Handbook of Erotic Fantasy: Tactical Voyeur (Patreon)

As Druid can tell you, herbal essences are vital reagents in most hair cleansing spells.

As Summoner can tell you, it is no fun getting outdone by the competition when you think you’ve rolled well. 

As I write, I’m thinking of a particularly unpleasant encounter my buddies went through a few months back. They’d forged a tenuous alliance with a gold dragon. So tenuous in fact that they didn’t want to wake it up for conversation. They merely wanted to drop a written letter and move along with their lives. So my buddy the alchemist does his usual stealth thing. He drinks down his invisibility potion. He pops his gaseous form extract. He wafts under the door and into the lair. 

Sure enough, the big guy is asleep on his treasure pile. That gives him a big fat penalty to Perception. Unfortunately for our plucky hero, he had to shift out of mist form to actually drop the letter. The dice clattered. 

“43 Stealth,” he crowed in triumph. 

“47 on Perception. The dragon wakes up and spots you,” I replied. 

“But I’m invisible!” 

“Dragon senses, bro!” 

Suffice it to say that I was not a popular GM that night. Nobody died, but I took the lesson to heart. If you’re going to have the kind of big scary monsters that are even better than PCs at the things they’re supposed to be good at, make sure that you foreshadow it. It’s no fun finding out that your super stealth monkey is out of his league, gargantuan dragon or no. 

So what about the rest of you guys? Have you ever been straight up outperformed by an NPC or monster? Was it a fun experience, or did you feel somehow cheated? More importantly, did you live to tell the tale? Let’s hear it in the comments!