Making "soft difficulty" adjustments

[DRD1812]

This is basically a question about monster tactics. But it's one that I seldom see discussed beyond "the monsters want to win."

This can be a tough tightrope to walk when you’re a GM. That’s because the difference between a fair fight and unfun tactics can be little more than a matter of taste. Take the boss fight my PF1e megadungeon group just lived through. The five of them were APL 16, and they were facing off against a CR 20 kraken lich monstrosity. Here are a few of the close calls I had to make as a GM.

-- All PCs are in reach. Do you target the squishy caster with all ten of your tentacles, or do you spread the damage out across the party?

-- Do you turn on power attack (increasing the likelihood of PC death), or do you leave it off (increasing the likelihood of dramatic but non-damaging grapples)?

-- The party’s bard has access to bard’s escape, and can teleport grappled party members out of trouble. Do you stuff your grapple victims beneath the inky waves, cutting off line of sight and blanking the spell?

-- You’ve decided to reflavor your lich kraken’s beak attack as an inflict wounds by simply changing the damage type to negative energy. When your player asks for a save to half, do you allow it?

-- The wizard casts control water, attempting to lower the water level and leave the kraken high and dry. You didn’t plan out ocean depth ahead of time. Does the wizard’s plan work as intended?

There are a couple of ways to approach these decisions. You can try to play optimally, giving your monster the maximum chance of winning the fight and killing the PCs. Then again, your can play in a characterful way, taking the monster’s psychology into account. Is it arrogant? Is it mindless? Under what circumstances will it choose to retreat? You might even take a mechanics-first angle, showing off as many tricks as possible for the sake of variety.

For my part, I wanted to foreground the multi-grapple aspect of the fight, so I leaned into those mechanics rather than maxing damage. I also like to reward my players for bringing the right tool for the job, so the teleportation and the water control tricks both worked. As for the inflict wounds business, that was just lazy monster building on my part. I can’t very well punish my players for my mistakes, and so the Will saves were summarily saved.

That’s my line of thinking anyway. But I'm curious to hear about how you guys handle these "soft difficulty adjustments" in your own games. Is it incumbent on a good GM to play the monsters as tough as possible, or do too-clever tactics get in the way of a good time? Conversely, does it ruin your victory when a GM “plays the villain dumb,” or can that serve to make more interesting fights?

(Comic for illustrative purposes.)

[DeathlessOne]

DRD1812 wrote:

-- All PCs are in reach. Do you target the squishy caster with all ten of your tentacles, or do you spread the damage out across the party?

If the squishy has made themselves out to be the biggest threat, and must be dealt with immediately, then yes. Pummel that caster into pulp. I hope the cleric has a breathe of life spell, or similar, handy.

Quote:

-- Do you turn on power attack (increasing the likelihood of PC death), or do you leave it off (increasing the likelihood of dramatic but non-damaging grapples)?

Leave it off. If the caster goes down, you now can attack the others who have higher AC with your attacks and grapple them. Those of them with hard hitting two-handed weapons can no longer use them.

Quote:

-- The party’s bard has access to bard’s escape, and can teleport grappled party members out of trouble. Do you stuff your grapple victims beneath the inky waves, cutting off line of sight and blanking the spell?

If grappling, pummeling, or otherwise does not render the bard incapable of casting those spells, yes. If I wanted to be incredibly terrifying, I'd cast antimagic field and keep all the grappled PCs within the field while still maintaining 90% of my combat capability, because KRAKEN LICH.

Quote:

-- You’ve decided to reflavor your lich kraken’s beak attack as an inflict wounds by simply changing the damage type to negative energy. When your player asks for a save to half, do you allow it?

No. If the creature has to roll to hit you, that is the test it needs to overcome in order to effect the character. If the bite had a rider effect on it, then I might allow for a save to negate the rider effect.

Quote:

-- The wizard casts control water, attempting to lower the water level and leave the kraken high and dry. You didn’t plan out ocean depth ahead of time. Does the wizard’s plan work as intended?

Yes. Though, that only reduces its land speed and requires the kraken to start having to deal with breathing issues. But, since it is a Lich Kraken, breathing isnt an issue.

[Mark Hoover 330]

I have been told I run on "easy mode" a couple times. One of the reasons is that I generally pick monsters straight out of the bestiaries and create NPCs using NPC levels or vanilla versions of PC classes. In short, even monsters with a higher CR than the PCs tend to be equal challenges or weaker than the PCs, by the numbers.

To make up for that, I get as strategic as I can.

It starts with the monster's backstory. Have they been in the area long? How intelligent are they? What resources do they have? Using this and other info I develop an idea of how well this monster has created secondary defenses, uses its terrain to its advantage, has faced foes like the PCs so they know that, say, monks are actually quite tough despite wearing no obvious armor and so forth.

When it comes to running the fight, my monsters definitely want to win. If they have Power Attack, they're using it. If they are grapplers and also have a Fly or Swim speed, they are trying to isolate a weak PC and make off with them into the air or under the waves.

Also, and this is something I don't tell my players, if the PCs stop and put on a bunch of buff spells and the monster they're about to face also has buff spells (even on consumables in their treasure), the monsters often pre-buff too. Maybe the monster heard the PCs' spellcasting, maybe they have insect spies in the area, IDK. Bottom line, monsters have their powers running.

When designing a fight I think of multiple forms of attack for the monsters/NPCs. If I can manage it without overwhelming the party, I want a mix of ranged and melee attacks, save-or-suck spells, and healing/revitalizing magic among the bad guys.

Finally there's the unexpected; the wizard using Control Water to expose the kraken. Again, I play on easy mode so most of the time these things out of my control or planning favor the PCs. Hey, the player had the smart idea of taking such an obscure spell on their PC, I want to reward their ingenuity!

Last, but certainly not least, I've gotten better at strategic retreats. Dimension Door, secret exits, Obscuring Mist, a Cape of Effulgent Escape and such. These and more have been used to try and give monsters and NPCs the chance to flee an encounter. They want to win, and barring that they want to survive!

[TxSam88]

Shrug - IMO the game is meant to be fun for the players. Make it a challenge, but for the most part, the players should always win. Play the bad guys however you want, but you can pretty much ignore the numbers, have it live as long as you want, deal as much damage as you want, and have it die in a very dramatic way, just when it seems all hope is lost for the party. It's more about telling a story that being a strategic combat game.

[Kurald Galain]

DRD1812 wrote:

-- All PCs are in reach. Do you target the squishy caster with all ten of your tentacles, or do you spread the damage out across the party?

At level 16, in a dungeon campaign, in a boss fight? Heck yes, crush that squishy; this is not the time to pull punches, and the character has had plenty of levels to mitigate his squishiness.

I'd likely answer differently if this was low-level, or a social campaign, or a mook encounter.

Quote:

-- Do you turn on power attack (increasing the likelihood of PC death), or do you leave it off (increasing the likelihood of dramatic but non-damaging grapples)?

See above; on the first turn, take down the caster hard with power attack; on subsequent turns, grapple away.

Quote:

Do you stuff your grapple victims beneath the inky waves, cutting off line of sight and blanking the spell?

Obviously.

Quote:

-- You’ve decided to reflavor your lich kraken’s beak attack as an inflict wounds by simply changing the damage type to negative energy. When your player asks for a save to half, do you allow it?

No, and this has nothing to do with level or whether it's a bossfight. If an attack doesn't give a save, then reflavoring it also doesn't. Just don't name it after the "inflict wounds" spell.

Quote:

-- The wizard casts control water, attempting to lower the water level and leave the kraken high and dry. You didn’t plan out ocean depth ahead of time. Does the wizard’s plan work as intended?

Yes; this is clever thinking on part of the wizard, and should be rewarded (e.g. the kraken can no longer put the party beneath inky waves).

$.02

[Mark Hoover 330]

Case in point: last night I ran 3 PCs and an NPC, APL2, against a ghast. The setup was that the ghast was hiding behind the remains of an overturned cart laying in a sparsely wooded culvert off a main road. Nearby was the carcass of a draft animal the ghast was feeding on.

The ghast waited for the PCs to draw near, revealed itself to move to an area with Cover 10' from one PC, and remained in Cover for the rest of the combat. It used the downed cart and surrounding foliage to its best advantage, turning a 4-on-1 combat where CR was equal to APL into a fight which, after the fact the guy playing the druid genuinely thought his warcat AC was a goner.

Ghasts have an Int of 17; there's no reason it's going to be dumb enough to sprint out into the middle of the party and start hacking away. It baited the PCs to come closer, used it's environment, used its Climb and Acrobatics skills and so on. While the fighter made all his Fort saves, the warcat AC failed both against the Stench and the Paralysis, leaving it entirely vulnerable. The fight was finally ended b/c the wizard cast a Dancing Lights into the foliage and then followed that with a Magic Missile the next round.

If your monster has a Climb speed, especially if it also has Reach or a 1-handed ranged attack, why would it ever be on the ground, out in the open? If there's walls or trees or boulders around, use 'em. If your monster relies on multiattack or has iteratives with melee attacks, wait somewhere for the party to come to you.

Finally, and I can't say this enough, use the Skills of the monster. For example, did you know that Knowledge (Local) is a Class skill for the fey? I don't think you see it on a lot of their stat blocks, but if you're giving them class levels, maybe think about giving them ranks in the skill.

Knowledge (Local) can help ID humanoids, local inhabitants, customs and traditions, and notable personalities. PCs have a local reputation? The fey might ID them. Depending on their backstories, 1 or more of the PCs might've learned their adventuring skills from local mentors or organizations; maybe the fey knows one PC is a wizard of x or the barbarian comes from y tribe. Any of this could in turn give the fey an advantage, like guessing who's going to have a low Will save or if someone's combat may be more Dex based.

Skills like Climb or Swim can get your monsters into Cover or Concealment; Sleight of Hand from out of combat to remove a PC's favorite light object on the exterior of their person; Use Magic Device so monsters or NPCs can use a piece of their own treasure. Instead of giving your players challenging fights by just adding +4 to the CR, see if there are ways to really exploit everything a specific monster can do to ruin the party's day.