I was recently watching a video on youtube by Shadiversity. He runs an interesting video series about fantasy monsters and races, looks at their particular traits and the type of weapons they would use.
I found his video on vampires particularly enlightening as it made me think on a deeper level when designing my games "What do my villains want and how does their gear help them get it?"
So I started designing my combat encounters and my villains and reworking their gear, sometimes for flavor and sometimes for challenge and it actually ended up making it much easier for me create encounters, as well as helping me play to their strengths. It's actually upped the difficulty of my encounters for my players a bit.
Do any of you change things up a bit for particular encounters?
For those interested, here's the video about vampires gear and what makes sense for a vampire.
It has a lot of articles about different monsters and how they would likely act. I think applying this makes encounters a lot harder but also somehow more satisfying, because you really feel there is a difference between a goblin squad and a bandit group, aside from HP and AC.
Sometimes, I'll re-create an equipment list for a monster or NPC based on what I want my adventurers to find when they loot the body for treasure. For instance, I once ran a game where the adventurers were fighting pirates, and this was the party's first encounter; so I made sure that the pirates had things like "cutlass, engraved dagger worth 10 GP" so that once they had killed the pirates off, they could decide to (a) keep the weapons, or (b) sell them and make a bit of a profit for themselves.
Feel free to also flesh out a villian's character in part by what they carry. In a separate encounter from the pirates, the party battled two low-level wizard NPC's who had orange robes to denote a local wizard's school, matching school-issued obsidian orbs as a magic focus, and spellbooks that bore the inscriptions "To (insert name) on your graduation, you're the best! Here's to a magical path ahead of you, ~Mom and Dad". That was a year ago, and the players have never forgotten those two NPC's that were literally cannon fodder, made memorable by just a little bit of NPC equipment change and embellishment. It's worth the effort!
Sometimes, I'll re-create an equipment list for a monster or NPC based on what I want my adventurers to find when they loot the body for treasure. For instance, I once ran a game where the adventurers were fighting pirates, and this was the party's first encounter; so I made sure that the pirates had things like "cutlass, engraved dagger worth 10 GP" so that once they had killed the pirates off, they could decide to (a) keep the weapons, or (b) sell them and make a bit of a profit for themselves.
Feel free to also flesh out a villian's character in part by what they carry. In a separate encounter from the pirates, the party battled two low-level wizard NPC's who had orange robes to denote a local wizard's school, matching school-issued obsidian orbs as a magic focus, and spellbooks that bore the inscriptions "To (insert name) on your graduation, you're the best! Here's to a magical path ahead of you, ~Mom and Dad". That was a year ago, and the players have never forgotten those two NPC's that were literally cannon fodder, made memorable by just a little bit of NPC equipment change and embellishment. It's worth the effort!
Thanks.
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I was recently watching a video on youtube by Shadiversity. He runs an interesting video series about fantasy monsters and races, looks at their particular traits and the type of weapons they would use.
I found his video on vampires particularly enlightening as it made me think on a deeper level when designing my games "What do my villains want and how does their gear help them get it?"
So I started designing my combat encounters and my villains and reworking their gear, sometimes for flavor and sometimes for challenge and it actually ended up making it much easier for me create encounters, as well as helping me play to their strengths. It's actually upped the difficulty of my encounters for my players a bit.
Do any of you change things up a bit for particular encounters?
For those interested, here's the video about vampires gear and what makes sense for a vampire.
There is a very nice blog about this, "The monsters know what they're doing".
https://www.themonstersknow.com/
It has a lot of articles about different monsters and how they would likely act. I think applying this makes encounters a lot harder but also somehow more satisfying, because you really feel there is a difference between a goblin squad and a bandit group, aside from HP and AC.
You should see the one Shad did about Giants.
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Sometimes, I'll re-create an equipment list for a monster or NPC based on what I want my adventurers to find when they loot the body for treasure. For instance, I once ran a game where the adventurers were fighting pirates, and this was the party's first encounter; so I made sure that the pirates had things like "cutlass, engraved dagger worth 10 GP" so that once they had killed the pirates off, they could decide to (a) keep the weapons, or (b) sell them and make a bit of a profit for themselves.
Feel free to also flesh out a villian's character in part by what they carry. In a separate encounter from the pirates, the party battled two low-level wizard NPC's who had orange robes to denote a local wizard's school, matching school-issued obsidian orbs as a magic focus, and spellbooks that bore the inscriptions "To (insert name) on your graduation, you're the best! Here's to a magical path ahead of you, ~Mom and Dad". That was a year ago, and the players have never forgotten those two NPC's that were literally cannon fodder, made memorable by just a little bit of NPC equipment change and embellishment. It's worth the effort!
💙🤍~*Ravenclaw*~ 🔮
Thanks.