Where goes the line between "GM is playing the monsters smart" and "GM is playing PvP to kill the party"?
A DnD hyperbolic example would be the flying invisible wizards casting fireball from the sky. Another old favorite is the Tucker kobolds which people still bring up in conversations.
These days it feels like playing "dumb" monsters is just though as bad game mastering. Like you are supposed to fuck the players up.
When having a PC death in a normal(that is, a non-boss encounter) shifts from being a possibility to being likely. That is, you need to keep in mind that your job as the GM is to CHALLENGE the players, not DEFEAT them.
Also, playing monsters smart doesn't HAVE to mean that the encounters are deadlier(by much), you just have to tone other parts of the encounter down. For instance(assuming 3.x since that's what I'm most familiar with) having flying, invisible wizards who rain fireballs from the sky would not be an appropriate encounter for a low level party, but assuming competently built PCs, they should have the ability to deal with them around level 12, especially if the wizards are lower level than the party is.
it depends on the players
deliberately gimping the monsters behavior to fit in with how people think they behave is much more suited to a casual crowd, since it helps make them feel more immersive, since telepathically communicating, tactical genius wolves will get people angry
if your party is bordering on munchkin levels of powergaming, then you push back and treat the game like FF tactics, deliberately using every trick in your arsenal, you will either drink their butthurt tears or provide them an adequate challenge, either way its cool
"flying invisible wizards" goes beyond tuckers kobolds, as you have created a threat that the players cannot hope to ever defeat, this is considered bad DMing, and only encourages munchkin play from your own players
you also arent supposed to murder your party unless they all agreed that that level of difficulty is the norm
Let your players determine the escalation of encounter difficulty. If they use blatant, unfair cheese, then their enemies will adopt those tactics over time. If the players continue to just kick doors down and forgo tactics in favor of smash shit, then their foes will rarely need to do more than rudimentary group tactics.
But, I can fly and see invisible things so that wouldn't be all that bad
I am at max 10 int. Anything with above 10 int is going to be as clever as they can be with the info they have.
I once decided to do a somewhat "realistic" session where the enemy NPCs would function like actual infantry squads. Using covering fire, grenades to flush people out of cover, that sort of thing.
The party got kind of annoyed when they captured an enemy (or rather, a position that was friendly until their natural murderhobo instincts took over) checkpoint only for a zeroed artillery barrage to utterly molest them.
Personally I say it's when you start breaking rules, making deliberately OP enemies, or excessively fudging dice in your favour.
5e specifically fixes your example, because unless the wizard had allies he'd be either invisible or flying.
>Where goes the line between "GM is playing the monsters smart" and "GM is playing PvP to kill the party"?
the part where the enemies don't have abilities and skills on par with the player?
The DM should always be trying to 'pvp' the players, maybe not meta-gaming it with the ogres running past a bunch of the party to start beating on the player the DM knows is the squishiest, but if you've got two ogres and one martial out in the open, the ogres should definitely gang up on either side of him and flank him while they're attacking instead of conveniently splitting up
Think of it like a videogame - the challenges the player will face will never be beyond what they can handle, and will probably actually take advantage of skills that they have obtained. So if the wizard learns how to fly, you start seeing flying enemies. But most enemies don't act as hard counters to characters as a whole, just certain skills at best.
It could be fun if, in the case of a BBEG and his armies, it could take a few squads of mooks for enemies to start changing things up to react to characters obtaining new skills or weapons.
Smart Monster:
>"The wolf uses pack tactics to try to kill your wizard and gets into flanking with another wolf."
PvP:
>"Now that the wolf has your wizard cornered it readies an action to attack as you are casting your spell so that you need to make a concentration check when you take damage."
This.
The few encounters I designed I generally made few rules for the monster that I would follow in the encounter like "attacks the last thing that hurt it (presuming monster could have seen the attacker)".
I liked having the difficulty stem from something, like an obvious leader that was directing the enemies, once killed I would have them attack random targets or even hesitate or back off.
Another question you can ask yourself when playing the monsters is "Would this creature fight to the death? or would it run away when the odds were against it or it planned to get revenge later"
>flying invisible wizards
So glad Wizards can't do this without a magic item (or a second caster) in 5th.
explain how a sword-focused fighter human of extremely regular build design (toughness, power attack, etc.) should deal with this.
Entirely depends on the expectations of the group.
If you're a chill, casual game, the GM playing hard is bullshit. If you're a hardcore combat focused group, the monsters not being super optimal will likely bore the players to tears. Both approaches are fine, it's just a matter of knowing what's the best thing to do in the current context.
Depends on the genre and flavor of the game. Shadowrun where corpsec are fucking idiots is probably going to be a shit game considering the players are generally more powerful than the opposition and the challenge comes from time constraints, numbers and strategy. In a standard swords and sorcery game, though, maybe the goblins shouldn't use complex tactics, because generally speaking you're not going into that type of game expecting a series of skirmishes and feigned routs to set up an intricate network of traps and ambushes.
Adapt to the players and their expectations.
When the enemies are smarter than they possibly could be. A group of mindless zombies won't single out the weakest member of the party, for example
I've been toying this in my head.
I was running an encounter recently , first proper session of a new game, that resulted in a player death.
Essentially the cleric spent the entire session isolated from the party by his choice, at least 100 feet away , would stay back , not engage and the player was on his phone a lot, the pack hunting monsters circled around the group who were fighting some of them head on and went for the lone cleric. The cleric got unlucky and was downed. Then a series of death saving throws as the party tried to revive him sealed his fate. Looking back I don't think I ruled the death saving throw and revive attempts perfectly by RAW, but none the less we lost a player.
On the one hand this seemed fair as he had chosen to isolate himself against enemies he knew were intelligent and hunted in packs. He was also disengaged in the session and not playing well. (He's arguably an experienced player ) On the other hand a character death early on is harsh, the players were certainly shocked by it and the lethal nature of the campaign.
I'm still feeling guilty about it, probably most for getting the rules wrong in terms of his death, and not sure how to go on, I feel I should probably tone down my encounters now but I also do want to provide a certain amount of challenge and lethality.
I'd say it would depend on the zombies. Even if they're feral and mindless, singling out an injured or weakened opponent might be instinctual since it's easier prey, as would attacking someone who is already grabbed by another zombie and therefore can't run.
I feel like that's assuming too much intelligence though. Like a predator animal might do that IRL but a zombie's only instinct is "MEAT, THAT DIRECTION, GO"
He said competently-built PCs.
Use their bow, after the rest of their party removes invisibility.
Typically I'll design encounters that I know the party can beat with some effort or use environmental effects to give the illusion of more difficulty than there is. Unless they really piss me off or get lazy, and then I send out a shakedown team with amusing themes like an assassin squad based off the Wizard of Oz characters or a fantasy version of Section 9 from Gits. Those got to be stupid fun in the end though and they still routinely quote some of the shit that went down.
> building the bog standard fighter
> incompetant
Sorry, I'll let you get back to your super refined spellbooks and one round instagib builds. I'll look instead for a game that focuses on being played enjoyably over autistic minmax needs.