What do you do when you are DMIng a campaign and you know one

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>>52643996
>Do you change everything up, even if you don't know they metagame?

Let them metagame, reading the stats is not significantly different from them knowing it off hand.

If it seriously bothers you, then homebrew some monsters.

I mostly just accept it as it doesn't really bother me, but I do like to throw curve balls sometimes just to keep them on their toes.

>>52643996
>implying i'm using monsters from manual

I don't mind 'till they try to tell me they can't do something and/or wouldn't do it

>>52643996
Then I make them fight the red dragon that painted itself white and laugh for weeks.
I've wiped parties with that before, and I will again.

>>52643996

Mostly I don't care.

I also make an enormous amount of my own monsters and don't tell the players, and reskin monsters I'm using and don't tell the players until after the fight, so metagaming is of limited use.

>>52643996
I don't exactly tell them what the creature is. unless they make a good-enough knowledge check. I tend to mix in enough custom monsters and creatures that the players never really know if they're dealing with a certain monster or not. If I mention a 'tall, moving statue, made of stone', the players don't know if it's a traditional magic-immune Stone Golem or if it's something else.

Then again, when they do make a knowledge check, I either give them a short version-
>It's a stone golem. Notably, it's immune to any magic that can be negated by spell resistance.
Or if they roll high enough, I'll even hand them the MM, flipped to the proper page. Or write down the custom monster's stats on an index card to show to them.

I don't want players to pour points into knowledge skills without a benefit for it, after all.

Most people in my group aren't really the reading type.
The one guy who does read game stuff is cool about it and pretends not to know anything his character doesn't.
I homebrew like 60% of the baddies in my campaign anyway.

Joke's on him, monsters are never the big threat in my games.
It's always the sentients that will fuck shit up.

>>52644034
>using the stats from the book as more than vague inspiration
Do people still do this?

I don't really give a shit because I don't play combat centric tacticool games in which combat serves any other than dramatic purpose. So players knowing stats of monsters doesn't hurt that much.

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>>52644350
I did that with an albino red dragon

Homebrew monsters or structure encounters so that knowing the monster is only part of the battle.