The Monsters Know What They're Doing: Combat Tactics for Dungeon Masters

Keith Ammann

Oct 2019 · The Monsters Know What They’re Doing Book 1 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

From the creator of the popular blog The Monsters Know What They’re Doing comes a compilation of villainous battle plans for Dungeon Masters.

In the course of a Dungeons & Dragons game, a Dungeon Master has to make one decision after another in response to player behavior—and the better the players, the more unpredictable their behavior! It’s easy for even an experienced DM to get bogged down in on-the-spot decision-making or to let combat devolve into a boring slugfest, with enemies running directly at the player characters and biting, bashing, and slashing away.

In The Monsters Know What They’re Doing, Keith Ammann lightens the DM’s burden by helping you understand your monsters’ abilities and develop battle plans before your fifth edition D&D game session begins. Just as soldiers don’t whip out their field manuals for the first time when they’re already under fire, a DM shouldn’t wait until the PCs have just encountered a dozen bullywugs to figure out how they advance, fight, and retreat.

Easy to read and apply, The Monsters Know What They're Doing is essential reading for every DM.

Ratings and reviews

"From the popular blog" - literally, without any apparent effort to edit the entries together into something cohesive. It ends up being very monotonous read end to end (over 500 pages), with the same points repeated over and over. Works fine if you're running a "monster of the week" and need reference material.

Really useful to help make monsters the threats they should be

About the author

Keith Ammann has been a Dungeons & Dragons player and DM for more than thirty years. He has been writing his fifth edition D&D–focused blog The Monsters Know What They’re Doing since 2016. He lives in Chicago.