So I have a desert oasis encounter I am designing and I have reached a bit of a wall.

The players will come across a dieing oasis nestled in the valley created by 2 large dunes. The water is almost entirely gone and alot of the plantlife here has dried out and died. As the players make camp, a monster begins stalking them. I am not sure what the monster will be yet (something cr 6), but I know it will need to have a fire ability like fire breath.

As the battle insues, the monster tries to use hit and run tactics for the first half, bealching flame upon the players before returning to the saftey of the tall dried grasses. Once a good portion of the oasis has been burned away, or whenever I feel the time is right, the monster will go all out against 1 player untill its gone and then it will try to hide again.

The part I am unsure about how to do involves the burning of the grasses. As the smoke from the fire begins to fill the valley, I want the players to become rather heavily effected by it. Perhapse they start viewing everyone as enemies, perhapse they see more monsters then actually exist. Should I roll to detirmine effects? Individually or as a group?

Any sugestions will be greatly appreciated!

Is this a game you're playing here? If so you might want to make the thread use private exclusions, they aren't generally available in public forums - but do work in GM workshop..

If you are going with illusory-type effects, I suggest going with a sort of group effect, but offer different details to each player, so each PC sees something there, but they don't agree on what exactly it is. So, there would be an illusory critter at location A, but PC 1 sees a kobold, PC 2 sees a goblin, PC 3 sees a big dog, PC 4 sees a small earth elemental, and so on.

If you just want to use something mind affecting, go with Confusion, altering or adding to the table as desired.

Doing both might be overkill, depending on how difficult the real enemy critter is to beat. You could do both, and if they're getting booty-smacked, do something to make it more obvious the illusory critters are really illusory, or have the Confusion effect fade in and out.

Sorry, the game is not on Myth-Weavers. It is tabletop. So I cant give each group thier own description unfortunately. At least not without slowing the game to a crawl.

With tabletop, I'd go for the Confusion effect. It'll allow for everyone to be affected differently, yet still have something wacky going on.

Mass Halucinagen. You can have everyone view the same thing.

I find it is times like this that a lot of OOC preparation can go a long way. Discuss the game with the players alone. Tell each one about the encounter you have planned, and feign that you can't keep this ingenious idea, you have to tell one of them or you'll burst. Tell each of them it is ACTUALLY going to be something. then let it really be your fire breathing monster. They'll love you for it. you'll figure something.
If that is too much work for you, just use pre-written descriptions. Hand them out individual and keep the players on their honor for keeping it in character.

Honestly, what I would do is 4 different effects. Make the one guy nauseous, the one guy hallucinatory, the one guy go crazy and battle for control of his character each turn, and the one guy not feel pain. Boom 4 effects. each one managable ooc.

Wasnt there a spell that turns the terrain into some aspect of the plain of chaos? I might look into that one too... That mixed with a few extra copies of the same monster might do the trick.