group of three players. During one session, one of the players (who would later become my fiance, go figure) got under my skin with her character and pissed me off by killing some NPCs that were suppose to be reoccurring characters. So I plotted against them and made a decision that while awful, gave me a slightly interesting story.
While exploring a dungeon, they awoke a Dracolich. They were fairly low level at the time and of course, such a creature is way, way out of their league. While two players understood this, my not yet fiance (who was still rather new at this whole thing) had heard the saying "If it has stats, it can die."
They somehow survived a few rounds against this thing and played pretty smart for a bit and I realized I had overreacted. I stopped the combat and explained the entire situation and then let them know this fight was unwinnable.
Which leads me to my point: Communication is the key. Like many people have said before, talking with your players (and encouraging them to talk) can be helpful for a table. It was my lack of communication that had led to my overreaction rather than discussing what was wrong and nearly killing their characters and wasting many sessions with an undeserved TPK. Discuss with your players what you want them to know.
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"It's big. No, really really big. Bigger than that. Bigger. No, really really really BIG!"
Last wednesday we spent most of the session trying to find super-long range attacks against a gargantuan zombie, because it just looked way too big to get close to. Unfortunately, this one still had Rock Throwing, so its range was actually about as good as ours was. Later on the GM said he was kinda surprised about that, because its CR was actually exactly APL. But we thought it was way scarier than that. Because hey, anything 3-4 sizes bigger than you is just going to HURT.
I threw a roc at a 2 different lvl 3 groups. They had plenty of time to find a cave to take cover. Both wanted to fight it. I had to give them a bunch of chances to break off and run. I mean u see both of the horses u were on carried up and dropped with a crunch and ur throwing alchemist fire... What?
Anyone else think the exp system for PF and dnd create players who only care about killing everything they come across?
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I think it's mostly about expectations. You're a badass hero, that much is obvious. There's a lot of quite scary things that you can actually face down. But there are also things you can't handle.
If you (as a player) didn't know the stats of any of the monsters, and you tried to decide whether you could handle them, purely based on description, name and picture given - I think you'd be wrong most of the time. You'd be running from stuff you could easily handle that just happens to look really nasty, or getting killed by small, unassuming but ridiculously skilled assassin-like monsters.
Bit of semi-metagaming is in order. As a GM sometimes you should just say "they look very very dangerous", and you should perhaps allow Knowledges to warn people about the real danger level of monsters.
Currently, really dangerous monsters have really high knowledge DCs, so if you meet them you don't have any clue what they are. Although you have the meta-information that you couldn't beat the knowledge DC, and that's a red flag.
It's okay that getting practical information about monsters gets harder with higher-CR monsters. But I think it'd be better to de-couple estimating danger level DCs from CR. So that even a commoner is able to see that a big dragon is scarier than a small dragon :P
Or that alternately it's a type of monster you don't have a good knowledge skill for.
Or....you grant the one who rolled highest, assuming high is round 16-20, to recall a tale of the enemy in question. The most brutal and deadly details...leave it up to that player to decide to be careful or suicidal.
...Of course, another way to do this is just to use Sense Motive. That skill does have some kind of 'hunch' check. It would also be generally neutral on this whole caster/martial divide we are making here. There would usually not be too much of a difference between players that rank this (well, maybe a WIS penalty wizard versus a WIS focused cleric, what with the WIS difference and class skill thing; you kind of have to work hard to get anything too major if they are both putting the skill points in)...
In my head, a successful sense motive check lets you know if the guy is confident he can whup you. It doesn't mean he is right unless he knows more about you then you know about him.
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...in RPGs the assumption is that the players will always, always, always triumph! And if they don't, then the GM is a big ol' Hitler! So there.
This rather contrasts with film, literature, legend, and almost every other entertainment form. I could start with Hercules or Thor and go all the way up to any Game of Thrones character that hasn't been killed yet. But the idea of defeat (whether fleeing, or being held in captivity, or being fooled/outmaneuvered) having story value and providing a valuable lesson that the hero can then use to attain the eventual, final triumph... has fallen into disfavor. I know PF is a power fantasy in many regards, and I'm not saying that defeat should be presumed or foreordained at any time; but it also shouldn't be considered 'worse than death', let alone a reason to ragequit on a character or a GM. We're not in pre-school here.
It's true that many stories in almost every entertainment form have lots of characters getting killed.
But there are also many stories that have the heroes regularly go up against impossible odds and emerge without a scratch. Maybe some players want to play THAT kind of story.
I have only twice as DM gone ahead with an "unbeatable" opponent that required just running or finding alternative solutions.
There's Always Someone Bigger
This harkens back to 2e days, where I had made an alternative bezerker class (prior to knowing about the kit). It ended up being pretty strong, well, ridiculously overpowered (early DM mistake). Super-powered killing skills, but losing sense of friend or foe. Oh, and it triggered on taking too much damage (roll a Constitution check kind of thing).
The group took the teamwork-play to the next level and started banking on this monster of a combatant, and that player threw himself at combat with wild abandon.
Late in the campaign, the group comes across an Iron Golem (way beyond their capabilities, but it had strict instructions on engagement, and moved slow).
First round, the bezerker charges into combat. The Iron Golem is readied for attacking first (reach, etc) and smacks the zerker across the room.
I ask for a check.
The player rolls, asks if he's raging.
I say, no.. that was the check to avoid outright dying. You are unconscious.
The rest of the group goes from bloodthirsty smiles to deadpan or pale. The Iron Golem takes it's 10 foot movement and breathes poison gas. The group retreats and decides to lure it into an area where it can fall and have a hard time climbing out.
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And That's When My Cat Made it's Appearance
This game took place in a d20 Wheel of Time game. We were playing on Halloween and the game was billed as a "Horror game". Very little combat took place; it was mostly a game of discovery and investigation.
It was a pretty big group (I think 6 players or so), and we all sat on the floor, in the dark, etc.
It took place at night, mist rolling in, and growling in the distance (intending to corral the players to this abandoned town-like place).
Eventually they find their way to the main building, and lock themselves in to get away from the hellhounds outside. Only to discover, via ghostly flashback encounters that this place was clearly a sanitarium.. one for male channelers.. which a Brown Aes Sedai had lead research on them. Medical research. Lobotomies and research in pain "therapy".
After finding chained up mindless husks of male channelers who've had their channeling burnt away (but just enough left to give longevity of life in this diseased, near-undeath existence), they come into the climactic room where they find the Brown sister doing... something.. to a young, new male strapped to a table.
She turns around and as the party is deciding what to do, she simply smiles, waves a hand, and one of the party members is sliced by a hundred blades of air, taking an absurd amount of damage, nearly killing them.
And that's when my cat comes up to one of my friends who sat with his hands behind him, and licked his fingers. He yelped out loud, scaring the crap out of everyone, and the game devolved into laughing off all the dread and terror I had built up.
The group basically decided they'd have just run away and we ended the session.
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These were great moments in our gaming history, still talked about 20 years later (for the older one).
Both times, I drove the point home by giving an overly blatant display of power on the opening round. Coupled with extensive description of events that let them know that what they just saw was "nothing" in terms of their actual power, and it nearly killed one of their party.
I'm sure at higher levels, the rocket-tag effect may blunt this a little, but then at higher levels there should be little that a party can't figure a way in defeating, barring gods and such.
High level also implies thinking outside the box in problem resolution as well.
"Overwhelming show of force" seems to fit ok for low-to-mid levels at least. As long as your party isn't completely dense.
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It also helps if you start the game off with "this game is sandbox-ish, don't expect everything you see to be 'level appropriate'".
I was a player in a Kingmaker game, and we were told at the start that there are random encounters that are meant for the full level range that would be appropriate for the area.
The DM rolled an encounter and let us know "in the distance" that we smelled/saw a Troll hunting party. We were level 2.
One player insisted that we should see if we can take them on. I (with my Knowledge check) insisted that we run on our horses while we still had a head start.
The Trolls kept up for a while, but we eventually escaped that encounter.
The player still insisted that we should have tried to take on 4-5 Trolls with our 4 party group of level 2s. "Think of the experience!" he said.
The man played too many video games... /sigh
It's true that many stories in almost every entertainment form have lots of characters getting killed.
But there are also many stories that have the heroes regularly go up against impossible odds and emerge without a scratch. Maybe some players want to play THAT kind of story.
Absolutely. And honestly, it's best to let folks know ahead of time what kind of game this is going to be. D&D/Pathfinder lends to "superheroic" gameplay where you are pretty much expected to "win".
However, "the unbeatable opponent that forces you to think outside the box or run" can still be a great single encounter on occasion, to contrast the normal gameplay.
Note, in my example post, I mention that I've only done this twice in 20 years of gaming as DM.
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I think it's mostly about expectations. You're a badass hero, that much is obvious. There's a lot of quite scary things that you can actually face down. But there are also things you can't handle.
A scene where a badass hero runs away.
Actually, heroes run away ALL the time in movies. Take Indiana Jones for example. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, he runs from savages, boulders, nazis, snakes. He even gets captured by the nazis rather than go down in some kind of Powergaming blaze of glory. You know if Indiana Jones had been a player, he wouldn't have even threatened that Nazi caravan. He would have just fired the rocket and then asked for some kind of sneak damage.
Han Solo runs from Storm Troopers, Rick O'Connell runs from the Mummy. Katniss Everdeen survives both Hunger Games pretty much by running away from most threats rather than fighting them.
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stick each of your index fingers in your nostrils.
Say: "Not every fight should be taken head on", with your fingers up your nose.
This is the international sign for TPK-hint (actually any very strong hint that should not be ignored), and has been used with success for decades in my group.
If the players ignore it, TPK.
They should learn it quite fast...
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Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
It isn't easy, because of the way Knowledge DCs work. It often backfires, with the GM thinking cool encounter and the players thinking lame, possibly quit-worthy encounter. The biggest problem I've seen is that many GM's who succeed end up wishing they hadn't.
Once the players have the fear of death in them you can't get rid of it. This fear is what leads to turtle characters, chaotic untrustworthy characters, rocket tag characters, scry and fry tactics and just about every other GM headache. Once the players are convinced the GM won't save them, they start taking responsibility for it themselves. And that means acting like a military unit with magic powers instead of a group of fated heroes.
I love that style of game with an uncaring GM and paranoid players who are constantly looking for efficiency and new tricks. I know plenty of people who hate it and only want to be in games where the PCs and NPCs are all contractually not genre savvy. Those people want more of a plot driven game rather than one driven by the rules or verisimilitude in my experience. Make sure your players enjoy being in a narrative driven game before using narrative devices like preordained losses. Otherwise your players are likely to react in exactly the opposite of the way you hope.
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Gregory makes a good point. In a Mage the Ascension game, we were so scared of the Technocracy that we basically tried to do every adventure through drones and remote control.
And we've done that in other cases too; when faced with enemy armies with overwhelming force, we start to avoid them. Although that hasn't always been a bad thing; we've had a great campaign where we basically went against the god-kings of a neighbouring country. They had lasers and resurrection machines, we had swords and bows. It meant we had to do some hitting and a lot of running, but that was pretty cool. And slowly we captured some of their weaponry...
I wonder if the OP has liked any of our answers yet.
Tell them that your not pulling punches and they need to know there limits
And if that don't work kill them
In character of course
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EDIT: NINJA'D by Gregory; also apologies for the formatting: I'm still stuck on an iPad
Tell them.
Make sure they understand their options.
Make sure they understand your expectations as well.
4E Game, we went up against a group of well-organized creatures (orcs/drow/dragonborn) with two tamed umber hulks. We did not know this.
We were taken prisoner early on, but we escaped and slowly began turning our prison into a prison for our foes. We took down our guard, a half-dozen orcs, two dragonborn (a hard fight!), and even two imps (one of whom we killed). But we stuck near the prison, because we had no idea where we were, and we were defeated by powerful opponents in the fog, previously... so we didn't want to take chances.
We were slowly being worn down, but our successes had bolstered our confidence.
Eventually we ran into another patrol, and, though we managed to take down most of it, one of the orcs (too far away to really see us or be seen) ran away.
We freaked out, and began fortifying the prison.
Then we waited.
The GM was clearly stumped, but we had no idea what else to do.
After we got cemented in, we taunted a few guards who came to guard us, until we took one of them down.
The others got smart enough to ignore our taunts, even when we were yelling about the prisoners we'd taken (everything alive so far! We're good guys!).
So the umber hulks burrow through the wall with a dragonborn to reclaim the prisoners by force. We took down the dragonborn, but we're unable to scratch the umber hulks. The combat lasted for well over an hour as we pulled out every trick we could think of to take down the dragonborn guy, and stop the umber hulks from reclaiming the prisoners. Following dragonborn's orders, the umber hulks "collected all the dragonborn to bring back to the Queen" - which they did, then included him when he dropped unconscious, and left.
We were furious.
Are hardest-won prisoners were claimed and there was nothing we could do. We were stuck in a maze-like dungeon, where everything looked the same, and the guards were only guarding one passageway of the two: clearly the other passageway was a trap. Our hardest work was undone, and we had nothing to go on, except the GM's shared puzzlement of "how did this situation develop exactly?"
It felt like the GM was railroading.
On the GM's perspective: a well-organized group of creatures slowly starts having patrols disappear on the prison-wing (which is fairly near the exist), all of their scouts sent to investigate disappear, and sending a few purposeful patrols only informed them that creatures powerful enough to take out those patrols were in the prison-area. Sending some of their elite agents yielded the same results. It was clear that this force was keeping the way out of the complex clear (the unguarded passage), probably for an invasion force? They were yelling so,etching about "prisoners" (orcs aren't good at common), so a rescue mission was launched.
So they sent their greatest assets (the umber hulks) and one of their four most powerful leaders, and instead of getting all the prisoners back, they get: three unconscious dragonborn, who will be unconscious for the next eight hours (we were thorough). No more information on us, except that one of us had the chutzpah to place a dagger in the knee of one the umber hulks and break it off. Holy crap: these guys were monsters and fearless.
We, of course, knew none of this.
They quickly reinforced their hall-guard with a full platoon.
How the GM intended the game to go: get imprisoned, fight our way out, and raid the dungeon a few times, until we win.
How the Game Played Out: we began a long, complex negotiation with the bad guys, eventually becoming their "allies", then carefully using our skills and talents to get them to distrust each other. The intent was to get all three factions (drow, dragonborn, and Orc) to fight with each other, but instead, we performed a few key assassinations, one non-lethal poisoning, and arranged for a public execution of a murderous patsy (the drow had torured and killed lots of people, just not the one she was being blamed for), followed by an infiltration/rescue of the prisoners, by tricking the Umberhulks into digging directly out.
In the end, we one-shotted two of the bosses, seduced/converted a third, and spent the rest of the campaign teaching orcs how to play simplified football "bjorker", have the drow control the finances, the dragonborn control the concessions "gormet, exclusive food", and convince the dark Queen that was the villain behind the whole thing that this is what she wanted the whole time.
Did it work out okay? Yes. But what the GM had intended as a few dungeon sessions as a one-off turned into a months-long political (and slow!) game because we got the wrong signals from two encounters.
In other words: manage their expectations, and communicate! :D
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Anyone else think the exp system for PF and dnd create players who only care about killing everything they come across?
No, I think that players and GMs who forget you don't have to kill monsters to overcome challenges create parties that only care about killing everything.
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Another example from the failed attempts to convey to the characters that this is an encounter beyond them:
I ran a home-spun adventure where the PCs are thwarting an evil cult digging for artifacts in the ruins of Myth Drannor. (obviously a reskinned Raiders of the Lost Ark plotline)
The PCs correctly figured out the cultists were DIGGING IN THE WRONG SPOT and located the actual location of the macguffin. Of course the cultists catch on and trap them at the entrance to the next dungeon adventure I have lined up for them. The overwhelming army of undead and cultists is supposed to just give them their motivation to immediately escape into the next adventure. I put the evil clerics on zombie mammoths to provide the extra hint that yeah, they can't follow you easily into that nice small passageway you've uncovered.
So what do they do, thumb their noses at the Nazis cultists and dash into the dungeon like I planned?
No they stand and fight against the force I arrayed before them.
I figured they'll at least see how poorly it goes for them while the evil clerics just keep putting negative energy into their zombie mammoths safely untouchable up in their howdahs, and at the very least back into the passageway where the mammoths can't follow. My backup plan was that the cultists would do the whole "you may have gotten away this time, but we'll eventually get you!" speech and just let them escape into the unknown dangers of the dungeon.
What do the players do? They too had too much of the "if it has stats, it can die" mentality. They try CLIMBING THE ZOMBIE MAMMOTHS to go after the clerics to stop the healing.
I resign myself to TPKing the fools, and fight it out. I even have the detachment's wizard fly off to "get more help". To my surprise, the party puts up a hell of a fight. They blow every resource they have, and manage to kill all four zombie mammoths AND the clerics keeping them going. Those PCs still standing are barely so.
I think, "Wow, I totally didn't call that. But it works out afterall, now they'll go hide in the dungeon for sure. Now we can move on."
What do they do? No, they want to go hit the cultist HQ before that wizard can organize everything. Keep in mind, this is like entire MINUTES since the alarm was sounded. It's been long enough in fact, I reason, that the wizard should probably be showing up with the next wave of "foes beyond any of you". GD it players, get the hint. Get inside.
What do they do? They attack. I don't feel bad about the fireball killing them all at this point.
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I have a very different idea about how to make the monster actually unbeatable: Don't. When I, as a GM, THINK that an encounter is unbeatable, and the players prove me wrong, that surprise provides the kind of fun that made me start on tabletop RPGs in the first place. If I wanted a story to happen JUST SO, I would write a novel.Sometimes players win fights they are not supposed to win. I would have them run into an NPC who tells them what the unbeatable monster did before the players run into it so they know not to try.
To prevent this make the monster actually unbeatable--> As an example saying the monster is only harmed by plot item X would be a good way to do it. It can also be immune to magic because _____.
I agree, but I try to give people what they ask for sometimes when I give advice. Hopefully he finds another way to get what he wants as opposed to making the monster into a plot device.
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Thanks everyone, I didn't expect to get so many replies!
I think I'm going to throw them a mastodon encounter, maybe give it a template for difficulty, then narrate the cyclops (sans miniature!) being charged by another and ripping its head off or something in one fluid motion.
Then tell the players about some nearby bushes which could provide nice concealment from the raging giant, hope they get the hint and then hav the cyclops find them again at a later stage on the same island.
If they decide to attack it I'll do the d20+WIS+BAB check to know it's way out their league, do to speak.
Deusvult and Tacticslion, great stories. :D
Of course, sometimes there is the opposite. I was running a fearless barbarians type character with a newish DM. The campaign was set against the backdrop of a large war. We were low level, and 3 or 4 times in a row, we were force to retreat against the massive army of evil. It all felt very railroady. After we had put of a few levels, I just finally hit a point of eff it. I knew the DM wanted to and expected me to retreat, but my character was a warrior, and I was sick of running away. The DM was not good at winging it, and mass chaos ensued.
Another thing to remember, is that sometimes these people are playing their characters well, and their character will not back down even when you clearly communicate to the player that they should.
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A) Don't go swimming if the authorities say the water isn't safe.
B) Don't leave out food, maybe run? One of my Magic cards says they can knock over trees. And I seem to remember that the bears that attack people in trees aren't the ones that run after you. (I'm so dead.)
C) I don't even know what that is. Is it a guy on a horse with a pointy stick?
D) Climb a tree and phone animal control.
Living in the Netherlands, I think the most dangerous animal you have a chance to run into is a tick that carries Lyme. I do know how to remove those. Those things are SCARY.
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Anyway, knowledge DCs should really be based on how famous the monster is, not on how dangerous. A commonly encountered, or historically/mythologically/religiously significant monster should have a low DC. Something that nobody ever runs into or has head of, should have a high DC.
Note that I didn't exactly link it to rarity; many rare monsters are also the stuff of legends. Point in case: dragons are fairly rare in the real world, but we all know about them. Even non-gamers do. Likewise, just about anyone knows that mummies are undead.
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Knowing that mummies are undead is one thing. Recognizing an actual encountered mummy, and not mistaking it for some kind of zombie, demon, or construct, might be harder.
Knowing that it's touch carries a disease that is also a curse, or that it has an actual mind-affecting aura of fear (rather than just being really scary), are also big differences in knowledge.
Knowing the myth, and recognizing it when you see the real thing, or knowing the true facts about it, is what makes the difference.
However, I do think that monsters should have a Knowledge check entry in the books. The current check mechanic doesn't marry stat blocks and skill ranks with "in-character knowledge" very well. Just because something has a lot of little abilities doesn't mean it should require some astronomically high roll to figure out everything (need to beat the DC by 5 for each "bit of useful information"). Also, how vague can you get?
I'd rather see each Monster entry with something like this:
Knowledge Check Information
DC XX-5: The name of the creature. So you can ask someone smarter than you for info later.
DC XX: You know the name of the monster, and what monster role it plays. So like, "Combat (melee, natural)" or "Spells".
DC XX+5: You know something important about the creature, like a deadly attack method or tactic, or a critical method of killing it.
DC XX+10: You know the abilities of the creature and normally what "effective strength" (CR relative to you, higher, similar or lower) it has. A specific creature might deviate, such as with advancement or magically boosted, or weakened/hobbled in some way, so it's more of a ballpark idea.
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I would say that detecting the creature's type should be fairly easy; maybe even a static DC. It's pretty clear that a mummy is undead and that a tiger is an animal.
Some traits you can just deduce by looking at the monster. Look, it's got claws and wings, and it's Large. This can give you clues (but not exhaustive answers) about its role as well.
You can often ballpark the monster's CR that way as well; the guide to creating monsters in the bestiary (here; step 3 and 4) talks about the relationship of size to CR. Unless you have a good reason, bunny-sized monsters shouldn't have 20HD, and that affects other CR aspects as well, such as saving throws, to-hit and weapon dice.
Of course the various monster types have different size/CR relations. Undead can be of medium size and yet really dangerous, while animals have a very strong size/CR correlation. And you certainly shouldn't tell the players exact CR number!
But in general, I think you shouldn't really need high knowledge DCs to figure out if an encounter is below, roughly at, or above your level.
I mean, you could do most of these calculations even without making knowledge checks, as a player, provided the GM doesn't make too many "killer bunny" monsters designed specifically to fool you. And the nice part is, this logic works in character too; your character could reach the same conclusions in roughly the same ways. So as a GM, it's okay to give a lot of this information, just to speed things up. "After taking a long hard look at the monstrosity, your character thinks he would be in over his head, because if you look at the size of those claws, the kind of reach it'll have on those arms, and the thick skin..."
Note that this doesn't give the player perfectly accurate information. It says a lot about the monster's physique, little about it's hidden powers, like spellcasting. Spellcasting monsters are likely to be much more dangerous than they look, physically speaking. However, spellcasting monsters do usually look a bit strange, and if you correctly guess that this monster may be able to cast spells, you at least know that you don't know enough to be sure.
Honestly, I was spitballing ideas there. I just dislike knowledge checks in general, as it kind of breaks from the traditional skill method.
Most skills allow trying to do something again, even if it simply requires a different circumstance.
Knowledge checks are to see if you know something or not. If you fail, you don't know it. Can't try it again if you see another mummy around the corner, etc. Failure at knowing a mummy means you don't know a mummy. No re-try.
I'd rather a Knowledge check meant you tried to remember something in the heat of the moment. Spend time trying again and it's like humming that tune over and over thinking the name is on the tip of your tongue.
"Take 20" would be the limit of your knowledge, essentially, but hey... who has 20 rounds to spend in combat trying to figure out what this thing is. And if you do, good on ya! You deserve knowing.
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i just look at them all, give them a sad little hopeful smile and say "you're all going to die! except you. you'll live, but you wont live well" they start to think really clever after that!
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Example of how a bad int roll on the part of the party fighter can let a party of 6 1st lvl gestalted characters, into a fight with a CR 6 Rock troll and manage to pull it out because of a follow up lucky roll.
Prior to this we had run into green slime and the alchemist had bottled some. This is important.
Everyone for the most part is sleeping when camp look out spotted something in the dark in the distance, about 70 or so feet. Everyone wakes up.
Spell caster uses dancing lights and moves them to the shadow in the distance to illuminate it and see what it was.
We see rock troll and promptly feel like we are in trouble.
Martial player rolls an int check and fails miserably and assumes the dancing lights is an attack spell and charges said troll. With a Katana manages to crit (gm did hit locations and hp) and promptly lopped off an arm. (max damage) The troll calmly picked up his severed arm. Backhanded the martial character with it and went to finish him off only to fumble and drop his own arm. Then the rest of the party starts hitting it with acid splash. Almost everyone in the party had that cantrip.
The other fighter charged up and activated racial ability to be big. healer hurried up to heal the first martial.
Two rounds go by, and we some how are all still alive, thanks to bad rolls on gm's part and some really lucky ones on ours. Our first martial is saved by the healer.
Then the alchemist remembers the slime and calls out. "Hey, will slime eat a troll?" A resounding yes around the table and the slime is thrown. By this time it's regen had not kicked in because almost every attack was acid and the martials were doing enough to keep its none acid damage ahead of its regen.
The alchemist hit the troll's other arm and after a couple more rounds the poor troll was a pile of slime. The party used acid splash to kill all the troll bits that were left. (Gm had a whole new troll grow from a piece of troll cut off so we didn't want to take chances. Only thing left was a troll finger kept suspended in a jar with a little bit of acid at the bottom to keep it from regenerating. Trolls blood was needed for healing potions.
Needless to say the Gm looked at us and said. "That was supposed to be an encounter that was more seen and you learn a little of what lives here. It was just a curious rock troll seeing about the fire. Wasn't going to harm you unless provoked. Poor thing is now a slime pile and a bottled finger for potion components. All because someone thought dancing lights was an attack spell." Shakes his head.