How do you decide what actions your monsters take during combat

>>54284314
Ghouls are kind of dicks. I have them try to paralyse with claw attacks then drag off victims to use bite on i.e eat.

Pack monsters I have encircle the party and attack target party members that look weak. I have them run away if theyre low on health as it isn't worth dying for a meal, unless there's a good reason for them staying (like being controlled by something )

Simple creatures like a bear or an ogre I have go headlong at the party. Creatures like bears in a corner will try to fight to the death , if not they'll run when bloodied (half HP) and behind. Ogres might have some.more bravado/anger and stick in.

Cowardly creatures like goblins tend to also gang up in numbers but run away when things look bad (half numbers, sometimes I roll a wisdom check )

Intelligent enemies like say a wizard or well trained knights will hit the weakest party members , avoid hitting the guys with high AC , and play as tactically effectively as possible .

The trickiest thing is when to attack a player who is down and when to focus fire. Realistically I can't think of an example in the world where an NPC enemy wouldn't make sure they've killed one of the player characters. A creature like a wolf for example is going to want to finish off its prey to eat it. An intelligent enemy is going to realise that the unconscious guy can easily get up when the cleric casts a heal or the ranger feeds him a good berry and then he's just as much of a threat. Even some dumb raging berserker would arguably want to smash whatever is front of them into a big pile of blood not leave them bleeding out. But generally for the sake of the metagame it's best not to as it's trivially easy to kill players in combats if you focus fire on them one at a time.

>>54284314
Geek the mage first.

>>54284529
That makes sense. I've also been struggling with how much to focus fire. If I play "optimally" I could probably easily kill a player character per encounter, but that's no fun for anyone.

Perhaps having "dumb" enemies focused on PCs that have become bloodied makes sense, but what about cases where we have two "equally strong looking" characters, say a Paladin and a Fighter, both within 5 feet of an enemy. Whom does it attacks?

Also, how do you deal with rewarding XP for enemies who run away?

>>54284729
Did the paladin cast magic?

Because magic, even when it's common, is pretty good at spooking people and casters tend to get focus fired because no one wants to get mind controlled or set on fire.

>>54284314
if i want the encounter to be hard i make them fight strategically and actually have them try their best to kill the party. if not i usually have them spread attacks out fairly evenly between the high defense characters.

>>54284729
Generally I reserve focus fire kill for obvious 'bbegs' boss/ miniboss encounters when shits going down. Again bit metagamey but you are playing a game at the end of the day. I assume the rest of the creatures just don't much know the difference and are fighting instinctually /for their lives.

Only exception to that is something like ghouls or ropers which aim to pick off one target to feast on, hence why they're scary. So context is always important and sometimes you just need to go with your gut.

When general enemies run away like goblins, wolves , orcs etc generally ill still reward full XP for them. The exception is something big and powerful like a dragon where I reward half xp if it gets away and the next half if they catch up to it and kill it in a wounded state. Full XP if it manages to heal up fully and they kill it anyway.

XP is a reward and rewards should be used to steer gameplay you want. So in that example the players are encouraged to go chasing after the dragon which is cool but not encouraged to run off chasing random orcs which would get very annoying unless there's some wider narrative purpose. Likewise you want weaker enemies to run away sometimes to speed up the inevitable in combat when there's only one guy left ineffectually attacking so you don't want to make that a long process by encouraging them.to chase it.

>>54284729
>about cases where we have two "equally strong looking" characters, say a Paladin and a Fighter, both within 5 feet of an enemy. Whom does it attacks?

I honestly either roll a dice to decide or have them attack whoever managed to just hit them. Reasoning they'll want to hit the thing hurting them over the thing missing.

I had a fight recently with an animated statue that was weak against magic attacks. It was mostly focussing on the barbarian as the barb was in his face and it was simply 'programmed' to attack whatever was closest but as soon as the ranger hit it with her magic weapon it switched focus to the 'larger' threat in his eyes the thing that could hurt it the most.

>>54284314
Ghouls aren't likely to bite when there's still combat happening. Stick to claw attacks.

If everyone's been paralysed, then chow down.

If it's not going their way, have them retreat - while dragging a paralysed titbit with them.

>>54284314
Should say

>Mess with dragon
>get a stabbin

>>54284729
I would say give full so for the monster if it runs. Having to kill every little thing kind of promoted the whole savage murderer thing. They concluded the fight even if it means letting the monster go so they should be rewarded as such. Same thing for talking their way out of a fight.

I found this blog a guy put together for 5e monster and enemy tactics, hes pretty good.

http://themonstersknow.com/

There's a post on ghouls too.