Post/Author/DateTime	Post
areschoug 02-28-07, 03:37 PM	Wellcome! As a DM's you will all encounter players that has been there from the beginning of time (before laptops and mobile phones that fit in your pocket). They know all the rules and all the tricks ..they will tear your corebook EL's into pieces and throw them on the nearest infernal flame. And they move in packs! Yes, the are players from hell. Groups of Elite players usually need EL's 2-3 higher on average if to be challenged at all. And sometimes they handle EL's 4-6 levels higher without breaking a sweat! So what do you do? Post below an encounter with something that will scare an Elite group of players without actually being more dangerous or deadly. Keep the EL in level with the PC's and explain, in short, why this would work. Good luck!
CharlieRock 02-28-07, 03:39 PM	Rust monster. Beholder.
areschoug 02-28-07, 03:42 PM	First of: Let your Level 6-9 PC's encounter an aspect of Bel from the Web enhancement Fiendish Codex II. It looks exactly like a Pit Fiend (CR 20+) and that will for obvious reasons scare the crap out of any player!
areschoug 02-28-07, 04:11 PM	Rust monsters are nice ways to scare any melee player with a metal armor or a metal weapon, even magical ones (or especially magical ones!). They have both darkvision and scent and you should use that in full advantage. It also have a nice 40ft movement that it can use to close the distance fast. The Rust monsters CR ranges from 3-5 (5-15 HD) and sometimes comes in pairs (EL 5-7). Thrown into play in combo with traps or a druid that controls them ie, they may scare players far above level 7.
OneWinged4ngel 02-28-07, 04:22 PM	Kobolds using effective team and swarm tactics, as well as cheap, effective traps on their home turf. Simple things like ankle breakers in high grass followed by poisoned spikes or a pit can ruin any charger's day. Keeping a few back or attacking from sides as soon as any caster disengages to cast spells. Poisoned weapons, choke points, murder holes... the works. On top of that, augment the group's effectiveness with a low level sorceror used intelligently (Ghost Sound and such can work miracles) They're clever little bastards, and on their home turf they should be feared. Seriously. It can be very hard for experienced, smart players, and it can wipe out mid-level players who aren't so smart surprisingly quickly. Playing smart can kill a lot better than brute force.
areschoug 02-28-07, 04:26 PM	Beholders are scary because they are deadly, even deadlier then they look. There are loads of threads about "how to kill your players" but this is not one of them.
areschoug 02-28-07, 04:29 PM	Kobolds using effective team and swarm tactics, as well as cheap, effective traps on their home turf. Simple things like ankle breakers in high grass followed by poisoned spikes or a pit can ruin any charger's day. Keeping a few back or attacking from sides as soon as any caster disengages to cast spells. Poisoned weapons, choke points, murder holes... the works. On top of that, augment the group's effectiveness with a low level sorceror used intelligently (Ghost Sound and such can work miracles) They're clever little bastards, and on their home turf they should be feared. Seriously. It can be very hard for experienced, smart players, and it can wipe out mid-level players who aren't so smart surprisingly quickly. Playing smart can kill a lot better than brute force. Nice. Only thing is that this thread is about things that are scary. Not deadly :)
OneWinged4ngel 02-28-07, 04:54 PM	Nice. Only thing is that this thread is about things that are scary. Not deadly :) And you can scare "elite" players with fairly weak enemies. Many "elite" players learn to fear intelligent enemies more than big ones. As soon as that ubercharger who does hundreds of damage on a charge hits those ankle breakers, he's going to start having second thoughts.
Pallin Rahl 02-28-07, 05:13 PM	...good way to scare my players? "The lone little kobold settles into an interesting stance, draws his blade, and prepares to engage the party. Martial Lore checks if ya got 'em..." ;) ...maybe my players just scare easily :P
Milandros 02-28-07, 05:45 PM	An equally experienced DM who starts the session with a little "I'm going to enjoy this one" grin...
CharlieRock 02-28-07, 05:56 PM	Beholders are scary because they are deadly, even deadlier then they look. There are loads of threads about "how to kill your players" but this is not one of them. Beholders don't have to 'do' anything. Just staring at them is enough. :rofl:
Melpomene 02-28-07, 05:58 PM	Pun-Pun.
WilwarinAndamar 02-28-07, 06:09 PM	For my group, two words: Colossal Centipede. CR 8 with 144 HP. 'Nuff said.
tiercel 02-28-07, 07:41 PM	The thing about experienced players -- their confidence, even overconfidence or downright ennui -- is that they have a lot of player knowledge about potential foes. Out-of-character knowledge even... so they feel a degree of certainty in facing a foe that their characters necessarily wouldn't upon facing one for the first time. So the best way to shake them up, strike a little fear, and even rekindle their interest is to take that away from them. Don't use monsters that are straight out of the box. One way to do this, of course, is simply to change the way a monster looks in your game. If it doesn't look like anything they (the players) have faced before, they will stop and wonder if you are pulling some obscure critter out of Monster Manual CDXLVIII. Sure, of course allow the appropriate Knowledge check, but that limits them to *in-character* knowledge and isn't encylopedic knowledge of the entire MM entry. A second way is straight-up advancement. You can of course add templates, but most templates have tell-tale signs that canny players will instantly recognize and account for. Telling the exact difference between a garden-variety out-of-the-box CR 3 dire wolf and a elite-array, 18HD (but still Large sized) CR 8 Spring Attacking advanced dire wolf shouldn't necessarily be obvious just on sight -- even a Knowledge (Nature) check probably won't help directly, since it only gives knowledge about wolves, not necessarily about *this* wolf. (Yes, you could certainly allow the Sense Motive assessment described in Complete Adventurer, but that is what that kind of skill check is *for*.) --Remember, after all, that the listings in the Monster Manuals are the weakest, most common examples of their kind. Lower-CR opponents can have a long shelf life with a little advancement, and keep your players off guard to boot. Another way, which you can combine with the above, is to make better use of existing resources. It is my contention that any intelligent creature with reasonable access to some kind of market economy of its own, and treasure, should convert at least some part of that treasure into battle-useful items if it expects to have to defend itself or its kin. (That, and feat selection could really be better for some monsters.) Without changing the CR at all, you could allow a stone giant to use a Large greatsword instead of a silly Large greatclub, use a chain shirt instead of hide for better AC and mobility, perhaps even spend most of its treasure allotment making both of those items +1. Additionally, you could flush Point Blank and Precise Shot (sure, stone giants are good ranged, but if you are engaging foes with 180' range increment rocks those two feats probably aren't helping most of the time), and take instead Improved Bull Rush to get to Awesome Blow. Stone giants like ambush tactics? Have a squad jump into melee, and then Awesome Blow opponents back and forth between each others' threatened areas like a hacky-sack. (Stone giants already have Combat Reflexes, after all.) The point is that your players can't afford to be so blase about combat if they are wondering if a squad of giants is just a bunch of normal giants or another "Hacky-Sack Ambush Squad," or if a dire wolf is a just a bigger, tougher wolf or The Son of Fenrir. Once your players are a little more off-balance and cautious, they will begin to react more like their characters perhaps *should* on facing a given foe for the first time -- once they stop assuming that every foe is out of the box, you will be able to start throwing in a few that *are* standard, just because your players know they can never just assume that. Put the Challenge back in Challenge Rating -- not knowing is half the battle! ;)
MrAaron 02-28-07, 08:52 PM	Three out of my five players are very experienced and I don't see this as a bad thing. I usually just change the description slightly (ghouls are a differant color in my world) and use slightly higher CRs. They're good players so they win harder fights. Is that so bad? Also, I suggest countering the good players every once in a while. Pull touch spells on the guy with high AC for example. I just scare them with harder monsters :P
Duke_of_Shards 02-28-07, 09:00 PM	Use beholders and rust monsters together ;) The beholder uses its anti-magic eye to render the players' magical weapons and armor non-magical, and the rust monster eats it =)
AngelofCthulhu 02-28-07, 09:55 PM	Then they get mad at the ganked TPK. To scare my players I just like to remind my players that running is worth positive Exp while dieing is worth negative. Also, hinting that Aboleths are everywhere despite it being a land locked territory works wonders. And by wonders I mean these people were walking on egg shells until they figured it out.
OneWinged4ngel 03-01-07, 01:18 AM	By the way, rust monsters aren't so scary. There are *cheap* items that make your items immune to it, among other things that just make them not so intimidating to "elite" players. For example, Durable Armor in Dungeonscape is only +500gp. A small protection to a major investment.
mkill 03-01-07, 08:10 AM	I found that most "elite" players are rather harmless, they have defeated the tarrasque often enough that they don't care so much anymore for super-ueber-builds or power escalation. Most experienced players bring enough presence to the table that they become the DMs best friend, if you know how to use them. They move the adventure forward when it's needed, they step back when the newbies want some spotlight. They know how do character interaction out of combat. If they defeat your combat encounters too easily, you were not smart enough. If your monsters are mindless colossal centipedes with just a lot of hp, like WilwarinAndamar suggested, well, these can be easily defeated. After all, that critter can only attack or flee. Where's the fun in that? Now look at the Succubus. Her CR is even lower than the centipede, only 7. She has a mere 33 hit points. But. Look at the special abilities, so many ways to play with a player's mind. She can change into any humanoid form, so the party won't attack it on sight. She can lure characters away from the party. She can plant suggestions by telepathy. If they attack, she can teleport to a save distance and call in a vrock. That is how you challenge experienced players.
Zumarai 03-01-07, 08:20 AM	Vile Aberrant Limbs Drow Chaos Monks (Spring Attackers or grapplers) are nice.
Bullshido 03-01-07, 08:25 AM	Wellcome! As a DM's you will all encounter players that has been there from the beginning of time (before laptops and mobile phones that fit in your pocket). They know all the rules and all the tricks ..they will tear your corebook EL's into pieces and throw them on the nearest infernal flame. And they move in packs! Yes, the are players from hell. Groups of Elite players usually need EL's 2-3 higher on average if to be challenged at all. And sometimes they handle EL's 4-6 levels higher without breaking a sweat! So what do you do? Post below an encounter with something that will scare an Elite group of players without actually being more dangerous or deadly. Keep the EL in level with the PC's and explain, in short, why this would work. Good luck! Hire two thugs to approach the player(s) before the game. Have them threaten the person(s) with physical violence if they dont agree to make more balanced characters.
Lunar_Shadow 03-01-07, 08:25 AM	Two words: Tucker's Kobolds. Tucker's kobolds This month's editorial is about Tucker's kobolds. We get letters on occasion asking for advice on creating high-level AD&D® game adventures, and Tucker's kobolds seem to fit the bill. Many high-level characters have little to do because they're not challenged. They yawn at tarrasques and must be forcibly kept awake when a lich appears. The DMs involved don't know what to do, so they stop dealing with the problem and the characters go into Character Limbo. Getting to high level is hard, but doing anything once you get there is worse. One of the key problems in adventure design lies in creating opponents who can challenge powerful characters. Singular monsters like tarrasques and liches are easy to gang up on; the party can concentrate its firepower on the target until the target falls down dead and wiggles its little feet in the air. Designing monsters more powerful than a tarrasque is self-defeating; if the group kills your super-monster, what will you do next send in its mother? That didn't work on Beowulf, and it probably won't work here. Worse yet, singular super monsters rarely have to think. They just use their trusty, predictable claw/claw/bite. This shouldn't be the measure of a campaign. These games fall apart because there's no challenge to them, no mental stimulation - no danger. In all the games that I've seen, the worst, most horrible, most awful beyond-comparison opponents ever seen were often weaker than the characters who fought them. They were simply well-armed and intelligent beings who were played by the DM to be utterly ruthless and clever. Tucker's kobolds were like that. Tucker ran an incredibly dangerous dungeon in the days I was stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C. This dungeon had corridors that changed all of your donkeys into huge flaming demons or dropped the whole party into acid baths, but the demons were wienies compared to the kobolds on Level One. These kobolds were just regular kobolds, with 1-4 hp and all that, but they were mean. When I say they were mean, I mean they were bad, Jim. They graduated magna *** laude from the Sauron Institute for the Criminally Vicious. When I joined the gaming group, some of the PCs had already met Tucker's kobolds, and they were not eager to repeat the experience. The party leader went over the penciled map of the dungeon and tried to find ways to avoid the little critters, but it was not possible. The group resigned itself to making a run for it through Level One to get to the elevators, where we could go down to Level Ten and fight "okay" monsters like huge flaming demons. It didn't work. The kobolds caught us about 60' into the dungeon and locked the door behind us and barred it. Then they set the corridor on fire, while we were still in it. "NOOOOOO!!!" screamed the party leader. "It's THEM! Run!!!" Thus encouraged, our party scrambled down a side passage, only to be ambushed by more kobolds firing with light crossbows through murder holes in the walls and ceilings. Kobolds with metal armor and shields flung Molotov cocktails at us from the other sides of huge piles of flaming debris, which other kobolds pushed ahead of their formation using long metal poles like broomsticks. There was no mistake about it. These kobolds were bad. We turned to our group leader for advice. "AAAAAAGH!!!" he cried, hands clasped over his face to shut out the tactical situation. We abandoned most of our carried items and donkeys to speed our flight toward the elevators, but we were cut off by kobold snipers who could split-move and fire, ducking back behind stones and corners after launching steel-tipped bolts and arrows, javelins, hand axes, and more flaming oil bottles. We ran into an unexplored section of Level One, taking damage all the time. It was then we discovered that these kobolds had honeycombed the first level with small tunnels to speed their movements. Kobold commandos were everywhere. All of our hirelings died. Most of our henchmen followed. We were next. I recall we had a 12th-level magic user with us, and we asked him to throw a spell or something. "Blast 'em!" we yelled as we ran. "Fireball 'em! Get those little @#+$%*&!!" "What, in these narrow corridors? " he yelled back. "You want I should burn us all up instead of them?" Our panicked flight suddenly took us to a dead-end corridor, where a giant air shaft dropped straight down into unspeakable darkness, far past Level Ten. Here we hastily pounded spikes into the floors and walls, flung ropes over the ledge, and climbed straight down into that unspeakable darkness, because anything we met down there was sure to be better than those kobolds. We escaped, met some huge flaming demons on Level Ten, and even managed to kill one after about an hour of combat and the lives of half the group. We felt pretty good — but the group leader could not be cheered up. "We still have to go out the way we came in," he said as he gloomily prepared to divide up the treasure. Tucker's kobolds were the worst things we could imagine. They ate all our donkeys and took our treasure and did everything they could to make us miserable, but they had style and brains and tenacity and courage. We respected them and loved them, sort of, because they were never boring. If kobolds could do this to a group of PCs from 6th to 12th level, picture what a few orcs and some low level NPCs could do to a 12th-16th level group, or a gang of mid-level NPCs and monsters to groups of up to 20th level. Then give it a try. Sometimes, it's the little things used well that count.
Galenraug 03-01-07, 10:27 AM	As mentioned before, power need not be strength of arms, hp, AC, BAB, or even spell-like abilities, magic, magic items, etc. I've created aristocrats, experts, civilian-class characters with relatively little combat panache, who through high diplomacy, intimidation, gather information, guild and organizational connections, are immune to most of the conventional hack and slash tedium. You can't simply go into the council hall and defeat the pontiff. What are the cultural limitations? What is his political and personal leverage? Does he have dirt on the party? How can he make the party's lives a living 9 Hells in the province if they openly fight his agendas, flex their power and otherwise pose any threat. The worst enemies that my party at higher, epic levels, these being parties who've battle the tarrasque, linnorms, even encountered a hecatoncheires from a distance, are the machivillians who've stood before them, with no allies, unarmed and unprotected, and can simply walk away with their backs to the party. That's power. Planning, tactics, intrigue and influence, favors and threats; that makes for a villian that will be talked about long after the campaign is over, and one that elite players will be busting their brains over; of course, in-game mechanics such as DR, magic, saving throws, attack bonus, and the like are values that a skilled player can manipulate to their advantage against a monster or a combat situation. But short of role-playing, they have nothing to see, nothing to directly battle, save the entire province, maybe the whole barony, county, or country. Who knows how far the villian's influence reaches? "Steel is weak without the hand that wields it. That is the riddle of steel, that is the power of flesh". -James Earl Jones, Conan the Barbarian Cheers
Aberlonian 03-01-07, 12:34 PM	Simple. Before the session, put a blank character sheet in front of each player.
Orchomenos 03-01-07, 02:44 PM	Something I've read somewhere: The unknown. A group is getting out of a forest and end in a savannah, with 10' tall herbs. They can't see what's coming. Darkvision, True Seeing won't work. If one of them is able to fly for a recon, have him spot something moving in the tall grass. It can be anything, including something totally harmless. For my group, two words: Colossal Centipede. CR 8 with 144 HP. 'Nuff said. In a recent PbP game with other experienced players, we were exploring a dungeon. My character, a gnome, had a Dire Badger mount. While my "speak with animal" ability was active, the badger tells me "It smells like Centipedes behind that door." We prepare for a serious fight, the barbarian and cleric in front lines, the elf ready his bow. We open the door... and are assaulted by a Centipede Swarm! :eek: So more than telling them something horrible is about to happen, misinformation is even better.
Nidair 03-01-07, 03:25 PM	We once fought against some sort of undead Shadow Dragon. It could heal itself with its breath weapon, as well as hit any bystanders with negative levels. It was ugly. Also, the Adamantine Clockwork Horror is one of the most horrid things ever made. It is a CR 8 construct that can throw Implosion, MDJ, and Disintegrate AT WILL.
OneWinged4ngel 03-01-07, 04:09 PM	..
Duke_of_Shards 03-01-07, 05:11 PM	Like I said. Elite players learn to fear kobolds wielded by a skilled DM. That's one stupid group...
OneWinged4ngel 03-01-07, 06:19 PM	That's one stupid group... Well, yes, in the example given for Tucker's kobolds it seems like the party was forgetting quite a few things, to put it lightly.
Chrono Nexus 03-01-07, 07:47 PM	It isn't about the enemies, it's about terrain and strategy. Cave systems are very useful for ambushes and traps, as the players aren't familiar with the cave layout and natural caverns pose threats in themselves (flooding, slick rock, sharp stalagmites/tites). It is very easy to lose your sense of direction in a cave, without the sun or lightsources for you to orient. Vertical encounters also severely limit character's options. Dependence of ropes can become a drawback if intelligent opponents figure out that cutting them will send the players falling. Like I stated before, underwater combat poses it's own risks. Most opponents they face are more maneuverable underwater than them, and some combats may amount to a waiting game between the monster and pcs (the monster avoiding the pcs until one is separated or weakened). Giant squid with good grapple modifiers are good for this. Controlling and keeping track of lightsources: a player's decisions are based wholly on the circumstance. If they can't see, they can't enact a perfect plan to combat the opponent(s). Darkness spells, mists, and smoke are good ways to give yourself the upper hand. Lastly, use the game structure against the players. Make a raid party that covers all the bases. A healer, a warrior, a mage, and a thief. It will be harder for the players to fight such a party, especially if it's just as equipped as them for survival. Edit: Just so you know, I am one of these "elite" players. I think flexibility and good tactics are more valuable than a high str- Elite players love nothing more than a good challenge- but to do that, you need to think like one.
Fencerboy 03-01-07, 09:41 PM	I once scared the crap out of my players using a badger and tall grass. It was meant as a joke, to kickstart a mini-campaign. So they were walking through tall grass, I called for spot checks, and they noticed the grass moving. Towards them. So they cast all their buff spells, drank potions and the archer opened fire. 7 damage on a 6 HP badger. I'm like... "Ok, your arrow flies true. You hear a barking squeal, and something rolls over, twitching." They were so ******... :D