I say for the most part reward him for his creativity and let his hawk spot some ambushes, he did spend a great on it after all. Also keep in mind there are places monsters can hide where the hawk would still have little to no chance to actually find them such as in really dense foliage, underneath/between certain rock formations, or they could pretend to be harmless beggars/merchants on the road to the party is in range. Let him have his fun, try not to make him regret the feat choice, but you also don't have to let it ruin your fun.
Use stealthier enemies and/or use forests and other obscuring terrain that would give advantage to enemies trying to stay hidden?
Hawks don't have Darkvision. Those ambushes could easily happen at night when sight-based perception automatically fails by darkness instead of during the day.
Don't look for ways to shut down creativity. You'll regret it if you teach them to stop thinking.
Lawngnome4hire wrote:
I think the fighter with his hawk familiar is FREAKIN AWESOME. Dont you dare nerf his cool idea! So what if they dont get surprised much...? He could have taken the Alert feat and completed negated all ambushes, ever. If you want a big surprise, just make the bad guys hide real good on occasion or use spells to help them out. This doesnt need a fix imo. It's cool baby yeah! 
Psikerlord wrote:
How is he negating the encounters? A feat still has an opportunity cost - and using this resource for a combat feat can make him much stronger in combat instead. Unless they are just skipping encounters - you shouldn't be irritated. After all - the ambush is not there to kill the party. It is there for the party to overcome it.
If you want to spice things up - you can even adjust few of the ambushes so that after scouting them it is obvious that the enemy is overwhelmingly stronger and the party HAS to use knowledge the have on the enemy to plan their own suprise attack instead.
It is perfect legitimate and you should in no way penalize players for intelligent and creative play.
First, any wizard could have done the same thing. As can anyone else who took the feat, anyone who took the ritual casting feat, a 3rd-level spell thief rogue, 3rd-level Pact of Chain warlock, 5th-level Pact of Tomb warlock, etc.
Second, it is hardly earth shattering. Anyone could get similiar effectives by climbing trees and scouting, having a rogue scouting ahead, etc.
Third, it is not fool proof. The hawk can't see in the dark, through trees, in rain or fog, and they aren't 100% sure to spot everything baring desert or extremely flat terrain. A hawk would need to fly at a fairly high distance to remain safe and survey any large area. Mountains often have low cloud, forests have thick trees, plains have tall grasses, etc. You don't have to be an arse... but some realistic weather and terrain and it can still miss the odd creature.
Forth, they can't find every creature. Especially in terrain with some cover... it can't avoid every bear, deer, badger, and other movement below. You party could be stopping every five minutes while the hawk checks out every possible movement -- and doing so might not be possible without extreme risk to the familiar. Numbers might make it impossible to scout and identify every small group, individuals, natural looking animals, etc. It honestly doesn't know if a group are elves, bandits, merchants, etc.
Fifth, the hawk is fragile. 1hp, low AC. It likely has to maintain altitude, which can make indentification difficult. Below a few hundred feet or constantly flying overhead and it is likely to get an arrow or magic missile for its troubles. Hence, reports are either sketchy or you'll loose your familiar every so often. The hawk is also not immune to natural conditions or mundane animals. An eagle, another hawk, etc. can easily kill it or want that hunting area.
Sixth, the familair is an NPC. It can, and should, be roleplayed. It isn't suicidal. It can get tired, lazy, want a reward for its work, etc., etc. You don't have to roleplay it as being useless, but most hawks don't fly around for 8 hours a day. That takes a lot of enegy, baring a lot of mountain updrafts. Typically, it will fly ahead and perch. This isn't likely to be a repeated 3 mile radius scan. "I'm tired.", "I want a mouse", or "It's raining and I'm cold." are perfectly legimate answers.
Seventh... most importantly... so what? The party has some idea of some upcoming possible danger. They can take some preparations to avoid the enounter, setup an ambush, or at least not be surprised. Again, they could have done that through scouting, tree climbing, or otherwise being careful. It doesn't mean they will necessarily avoid the enounter -- they probably want the treasure, XP, and ability to rid the world of goblins. They most likely have to close in order to see if they are friendly or foes (hawk isn't going to get that close). It does mean they may have some surprise, won't get caught in their sleep, etc. Great. It means they'll get a bit further and have a lowered chance of getting slaughtered.
Not to mention, there really aren't that many 'outside ambushes' in LMoP. In fact, I can think of only a couple. This module is much more of a dungeon crawl (four of them, to be precise!) with a few random encounters and a couple of ambushes (one, really, but a few places where there are guards outside that the hawk could spot).
In other words, if you are playing through LMoP and then HotDQ, this ability isn't going to get anywhere near as much use as simply having a rogue with expertise in perception would (since that would work even in the dungeons, esp if said rogue was a race with darkvision).
Reward creative play, and don't be surprised when someone actually builds a real perception based character at some point in the future 
Hit him with a curse so that every night he turns into a wolf, and his hawk turns into a woman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladyhawke
I advise doing nothing except relying less on content that is so easily trivialized.
Talk to the player. Find out if maybe he just doesn't want to be ambushed or surprised, or use content that is still challenging even without an ambush or surprise. There are lots of other ways to challenge people, and the familiar will still be quite useful.
Lawngnome4hire wrote:
Lawngnome4hire wrote:
Lawngnome4hire wrote:
BW0222 wrote:
Keep in mind that there will be places where the hawk can't go or scout. Caves, at night, or a multi room building or dungeon will take the hawk out of the equation, especially at later levels. I say let the player and his hawk shine where appropriate. That means he will detect ambushes, for instance.
The above doesn't mean that you, the DM, throws in the towel every time the hawk succeeds. The hawk might foil the ambush, but it might not prevent the fight, "We've been spotted! Kill them!"
Remember, if the hawk can see the enemy, the enemy can see the hawk. After a few routs, the bad guys may well associate the hawk with the party and upon seeing it, adjust their tactics accordingly.
While, as a DM, I tend not to target player's familiars, I do make it known that if a player sends their familiar into harm's way it may be attacked. This is one of those cases. That hawk is a target. I am not saying have the bad guys slay it the very next fight, but have a few shots sent its way (possibly with the hawk taking damage if a legit hit is scored) to let the player know the enemy is on to him. This way, he can still choose to use his scout, but now he must be more careful and choose when to use it as opposed to it being "always on patrol." Should he insist on sending it out non stop, then he risks non stop attacks upon it (where it makes sense and is fair).
Keep in mind, as mentioned in the preceeding posts above, that hawks do not have dark vision or X-ray vision. They don't fly well in high winds and suck at dungeon delving. Hawks aren't the only things that fly and are part of the food chain in a magical world full of flying beasts.
Resist the urge to destroy the hawk outright. Yes, Magic Missile doesn't miss and a well placed fireball will take it out, but don't do that. As I mentioned above, there are other ways to get the player to "back down" the hawk usage in a way that is fair and adds fun to the game. Please don't shut the player's hawk completely down. Let him find ambushes and discover things. Heck, I might even let his familiar gain hit dice and such and see where the role-play takes it. Yes, it could be shot down, but if the player is smart (and a bit lucky) he might end up with a legendary familiar! In short, expose him to risks (losing the hawk, the enemy being tipped off by seeing the familiar) but reward him should he prevail.
bawylie wrote:
As a player, the biggest killjoy is when a DM metagames to negate our out-of -the-box thinking. Honestly, that ruins the game. So what if our trick "negates" this or that, 1 out of 10 or 99 out of 100 encounters.
As a DM, I feel that I'm facilitating the players' adventure, not railroading it. Yes one or all of them may die, or they might easily beat or completely avoid that super awesome encounter I designed, but that's the game. If they find a way to negate most ambushes (anyone remember the Mindbender Prestige Class plus Mindsight feat from 3.5?), more power to them! Give them opportunities to exploit their trick rather than try to beat it.
Centauri wrote:
During the play test, my son ran a Wizard with a hawk familiar. He tried to make that poor hawk do EVERYTHING. It became a fun part of the game, with him pushing the boundaries as hard as he could, and me explaining why it was physically impossible for a hawk to do what he was asking.
The role of the DM is to adapt and react to what his players do. In fact, I've moved exclusively to using milestone XP to help facilitate a more free-form mindset such that no one feels punished for playing intelligently and avoiding encounters. A common issue I used to have when using the 'default' XP system is that players would scout and have the means to avoid a fight, but felt obligated to go ahead and do the encounter anyway so as not to miss out on the XP, and I always felt a bit cheesy awarding them 'full XP' for avoiding an encounter. By decoupling the awarding of XP from encounters/traps/etc and simply handing out levels based on either achieving overall in-game goals (save the town, uncover the plot, etc) or simply passage of in-game time (in less goal oriented campaigns) I find that not only do players feel comfortable leveraging all of the tools available to them, but they also don't feel obligated to get into fights. They still get into plenty of fights, of course, but in general for more rational in-game reasons rather than just 'to get XP' or 'because the DM built the encounter'.
Yeah, it can require a bit more in-the-fly work from the DM, but frankly I find that we spend more time roleplaying and having fun if I just let the players do their thing and focus my energy on figuring out how things react to their actions.
BW0222 wrote:
Lawngnome4hire wrote:
[quote="Centauri"]
Why, in a world in which animals can be familiars would anyone assume that anything was just a "normal animal"?
By all means let him continue to do it, but every once in awhile I'd have an enemy take a pot-shot at the bird. Hawks taste like chicken.
Another possibility that I have yet to see suggested is this: Don't use the familiar's passive perception. Make the player roll active perception. That way, he's bound to have crappy rolls every now and again, and the hawk won't spot anything. It makes sense, after all; the hawk is actively searching for enemies. 10-29 makes things a lot less predictable than always a 19. :-)
Thoughts_My_Aim wrote:
Metaphysicist wrote:
Centauri wrote:
bawylie wrote:
BW0222 wrote:
Centauri wrote:
BW0222 wrote:
Thoughts_My_Aim wrote:
Thoughts_My_Aim wrote:
Centauri wrote:
Lawngnome4hire wrote:
Centauri,
I think it would be fair to say that I wouldn't game with you, nor would any of my group.
As a DM, you would cease being a fair arbitrator and force an outcome despite all possible believability and perfectly reasonable player attempts to avoid that outcome. Enemies would somehow be able know there is a familiar scouting (as opposed to dozens of other magical or mundane efforts), which animal that familiar is (rather than commiting tiny-animal genocide through the wilderness), have magical abilities to target said familiar at ranges nothing in the book typically permits, etc. And you think players would find this fun? Even though they are specifically taking actions to avoid it? Sorry... most players I know which are bright enough to have the hawk scouting in the first place, would call BS on this. They would know they are having the encounter because you are forcing it on them.
Meanwhile, I would simply look at the enounter stat block, make a fair and unbiased assessement of their ability to counter being spotted by the hawk, allow the players to avoid the enounter as they are able, and get on with the next encounter. My players wouldn't miss on any fun -- they wouldn't even know that said enoughter was going to be fun (or not).... they would have had the fun of seeing their intelligent play rewarded and enjoyed the next combat encounter instead of that one.
As a player, you want me to run an hour combat which the players are clearly going to slaughter the creatures (and which you'll already indicated you don't find non-challenging encounters fun)... just to find out whether or not the party actually has to use two spells slots and take 4hp because for some possible reason this is important to you... even though, as a DM, I already know it is almost certainly utterly pointless. Sorry, again, any players I know would look at you as if you were insane and ask you to go into another room and run the combat yourself.
Meanwhile, I would just meta-game the lopsided combat, give the description I did, give the players XP and loot, etc. Players would be happy their intelligent play worked so well that there was no point in running it through combat and that they could get onto the more difficult encounters to come.
Metaphysicist wrote:
BW0222 wrote:
BW0222 wrote:
Beldak_Serpenthelm wrote:
Centauri wrote:
Thoughts_My_Aim wrote:
Centauri wrote:
Thoughts_My_Aim wrote:
The Alert feat does essentially the same thing, only better. I don't see a problem here with the scouting hawk. A wizard could do the same thing, and NOT expend a feat.
This is excellent play by the fighter, and not even a min-max decision in my opinion.
Thoughts_My_Aim wrote: