How much do I tell new players about new monsters?

Question

Background

I am a brand-new DM, about to lead a game for brand-new players. I have a lot of knowledge of rules from playing Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights over and over, leafing through a friend's books, and finally buying the three basic books for myself.

Question

How much information should I give to my players about monsters they encounter?

Should I essentially read the entire MM entry to them, or let them figure out how the enemies operate through experience, or (as I assume), something in the middle? Keep in mind, only one of them has even peripheral experience with D&D (they are very good sports for giving it a shot!), so they won't be bringing background knowledge to the table. For example, do DMs generally let players know what immunities creatures have, or do they let them figure it out by trial and error? What about offensive abilities? For example, if a player has a potion of fire resistance, should I give them a heads-up about the fact that the chimera they're facing has a fire breath attack?

Answer 1

Generally, you should only tell them what their character knows. Some DMs don't even tell them the creature's name until afterwards, they just describe its appearance.

Let them make a skill check to see how much they know (eg arcana, nature, religion, history - depending on the type of creature. Or perception, if there is some visual clue).

Or, if you decide they would have encountered the creature before, or the creature's abilities are common knowledge, then just tell them.

Otherwise, it's an unknown creature, let them discover its abilities by experience. You'll have to tell the players what's happening during combat, so they know if it is resistant or vulnerable to their attacks. For example, "The red dragon hardly seems to notice your Fireball. But it roars in pain as the Ray of Frost hits him."

Answer 2

I generally don't give anything away. Discovery is part of the fun to the player.

I try to give a very detailed description of the monster as the players would see it (if it's in low light they may not see ALL the tentacles).

If a player has a skill that might give them some more information I'd let them roll to see if they'd know a bit more.

Answer 3

You have to balance out the fun of discovering a new monster with how devastating a LACK of knowledge could be to the party. Consider the harpy, with its ability to lure in folks who fail a DC11 wis check. This could wipe out the entire party if they don't know to plug their ears. So is it more fun (for the players) to know about this and act accordingly (not be able to communicate verbally, poor perception checks since they can't hear, etc) or risk getting wiped out? Same with a lycanthrope immune to damage from nonmagical, non-silvered weapons. Is it more fun for the party to figure out how to defeat this ahead of time or "learn" it in the midst of a battle they can't win? Depends on the party, of course, as there are usually ways to magic up weapons on the spot, but a novice party might not know this.

Somewhat minor abilities, like the hobgoblin's "martial attack" (increased damage when a target is next to an ally of the hobgoblin), can easily be learned about in-battle ("that hobgoblin hits harder, using his ally to distract you") as it shouldn't be an insurmountable challenge.

Give the party the opportunity to interview survivors, survey the scene of a previous attack, or observe the creature from a distance. After a few fights, they should realize that monsters don't all fall to the same "attack, attack, magic missile!" combo. If they insist on rushing in, ignoring your role play opportunities, then let the chips fall where they may.

Giving the party advance warning of a creature's abilities and weaknesses lowers the encounter difficulty. If a fight is intended to be "deadly", then less info serves that purpose. But if it is supposed to be an easy/medium threat only, then not knowing about something that could crush the party doesn't fit that description (see DMG p82).

Answer 4

This depends on your playstyle and the way you want to play.

Would the characters' reasonably know about these creatures and is that something you want to have the players' have access to as part of play?

Now, there's plenty of old school play where you pretty much know nothing about a creature until you've dealt with it enough to figure out what it can do. This works either where the monster is rare and the characters would know nothing about it, or in videogames where player skill is created through repeatedly encountering the same thing over and over until you gain understanding of what it is about.

Another alternative is to give the description based on the characters' understanding - presumably the druid knows about many animals, the necromancer knows about ghosts, etc. and can tell the differences between the well known types and has a good idea about what their abilities are. This is where characters having appropriate skills or backgrounds can be very useful.

You can scale the description up or down, accordingly. The average person figures out that it's an animated statue. The cleric says, "No, this is a golem, a divine secret that should have been used to protect a place." The character who can cast the "create Golem" spell probably knows enough that you might as well give them the stats for the average golem, and so forth.

Also be aware that players may see this as a game like many people see videogames - of course you look up the stats on the monsters you face. Some players might just love the lore and look up stuff on the monsters because they're cool and fun. So the whole point of mysterious monsters usually drops away quickly for most gamers - you then end up with the second problem of what happens when players begin using information their characters couldn't possibly know? Do you force players to play suboptimally, or do you accept it like how when someone replays a videogame they already can speed through because they know what to expect?

There's no one right answer, there's just what sounds fun for you and your group and it's good to lay out those expectations up front.

Answer 5

Don't read the MM. Either send monsters with no killing tricky features (like harpies have), or give them the important information (or some opportunity to get it) through skill rolls (as others suggested) or NPCs and other in-game ways.

The more emphasis on stats, the more the players will take it as a PC game, just with graphics substituted by imagination. If you emphasize challenge within fiction over a rule-combining challenge, players will be more likely to treat the game as something like Hobbit, just interactive - which is more fun for most of us.

To be concrete, in my campaign the PCs defeated their first vampire in a short (but still challenging) clash, but after a session focused on information gathering (where they heard tales of sir Irisian making various feats of supernatural strength and of his full village of pale, unhealthy looking women, whom he used as "refreshing blood cans"). The PCs didn't find for sure that he's a vampire, so we played an extra session with one of the PCs playing an NPC scout (his PC from a previous game), who found some sign that this knight really is a vampire. When the scout appeared to tell the PCs, he also gave them some silver arrows.

I should have added some complication to penalize the PCs for failing to find the information in time, but making them face an invulnerable (and high level) vampire without countermeasures would be no fun. The extra one-to-one session is not necessary, just make sure that learning of weaknesses of the monster they are likely to face is fun by itself. Off course, don't do this before every encounter with any monster, just for those who can make too much trouble before the players/PCs find how to fight them.

Answer 6

Lots of great answers above…

• Dealing with the unknown is a big part of the challenge and the fun of RPG! In fact, I kept the 1e Monster Manual away from my player group for a long time so that they would be surprised by new creatures. It isn’t as much fun when they recognize a monster right away and start detailing all of its stats, special skills, and weaknesses from the monster encyclopedia! These are supposed to be adventures in strange and mysterious locales filled with unknown creatures and other dangers.

• You may need to help newbies out a bit. If your players are not familiar with mythology, then perhaps one of the characters has heard stories about the creature which will provide some clues.

• As mentioned above, it is crucial for the DM to provide hints about how the monster reacts - perhaps shying away from the flame of a torch or demonstrating aspects of intelligence, such as organizing for battle or a strategic retreat, or recovering health from a certain type of magical attack.

• Strike a balance for the good of the gameplay. If you throw a group against a monster that slaughters them because they were too weak or unequipped with the weapons needed to fight it, then your adventure is over quickly and with little or no fun.

• As a DM, I always tried to give the players a chance to survive. If they made foolish choices, however, then they might just learn the hard way.

Answer 7

It might be smart to consider how expendable you view your players characters. Is it okay for them to die once in a while fom their mistakes, or should the game never really punish for making bad choices. While it might not be nice for a chacter to die (it sucks really), always keeping your players alive might have draw backs as well. IE your players will always expect to succeed with the least amount of effort, expecting information to be handed to them. If players know the world is a harsh and dangerous place, they will be more gratefull for a chance to learn how to survive a battle.

Since your players are starting you should give them a good push in the right direction the first couple of times (oh hey you have knowledge arcana? you can try to use that to see if you know more about this creature) other wise it would be way to frustrating for them.