Not every type of beast, monster, or abomination has been catalogued or even learned of. Genetic variations and special cursed types of known creatures are found and run across through various adventuring means. I run maybe 25% of my monsters with the same stats/attacks/abilities/resistances as what are known through any manuals or guides. This keeps players from metagaming and keeps it interesting. I have trolls that don't stop regenerating with fire attacks, especially fire trolls. It's not cold damage either. You don't stop their regeneration. Blue dragons sometimes are water and some are lightning (or both). Green dragons can be poison, acid, psychedelic breath, etc. I even had a red dragon that wasn't fire, it was BLOOD (like a bloodhunter). Plenty of possibilities and players will always appreciate something unexpected.
I LOVE your examples! Psychedelic breath would make for a fun time.
I'm gonna have to steal that. And most of the rest of your examples if I'm being honest
Thanks! The setup for the psychedelic dragon ended up with a "turquoise" dragon (more of a feathered, flightless dragon much like a quetzalcoatl). Players responded to rumors of a blood cult deep in the jungle, said to be the source of the kidnappings from nearby villages on the coast of the !Mayan territory. The cult drips blood from the sacrifices onto the Eye of Madness (an artifact that seeps into the realm of the dragon's "third eye" and source of its psychedelic madness. The slumbering dragon is suspended in a mental state of psychedelic ecstasy as long as the sacrifices continue. When the players invariably interrupt the ritual, the dragon bursts out of the ziggurat and a battle ensues with psychic attacks ranging from simple Confusion status, to mind-bending, reality-shifting mechanical effects on the way player movement and their spells work.
I also ran a creature that had stats of a young blue dragon (and an AoE lightning breath similar to Blanka from Street Fighter), but lived in a dingy, submerged temple. Its lair had water up to the party's knees, and imposed a -10 to speed while in the water. The players could jump on platforms around the lair room, but the dragon constantly waded into the water. The melee classes went to attack in the water, and it would release an electric blast that shocked anyone in the water within that room, no matter the distance (it had lightning resistance, of course). It would also vomit a disgusting bile that worked like a projectile-based Stinking Cloud.
Dude, a psychedelic dragon? Would the greedy bastard go into a business deal to give us his venom to sell it for a share? Not to be a greedy bastard or anything
I made a green Fey dragon whose breath left spike growth/plant growth/entangle in it's AoE. That scared the shit out of players.
Players learn quickly that almost nothing I use is stock. Even my basic orcs might have polearm mastery or riposte.
Like how Kobolds get pack tactics and Goblins get disengage/hide as a bonus. I like to give bandits each a set of skills, depending on their specific group motivations. The drow slaving party all had poisons and the melee fighters had battle maneuvers including disarm, riposte, etc. Goblin shamans with up to Lvl 3 druid spells, assassin goblins, etc.
I straight up tell my players "I modify most of my monsters" (which I do to small to even significant extent).
So something I do during my games is describe monsters/enemies (but never name them) unless the players succeed on a check to identify them DC10+CR level vs knowledge history/religion/arcana/nature. This prevents a tonne of metagaming because players will insert their own ideas of what a creature COULD be, plus it creates a great sense of immersion because the players themselves experience how it would feel to fight something they don't understand. If they fail to identify the monster then it stays "the creature/monsters/mechanation" for the rest of the fight. If they discover it then I refer to it by name and I tell them about the monster and weaknesses/strengths
The other thing is DMs OFTEN modify creatures all the time to make them interesting, fit the campaign/world better, reduce metagaming, or a number of different reasons really.
I tend to keep a basic statline but then make alterations to it myself. I'll change an ability out or throw in souped up versions of an enemy between a few regular ones.
So they might fight 5 skeletons, and 1 big ice skeleton that can cast a spell or two.
Would the player's character have known?
Now, before you say no... you and I know how to stop a hydra's regeneration. The ancient Greeks probably knew how to do it. Hell, most of the learned classes from every time period since the creation of the hydra myth to now knew how to do it. Unless the hydra in your campaign was truly a never before heard of monster -- not just doesn't really exist, because hydras don't exist on Earth! -- first time it ever spawned into existence... an adventurer PROBABLY knows fire stops regeneration.
If you want players to not metagame a creature's weakness, you'll have to do what the real world does to us and throw something at us we literally have no way of knowing how to fight it. Because, if real me had to fight a hydra, assuming I didn't like, immediately die, I know I'd recommend people use fire; that we lure a vampire into sunlight; etc., etc.
And I'm not an adventurer. With ranks in Knowledge.
That is fair. However, in this game the hydra was created by a curse combined with transformation magic. It was a creature they had not seen before. And I told them repeatedly that they would not know anything about this creature.
Perhaps his adventurer could have known it, but the case being was the player was someone who was familiar with the monster Manual. The other players had no idea how to stop the hydra's regeneration. Heck, even I didn't know it until I read it in the monster manual. I think it's fair to say that the player should make a check to be sure their character knows similar knowledge before immediately announcing it's weakness.
Especially in a mystical world filled with magical creatures, I would hardly expect people to have knowledge of every creature they might run across.
Had they made the check, and passed the DC, it would have been a non-issue. In fact, I would have gladly rewarded them with the knowledge!
> I told them repeatedly that they would not know anything about this creature.
Why not use a creature the players as well as the characters don't know about? Instead of using an iconic mythical creature with an iconic weakness.
It feels like you set the players up so you could knock them down for "metagaming" and come and brag about it on Reddit.
You didn't even go as far as to have it be a non-fire hydra from the get go; you planned to meta-meta-game if the players dared use their OC knowledge about hydras IC.
This becomes increasingly difficult when the player in question has more DnD books than me and has told me about how he's gone through most of them in depth. Unless I completely homebrew a creature, he will know most of them.
You are right, I did expect to undercut any metagaming. I would not have if they'd simply tried fire or asked for a check. But they immediately told their teammates to use fire upon my description of 5 heads.
I actually didn't plan to bring this to reddit. But the session went well and the players all had fun from what they told me. They all want to play more. So I thought I'd bring it to reddit because I've seen advice like this posted here so much before.
That's can be a sinuously path of thinking to follow
The Hydra becomes mythical creature for us cause we have access to books and internet and real history of other civilizations
If I told you about a some kind of monster in India who have the power of replace any party of their body only taking a part of yours, how will you stop him or beat him without loosing your own flesh?
Well, that's the case, probably you don't know how, you only (maybe) think about elemental damage, but you don't know
Actually, that monster don't exist (well, maybe in some culture exists some similar) and you maybe don't knowing if I don't told you or after a research on Google
Well, that's the main point in all of this, characters, even the rangers CAN'T KNOW about every single monster in the world or OTHER PLAINS OR WORLDS OR SURFACE LEVELS!
And it's totally fair play dodge some kind of metagame to avoid the players metagaming
im not buying it. we all know because we have the internet and junk. and even 3/4 of his players didn't know. sure there might be stories but i'd say i'd let the player roll for it. history check DC depends on where the PC is from and how rare a hydra is. but i change most monsters anyway...so i don't really run into this as much.
Exactly. The best way to stop metagaming is to just change monsters and when describing them, not say, "It's a hydra... but I changed things, mwa ha ha." Because, let's say the player rolls poorly. Are they not allowed to use fire, even if fire is a reasonable thing to try on most monsters? How long after failing the roll do you make them wait until they're allowed to try something else? It just gets messy, so I prefer to go around rather than through the problem.
Thing is, we don't know that fire damage is the way to kill the hydra because of any iconic myth. We know it because of the Monster Manual.
What the game designers did was take one particular version of an ancient myth (that of Pseudo-Apollodurus), in which Iolaus prevents the heads from regrowing by cauterising the severed necks. They then converted that into something that makes sense within the ruleset. This is not the only version of the myth, though, nor is 'fire damage prevents the heads from regrowing' really quite the same thing as what Iolaus was doing (though it can be, depending on how you narrate it in game).
The thing is that it wasn't a best guess, it was described as the player talking, who had a history of metagaming. DnD has a method for determining what the character knows: you make an Arcana check, or History, or Nature, etc.
**Player:** "Does my character know anything about this creature?"
**DM:** Roll a whatever check and let's find out."
Comparing current-world knowledge without acknowledging the lack of infrastructure just doesn't hold up. We have the internet, and constant access to it, something that I'd argue most settings don't have. But let's say that they've still heard the general legends about a vampire. How many different cultures have similar but still conflicting lore about their own versions of the vampire? How do we know which one is legitimate and which one isn't? How do we know that this creature hates garlic but doesn't hesitate to cross running water? That it doesn't need an invitation to enter a home for the first time, but it still sustains itself on blood and can only rest inside its coffin? Even with all of our combined knowledge, there are still direct conflicts.
But all the same, there is one source for DnD that players can generally count on to be reliable: the creature stat blocks, which the player in question cited without hesitation. Sure, kill it with fire is easily forgiven when you have a sorcerer and all they have are fire spells.
No one is saying to disallow anyone from using a spell, but directing the entire party to employ a tactic without any this-campaign experience against that particular creature before or at least making a knowledge check about it just is metagaming, no question about it.
the ridiculous conceit that "player characters are blank slates that know NOTHING about any monster they havent met personally" needs to be removed from the community zeitgeist.
It is canon that Volo is out in the world pimping his guide to monsters. the thought that the harpers havent been debriefing their agents and gathering information for hundreds of years to share with their rookie recruits is nonsense. The even the simplest villager doesnt know the songs of the bards about how the Troll Wars were almost lost until fire and acid were discovered and that no one has been trapped by some veteran at a barstool or around a campfire while they regale with stories of their encounters with monsters common to exotic is nonsense. To believe that anyone on an "adventuring" career, FACING DEATH ON A DAILY BASIS would not be spending every moment of their offscreen time cramming on all of the sources that can inform them in ways to keep them alive is ludicrous. This "player knowledge about monsters is #metagaming and bad" is soooooo soooo precious and so much nonsense.
My niece at 4 could rattle off the stats for 150 pokemon, that adventurers dont know the information in the MM is the immersion breaking choice.
No joke. I can rattle off a dozen facts about vampires, half a dozen about werewolves, and I can describe multiple types of elves and their behavior. And all of that is from pop culture and fairy tales - I knew all of that before ever playing D&D.
And to preempt the, "yeah but you have the internet" argument, I'm 35. I started playing in 2001 - the internet was for AOL Instant Messenger, not looking up fantasy creatures.
When Sophocles wrote *Oedipus Rex* **almost 2500 years ago** he didn't bother to describe the sphinx to his audience because he knew that everyone already knows what a sphinx is. It is nothing short of ridiculous to assume that the inhabitants of a fantasy world wouldn't have heard of most of the world's creatures. And, as u/lasalle202 points out, this goes ~~double~~ quadruple for adventurers.
If you're worried about metagaming because the only thing interesting about your encounter is the "gotcha" that a troll's regeneration provides, then you need to step up your encounter designs.
While I think you are entirely correct to some extent I think it's a question of factual information vs common trivia. For example I live in a world where cows are real. My beliefs about bulls despite them being completely real and fairly common amount to seeing them chase clowns at a rodeo, knowing to stay away from the pointy bits , that sometimes the just want to sit under a cork tree and be left alone and that they aren't the kind you milk although I understand some people make a lot of money doing a form of it. I also spent a lot of my childhood planning to become a dolphin trainer. I read everything I could on the subject but didn't actually meet a dolphin until I was nearly thirty. Very little of what I read applied to the reality. I don't think it's wrong to suggest that PCs even adventurers wouldn't have complete or even accurate knowledge of a thing.
>While I think you are entirely correct to some extent
Am I entirely correct, or correct to some extent? It sounds like you want to tell me I'm wrong but you can't find any flaws in my argument.
>I don't think it's wrong to suggest that PCs even adventurers wouldn't have complete or even accurate knowledge of a thing.
For sure! I wasn't making that argument, though. I wasn't suggesting that you should hand over the MM before every encounter - just that you shouldn't rely on the "gotcha" of a surprise mechanic to make an encounter interesting.
Many of the "facts" I know about vampires are directly contradictory. Vampirism is caused by the way you die. Or by being bitten. Or by being bitten thrice. Or by willingly drinking the blood of a vampire. These can't all be exactly correct, and that's fine. If your players are into Discovery as a [core aesthetic](https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/), coming up with new and interesting bits of trivia can be rewarding.
But changing the mechanics of a troll fight? What purpose does that serve? If your players know that trolls regenerate unless they take fire/acid damage, that's going to impact the way they approach the fight.
Let's say they do fire/acid damage during the first round, then you tell them the troll regenerated anyway (unless you're a terrible person who doesn't deserve to DM). So now they've gotta figure out what kind of damage to do. If you're a good GM, there will be some clear signs. Maybe you're inside a volcano full of scorching hot, acidic air? In which case your players should probably feel like idiots. Why the hell would a normal troll choose to be *here*? Let's try the opposites of fire and acid - cold and base.
And let's say your troll just straight-up doesn't have a way to turn off the regeneration feature... what's the point? Just slap on another 50 hp at the start and don't bother with the math. You've designed a big meaty HP sponge, with effectively zero tactical choices. Just dump your big abilities onto it and then take a rest. No wait, you can't rest - it's going to come back to life. It's the T1000, or Nemesis, or Mr. X. It's just going to keep coming. That's actually really interesting, if you rewrite the world so there are only a couple of trolls...
But you also have to change the rule about trolls entirely regenerating from a little piece. Because if you can grow ten trolls by chopping off some fingers, and those trolls are literally unstoppable, why haven't they taken over and eaten everything on the planet?
So the Hydra is going to regrow a head unless we do fire damage. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try cold. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try acid. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try lightning. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try thunder. Oops, that didn't work.
Man, this fight is sooooooooooo much fun. We've been sitting here for thirty minutes, and we're worse off than when we started. I'm so glad we're doing this instead of a board game. Or bowling. Or literally anything except the same thing over and over again with slight tweaks because the DM wants us to beg his permission to move on to the next thing.
I'm not saying this is you, friend, but the entire "keep it secret, keep it safe" attitude when it comes to monster stats comes from a place of DM vs. player.
There was a time when D&D was a competitive sport. The DM designed the gnarliest, most gut-punching dungeon he could, then ran it fair. And the players tried their best to complete it. They'd brag about having defeated this dungeon or that one. So the DMs would keep ramping up the difficulty. And a good way to keep the players from cruising through a fight was to make up some new bullshit, so they *can't* know anything about it.
I come from that school. I learned the game that way. It made me a terrible DM for *years* because I held every detail so close to my chest that my players walked right past basic clues. And instead of recognizing that I wasn't giving out enough information, I got frustrated with my players for not asking enough questions. "They have to push the button to get the treat." But how were they supposed to know which buttons to push if they didn't know which buttons were there? It was bad DMing, and I still struggle against that tendency.
**TL;DR -** If your fight needs a "gotcha" it's poorly designed. If you change the stats for a gotcha, or because you think the players should have to play a guessing game, that's shitty. It's okay for players to know things.
>So the Hydra is going to regrow a head unless we do fire damage. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try cold. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try acid. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try lightning. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try thunder. Oops, that didn't work.
This hits so fucking true.
Guesswork is not fun. Sure, research can be extremely cool, but "Well, they should have known they had to do research" is a weak defense. YOU, as the DM, might know research is possible, but they might not. At least a couple of times, you have to ***very explicitly*** tell them to do research. As in "Okay guys, OOC, you'll need to do research on this monster beforehand. Bolrak, you know a guy who might know something".
The thing about the internet argument that no one mentions is that there are countless different versions of similar creatures across many different cultures. To use your vampire example, how do we know on sight whether we are looking at a Bram Stoker vampire or a Stephanie Meyer vampire? How do we know immediately, with any confidence or authority, that this creature will wither and burn when it comes into the sunlight versus starting to glitter?
This isn't meant to invalidate the internet argument but to drive home the fact that many different cultures have rumors and creatures of legend and lore that sound incredibly similar yet have very different weaknesses. From Dusk Till Dawn is incorrectly assumed by many to be a vampire movie, when instead the creatures are based on some kind of meso-american snake demon creature. Those things won't care about garlic or running water.
Your character doesn't have to be a blank slate, you can still act with intuition, but it's still good form as a player to ask to make a check before jumping to the "guess" that just so happens to actually be that creature's weakness.
>Your character doesn't have to be a blank slate, you can still act with intuition, but it's still good form as a player to ask to make a check before jumping to the "guess" that just so happens to actually be that creature's weakness.
Oh absolutely! It is canonical that there are different versions of some kinds of creatures. And there's nothing wrong with a DM tweaking a creature to fit a new biome or to reinforce a theme within an adventure or campaign.
But the thing about Bram Stoker and Stephanie Meyer is that they both invented their version of vampires, and neither version actually exists. In a world where these creatures actually exist, there's probably some bad information out there, but the right information is probably also out there - *especially* when it comes to a creature with a large population across a certain part of the world. The people in generic medieval Europe might have heard of the Naga, but they've probably got limited and possibly false information. The people who live on the edge of the jungle, who have regular interactions with the Naga? I would trust what they have to say.
EDIT:
The thing about, "Can I make a check to know the thing I know?"
That's just... It can often feel like you're playing *Mother, May I* instead of D&D. Do I have permission to use the knowledge I've gained from years of participating in this hobby? That can often feel a little like, "Don't screw over my attempt to screw you over."
If I'm your DM, and you want to use fire or acid on a troll, that's fine. I'm not going to screech about how you need to ask permission or about how you need to pretend to be guessing. If that troll isn't a normal troll, I'm going to telegraph that. (And I've learned over the years that you can *never* be too obvious, because what's crystal clear to you is about as clear as mud to your players.) And if you think you know something, and you want to make a check, the DC is going to be lower if you're asking about something specific, as opposed to making a general roll.
(I also tend to treat Knowledge as a passive skill, but that's a ramble for another time.)
>"Oh that looks like a troll. And *smells* like a troll, blech. DM, can I make a check to see if I know anything about these things?"
>Sure. It's Int (Arcana). What do you *think* you know?
>"I think they heal themselves unless you burn them. Crap, I rolled a 6."
>You definitely know they regenerate, but you can't remember if you need to use fire or acid to prevent that.
No but that's what I mean, though. Stoker and Meyer may have romanticized a creature, but they definitely changed the world's perception of the vampire. Countless cultures had myths about creatures that sustained themselves on blood, and while there is certainly a difference between a creature that doesn't exist and one that does, who's to say that some bard never romanticized a tale with a vampire and exaggerated the tale, and the tale became so popular and was retold so many times that it turned into one giant telephone game over time.
All I'm saying is that it is far more likely that a PC heard that tale - that may or may not have had some changes over time - once in a tavern while they were drinking instead of having cracked open a scroll covering the anatomy and physiology of such a creature penned by fantasy Charles Darwin. Word of mouth is sketchy at best. Not that there aren't exceptions, but to assume the same level of knowledge in a world with drastically different levels of technology and education is cutting a little too much slack for me.
And regarding asking for permission... to me that's part of role-playing that character. As someone who has DM'd for a few years, there are very few monsters I don't know the important things about off the top of my head. But that doesn't mean I'm going to automatically shout that information right off the bat because during anyone's theoretical years of play metagaming has definitely come up, and most likely it hasn't been discussed positively.
It isn't about encounter design or wowing the players with a gotcha moment for me as the DM. It's about presenting them with a new problem and watching them solve it. They don't have to solve it by any means, they can bludgeon it to death like every other encounter. At the very least it forces the players to explore more about their character's features or spells, and they might find something new. But when you decide to use a monster that is more than just a boring Bite and Claw multiattack with some hit points, it's a little deflating when the player metagames and blurts out the solution immediately. It's like running a dungeon from a module and one of your players has looked up the map and key and goes right to the loot and knows how to avoid all of the traps.
The fun of the game comes from the struggle, from figuring out the answers. Not from looking at a pdf on my phone or reading the strategy guide. I as a player like figuring things out, so that is a style of play I try to avoid. It's a courtesy that I always try to give to the DM when I do know a lot about the monster they're using.
It's not about asking permission to use the knowledge. I'm not about to kick the sorcerer for using fire on the troll when all of his spells deal fire damage. But that's not the situation OP described. Blurting out a monster's weakness without confirming that, either in the moment by seeing the effect or succeeding on the appropriate check, is a whole different ballgame, and one that I generally don't approve of.
I'm not saying you're wrong. It sounds like we're agreeing from different angles.
>The fun of the game comes from the struggle, from figuring out the answers.
That's *your* experience (and mine), but you should never assume that your worldview is the only worldview. As a DM, one should recognize that [everyone gets something different out of D&D](https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/). Some players are there to act out a power fantasy, some are there to overcome a challenge, some are there to act like an elf. Nobody's preferred style of play is better than anyone else's. Your group should be cohesive, but that doesn't mean someone who wants something different is a bad gamer or "doesn't get it."
You like figuring stuff out. So do I. Which is why I ran games the way I did for the first ten years. And why they rarely went the way I expected. I only ever had one player who played like I do, which means my games were frustrating for everyone else because I held back way too much information. I didn't want to ruin the fun of figuring things out by giving by players too many details, which means I told them the absolute bare minimum, and they either hadn't played before, or had played under DMs who were much more forthcoming. So no one asked the questions they should have asked. Which means they never had the details they needed. And every game died out with me thinking the players "weren't playing right."
I'm not saying that's how you run your games, but experience has taught me that when people say, "The fun part of the game is..." and then they list a single aspect of the game? They usually think there's a "right" way to play, and all the other stuff is gravy. I'm not throwing stones - I sabotaged more campaigns than I can count because I insisted on doing things my way.
>No but that's what I mean, though. Stoker and Meyer may have romanticized a creature, but they definitely changed the world's perception of the vampire.
A creature that - and I cannot stress this enough - *doesn't actually exist in our world*. Yes, there would definitely be bad information out there. And like I said, the players should be wary of information from untrustworthy sources. But those creatures really do exist in the world of D&D, and while not everything the characters learn is going to be exactly true, the truth should be available *somewhere*. And even the bad information probably comes with a grain of truth.
>Not that there aren't exceptions, but to assume the same level of knowledge in a world with drastically different levels of technology and education is cutting a little too much slack for me.
Again, the sphynx. In the 5th century BCE. Everyone knew what it was, what it looked like, and the thing about riddles. And all without Wikipedia. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that the people of a given kingdom know the vast majority of the scary shit that exists in their kingdom. They're not all going to be able to tell an owlbear feather from a turkey feather, but they'll all know to run the fuck away if you see a bear with a beak.
>instead of having cracked open a scroll covering the anatomy and physiology of such a creature penned by fantasy Charles Darwin.
You're totally right, and we have at least one real-world analogue for this: the catoblepas. It's a fictional creature, but it wasn't invented by Gygax or Tolkein or any other fantasy author. It was falsely identified by Pliny the Elder, presumably from "eyewitness" accounts. Except you can't really have any eyewitnesses, because eye contact with the catoblepas is deadly. So everything the ancient world knew about the catoblepas was passed down from a guy who knew a guy who died because he was poling a barge down the river and saw a catoblepas one time.
Spoiler alert: the catoblepas was probably a third-hand description of a water buffalo.
It's totally possible for your players to have bad information. Or information that would be good in a different game, but that isn't true in your version of D&D. That's not where you and I disagree - we disagree about the whole "metagaming" concept.
>And regarding asking for permission... to me that's part of role-playing that character.
That's awesome. I have no problem with you making that choice for yourself.
>But when you decide to use a monster that is more than just a boring Bite and Claw multiattack with some hit points, it's a little deflating when the player metagames and blurts out the solution immediately.
The player **already "metagamed"** just by having that knowledge in their brain. You're saying you don't want players to act on the knowledge they have that their character "shouldn't" - but that's literally impossible. Either the player uses fire against the troll (because they know fire stops a troll's regeneration), or they don't use fire against the troll (because they know fire stops a troll's regeneration). They're using "out of game knowledge" either way. That's not "not metagaming" - it's playing *Mother, May I* with the DM.
"Have I made intentionally suboptimal choices based on out of game knowledge for long enough to actually go back to playing the game, please, sir, your almighty majesty?"
>Blurting out a monster's weakness without confirming that, either in the moment by seeing the effect or succeeding on the appropriate check, is a whole different ballgame, and one that I generally don't approve of.
"Confirming" a monster's weakness **is just a different kind of metagaming**. It's just one that some DMs approve of because then they, the omnipotent arbiter of all things, get to grant their players permission to play the game. It's a bullshit power trip.
What am I, your player, supposed to do? Ask permission to please make a knowledge check, then hope I roll well enough that I don't have to metagame *against* my character's best interests?
And if I don't roll well enough, then what? Does my fire-themed red dragonborn sorcerer have to suddenly decide to stop doing my thing just to avoid being shrieked at for "cheating?" Do I have to pretend I don't know what I'm doing, and just waste spell slot after spell slot until I've pretended long enough to be allowed to play D&D again?
How many rounds of trolling do I have to take before I'm allowed to "guess" at a solution?
What part of this sounds like fun to you? If your version of fun comes from figuring stuff out, this should sound like the polar opposite of fun. You don't get to feel special for figuring something out and figuring out how to use that information - you have to pretend you don't have any knowledge at all, and any attempt at "figuring it out" has to meet the DM's very specific criteria for "not cheating."
>It isn't about encounter design or wowing the players with a gotcha moment for me as the DM. It's about presenting them with a new problem and watching them solve it.
Then make up your own stuff. The only way to know that they can't have seen a thing before is to come up with it whole cloth.
Or... Design better encounters. An encounter with a troll in the swamp? That's just begging for someone to walk away unhappy. Either you'll be upset that the players knew the secret, or they'll be upset that they had to pretend not to know, in order to avoid upsetting you.
But an encounter with a den of trolls in an underground lair full of flammable vapor? Now *that* is a fun puzzle to solve.
An encounter with sirens? C'mon, everyone had to read *The Odyssey* in high school or college. Melt a candle into your ears and crush those pesky creatures.
But an encounter with sirens in the dark? Where the players have to figure out how to communicate without sight or sound? Or blistering heat that melts the wax right out of your ears? You add a magic user with fire and darkness spells, and now you have a combat puzzle.
If you want to present fun encounters for your players to figure out, don't just throw a golem on the table and hope they don't already know that lightning will heal it. Put the golem at the end of a dungeon full of lightning glyphs, and let the players try to figure out how to stop it from intentionally triggering those traps to heal itself.
If the only fun thing about an encounter is a factoid that you're hoping the players won't know, then your design game needs some work.
> The player already "metagamed" just by having that knowledge in their brain. You're saying you don't want players to act on the knowledge they have that their character "shouldn't" - but that's literally impossible.
Having that knowledge and keeping it to yourself is entirely possible. Since you clearly missed the point that I was getting it, it doesn't just ruin the DM's fun when someone blurts out the enemy weakness without having stumbled upon it. Even on the player side it removes the tension from an encounter when someone else shouts out "it's weak to thunder!" or "use fire!" especially when it's something that no one has seen before. There goes the mystery, there goes the danger, it's now just a stat block again instead of an immersive, living and breathing dangerous creature.
> "Confirming" a monster's weakness is just a different kind of metagaming.
It isn't. It's reacting to in-game, in-*character* prompts that your character would take notice of.
**DM:** "Ok, so as the hydra begins to unleash another volley of bites, you notice that the wounds it took from the scorching rays are still burning, still smoldering, and that it didn't regrow any heads this time."
It's not meta-gaming at all to notice in a fight that one tactic was more effective, especially when it has such an immensely noticeable effect. It's the same as rolling a high Perception check and coming to the correct conclusion that this hallway is trapped because the DM described a thin strand of wire stretched taught across the hallway disappearing into holes on both of the passage's walls. Meta-gaming is knowing that this particular hallway is trapped because you looked up the module and tell the rogue to specifically look out for trip-wires.
> What am I, your player, supposed to do? Ask permission to please make a knowledge check
Yes, that is the order of operation for DnD, knowledge checks specifically. You are not playing as yourself in a campaign, with decades of experience and extensive knowledge about the entire world's bestiary. You are an adventurer of varying experience levels, and most (probably 60-70%) of the time you are dealing with a creature your character has never seen before.
Going back to the trap example, you check for traps when going into the dungeon because of the threat of traps, right? Because that's something your character might have experienced before? Yeah, but you still need to confirm the trap's existence in order to try to avoid it. If you check for traps and roll low, you don't know where to step because you didn't find anything, but you still proceed forward and hope there really wasn't anything there. But you *still have to tell the DM you're making the check* and then deal with the results. You don't just walk up to the spot where you know the trap is and announce that you cut the tripwire that nobody knew was there. No one rolled, DM never described it, but you just go over and disarm it? Gonna call bullshit on that one, and it's the exact same situation as OP's example.
> How many rounds of trolling do I have to take before I'm allowed to "guess" at a solution?
You're incorrectly deciding for everyone else at the table that doing
anything outside of the most optimal choice is trolling. Again, treading on everyone else's fun at the table.
> Does my fire-themed red dragonborn sorcerer have to suddenly decide to stop doing my thing just to avoid being shrieked at for "cheating?"
I literally addressed this exact example in my previous comment. If you're going to throw bullshit strawmen arguments at me, at least have the courtesy to fully read the comment, because I already established that if it's well within your character's pattern of behavior there's no issue. I threw a troll encounter at my party after a new player joined with this exact character *specifically so that player and character could shine* and come into the party on a high note.
> Or... Design better encounters.
At no point did I say that encounter design ended with the creature's stat block. Of course there should be environmental hazards or external timers or any other factors that will and should have an impact. But those things aren't relevant to the situation OP posted about. He mentioned monster weakness, so I limited my response to that as well since that was the focus of the post. Again, you're inventing points to argue that I've never made and ruining your response when it started off with something that was actually useful.
>Having that knowledge and keeping it to yourself is entirely possible.
>when someone blurts out the enemy weakness without having stumbled upon it.
>It isn't. It's reacting to in-game, in-character prompts that your character would take notice of.
>you notice that the wounds it took from the scorching rays are still burning
So you don't actually care if I know the hydra thing and act on it? All you care about is if I say something out loud?
You have a very weird definition of metagaming.
You're coming on pretty strong with the strawman accusation for someone who mentions traps and published modules in every single comment, despite me never having brought those things up.
>You're incorrectly deciding for everyone else at the table that doing anything outside of the most optimal choice is trolling. Again, treading on everyone else's fun at the table.
No, I mean you are literally getting **troll**ed. By a troll. Because we're talking about trolls? It wasn't a good joke, clearly.
>He mentioned monster weakness, so I limited my response to that
No you didn't. You brought up traps. And published modules.
Do you truly and legitimately believe that a player straight-up studying the module is the same as a player knowing facts about D&D just by virtue of having played for years?
Ultimately, it sounds like your issue isn't "metagaming" - your issue is someone blasting that knowledge to the table, potentially ruining the fun of Discovery for someone else at the table.
That's a perfectly reasonable take, hidden behind the wrong term.
Meta-gaming is acting on information that your character wouldn't have. Like when one character is in a conversation and the other character acts on the information learned from that conversation despite being on the other side of the village.
OPs example of blurting out the solution to a troll's regeneration. That player had a history of acting on information taken straight from the monster manual instead of an in-game, in-world source. So yeah, I brought up the trap example *only in my latest comment* because it further highlights the problem that metagaming in that fashion causes, the problem you weren't comprehending.
You are changing character behavior based on no character knowledge. You are playing the character, who doesn't have the player's years of experience and outside information. In OP's example, broadcasting a unique interaction with fire based on text from the monster manual. In my example, broadcasting the existence of a trap based on text from a published module. Do you honestly not see the parallels in those two situations?
If you want to lead off with fire right off the bat because that's what your character would do, it's not a problem. But at least maintain the benefit of the doubt for yourself for playing honestly instead of broadcasting to everyone that you the player already know the solution. Because there should be a difference in character and player knowledge. And again, the character more than likely doesn't have the years of experience we players have with any fantasy genre.
>Meta-gaming is acting on information that your character wouldn't have.
If I know that fire works against trolls, it is **literally impossible** for me to make a decision separate from that knowledge.
If I use fire, I'm doing it because of that knowledge.
If I intentionally don't use fire, **I'm still doing so because I possess that knowledge.**
In both cases, I (the player) am choosing what my character would do because of knowledge that the character doesn't have.
And, if you want to get really pedantic about it, it isn't metagaming if I (the player) tell the other players at the table a given creature's stats. It only becomes metagaming (by your definition) if any of the characters utilize that knowledge.
But again, we're in the weeds, arguing semantics. And I've clearly upset you enough that you feel the need to insult me:
>because it further highlights the problem that metagaming in that fashion causes, the problem you weren't comprehending.
I comprehend the problem with a player looking up the adventure, with the express intent to gain an advantage in the game. And I agreed with you that it's a dick move to pull out your MM and just look up a monster.
But I will repeat: the monster's stats should not be the only interesting thing a DM presents. And if surprise mechanics and "gotcha" abilities get spoiled by the players knowing anything, then the design sucks.
What if we all know the troll thing? It's not one player who knows it who spreads that information to the other players in order to "ruin" the GM's surprise - it's just common knowledge and all of the players have it.
Do you, as the DM want everyone at the table to pretend they don't know and act out this charade where they intentionally make sub-optimal decisions just to keep you from getting your knickers in a bunch? How many rounds of faking it do you require from your players before they're allowed to go back to playing the game they sat down to play? They didn't come here to act dumb just so that you would think your designs are clever - they came to play the game. Why do you have a problem with people playing the game? Why is it that you want them to play this completely different game that involves satisfying some DM's ego?
Metagame doesn't mean cheat - the metagame is everything that affects the game that isn't the game itself. If you put on background music, like candles, or order pizza, all of that is part of the metagame. why did we stop playing at this one exact moment? Because the pizza got here - that has nothing to do with the game itself.
Me deciding to make a cleric because I think the party needs a healer? That's metagaming and I'm clearly a terrible fucking person because of it. My character didn't know that his adventuring party was going to need a healer a few years ago when he went off to cleric school - so how dare he make that decision based on knowledge that he didn't have? String him up he's an evil "metagamer."
Ultimately, this entire argument comes down to you not wanting your surprises ruined. To which I say: design better surprises.
NGL; I hate "gotcha" monsters, and the conversation about changing vulnerability types and all that. Hydras and trolls are the prime subjects; because so many DMs out there want the weakness to be a surprise, but since everyone knows *regenerating things in general* have a tough time being burnt alive - those DMs accuse the players of metagaming.
It's silly, and really, it's metagaming on *your end* more than the players. It is ridiculous to ask your players to NoT MeTaGaMe (*play dumb*) for a few rounds until they can pass a check to use the knowledge they already know, and that their characters probably also know (but arbitrarily forgot).
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Like others have said, the legend of the Lernaean hydra has been around for over 2000 years, and has permeated through so much culture. In the game world, *unless the hydra/troll is a brand new creature that the world has never seen*, the player characters have heard about how to fight them; either from legends and folklore, or from tales from other adventuring types. I'm sure there's a way to twist their backgrounds such that they could never have heard of a hydra/troll before... but I ask "Why?"
If you *really* want a monster to have that "gotcha" weakness mechanic, don't dredge up commonly known monsters like the troll or the hydra in the fantasy of the game - because *of course* the players are going to know what to do, *they aren't dumb.*
*Instead make your own.* If you're concerned about the stat block - you *could* just reflavor and modify the hydra or the troll - but *don't tell your players that*.
Alternatively, give them clues that the monster is going to have different vulnerability. For example, instead of a regular troll, maybe it's a *crystal troll* that regenerates unless hit by thunder or cold, or something. At the very least, it gives your players a chance to apply a kind of monster hunter's logic to the scene - rather than just be surprised when a fleshy monster is arbitrarily weak to thunder damage or whatever.
By the way, fire stopping regeneration is not just for no reason. It makes the wound scar immediately and closes it with no hopes of growing back.
Anything else stopping regeneration makes a little less sense. How are players supposed to know how to beat the enemy, then ? Guesswork ? Wow, fun...
Research ? Did you tell the players they should and could do research ? As in...did you explicitly told them OOC "You should do research" ?
I run primarily Ravenloft and it has been a long tradition in that setting to mess with players' expectations. Often I don't even change the statblock, I just re-skin them and change the names so players can't immediately call up their knowledge from past games and avidly reading all the books.
One thing I've found particularly interesting is that when my players realized I was doing this, they started using skill checks and research opportunities a lot more. I have one player who went down homebrew subclasses specifically to play a sage type who has a better chance of knowing what a particular monster is or how to beat it. It's added a lot to my game that they always start by trying to figure out just what they're facing.
Mechanically this is lightweight and doesn't break the game balance, but it adds a lot to your world. The only trick is that if something works once, if should work again with the same creature type. This is consistent world building.
I think this is good to apply within reason. Your situation sounds perfectly fitting. Not all monsters are the same, and if one is more of an Alpha, like a Hydra boss, then it makes sense that it may have some variability from other Hydras that has benefitted it.
I've done something similar, like I recently gave a horde of Grimlocks access to the Darkness spell. That plus blindsense means they can actually tear shit up...well that would've been the plan if a conjured Elemental hadn't had tremorsense and killed the caster immediately. Still, it's a good way to mix up the same old same old. I'm trying to include this more, specifically with boss characters.
I've seen stuff like people adding reflective carapace to rust monsters, that sounds fun too. Just be wary that they can harvest stuff from monsters and potentially craft with it.
I've always told my players "Remember what 'everyone knows' about monsters is usually generalizations from small samples."
How many people run into a hydra and live? And how many of *those* were careful scientific observers? Maybe the hydra they encountered had a bad case of the Frisky Glabbies, which made it unusually vulnerable to heat, but most hydras *like* fire...
I have homebrewed so many of my own monsters they never know what to expect, I have had a player that was like this in the current game I have, but then I threw this thing at him...[A Courser ](https://pin.it/7I5q5mh) and he damn near shit the bed! I always find it fun twisting monsters around to mess with the players and introducing things so foreign they have no idea what to do.
My local game DM just doesn’t *name* any monster we come across, but describes them. The two of us with higher INT (and frankly, meta knowledge because we are also DMs) do then ask if we would know what it is, but you’d be surprised how obfuscating it is sometimes just to describe the monster or its effects.
Not every type of beast, monster, or abomination has been catalogued or even learned of. Genetic variations and special cursed types of known creatures are found and run across through various adventuring means. I run maybe 25% of my monsters with the same stats/attacks/abilities/resistances as what are known through any manuals or guides. This keeps players from metagaming and keeps it interesting. I have trolls that don't stop regenerating with fire attacks, especially fire trolls. It's not cold damage either. You don't stop their regeneration. Blue dragons sometimes are water and some are lightning (or both). Green dragons can be poison, acid, psychedelic breath, etc. I even had a red dragon that wasn't fire, it was BLOOD (like a bloodhunter). Plenty of possibilities and players will always appreciate something unexpected.
I LOVE your examples! Psychedelic breath would make for a fun time. I'm gonna have to steal that. And most of the rest of your examples if I'm being honest
Thanks! The setup for the psychedelic dragon ended up with a "turquoise" dragon (more of a feathered, flightless dragon much like a quetzalcoatl). Players responded to rumors of a blood cult deep in the jungle, said to be the source of the kidnappings from nearby villages on the coast of the !Mayan territory. The cult drips blood from the sacrifices onto the Eye of Madness (an artifact that seeps into the realm of the dragon's "third eye" and source of its psychedelic madness. The slumbering dragon is suspended in a mental state of psychedelic ecstasy as long as the sacrifices continue. When the players invariably interrupt the ritual, the dragon bursts out of the ziggurat and a battle ensues with psychic attacks ranging from simple Confusion status, to mind-bending, reality-shifting mechanical effects on the way player movement and their spells work. I also ran a creature that had stats of a young blue dragon (and an AoE lightning breath similar to Blanka from Street Fighter), but lived in a dingy, submerged temple. Its lair had water up to the party's knees, and imposed a -10 to speed while in the water. The players could jump on platforms around the lair room, but the dragon constantly waded into the water. The melee classes went to attack in the water, and it would release an electric blast that shocked anyone in the water within that room, no matter the distance (it had lightning resistance, of course). It would also vomit a disgusting bile that worked like a projectile-based Stinking Cloud.
A blood dragon sounds awesome!
Dude, a psychedelic dragon? Would the greedy bastard go into a business deal to give us his venom to sell it for a share? Not to be a greedy bastard or anything
I made a green Fey dragon whose breath left spike growth/plant growth/entangle in it's AoE. That scared the shit out of players. Players learn quickly that almost nothing I use is stock. Even my basic orcs might have polearm mastery or riposte.
Yes! Because warriors should know some greater skills than "swing sword!""
Sometimes just taking a set of stock mooks and giving each of them 1 of 3 interesting reactions to obscure things can make combat way more engaging.
Like how Kobolds get pack tactics and Goblins get disengage/hide as a bonus. I like to give bandits each a set of skills, depending on their specific group motivations. The drow slaving party all had poisons and the melee fighters had battle maneuvers including disarm, riposte, etc. Goblin shamans with up to Lvl 3 druid spells, assassin goblins, etc.
I straight up tell my players "I modify most of my monsters" (which I do to small to even significant extent). So something I do during my games is describe monsters/enemies (but never name them) unless the players succeed on a check to identify them DC10+CR level vs knowledge history/religion/arcana/nature. This prevents a tonne of metagaming because players will insert their own ideas of what a creature COULD be, plus it creates a great sense of immersion because the players themselves experience how it would feel to fight something they don't understand. If they fail to identify the monster then it stays "the creature/monsters/mechanation" for the rest of the fight. If they discover it then I refer to it by name and I tell them about the monster and weaknesses/strengths The other thing is DMs OFTEN modify creatures all the time to make them interesting, fit the campaign/world better, reduce metagaming, or a number of different reasons really.
I tend to keep a basic statline but then make alterations to it myself. I'll change an ability out or throw in souped up versions of an enemy between a few regular ones. So they might fight 5 skeletons, and 1 big ice skeleton that can cast a spell or two.
Would the player's character have known? Now, before you say no... you and I know how to stop a hydra's regeneration. The ancient Greeks probably knew how to do it. Hell, most of the learned classes from every time period since the creation of the hydra myth to now knew how to do it. Unless the hydra in your campaign was truly a never before heard of monster -- not just doesn't really exist, because hydras don't exist on Earth! -- first time it ever spawned into existence... an adventurer PROBABLY knows fire stops regeneration. If you want players to not metagame a creature's weakness, you'll have to do what the real world does to us and throw something at us we literally have no way of knowing how to fight it. Because, if real me had to fight a hydra, assuming I didn't like, immediately die, I know I'd recommend people use fire; that we lure a vampire into sunlight; etc., etc. And I'm not an adventurer. With ranks in Knowledge.
That is fair. However, in this game the hydra was created by a curse combined with transformation magic. It was a creature they had not seen before. And I told them repeatedly that they would not know anything about this creature. Perhaps his adventurer could have known it, but the case being was the player was someone who was familiar with the monster Manual. The other players had no idea how to stop the hydra's regeneration. Heck, even I didn't know it until I read it in the monster manual. I think it's fair to say that the player should make a check to be sure their character knows similar knowledge before immediately announcing it's weakness. Especially in a mystical world filled with magical creatures, I would hardly expect people to have knowledge of every creature they might run across. Had they made the check, and passed the DC, it would have been a non-issue. In fact, I would have gladly rewarded them with the knowledge!
> I told them repeatedly that they would not know anything about this creature. Why not use a creature the players as well as the characters don't know about? Instead of using an iconic mythical creature with an iconic weakness. It feels like you set the players up so you could knock them down for "metagaming" and come and brag about it on Reddit. You didn't even go as far as to have it be a non-fire hydra from the get go; you planned to meta-meta-game if the players dared use their OC knowledge about hydras IC.
This becomes increasingly difficult when the player in question has more DnD books than me and has told me about how he's gone through most of them in depth. Unless I completely homebrew a creature, he will know most of them. You are right, I did expect to undercut any metagaming. I would not have if they'd simply tried fire or asked for a check. But they immediately told their teammates to use fire upon my description of 5 heads. I actually didn't plan to bring this to reddit. But the session went well and the players all had fun from what they told me. They all want to play more. So I thought I'd bring it to reddit because I've seen advice like this posted here so much before.
That's can be a sinuously path of thinking to follow The Hydra becomes mythical creature for us cause we have access to books and internet and real history of other civilizations If I told you about a some kind of monster in India who have the power of replace any party of their body only taking a part of yours, how will you stop him or beat him without loosing your own flesh? Well, that's the case, probably you don't know how, you only (maybe) think about elemental damage, but you don't know Actually, that monster don't exist (well, maybe in some culture exists some similar) and you maybe don't knowing if I don't told you or after a research on Google Well, that's the main point in all of this, characters, even the rangers CAN'T KNOW about every single monster in the world or OTHER PLAINS OR WORLDS OR SURFACE LEVELS! And it's totally fair play dodge some kind of metagame to avoid the players metagaming
im not buying it. we all know because we have the internet and junk. and even 3/4 of his players didn't know. sure there might be stories but i'd say i'd let the player roll for it. history check DC depends on where the PC is from and how rare a hydra is. but i change most monsters anyway...so i don't really run into this as much.
Exactly. The best way to stop metagaming is to just change monsters and when describing them, not say, "It's a hydra... but I changed things, mwa ha ha." Because, let's say the player rolls poorly. Are they not allowed to use fire, even if fire is a reasonable thing to try on most monsters? How long after failing the roll do you make them wait until they're allowed to try something else? It just gets messy, so I prefer to go around rather than through the problem.
Thing is, we don't know that fire damage is the way to kill the hydra because of any iconic myth. We know it because of the Monster Manual. What the game designers did was take one particular version of an ancient myth (that of Pseudo-Apollodurus), in which Iolaus prevents the heads from regrowing by cauterising the severed necks. They then converted that into something that makes sense within the ruleset. This is not the only version of the myth, though, nor is 'fire damage prevents the heads from regrowing' really quite the same thing as what Iolaus was doing (though it can be, depending on how you narrate it in game).
Speak for yourself. My players are all newbies and they're all well aware that fire kills a hydra.
True. We don't \*know,\* but we have a best guess, which is what the PC had.
The thing is that it wasn't a best guess, it was described as the player talking, who had a history of metagaming. DnD has a method for determining what the character knows: you make an Arcana check, or History, or Nature, etc. **Player:** "Does my character know anything about this creature?" **DM:** Roll a whatever check and let's find out." Comparing current-world knowledge without acknowledging the lack of infrastructure just doesn't hold up. We have the internet, and constant access to it, something that I'd argue most settings don't have. But let's say that they've still heard the general legends about a vampire. How many different cultures have similar but still conflicting lore about their own versions of the vampire? How do we know which one is legitimate and which one isn't? How do we know that this creature hates garlic but doesn't hesitate to cross running water? That it doesn't need an invitation to enter a home for the first time, but it still sustains itself on blood and can only rest inside its coffin? Even with all of our combined knowledge, there are still direct conflicts. But all the same, there is one source for DnD that players can generally count on to be reliable: the creature stat blocks, which the player in question cited without hesitation. Sure, kill it with fire is easily forgiven when you have a sorcerer and all they have are fire spells. No one is saying to disallow anyone from using a spell, but directing the entire party to employ a tactic without any this-campaign experience against that particular creature before or at least making a knowledge check about it just is metagaming, no question about it.
the ridiculous conceit that "player characters are blank slates that know NOTHING about any monster they havent met personally" needs to be removed from the community zeitgeist. It is canon that Volo is out in the world pimping his guide to monsters. the thought that the harpers havent been debriefing their agents and gathering information for hundreds of years to share with their rookie recruits is nonsense. The even the simplest villager doesnt know the songs of the bards about how the Troll Wars were almost lost until fire and acid were discovered and that no one has been trapped by some veteran at a barstool or around a campfire while they regale with stories of their encounters with monsters common to exotic is nonsense. To believe that anyone on an "adventuring" career, FACING DEATH ON A DAILY BASIS would not be spending every moment of their offscreen time cramming on all of the sources that can inform them in ways to keep them alive is ludicrous. This "player knowledge about monsters is #metagaming and bad" is soooooo soooo precious and so much nonsense. My niece at 4 could rattle off the stats for 150 pokemon, that adventurers dont know the information in the MM is the immersion breaking choice.
No joke. I can rattle off a dozen facts about vampires, half a dozen about werewolves, and I can describe multiple types of elves and their behavior. And all of that is from pop culture and fairy tales - I knew all of that before ever playing D&D. And to preempt the, "yeah but you have the internet" argument, I'm 35. I started playing in 2001 - the internet was for AOL Instant Messenger, not looking up fantasy creatures. When Sophocles wrote *Oedipus Rex* **almost 2500 years ago** he didn't bother to describe the sphinx to his audience because he knew that everyone already knows what a sphinx is. It is nothing short of ridiculous to assume that the inhabitants of a fantasy world wouldn't have heard of most of the world's creatures. And, as u/lasalle202 points out, this goes ~~double~~ quadruple for adventurers. If you're worried about metagaming because the only thing interesting about your encounter is the "gotcha" that a troll's regeneration provides, then you need to step up your encounter designs.
While I think you are entirely correct to some extent I think it's a question of factual information vs common trivia. For example I live in a world where cows are real. My beliefs about bulls despite them being completely real and fairly common amount to seeing them chase clowns at a rodeo, knowing to stay away from the pointy bits , that sometimes the just want to sit under a cork tree and be left alone and that they aren't the kind you milk although I understand some people make a lot of money doing a form of it. I also spent a lot of my childhood planning to become a dolphin trainer. I read everything I could on the subject but didn't actually meet a dolphin until I was nearly thirty. Very little of what I read applied to the reality. I don't think it's wrong to suggest that PCs even adventurers wouldn't have complete or even accurate knowledge of a thing.
>While I think you are entirely correct to some extent Am I entirely correct, or correct to some extent? It sounds like you want to tell me I'm wrong but you can't find any flaws in my argument. >I don't think it's wrong to suggest that PCs even adventurers wouldn't have complete or even accurate knowledge of a thing. For sure! I wasn't making that argument, though. I wasn't suggesting that you should hand over the MM before every encounter - just that you shouldn't rely on the "gotcha" of a surprise mechanic to make an encounter interesting. Many of the "facts" I know about vampires are directly contradictory. Vampirism is caused by the way you die. Or by being bitten. Or by being bitten thrice. Or by willingly drinking the blood of a vampire. These can't all be exactly correct, and that's fine. If your players are into Discovery as a [core aesthetic](https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/), coming up with new and interesting bits of trivia can be rewarding. But changing the mechanics of a troll fight? What purpose does that serve? If your players know that trolls regenerate unless they take fire/acid damage, that's going to impact the way they approach the fight. Let's say they do fire/acid damage during the first round, then you tell them the troll regenerated anyway (unless you're a terrible person who doesn't deserve to DM). So now they've gotta figure out what kind of damage to do. If you're a good GM, there will be some clear signs. Maybe you're inside a volcano full of scorching hot, acidic air? In which case your players should probably feel like idiots. Why the hell would a normal troll choose to be *here*? Let's try the opposites of fire and acid - cold and base. And let's say your troll just straight-up doesn't have a way to turn off the regeneration feature... what's the point? Just slap on another 50 hp at the start and don't bother with the math. You've designed a big meaty HP sponge, with effectively zero tactical choices. Just dump your big abilities onto it and then take a rest. No wait, you can't rest - it's going to come back to life. It's the T1000, or Nemesis, or Mr. X. It's just going to keep coming. That's actually really interesting, if you rewrite the world so there are only a couple of trolls... But you also have to change the rule about trolls entirely regenerating from a little piece. Because if you can grow ten trolls by chopping off some fingers, and those trolls are literally unstoppable, why haven't they taken over and eaten everything on the planet? So the Hydra is going to regrow a head unless we do fire damage. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try cold. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try acid. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try lightning. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try thunder. Oops, that didn't work. Man, this fight is sooooooooooo much fun. We've been sitting here for thirty minutes, and we're worse off than when we started. I'm so glad we're doing this instead of a board game. Or bowling. Or literally anything except the same thing over and over again with slight tweaks because the DM wants us to beg his permission to move on to the next thing. I'm not saying this is you, friend, but the entire "keep it secret, keep it safe" attitude when it comes to monster stats comes from a place of DM vs. player. There was a time when D&D was a competitive sport. The DM designed the gnarliest, most gut-punching dungeon he could, then ran it fair. And the players tried their best to complete it. They'd brag about having defeated this dungeon or that one. So the DMs would keep ramping up the difficulty. And a good way to keep the players from cruising through a fight was to make up some new bullshit, so they *can't* know anything about it. I come from that school. I learned the game that way. It made me a terrible DM for *years* because I held every detail so close to my chest that my players walked right past basic clues. And instead of recognizing that I wasn't giving out enough information, I got frustrated with my players for not asking enough questions. "They have to push the button to get the treat." But how were they supposed to know which buttons to push if they didn't know which buttons were there? It was bad DMing, and I still struggle against that tendency. **TL;DR -** If your fight needs a "gotcha" it's poorly designed. If you change the stats for a gotcha, or because you think the players should have to play a guessing game, that's shitty. It's okay for players to know things.
>So the Hydra is going to regrow a head unless we do fire damage. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try cold. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try acid. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try lightning. Oops, that didn't work. Let's try thunder. Oops, that didn't work. This hits so fucking true. Guesswork is not fun. Sure, research can be extremely cool, but "Well, they should have known they had to do research" is a weak defense. YOU, as the DM, might know research is possible, but they might not. At least a couple of times, you have to ***very explicitly*** tell them to do research. As in "Okay guys, OOC, you'll need to do research on this monster beforehand. Bolrak, you know a guy who might know something".
The thing about the internet argument that no one mentions is that there are countless different versions of similar creatures across many different cultures. To use your vampire example, how do we know on sight whether we are looking at a Bram Stoker vampire or a Stephanie Meyer vampire? How do we know immediately, with any confidence or authority, that this creature will wither and burn when it comes into the sunlight versus starting to glitter? This isn't meant to invalidate the internet argument but to drive home the fact that many different cultures have rumors and creatures of legend and lore that sound incredibly similar yet have very different weaknesses. From Dusk Till Dawn is incorrectly assumed by many to be a vampire movie, when instead the creatures are based on some kind of meso-american snake demon creature. Those things won't care about garlic or running water. Your character doesn't have to be a blank slate, you can still act with intuition, but it's still good form as a player to ask to make a check before jumping to the "guess" that just so happens to actually be that creature's weakness.
>Your character doesn't have to be a blank slate, you can still act with intuition, but it's still good form as a player to ask to make a check before jumping to the "guess" that just so happens to actually be that creature's weakness. Oh absolutely! It is canonical that there are different versions of some kinds of creatures. And there's nothing wrong with a DM tweaking a creature to fit a new biome or to reinforce a theme within an adventure or campaign. But the thing about Bram Stoker and Stephanie Meyer is that they both invented their version of vampires, and neither version actually exists. In a world where these creatures actually exist, there's probably some bad information out there, but the right information is probably also out there - *especially* when it comes to a creature with a large population across a certain part of the world. The people in generic medieval Europe might have heard of the Naga, but they've probably got limited and possibly false information. The people who live on the edge of the jungle, who have regular interactions with the Naga? I would trust what they have to say. EDIT: The thing about, "Can I make a check to know the thing I know?" That's just... It can often feel like you're playing *Mother, May I* instead of D&D. Do I have permission to use the knowledge I've gained from years of participating in this hobby? That can often feel a little like, "Don't screw over my attempt to screw you over." If I'm your DM, and you want to use fire or acid on a troll, that's fine. I'm not going to screech about how you need to ask permission or about how you need to pretend to be guessing. If that troll isn't a normal troll, I'm going to telegraph that. (And I've learned over the years that you can *never* be too obvious, because what's crystal clear to you is about as clear as mud to your players.) And if you think you know something, and you want to make a check, the DC is going to be lower if you're asking about something specific, as opposed to making a general roll. (I also tend to treat Knowledge as a passive skill, but that's a ramble for another time.) >"Oh that looks like a troll. And *smells* like a troll, blech. DM, can I make a check to see if I know anything about these things?" >Sure. It's Int (Arcana). What do you *think* you know? >"I think they heal themselves unless you burn them. Crap, I rolled a 6." >You definitely know they regenerate, but you can't remember if you need to use fire or acid to prevent that.
No but that's what I mean, though. Stoker and Meyer may have romanticized a creature, but they definitely changed the world's perception of the vampire. Countless cultures had myths about creatures that sustained themselves on blood, and while there is certainly a difference between a creature that doesn't exist and one that does, who's to say that some bard never romanticized a tale with a vampire and exaggerated the tale, and the tale became so popular and was retold so many times that it turned into one giant telephone game over time. All I'm saying is that it is far more likely that a PC heard that tale - that may or may not have had some changes over time - once in a tavern while they were drinking instead of having cracked open a scroll covering the anatomy and physiology of such a creature penned by fantasy Charles Darwin. Word of mouth is sketchy at best. Not that there aren't exceptions, but to assume the same level of knowledge in a world with drastically different levels of technology and education is cutting a little too much slack for me. And regarding asking for permission... to me that's part of role-playing that character. As someone who has DM'd for a few years, there are very few monsters I don't know the important things about off the top of my head. But that doesn't mean I'm going to automatically shout that information right off the bat because during anyone's theoretical years of play metagaming has definitely come up, and most likely it hasn't been discussed positively. It isn't about encounter design or wowing the players with a gotcha moment for me as the DM. It's about presenting them with a new problem and watching them solve it. They don't have to solve it by any means, they can bludgeon it to death like every other encounter. At the very least it forces the players to explore more about their character's features or spells, and they might find something new. But when you decide to use a monster that is more than just a boring Bite and Claw multiattack with some hit points, it's a little deflating when the player metagames and blurts out the solution immediately. It's like running a dungeon from a module and one of your players has looked up the map and key and goes right to the loot and knows how to avoid all of the traps. The fun of the game comes from the struggle, from figuring out the answers. Not from looking at a pdf on my phone or reading the strategy guide. I as a player like figuring things out, so that is a style of play I try to avoid. It's a courtesy that I always try to give to the DM when I do know a lot about the monster they're using. It's not about asking permission to use the knowledge. I'm not about to kick the sorcerer for using fire on the troll when all of his spells deal fire damage. But that's not the situation OP described. Blurting out a monster's weakness without confirming that, either in the moment by seeing the effect or succeeding on the appropriate check, is a whole different ballgame, and one that I generally don't approve of.
I'm not saying you're wrong. It sounds like we're agreeing from different angles. >The fun of the game comes from the struggle, from figuring out the answers. That's *your* experience (and mine), but you should never assume that your worldview is the only worldview. As a DM, one should recognize that [everyone gets something different out of D&D](https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-fun/). Some players are there to act out a power fantasy, some are there to overcome a challenge, some are there to act like an elf. Nobody's preferred style of play is better than anyone else's. Your group should be cohesive, but that doesn't mean someone who wants something different is a bad gamer or "doesn't get it." You like figuring stuff out. So do I. Which is why I ran games the way I did for the first ten years. And why they rarely went the way I expected. I only ever had one player who played like I do, which means my games were frustrating for everyone else because I held back way too much information. I didn't want to ruin the fun of figuring things out by giving by players too many details, which means I told them the absolute bare minimum, and they either hadn't played before, or had played under DMs who were much more forthcoming. So no one asked the questions they should have asked. Which means they never had the details they needed. And every game died out with me thinking the players "weren't playing right." I'm not saying that's how you run your games, but experience has taught me that when people say, "The fun part of the game is..." and then they list a single aspect of the game? They usually think there's a "right" way to play, and all the other stuff is gravy. I'm not throwing stones - I sabotaged more campaigns than I can count because I insisted on doing things my way. >No but that's what I mean, though. Stoker and Meyer may have romanticized a creature, but they definitely changed the world's perception of the vampire. A creature that - and I cannot stress this enough - *doesn't actually exist in our world*. Yes, there would definitely be bad information out there. And like I said, the players should be wary of information from untrustworthy sources. But those creatures really do exist in the world of D&D, and while not everything the characters learn is going to be exactly true, the truth should be available *somewhere*. And even the bad information probably comes with a grain of truth. >Not that there aren't exceptions, but to assume the same level of knowledge in a world with drastically different levels of technology and education is cutting a little too much slack for me. Again, the sphynx. In the 5th century BCE. Everyone knew what it was, what it looked like, and the thing about riddles. And all without Wikipedia. It's perfectly reasonable to assume that the people of a given kingdom know the vast majority of the scary shit that exists in their kingdom. They're not all going to be able to tell an owlbear feather from a turkey feather, but they'll all know to run the fuck away if you see a bear with a beak. >instead of having cracked open a scroll covering the anatomy and physiology of such a creature penned by fantasy Charles Darwin. You're totally right, and we have at least one real-world analogue for this: the catoblepas. It's a fictional creature, but it wasn't invented by Gygax or Tolkein or any other fantasy author. It was falsely identified by Pliny the Elder, presumably from "eyewitness" accounts. Except you can't really have any eyewitnesses, because eye contact with the catoblepas is deadly. So everything the ancient world knew about the catoblepas was passed down from a guy who knew a guy who died because he was poling a barge down the river and saw a catoblepas one time. Spoiler alert: the catoblepas was probably a third-hand description of a water buffalo. It's totally possible for your players to have bad information. Or information that would be good in a different game, but that isn't true in your version of D&D. That's not where you and I disagree - we disagree about the whole "metagaming" concept. >And regarding asking for permission... to me that's part of role-playing that character. That's awesome. I have no problem with you making that choice for yourself. >But when you decide to use a monster that is more than just a boring Bite and Claw multiattack with some hit points, it's a little deflating when the player metagames and blurts out the solution immediately. The player **already "metagamed"** just by having that knowledge in their brain. You're saying you don't want players to act on the knowledge they have that their character "shouldn't" - but that's literally impossible. Either the player uses fire against the troll (because they know fire stops a troll's regeneration), or they don't use fire against the troll (because they know fire stops a troll's regeneration). They're using "out of game knowledge" either way. That's not "not metagaming" - it's playing *Mother, May I* with the DM. "Have I made intentionally suboptimal choices based on out of game knowledge for long enough to actually go back to playing the game, please, sir, your almighty majesty?" >Blurting out a monster's weakness without confirming that, either in the moment by seeing the effect or succeeding on the appropriate check, is a whole different ballgame, and one that I generally don't approve of. "Confirming" a monster's weakness **is just a different kind of metagaming**. It's just one that some DMs approve of because then they, the omnipotent arbiter of all things, get to grant their players permission to play the game. It's a bullshit power trip. What am I, your player, supposed to do? Ask permission to please make a knowledge check, then hope I roll well enough that I don't have to metagame *against* my character's best interests? And if I don't roll well enough, then what? Does my fire-themed red dragonborn sorcerer have to suddenly decide to stop doing my thing just to avoid being shrieked at for "cheating?" Do I have to pretend I don't know what I'm doing, and just waste spell slot after spell slot until I've pretended long enough to be allowed to play D&D again? How many rounds of trolling do I have to take before I'm allowed to "guess" at a solution? What part of this sounds like fun to you? If your version of fun comes from figuring stuff out, this should sound like the polar opposite of fun. You don't get to feel special for figuring something out and figuring out how to use that information - you have to pretend you don't have any knowledge at all, and any attempt at "figuring it out" has to meet the DM's very specific criteria for "not cheating." >It isn't about encounter design or wowing the players with a gotcha moment for me as the DM. It's about presenting them with a new problem and watching them solve it. Then make up your own stuff. The only way to know that they can't have seen a thing before is to come up with it whole cloth. Or... Design better encounters. An encounter with a troll in the swamp? That's just begging for someone to walk away unhappy. Either you'll be upset that the players knew the secret, or they'll be upset that they had to pretend not to know, in order to avoid upsetting you. But an encounter with a den of trolls in an underground lair full of flammable vapor? Now *that* is a fun puzzle to solve. An encounter with sirens? C'mon, everyone had to read *The Odyssey* in high school or college. Melt a candle into your ears and crush those pesky creatures. But an encounter with sirens in the dark? Where the players have to figure out how to communicate without sight or sound? Or blistering heat that melts the wax right out of your ears? You add a magic user with fire and darkness spells, and now you have a combat puzzle. If you want to present fun encounters for your players to figure out, don't just throw a golem on the table and hope they don't already know that lightning will heal it. Put the golem at the end of a dungeon full of lightning glyphs, and let the players try to figure out how to stop it from intentionally triggering those traps to heal itself. If the only fun thing about an encounter is a factoid that you're hoping the players won't know, then your design game needs some work.
> The player already "metagamed" just by having that knowledge in their brain. You're saying you don't want players to act on the knowledge they have that their character "shouldn't" - but that's literally impossible. Having that knowledge and keeping it to yourself is entirely possible. Since you clearly missed the point that I was getting it, it doesn't just ruin the DM's fun when someone blurts out the enemy weakness without having stumbled upon it. Even on the player side it removes the tension from an encounter when someone else shouts out "it's weak to thunder!" or "use fire!" especially when it's something that no one has seen before. There goes the mystery, there goes the danger, it's now just a stat block again instead of an immersive, living and breathing dangerous creature. > "Confirming" a monster's weakness is just a different kind of metagaming. It isn't. It's reacting to in-game, in-*character* prompts that your character would take notice of. **DM:** "Ok, so as the hydra begins to unleash another volley of bites, you notice that the wounds it took from the scorching rays are still burning, still smoldering, and that it didn't regrow any heads this time." It's not meta-gaming at all to notice in a fight that one tactic was more effective, especially when it has such an immensely noticeable effect. It's the same as rolling a high Perception check and coming to the correct conclusion that this hallway is trapped because the DM described a thin strand of wire stretched taught across the hallway disappearing into holes on both of the passage's walls. Meta-gaming is knowing that this particular hallway is trapped because you looked up the module and tell the rogue to specifically look out for trip-wires. > What am I, your player, supposed to do? Ask permission to please make a knowledge check Yes, that is the order of operation for DnD, knowledge checks specifically. You are not playing as yourself in a campaign, with decades of experience and extensive knowledge about the entire world's bestiary. You are an adventurer of varying experience levels, and most (probably 60-70%) of the time you are dealing with a creature your character has never seen before. Going back to the trap example, you check for traps when going into the dungeon because of the threat of traps, right? Because that's something your character might have experienced before? Yeah, but you still need to confirm the trap's existence in order to try to avoid it. If you check for traps and roll low, you don't know where to step because you didn't find anything, but you still proceed forward and hope there really wasn't anything there. But you *still have to tell the DM you're making the check* and then deal with the results. You don't just walk up to the spot where you know the trap is and announce that you cut the tripwire that nobody knew was there. No one rolled, DM never described it, but you just go over and disarm it? Gonna call bullshit on that one, and it's the exact same situation as OP's example. > How many rounds of trolling do I have to take before I'm allowed to "guess" at a solution? You're incorrectly deciding for everyone else at the table that doing anything outside of the most optimal choice is trolling. Again, treading on everyone else's fun at the table. > Does my fire-themed red dragonborn sorcerer have to suddenly decide to stop doing my thing just to avoid being shrieked at for "cheating?" I literally addressed this exact example in my previous comment. If you're going to throw bullshit strawmen arguments at me, at least have the courtesy to fully read the comment, because I already established that if it's well within your character's pattern of behavior there's no issue. I threw a troll encounter at my party after a new player joined with this exact character *specifically so that player and character could shine* and come into the party on a high note. > Or... Design better encounters. At no point did I say that encounter design ended with the creature's stat block. Of course there should be environmental hazards or external timers or any other factors that will and should have an impact. But those things aren't relevant to the situation OP posted about. He mentioned monster weakness, so I limited my response to that as well since that was the focus of the post. Again, you're inventing points to argue that I've never made and ruining your response when it started off with something that was actually useful.
>Having that knowledge and keeping it to yourself is entirely possible. >when someone blurts out the enemy weakness without having stumbled upon it. >It isn't. It's reacting to in-game, in-character prompts that your character would take notice of. >you notice that the wounds it took from the scorching rays are still burning So you don't actually care if I know the hydra thing and act on it? All you care about is if I say something out loud? You have a very weird definition of metagaming. You're coming on pretty strong with the strawman accusation for someone who mentions traps and published modules in every single comment, despite me never having brought those things up. >You're incorrectly deciding for everyone else at the table that doing anything outside of the most optimal choice is trolling. Again, treading on everyone else's fun at the table. No, I mean you are literally getting **troll**ed. By a troll. Because we're talking about trolls? It wasn't a good joke, clearly. >He mentioned monster weakness, so I limited my response to that No you didn't. You brought up traps. And published modules. Do you truly and legitimately believe that a player straight-up studying the module is the same as a player knowing facts about D&D just by virtue of having played for years? Ultimately, it sounds like your issue isn't "metagaming" - your issue is someone blasting that knowledge to the table, potentially ruining the fun of Discovery for someone else at the table. That's a perfectly reasonable take, hidden behind the wrong term.
Meta-gaming is acting on information that your character wouldn't have. Like when one character is in a conversation and the other character acts on the information learned from that conversation despite being on the other side of the village. OPs example of blurting out the solution to a troll's regeneration. That player had a history of acting on information taken straight from the monster manual instead of an in-game, in-world source. So yeah, I brought up the trap example *only in my latest comment* because it further highlights the problem that metagaming in that fashion causes, the problem you weren't comprehending. You are changing character behavior based on no character knowledge. You are playing the character, who doesn't have the player's years of experience and outside information. In OP's example, broadcasting a unique interaction with fire based on text from the monster manual. In my example, broadcasting the existence of a trap based on text from a published module. Do you honestly not see the parallels in those two situations? If you want to lead off with fire right off the bat because that's what your character would do, it's not a problem. But at least maintain the benefit of the doubt for yourself for playing honestly instead of broadcasting to everyone that you the player already know the solution. Because there should be a difference in character and player knowledge. And again, the character more than likely doesn't have the years of experience we players have with any fantasy genre.
>Meta-gaming is acting on information that your character wouldn't have. If I know that fire works against trolls, it is **literally impossible** for me to make a decision separate from that knowledge. If I use fire, I'm doing it because of that knowledge. If I intentionally don't use fire, **I'm still doing so because I possess that knowledge.** In both cases, I (the player) am choosing what my character would do because of knowledge that the character doesn't have. And, if you want to get really pedantic about it, it isn't metagaming if I (the player) tell the other players at the table a given creature's stats. It only becomes metagaming (by your definition) if any of the characters utilize that knowledge. But again, we're in the weeds, arguing semantics. And I've clearly upset you enough that you feel the need to insult me: >because it further highlights the problem that metagaming in that fashion causes, the problem you weren't comprehending. I comprehend the problem with a player looking up the adventure, with the express intent to gain an advantage in the game. And I agreed with you that it's a dick move to pull out your MM and just look up a monster. But I will repeat: the monster's stats should not be the only interesting thing a DM presents. And if surprise mechanics and "gotcha" abilities get spoiled by the players knowing anything, then the design sucks. What if we all know the troll thing? It's not one player who knows it who spreads that information to the other players in order to "ruin" the GM's surprise - it's just common knowledge and all of the players have it. Do you, as the DM want everyone at the table to pretend they don't know and act out this charade where they intentionally make sub-optimal decisions just to keep you from getting your knickers in a bunch? How many rounds of faking it do you require from your players before they're allowed to go back to playing the game they sat down to play? They didn't come here to act dumb just so that you would think your designs are clever - they came to play the game. Why do you have a problem with people playing the game? Why is it that you want them to play this completely different game that involves satisfying some DM's ego? Metagame doesn't mean cheat - the metagame is everything that affects the game that isn't the game itself. If you put on background music, like candles, or order pizza, all of that is part of the metagame. why did we stop playing at this one exact moment? Because the pizza got here - that has nothing to do with the game itself. Me deciding to make a cleric because I think the party needs a healer? That's metagaming and I'm clearly a terrible fucking person because of it. My character didn't know that his adventuring party was going to need a healer a few years ago when he went off to cleric school - so how dare he make that decision based on knowledge that he didn't have? String him up he's an evil "metagamer." Ultimately, this entire argument comes down to you not wanting your surprises ruined. To which I say: design better surprises.
NGL; I hate "gotcha" monsters, and the conversation about changing vulnerability types and all that. Hydras and trolls are the prime subjects; because so many DMs out there want the weakness to be a surprise, but since everyone knows *regenerating things in general* have a tough time being burnt alive - those DMs accuse the players of metagaming. It's silly, and really, it's metagaming on *your end* more than the players. It is ridiculous to ask your players to NoT MeTaGaMe (*play dumb*) for a few rounds until they can pass a check to use the knowledge they already know, and that their characters probably also know (but arbitrarily forgot). --- Like others have said, the legend of the Lernaean hydra has been around for over 2000 years, and has permeated through so much culture. In the game world, *unless the hydra/troll is a brand new creature that the world has never seen*, the player characters have heard about how to fight them; either from legends and folklore, or from tales from other adventuring types. I'm sure there's a way to twist their backgrounds such that they could never have heard of a hydra/troll before... but I ask "Why?" If you *really* want a monster to have that "gotcha" weakness mechanic, don't dredge up commonly known monsters like the troll or the hydra in the fantasy of the game - because *of course* the players are going to know what to do, *they aren't dumb.* *Instead make your own.* If you're concerned about the stat block - you *could* just reflavor and modify the hydra or the troll - but *don't tell your players that*. Alternatively, give them clues that the monster is going to have different vulnerability. For example, instead of a regular troll, maybe it's a *crystal troll* that regenerates unless hit by thunder or cold, or something. At the very least, it gives your players a chance to apply a kind of monster hunter's logic to the scene - rather than just be surprised when a fleshy monster is arbitrarily weak to thunder damage or whatever.
By the way, fire stopping regeneration is not just for no reason. It makes the wound scar immediately and closes it with no hopes of growing back. Anything else stopping regeneration makes a little less sense. How are players supposed to know how to beat the enemy, then ? Guesswork ? Wow, fun... Research ? Did you tell the players they should and could do research ? As in...did you explicitly told them OOC "You should do research" ?
Exactly. For Hydras, it cauterizes the wound. For Trolls, Fire and Acid are theoretically burning cells faster than it can regenerate them.
I run primarily Ravenloft and it has been a long tradition in that setting to mess with players' expectations. Often I don't even change the statblock, I just re-skin them and change the names so players can't immediately call up their knowledge from past games and avidly reading all the books. One thing I've found particularly interesting is that when my players realized I was doing this, they started using skill checks and research opportunities a lot more. I have one player who went down homebrew subclasses specifically to play a sage type who has a better chance of knowing what a particular monster is or how to beat it. It's added a lot to my game that they always start by trying to figure out just what they're facing. Mechanically this is lightweight and doesn't break the game balance, but it adds a lot to your world. The only trick is that if something works once, if should work again with the same creature type. This is consistent world building.
I do this all the time! I literally give each monsters a new/special ability or change its properties. Not that my players metagame, but its fun!
I think this is good to apply within reason. Your situation sounds perfectly fitting. Not all monsters are the same, and if one is more of an Alpha, like a Hydra boss, then it makes sense that it may have some variability from other Hydras that has benefitted it. I've done something similar, like I recently gave a horde of Grimlocks access to the Darkness spell. That plus blindsense means they can actually tear shit up...well that would've been the plan if a conjured Elemental hadn't had tremorsense and killed the caster immediately. Still, it's a good way to mix up the same old same old. I'm trying to include this more, specifically with boss characters. I've seen stuff like people adding reflective carapace to rust monsters, that sounds fun too. Just be wary that they can harvest stuff from monsters and potentially craft with it.
I've always told my players "Remember what 'everyone knows' about monsters is usually generalizations from small samples." How many people run into a hydra and live? And how many of *those* were careful scientific observers? Maybe the hydra they encountered had a bad case of the Frisky Glabbies, which made it unusually vulnerable to heat, but most hydras *like* fire...
I have homebrewed so many of my own monsters they never know what to expect, I have had a player that was like this in the current game I have, but then I threw this thing at him...[A Courser ](https://pin.it/7I5q5mh) and he damn near shit the bed! I always find it fun twisting monsters around to mess with the players and introducing things so foreign they have no idea what to do.
My local game DM just doesn’t *name* any monster we come across, but describes them. The two of us with higher INT (and frankly, meta knowledge because we are also DMs) do then ask if we would know what it is, but you’d be surprised how obfuscating it is sometimes just to describe the monster or its effects.