My group is playing Abomination Vaults, and on the second level there is a room with an undead Minotaur Skeleton Warrior. The book specifically states that it never leaves the room it’s in.

My group quickly figures this out and would simply have everybody ready an attack, one PC would open the door, triggering everybody else’s reaction, and would then close it again.

After doing this about 10 times they finally took down the skeleton despite it having resistance to most of their attacks, with none of them taking any damage.

This is a somewhat inexperienced group that doesn’t usually do strategy things, so I was happy to see them plan and execute.

Anyway what’s the weirdest way your group beat a supposedly challenging enemy?

  • PotatoesFallOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    2 months ago

    That’s a good shout, thanks.

    In this case it was a mindless creature with -5 intelligence so I wanted to give them the reward for actually making a strategy for once. Next time they will have to make a better strategy :P

    • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 months ago

      I see this as an excellent strategy to use with inexperienced players.

      Let the gamify the tactics a little, give them a false sense of security and then BOOM give them a genuinely intelligent opponent that makes them pee their pants

      Oooh, or you could bring in another player to play the enemy similar to this greentext (tl;dr: FelixLaVulpe tells the story of playing a minotaur against an min/max adventuring party at the DM’s request. Spoiler, it goes very poorly for the overconfident party)

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      Even with the minotaur skeleton, I’d argue that it has enough object permanence to know that the things it’s trying to kill haven’t just ceased to exist because it can’t see them. I’d have let the players do it for like one round (an entire round of free damage is still a big reward for clever tactics) and after that have the skeleton start attacking the door itself.

      • PotatoesFallOP
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        They were dealing like 5 damage a round due to resistances lol

        • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 months ago

          Even if the minotaur smashed the door, it would be attacking through cover to try and hit them in the hallway, and wouldn’t be able to enter the hallway

      • Kichae@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        I think it depends on how experienced the players are. Players without a lot of experience get a lot out of feeling like they outsmarted the game, and it can lead them toward seeing the wider possibilities outside of just hitting the enemy really, really hard.

        But definitely don’t let them do the same trick in multiple encounters.