Spot Checks and the Encounter System

[Legacy_Sarcose]

               Hi, just learning to DM here. I've been wondering if there's a way to limbo encounters or otherwise alter them in response to player actions, besides just leaving them very weak in the first place and toughening them up on the fly - this could work in theory, but its sort of in the same school as DMing a tabletop game and trying to prepare for everything the players could do. I'd rather remove the encounter and maybe replace it with one where, say, the goblins aren't in position yet or are a neutral faction so the players can prepare before the engagement - the alternative is to design every hostile encounter in such a way that the monsters are always at a disadvantage and then buff them individually in response to players tripping them. That strikes me as ineloquent.

But maybe I'm showing my ignorance - I have not yet spawned encounters off the palette on the fly. Do those encounters, say, retain their trigger shapes and spawn points? Could I, using a naming system and a printed out chart of encounter shapes and properties, basically deal with this by only using encounters spawned in-game, thereby taking complete control?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rubies]

               The first thing that comes to mind is that you'd be better off using a sort of trigger/waypoint system instead of an encounter/spawn point system if you wanted to be able to dynamically adjust (or keep) spawn points without the corresponding trigger always being there/activated. I don't have much experience with the vanilla NWN encounter system to say much on that, and I'm not -entirely- sure what you're after, but it sounds like you're just after some static encounters that you can modify the monsters spawned based on some variables?

On the other note, yes, you can limbo monsters and access them through the DM Chooser menu, and they'll keep most changes you make to them.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rubies, 10 janvier 2012 - 05:26 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Sarcose]

               An example of what I'm after would be the classic ambush scenario in a tabletop pnp campaign, where with a good enough spot check (or other metric of success) your players can circumvent the ambush and catch the enemies at a disadvantage.

"Spawning in" monsters is sort of counter to roleplaying in that it doesn't allow you to prepare for it in the context of the world itself. The best thing I can honestly think of right now is to custom design every combat situation on the fly by spawning in monsters, personally giving players prompts to do spot checks beforehand so I can choose who and what to spawn in, and in what configuration (popping in from the trees to attack, or far away and looking in the other direction so the PCs can catch them off guard, for instance).

And yeah, how do you limbo encounters? Right now I'm just working with encounters in a module I downloaded and haven't added any of my own, but I can't see them when show triggers is on, and I can't seem to right click them.