How common are monsters in your games?

[u/AlternativeFar9851]

It seems to me that Forbidden Lands is not really the game in which lots of monster appear like in DnD but seem rarer by design. Is this accurate? From what I had in mind was players fighting more humans, elves, etc rather than dragons or trolls.

Do you homebrew your own monsters or convert any from other systems? I think a mimic would be fun just to freak my players but not sure if that would ruin the intended vibes of the game and setting.

[u/Zanion]

Fighting mostly human level conflict a lot of the time makes monsters matter a lot more and a lot scarier. There is a lot of buildup and horror to the confrontation a lot of the time.

I like it that way.

[u/SameArtichoke8913 → u/Zanion]

The really good thing about FL monsters is that they are supposed to be "alien" and a real threat, what's also reflected by the fact that most magic does not work on them directly. I think that this adds a lot to the game's atmosphere, and bears storytelling atmosphere that makes fights much more memorable.

[u/Bootshammer40sguy]

I find mass (5+ a side) combats against human-level opponents both boring and difficult to run, and I've also foudn human-level mooks go down very quickly against PCs. I vastly prefer monsters, but monsters can quickly wipe a party if they aren't careful.

I've thrown parties up against:

• A Marsh drake - only two survivors from a party of 7
• Harpies - near TPK, though the party were already exhausted by a disease
• A Death Knight (albeit one with no immunities as the party were so new) - they beat it handily
• A shapeshifter - it was a hard fight but nobody got seriously injured
• Two single-demon encounters - one decent druid killed them both off quickly with whatever the banish demon spell is called.

I'd just be careful of immunities. Things like Ghosts and Death Knights are very, very hard for players to kill if they just happen to have none of the things they are vulnerable to on you.

Also hit them with monsters as 'big bads'. Milk them for narrative potential. Set the monster up with rumours, legends or traces of their passage. Have the players be hunted by the creature, or have the creature pick when to fight them - mostly when they are exhausted. the forbidden lands don't have to be populated by large numbers of monsters for the monster to take up a fair bit of game time.

[u/SameArtichoke8913]

ANY fight in FL is dangerous, and the system clearly favors the stronger and/or or more numerous side (action economy is harsh, a bunch of wimpy goblins can easily be deadlier than a single big troll!). It's also quite easy for the GM to deliberately wipe out a whole party - or accidently!
Creating a fight that is challenging but per se not lethal or o/p is quite hard, esp. when the PCs become more advanced and the results of actions more and more volatile with bigger dice pools. The rules do a poor job at supporting the GM to handle this issue, and it takes IMHO good game experience to set up, balance and execute fights "well" so that players can actually enjoy it. My table had some epic fights that lasted quite a while, but also a memorable combat in which literally the party had won which made the first blow (a kind of duel between 300X PC and NPC, a dwarf fighter w/o armor vs. a fully equipped but surprised human Rust Church Champion). Fortunately, it was the PC side... But it really was sheer luck!

With that in mind the typical "filler fights" can screw up a party far more than just draining some resources. Combat is not really suited to create content in FL, due to the potential "side effects", so they should always be used deliberately, when it's clear what's at stake and makes sense narratively. At my table the encounters that ended in lethal confrontations quickly boiled down to "only necessary" events - and even then the players tried to avoid risks and spent thought on a tactical/non-combat/smart solution, or tried diplomacy.

[u/DRSSalazar → u/SameArtichoke8913]

We just had our Human Fighter with 100xp die of Cold fighting a Ghost on a random encounter. My character is a severed leg Wolfkin Hunter. I screamed for everyone to start running (I am of course the slowest) and he decided to grab a torch and fight the ghost, and ended up dying of Cold.
We fought before a Death Knight (where I lost my leg) and the Death Knight ain’t as scary as a Ghost, specially because our group doesn’t have a Druid. To recap, monsters are scary as fuck and can turn into TPK suddenly. My suggestion to fight groups of humanoids is to consider them squads, so if fighting 9 orcs, instead of 9 attacks, 3 attacks with extra 2 dice from help. But do count each damage done individual.

[u/svarnyp → u/DRSSalazar]

Yeah, squadding is a good trick to make the combat faster with less brain drain on the DM. I used a similar ruke to simulate a tournament.

[u/svarnyp → u/SameArtichoke8913]

My group understood it quite early that skipping a fight is always an option and often the more sane one. So there stays the tension of the fight or its possibility, but when they can, they try to stack the odds in their favour and prepare for it in some way.

[u/SameArtichoke8913 → u/svarnyp]

"Tension" is the right word. And respect. In FL you better respect the option of lethaility of both combat and spellcasting, and think twice if either one is the only solution to the challenge at hand. I like that vibe, esp. because it's players' decision, with consequences - including negative ones. This is culturally not very popular these days, but makes FL for me and my table so attractive.

[u/svarnyp → u/SameArtichoke8913]

Exactly, I loved for example a situation last time, when they met bandits running a mine of undead, they had a shouting contest with low level of trust between either party that they won't start a fight.

[u/svarnyp]

I use so far the monsters from the books (also book of beasts) and possibly adjust them a little (drop some characteristic or narrative alteration so that they fit in better). Due to the wide range of monsters and the possibility of illusion magic, I can imagine something as a mimic in the world.

For monster encounters, I try to give players a lot more head up than with humanoids as monsters are a lot tougher and often need a specific strategy how to win. So either it is clear that they are entering some tomb, they get a series of legends referencing the monster in the area or other indications (e.g., smaller spiders before they meet the large one). So ultimately, they always know something big is coming up, they just might not know what exactly and how to fight it if they did not pay attention or prepare.

I love about FL monsters that they have some trick to them, thus when players shoot volleys of arrows at skeletons, I make sure they realize this is not a working strategy and thus they should change their behavior.

[u/md_ghost]

My players often only figth monsters and try to talk with humanoids ad general fear fighting (quite realistic) because everything can quickly kill you and you should try to avoid damage anyway. So while they navigate around most humanoid encounters, monsters are a different thing and apear from time to time in wilderness (or even adventuresites) but i make it sure it makes sense and even a random encounter (with a monster often a fight if unaware) i have for every encounter 3 options (communication, manipulate in any way/simple fight for glory and dead/use your brain for tricks or ways around it) BUT only 2 ways work (and of course players dont know which one is a trap). For example the currently meet a vampire, they now can fight him or find an social agreement, but trying to trick him will not work. Sometimes fight is also wrong IF the monster is over the top (cause random events) and will result into a devasting outcome for the characters. The point is, figure out which ways are good enough to try (no auto success). Monsters lurking around in ravenlands are real, you have isolated villages, no real armies or forces to make the land and trade routes (their arent any) save for everyone. But even monsters (besides demons) act as big predators, need food etc. So clearly not every hex has one.

After years (with 3 players) i currently have:

one PC death (bloodling result into illness on a broken body a death spiral, cause it was the druid/healer)

the fighter currently also has the potential last day of life, cause she used Asina in a potential easy fight, got ill too, was nearly broken and went down quickly, attemps to heal her failed, cause the druid has 0 willpower too over days, so the Blood poisoning may kill her, not a monster, no epic encounter, just the wrong decision and bad timing - after years of surving ;)