Hi everyone
My players regularly find giant monsters (i.e. Huge or more) "not fun" when I GM them. But I like using giant monsters : they are inherantly scary, and even though I tend to be nice with my players and try to not give them impossible challenges, a good Kaiju or two from time to time is a good way to establish that "serious sh*t is going down and the situation is not something to take lightly". Plus, the more you gain levels, the more you will have to use giant monsters to have level-appropriate encounters against a single ennemy. Also, giant monsters are cool. So I see this situation as a problem.
When I talked to them to know what is their problem, they told me that giant monsters are way too powerfull compared to PCs. Most of the time, if the monster hits with even only one attack, it will at least put one PC unconscious (except for the occasional tank with a tone of HPs who is down after two hits). It's worse when the monster has multiple attacks because they can take out multiple PCs in a single turn, or focus on one PC to be sure to down them. Plus, giant monsters tend to have special abilities that can cancel any character once it triggers (for exemple, the Giant Flytrap's Engulf ability tends to completely remove a character from the fight until the Flytrap is killed, since it has a monstruous grapple modifier). From my players' perspective, these prevent the "giant monster encouters" from being scary : since they one-shot pretty much anyone, you immediatly go from the "okay I'm full health this should be okay until I take a hit" to "okay I'm dead time to wait for the battle to end and for my healer to heal me". Put this way, I can understand their frustration.
Also, this can become kind of frustrating for me as well sometimes. When I one-shot a player, it's not really fun. And when I don't one-shot a player, that mainly means that I did not hit them once, and so the fight appears "easy" since the monster never really fought. And the players end up killing the monster in two to three turns, because, despite their big damage output, giant monsters are not that resistant. I don't think the GM is "against" the players, but they have to at least give them a challenge from time to time, so it bothers me when I build up a big encounter/(mid-)boss fight for my monster to finally just be a glorified punching bag.
Just getting out of a giant creature's reach is most of the time not possible. When you play a close-combat character... well, you have to get close of your target. And if you are a long-range character, you don't really have many options to get to a safe spot. A Step only covers 5ft, so it's not enough for a Huge monster or more if it's right next to you, and a retreat only cancels the opportunity attacks from the first square.
So, I am looking for some advices on how to run and/or modify "giant" monsters to make them more fun, more scary, and less frustrating. Do you have any ideas on what I could do ? How do you run your giant monsters ? Do you change some things ?
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Give your party the Escape Route Feat. Maybe a Cavalier is with them or maybe just give it out as a Special Reward for something ("Thank you for bringing me the McGuffin. Let me give you some special training as a reward" - Free Teamwork feat) That goes a long way to dealing with the threatening reach, and they might remember it for future campaigns.
Don't give the Big Monster Combat Reflexes. It gets 1 Attack of Opportunity and that's all. That will give your party more chances to close in around it.
Enjoy Combat Manners.
Overrun is fun for a big monster to use but it doesn't hurt.
Awesome Blow is also fun AND it hurts
I'm confused. What monsters are you using, and what level are the PC's?
A single combatant is basically always inferior to multiple ones in terms of the quality of the encounter you're building.
There have got to be layers to make things engaging and dynamic, and not just a slugfest.
Sometimes, it makes sense to throw out traditional combat all together in favor of something totally different.
Give your party the Escape Route Feat. Maybe a Cavalier is with them or maybe just give it out as a Special Reward for something ("Thank you for bringing me the McGuffin. Let me give you some special training as a reward" - Free Teamwork feat) That goes a long way to dealing with the threatening reach, and they might remember it for future campaigns.
Thanks, I did not know of this feat :) My current party indeed has a Cavalier with the tactician archetype, but I don't know if he knows of this feat. Either way, I may have a good opportunity to give it out as a bonus feat pretty soon.
Most of my players don't min-max/optimize, but they like to use a bunch of feats to be able to do a bunch of things even if it's not the most optimized thing to do, but I doubt they would want to take this one if it's not a bonus feat... I will probably try to talk about it with my players. Maybe I should give it as a bonus feat at the start of my future campaigns ? It seems to be a good way of mitigating the "static battles" problem without having to rework the whole attack of opportunity system. But my players will probably not want to sacrifice a feat for this one and prefer taking feats that go well with their characters. so making it a bonus featDon't give the Big Monster Combat Reflexes. It gets 1 Attack of Opportunity and that's all. That will give your party more chances to close in around it.
Enjoy Combat Manners.
Overrun is fun for a big monster to use but it doesn't hurt.
Awesome Blow is also fun AND it hurts
Oki doki. I will remove Combat Reflexes from Big Monsters, and check the combat maneuvers :)
I'm confused. What monsters are you using, and what level are the PC's?
From the monsters I remember :
- A Cetus (CR 13) against a level 13 4-player group (a paladin, a witch, a hunter + Roc mount, and a paladin/oracle/warpriest) (they were on a boat during the encounter)- An evolved dire crocodile (CR 10) against a level 8 4-player group (a cavalier, a swashbuckler, a word-magic druid and a sorcerer/draconian disciple) (the crocodile was in the sewers, and had a surprise attack before going back underwater for the first round, then remained the rest of the combat on the surface)
- A giant flytrap (CR 10) against the same group but now level 9
A single combatant is basically always inferior to multiple ones in terms of the quality of the encounter you're building.
Yeah, I understand that sometimes you would be better having multiple small ennemies rather than one big monster. But sometimes having one big monster can be nice narratively speaking. I like to make my encounters as diverse as possible. Plus a bunch of encounters in Paizo APs are against one big monster.
There have got to be layers to make things engaging and dynamic, and not just a slugfest.
Sometimes, it makes sense to throw out traditional combat all together in favor of something totally different.
I'm not sure if I understood this part correctly, since English is not my main language x) I do want to make things engaging. What would you suggest as "something different" ?
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Personally, I'd try to warn my players that something very powerful comes their way. That could be giant footprints, the crushed remains of powerful other creatures or a closing thundering. So they might have the choice between fight and flight. Or at least the chance to prepare, both mentally and mechanically. And if they flee, still I would have established that really dangerous creatures roam here.
If they had real trouble with Huge+ creatures (which not necessarily equates very powerful), I'd give them some hints how to fight them. Reach weapons, specialized feats (Just out of Reach) and size increasing magic come to my mind.
Monsters killing average PCs with a single hit have their place, but I'd rather use them as story elements than as regular encounters. To sow despair when the party has to watch the inevitable destruction of a settlement, as bodyguards of creatures that are not supposed to be attacked (at least right now) or as threat that could be released if they don't act fast enough. And leveling / gearing up to be able to beat an once overwhelming foe is very satisfying, so I'd try to offer my players a rematch.
If other monsters don't really challenge them, more battlefield diversity (fog, lava, walls etc.), NPC magic usage (illusions, healing, slowing etc.) or special combat tricks (Pushing Assault, Improved Reposition, Spring Attack etc.) can make a difference.
You said already some examples, but those are clearly not the full truth. A PC will not go down in one hit to anything they are supposed to be able to fight unless somebody is royally messing up.
Are your wizards trying to be the tanks?
Most of the time, no. But sometimes there will be surprise attacks, or the monster is revealed and the wizards are too close to it and are in its range. For exemple, the Druid will check on a bush where a big plant is hidden, or they will disturb a Putrid Ooze chilling in a hole, or they will approach a living tree without noticing that it's a monster and not just a normal tree.
Are you stacking templates?
No. For big monsters, I don't usually use templates, and I never used more than one template as of today regardless of the monster.
Are you throwing things way too high of CR for the party?
Unless I want to create an obstacle which my PCs are not supposed overcome (which is not the case for those battles with which I am having problems), I always keep my CRs between group level and group level +2, with using the latter for (mid-)boss-fights.
Are you allowing the players downtime to retrain their hp to at least average if not max?
No, we don't play with downtime rules on most of my games because the APs I played usually don't allow downtime (Carrion Crown, Tyrant's Grasp). For their HP rolls, they have the choice between choosing the average roll on their dice (so for exemple 5 for a d8), or rolling for HPs. If they roll for HPs, they can reroll once if they rolled a 1. Most of the time they choose the average roll method.
Did you give them less than a 15 point buy (dice rolling is always wrong, as it will never create anything close to balanced)?
I give my players 20 points.
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I dunno, that Cetus looks like it could take down pretty tough characters with ease. +26 to attack and 6d6+27 with Greater Vital Strike for 24d6+27, then +46 to grapple for another 6d6+27. That's 159 fairly damage. A lvl13 barbarian with 18 Con has 168hp while raging, but pretty much everyone else is going down hard.
Compare this guy to the Froghemoth, the Carnivorous Blob or an Ice Devil. That CR feels...a little off.
And what I meant by "something different" was something besides the regular "roll initiative, make attack rolls" combat.
In one of my games, my players had to deal with a sentient hill; basically a 500,000-ton stone golem. I made it clear that if they were struck by one of it's blows, they'd be dead. And that attacking a small mountain with any sort of traditional weapons was pointless.
So instead of a combat, the encounter involved them trying to climb up the giant's body, which was covered in traps, falling boulders and gargoyles. The monster felt BIG, because they couldn't engage it like like a foe. It was heavy and slow and unstoppable, and made for a much more compelling encounter than "roll initiative, make attack rolls."
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Personally, I'd try to warn my players that something very powerful comes their way. That could be giant footprints, the crushed remains of powerful other creatures or a closing thundering. So they might have the choice between fight and flight. Or at least the chance to prepare, both mentally and mechanically. And if they flee, still I would have established that really dangerous creatures roam here.
Okay, I will keep that in mind and try to warn them more in advance.
If they had real trouble with Huge+ creatures (which not necessarily equates very powerful), I'd give them some hints how to fight them. Reach weapons, specialized feats (Just out of Reach) and size increasing magic come to my mind.
I have to admit I never thought about talking with my players about how to defeat such and such types of monsters, since most of them are more experienced than me. I will give it a shot :)
Monsters killing average PCs with a single hit have their place, but I'd rather use them as story elements than as regular encounters. To sow despair when the party has to watch the inevitable destruction of a settlement, as bodyguards of creatures that are not supposed to be attacked (at least right now) or as threat that could be released if they don't act fast enough. And leveling / gearing up to be able to beat an once overwhelming foe is very satisfying, so I'd try to offer my players a rematch.
If other monsters don't really challenge them, more battlefield diversity (fog, lava, walls etc.), NPC magic usage (illusions, healing, slowing etc.) or special combat tricks (Pushing Assault, Improved Reposition, Spring Attack etc.) can make a difference.
*takes notes* Gotcha. Thank you for your advices :)
I dunno, that Cetus looks like it could take down pretty tough characters with ease. +26 to attack and 6d6+27 with Greater Vital Strike for 24d6+27, then +46 to grapple for another 6d6+27. That's 159 fairly damage. A lvl13 barbarian with 18 Con has 168hp while raging, but pretty much everyone else is going down hard.
Compare this guy to the Froghemoth, the Carnivorous Blob or an Ice Devil. That CR feels...a little off.
And that's only its bite attack. You add to that the Combat Reflexes which cancels most repositioning options with its 21 Dex, the SR 24 which cancelled most of the Witch's attempts at casting spells on it, and the Mariner's Misfortune which makes you 50% less effective. And a free grab with its bite attack with a +46 to grapple, doubling the damages from the bite if it succeeds, at triggering Swallow Whole the next turn. Even with 20 to Dex and Str a level 13 character would have at most 33 to their CMD.
I feel like the more recent the bestiary is, more Huge+ creatures' CRs are weird. Maybe there's a way to rectify a monster's CR depending on its damages ?
And what I meant by "something different" was something besides the regular "roll initiative, make attack rolls" combat.
In one of my games, my players had to deal with a sentient hill; basically a 500,000-ton stone golem. I made it clear that if they were struck by one of it's blows, they'd be dead. And that attacking a small mountain with any sort of traditional weapons was pointless.
So instead of a combat, the encounter involved them trying to climb up the giant's body, which was covered in traps, falling boulders and gargoyles. The monster felt BIG, because they couldn't engage it like like a foe. It was heavy and slow and unstoppable, and made for a much more compelling encounter than "roll initiative, make attack rolls."
Oooh, Shadow of the Colossus style, I really like the idea ! :) It will be a bit difficult to have something like that for every single encounter, but thinking up alternate methods such as this one can be interesting for some of them.
Use lower cr giants
Yeah, maybe using lower CRs might be a good idea. Something like CR-1 for regular fights, and CR +1 for boss-fights maybe. But in that case, I may need to give them some extra HPs so that my players don't one-shot them either.
and don't make up the cr by using more giants?
Sorry, I did not understand this part of your sentence ^^"
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Well, if the party was level 13, you could make them fight a Cloud Giant (CR11) instead of a CR13+ giant. I think GeneticDrift is just saying, "Don't make them fight two Cloud Giants at once to bring it up to a CR13 encounter, or your players will get upset again."
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Well, if the party was level 13, you could make them fight a Cloud Giant (CR11) instead of a CR13+ giant. I think GeneticDrift is just saying, "Don't make them fight two Cloud Giants at once to bring it up to a CR13 encounter, or your players will get upset again."
I think they understood. Haha.
So I see two specific problems. First, you're using Huge+ monsters as bosses or mid-bosses (solo monsters of higher CR). Of course your players aren't going to have fun with Huge+ creatures if every one is a boss-level fight (unless they really love just the boss fights, I guess). Second, and somewhat tied into the first, you seem to favor a specific kind of scenario (giant monster surprises players) which is even more difficult for the players.
Fair point. I will keep it in mind. This confirms to me that I should better use less powerful creatures. And yes, it's true now that I think about it that there are too many "surprise encounters" in the encounters my players are the most disatisfied with.
That Croc has a Stealth of +8. It's not impossible it got the drop on the players but it is unlikely. The Giant Flytrap is explicitly designed to do just that. Turning characters into the stars of a horror movie is only fun if that's what the players want. Playing Strange Aeons? Sure. Playing Giantslayer? Probably not.
It's funny you said that. Because the croc and the flytrap are indeed encounters from a horror story : those are two encounters in Tyrant's Grasp, the AP I am currently running. I warned my players about the story being in the survival horror genra, but "throwing big monsters that can one-turn them" is not what they would qualify as horror.
Still, I take notes on your remarks for when I will try to create my own adventures and in order to modify the AP a bit so that my players can be a bit more prepared and have funnier battles :)
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It will be a bit difficult to have something like that for every single encounter, but thinking up alternate methods such as this one can be interesting for some of them.
Even when you don't throw out the traditional rules, adding elements to an encounter can create a challenge without the big scary monster being absolutely unstoppable.
In that same game, one of my encounters involved a shifting, living maze and a giant minotaur-esque creature. The beast had to Squeeze to haul it's bulk through the corridors and was perpetually staggered. The maze involved traps and hazards that cost the PC's time and limited their movement. In this case, the monster's offensive power was much higher than anything they could safely face, but it was also restricted so thru could avoid it. It was a very tense, frightening race-against-the-clock scenario.
In another, the monster was a sphinx-gorgon type thing that slowly turned the PC's to stone as they spoke with it and tried to answer it's riddles. It was obviously dangerous enough that the PC's wanted to at least try to avoid a direct confrontation to save on resources (not to mention the very real but oft overlooked fact that getting clawed, bitten, crushed, sliced and maimed isn't all that fun and would be avoided evenby hardened warriors if possible), but the longer they talked with it, the more difficult a fight would be if combat became unavoidable (it was really big on manners and social niceties, and none of the party was especially great at that). And then the animated, partially petrified, partially eaten remains of would-be heroes past kept coming out of the shallow water around them to attack.
Both encounters featured a gigantic monster, but neither of them felt as static and hopeless as a head-on combat where one or more PC's are dropped to the negatives each round.
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Terrain can really change a battle up as well.
Giant Monster but in a room with lots of pillars and alcoves. Things players can hide behind, use to avoid AOO, etc...
But also Things a giant monster can smash. A 3 foot wide Stone Pillar might have 500 someodd Hit Points and a Hardness of 8. But say every time it misses a PC with that 4d6+18 attack, it hits the nearest pillar. Things Crack, the roof shakes, PCs get worried (They don't need to know how many HPs a pillar has)
Terrain can really change a battle up as well.
Giant Monster but in a room with lots of pillars and alcoves. Things players can hide behind, use to avoid AOO, etc...But also Things a giant monster can smash. A 3 foot wide Stone Pillar might have 500 someodd Hit Points and a Hardness of 8. But say every time it misses a PC with that 4d6+18 attack, it hits the nearest pillar. Things Crack, the roof shakes, PCs get worried (They don't need to know how many HPs a pillar has)
Yes, I agree with you. We were talking about it with my players, and they said that they liked another battle where terrain was a major factor, even though the ennemies were dealing them no damages, because they really had to use the terrain to progress in the battle :)
That Cetus monster in particular seems very specific. It has a glaring weakness which is probably what accounts for its CR, but if the player characters don't know about the weakness, the monster will be far more powerful than it's supposed to be.
Flesh to Stone is a level 6 spell, so a level 11 full spellcaster should have access to it, and I think that with a monster *this specific* there should be some hints along the way that there may or may not be something vulnerable to petrification in the party's future.
Well... I have to admit that this encounter in particular was set up like a pseudo-random encounter to spice up a travel. I wanted to try and add an unusual monster, and I had decided on the monster too late to give hints... My bad ^^" This resulted in our full caster not having petrification spells prepared.
If the party has no full spellcaster, do they have anyone who can use wands? scrolls? Giving out an unusually specific piece of loot can be a portent of things to come ("So *that's* why we found the Scroll of Stone to Flesh last month").
Yes, that's something I'm trying to do more and more. I try and swap the scenario's loot for items that are useful to the party in terms of party members' abilities and what types of monsters they will encounter.
Charm Monster would also have a decent chance of working and it would result in a hilarious effect of this extremely powerful creature now escorting the PCs and their ship to safety.
I'm not a fan of Charm spells. I feel like they tend to break the game too much. My players know this, so they refrain from using it.
Keep in mind that Charm Spells only change the emotions of the monster, it's compulsions that control their thoughts.
A charmed monster still has free will, it just likes you. This can actually open up some fun Role-playing in a "and I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him and call him George" kind of way.
You said already some examples, but those are clearly not the full truth. A PC will not go down in one hit to anything they are supposed to be able to fight unless somebody is royally messing up.
*cackles in The Haunting of Harrowstone*
I once threw a were dire pole bear barbarian at PCs, at 15th-level. It was balanced in terms of attack, damage, saving throws... but not grappling. It could only fail a grapple roll on a 1 (because a 1 is always a failure). The CMB would have been somewhat more balanced in Pathfinder.
A grappled PC is frustrating for the player, but it also limits the monster's offense. At least one natural attack is gone, and at most the creature doesn't do anything else than grappling - while the remaining PCs still have all their actions.
At the end of the second book, we fought a giant killer whale as part of the encounter. It was frustrating, because you knew it would never miss, and there was nothing you could do about it at such a low level. My character spent one round at the "seashore" and got bitten. My high AC meant nothing.
Well, player strategies like high AC should work most of the time (since the player invested in them), but not all the time (since otherwise there would be little challenge). Displacement and improved invisibility can add another layer of defense - the first one is also available as an (expensive emergency) potion.
IMO those giant monsters are only interesting at high level, or at the very least when you have prep time to beat them.
Big monsters have multiple disadvantages, such as (usually) trouble in narrow passages, lousy ranged attacks and a low touch AC. Often you can exploit at least one of them.
what if the Sorcerer had an old scroll of Mount or Summon Monster laying around? It's a long shot but just suppose. A clever player, armed with the idea they're about to encounter some Gargantuan sized predator that likes to ambush at the water's edge, might just toss the thing a summoned meal, wait to see the monster revealed and at that point decide to either engage it directly or flee past while it is busy chomping its dinner
reminds me of the time my game ground to a halt when the party, confronted by a deceptively simple disintegration trap, argued for HOURS over the morality of sacrificing a Summoned monster to figure out exactly how it worked.
Sure it hijacked the momentum of the game, but there is a certain kind of enjoyment to be had by creating a trap or encounter that so confounds your players. Good times, good times.
what if the Sorcerer had an old scroll of Mount or Summon Monster laying around? It's a long shot but just suppose. A clever player, armed with the idea they're about to encounter some Gargantuan sized predator that likes to ambush at the water's edge, might just toss the thing a summoned meal, wait to see the monster revealed and at that point decide to either engage it directly or flee past while it is busy chomping its dinnerreminds me of the time my game ground to a halt when the party, confronted by a deceptively simple disintegration trap, argued for HOURS over the morality of sacrificing a Summoned monster to figure out exactly how it worked.
Sure it hijacked the momentum of the game, but there is a certain kind of enjoyment to be had by creating a trap or encounter that so confounds your players. Good times, good times.
Summoned Creatures don't really die when killed per se so really it's just a question of whether or not they'll feel it or if it's too fast of an effect.
Or just use evil outsider summons. They deserve it anyways.
Wow, so many posts since last time I checked ! Ok, I'll try to answer everyone.
The two best ways I've used large creatures is either having them as multiple "parts", allowing the players to disable the different body parts of the creature. For example, cutting off a Kraken's arm to reduce the number of chances it has to attack and grab the party.
The other way is to feature them as terrain elements of other encounters. Maybe the party must fight there way through an enemy army to escort their NPC friends out of a city while a dragon flies over head, with the dragons breath weapon/debris it knocks aside with it's swinging tail, wind made by it's flapping wings, etc affecting the fight.
In general if you're running huge creatures with massive damage abilities - telegraph attacks. Have the dragon's maw fill with fire a turn before you use the breath weapon, etc. If players feel like they can anticipate what is going to happen getting hit out of nowhere will feel less like an anticlimax.
Yes, I was planning on doing this, but was afraid it would be too video-gamey. Glad to see that it worked for someone else :)
I didn't find them all that fun in D&D 3e and Pathfinder either. Big monsters have big Strength, which gives a big bonus to hit and damage, and their grappling is overpowered (especially in 3e).
Yup, you pointed out the exact problem we have with those...
Barring the Cetus, the other 2 encounters you spoke of, the croc and the flytrap, seem like they just caught the PCs off guard. Maybe what they don't like is just that: being caught off guard.
That's a possibility, yeah. I will have to tweak the AP a lot though, since most of the encounters... are surprise encounters.
When you make a character, even if the GM gives you an overview of the campaign, you naturally paint a rosy picture in your head of how things are going to go for this PC. Despite this being a "horror" campaign I've got an awesome build; my cavalier can ride, deals "X" damage average per round, will get Overrun and later Trample with his mount... and so on.
You think of all the great stuff you'll be able to do. Are your players able to DO that stuff a lot? I can tell you that being caught by surprise by giant monsters really nulls many of those cool things right off the starting line.
I... I knew it, but never thought about it that way. Yeah, now that you say it like that, it makes sense. I will need to look how I can change some battles to work better with my PCs abilities.
Do your players use Knowledge checks to ID monsters? How about investigation? How often does the adventure start off, before any of your random monsters or encounters, with the players spending their downtime doing research, scouting areas, using Diplomacy to Gather Information, casting Divination spells, etc.?
They try to use their Knowledge but rarely succeed against big monsters. But they just got an item that will help them with that, if they touch the monster. They don't have the time to investigate and don't have downtime in Tyrant's Grasp, since it's somewhat of a "race against time" AP.
Another reason, related to a lack of forewarning of the monsters, could be an inability to get through their defenses. I don't know if any of the big brutes you're throwing against these PCs have challenging DRs, Spell Resistance, Immunities or Energy Resistances, but if these come up spur of the moment and players aren't prepared this can make a fight a massive slog instead of a fun adventure.How often are your gigantors getting Full Attack actions? If Godzilla somehow manages a Surprise round, gets up next to a melee type in that round, and then beats the melee type's Initiative the first full round, I can see where Godzilla gets a Full Attack. If however the characters can clearly see Godzilla on the horizon, I can't imagine many of them would let the beast come at them to get multiple rounds of Full Attacks against them.
Actually, my players do manage to pass their defenses, most of the time. But as you pointed out, they regularly have bad Initiative rolls. Plus, some monsters (like the croc) are designed to be hard to reach (for exemple, the croc can go under the water, and is not visible as long as he is underwater), so if they are not one-shoted, they get more rounds.
Most of the time, they only need one full-attack to down one of the PCs. I'd say they most of the time get one or two full-attacks before being downed, when the PCs are not unlucky with their rolls.You're running through APs and one of the characters is a Cavalier. Not knowing the PC's build, I don't have a baseline here, but many cavaliers have a Mount that serves as part of their combat effectiveness. Was that Mount, that character, a good choice for an adventure through the sewers?
[...]
I did warn my player that he won't be able to use his mount most of the time, as the AP is really not mount-friendly. But still he decided to be a Cavalier. He took the "Strategist" archetype and built his Cavalier like a tank/melee DPS. He has some mount combat feats (Mounted Combat and Ride-By-Attack) but was only able to use those once, because there was one time when they were outdoor. He couldn't take his horse in the sewers. From what I can remember, he wants to use those feats when our Sorcerer will be able to change into a dragon to mount her (I accepted).
Now I'm kinda wondering if it would not be better to tell him to change those feats... From what I know of the rest of the AP, he will probably use his mount once or twice, if the mount is not killed because of the scenario.
Lastly, when you make random encounter lists or look up a quick monster that you think would be fun to throw at the PCs, how often do you take a quick inventory of the PCs themselves before you make your choices? I mean if you've got a sorcerer/dragon disciple that LOVES throwing Fire spells and uses direct damage to win fights, picking a Gargantuan Fire Elemental at the party might kind of negate the sorcerer's powers.
I usually don't use random encounters and choose my monsters in advance when I want to add one, but I will keep this in mind :)
On a larger scale, looking at the party you described: Cavalier, Swashbuckler, Word Druid and Sorcerer [...]
The Cavalier is primarily an armored, sword-and-board tank, with high AC and hp and an ok melee DPR, and wants to become a Knight of Ozem. He attracks attacks and defends the other PCs while giving them team feats.
The Swashbuckler is the main melee DPR with the ability to reach up to 3 squares, with to do rotating attacks and deal massive damages (as long as the enemy is not immune to precision damages), with an okay AC. He gains his abilities back by doing non-lethal damages and destroying undeads (which is perfect for this AP).The druid and the sorcerer both are magic DPR, with the sorcerer also being an ok melee DPR that can take up melee damages (high Con/hp and okay AC for a melee), while the druid is the glasscanon (very low AC and HP) and the group's healer.
The druid only wildshapes into a crow and sometimes an elemental, and it's mostly to scout or cast spells while being out of reach or blending into the environment. He never used it to attack.
The sorcerer often goes to melee attack, unless the monster seems really dangerous (like the croc), then she blasts it from far away.
As yet another compromise to cheer your players up, along with other's suggestions, have you ever thought of making UNDER powered encounters? What about a random encounter with a CR 13 amount of ogres led by an ogre magi? No one monster poses much of a threat and even the "boss" type has little chance to affect the characters much. On the other hand the PCs, who once would've been utterly destroyed by a warband of minor giant types, get to wail on these foes and feel like the superhumans they are.
Yes, nice idea, I will try to do this from time to time ! I check if I can do this with some of the ennemies they already fought against :)
You said already some examples, but those are clearly not the full truth. A PC will not go down in one hit to anything they are supposed to be able to fight unless somebody is royally messing up.*cackles in The Haunting of Harrowstone*
My players are still traumatized by this freakin' furnace :,D
One of the encounters mentioned above is described as an "evolved" dire crocodile.
Sorry, language barrier. It's the simple archetype where you add +1 to the CR of the creature.
At a +8 Stealth in the water it may not have gotten spotted, fine, but that doesn't mean there aren't signs of it's existence. Even though it can Swallow Whole that doesn't mean it consumes the whole meal. A Gargantuan sized dinosaur likely needs feed itself with tens of thousands of calories of meat per meal; bones should absolutely litter the sewer stream here.
I would agree with you, but in context it's not possible. From what the AP tells the GM, you can't see through the water (it's muddy), and the bones are underwater. You only know there "some dangerous beast" there if you did a secondary quest before - which my PCs did, so I gave them this info.
Then think: why are the PCs down here? 4 PCs, APL 10; it's a pretty good bet the AP has a specific mission in mind for the characters. Does having to fight and slay this thing meet the requirement for victory? An animal type creature might be frightened away from their potential meal, even if they're bigger than their meal, by things like overwhelming damage, fire, jarring noise, etc. If the characters are clever and try using Knowledge: Nature, Survival, and so on to identify these animalistic tendencies, think about rewarding their ingenuity so that you encourage more of it in the future.
Once again, I agree with you, but I just want to point out the context to answer your question. Here, the mission is to cross a sewer stream. The water is filthy and makes you ill if you step in it. There are some wooden planks you can use to make a bridge. The sewer stream is guarded by this giant croc. In its statblock, it's stated that the croc fights to the death, unless it is fed.
Still, I agree, I should have made the croc flee once the players did damage it instead of following the "fight to the death" strategy, or find something else.
It seems I really need to learn how to distance myself from the official material, and try to tailor my encounters to suit my PCs.
Once again, thanks to everyone for their wonderful tips ! This thread really made me think about how to be a better GM more than before I started it :)
Just reading all of this and one thing jumps out. Are you doing surprise correctly? My players always max out Perception, so we are almost never surprised, even in an ambush or something.
"If some but not all of the combatants are aware of their opponents, a surprise round happens before regular rounds begin. In initiative order (highest to lowest), combatants who started the battle aware of their opponents each take a standard or move action during the surprise round. You can also take free actions during the surprise round. If no one or everyone is surprised, no surprise round occurs."
So during a surprise round, that alligator cannot move and attack.... the Cestus cannot leap and bite.
(Also, a water based creature attacking non water based characters on a boat, significantly raises the CR of that encounter. The same when flying creatures attack non flying characters.)
It seems like the problem is that your big monsters are too difficult for your PCs.
So, you can find big monsters that aren't so bad like the Titan Centipede or those collossal crabs.
Also, you can start training your players to be more tactical: make sure all of them have good ranged capability. Get them thinking about diversionary tactics, some defensive spells like mirror image, the ability to handle things like darkness and smoke then put that environment on their opponents. Maybe they can learn how to use seige engines. Maybe the party can learn how to create and draw the monsters into difficult terrain and then just feather the monsters to death with their arrows.
Maybe you can be subtle about it: put enough +1 bows in the treasure troves so that everyone in the party can have one and starts thinking about being good at using them. Start using tactics on the PCs themselves, have one of them taken down by a bunch of Pixies that use clever tactics to bring down the party Barbarian who want to capture him and make him perform the next quest. Have a local merchant be an Alchemist who is selling them arrays of different kinds of splash weapons that can be thrown, fired from crossbows or loaded into ballistae. Hopefully, this will start the wheels in their heads turning.
Bear in mind that maybe your players don't want to be tactically-minded (or told they are dumb), and the solution for them to have a better time is for you to quietly dumb it down. But even if that's the case, maybe you should push them.
*writes down in her notebook* Oh they do want to make tactical fights. In fact their favorite fights are the tactical ones.
Good ideas, I will try what you are saying :) At first I wanted to do some out-of-game session where I explain to them how to use more tactical things (especially because Sorcerer is a new player and Druid never played a caster before), but maybe just directly putting them on these situations/showing them with the help of some NPCs might be better. I'll also see if I can change some giant monsters to use more straightforward ones.Edit : Now that I think about it, last time they found an anti-ghost item just before fighting a ghost, and they used the item as soon as they could. So this technic does work with them. I will try to add more "obvious" items on their path until they learn how to be more tactical :)
Here, the mission is to cross a sewer stream. The water is filthy and makes you ill if you step in it. There are some wooden planks you can use to make a bridge. The sewer stream is guarded by this giant croc. In its statblock, it's stated that the croc fights to the death, unless it is fed.Emphasis mine. So Almarane I would ask in this situation: how do you inform your players that feeding the croc would be a viable solution?
This is why upthread I asked if the PCs are using their Knowledge checks. Players, expecting combat, might not stop and think "maybe if we throw the monster all our rations it'll leave us alone" but if you read them text about the encounter like "the monster surges forth from the water, it's jaws snapping; it appears ravenously hungry!" it MIGHT spur some thought towards that solution.
If you know for a fact that the PCs might be able to just give up some food to ignore the combat, you might spontaneously call for a Knowledge: Nature or, better yet, Handle Animal check. See, the Cavalier likely has a decent Handle Animal because of their need to be mounted. Having the Cavalier spontaneously recognize the croc's behavior being primarily driven by hunger and thus that food might be a way to control the creature not only gives the players a potential other way to defeat the encounter but ALSO makes the player of the Cavalier feel special and unique for a skill they've invested in but rarely get to use.
Situations like this might, in turn, urge your players to start using ALL of their characters' skills and abilities in more creative and tactical ways. This makes them more engaged and thus, they might have more fun!
That's a fair point. After reading your previous answers, I really thought about it. In the AP itself, it is just stated that some NPCs feed the croc, and then the croc attacks whoever comes in the "room" and does not feed it. I thought after that that, maybe, I should have made them see some NPC feeding it while they were sneaking.
But now that I red your new answer, I really like this idea ! Making PCs use all their skills is really neet !
Just reading all of this and one thing jumps out. Are you doing surprise correctly? My players always max out Perception, so we are almost never surprised, even in an ambush or something.
"If some but not all of the combatants are aware of their opponents, a surprise round happens before regular rounds begin. In initiative order (highest to lowest), combatants who started the battle aware of their opponents each take a standard or move action during the surprise round. You can also take free actions during the surprise round. If no one or everyone is surprised, no surprise round occurs."
So during a surprise round, that alligator cannot move and attack.... the Cestus cannot leap and bite.
I admit I made the croc sneak attack on the first turn. For the Cestus, I don't remember well (it was some years ago), but I do think he won initiative. Anyway, yes, I do let the characters who succeeded their Perception check play during the surprise round. (And when I forget my players are prone to protest anyway xD)
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When I run a solo ambush predator type monster, I have it take 10 for stealth and perception. This avoids the circumstances where a pc tries to sneak up on them and rolls a nat 20, but fails because the creature also rolled high and has a better perception check. Or where you roll high on stealth so the party can't make that high of perception. A solo monster will have around 50% more hit dice then the pcs, equating to 50% higher skill rank max, and often racial bonuses, skill focus, and high ability scores, giving them better numbers than the average pc. A cr2 croc has a +13 stealth, a level 2 pc would need 2 ranks, a 16wis, racial bonus, and skill focus to get their perception that high, and that's an at level encounter. Encounters are often level +1 or +2.
