Encounters

[Manly Man]

I'll second the tactics thing. Just because a monster doesn't have genius intellect doesn't mean it's an idiot; many monsters with low Intelligence scores actually have a relatively high Wisdom score instead. They may not recognize things like a weapon being made out of adamantine, but they are aware of their own capabilities, and able to learn. If there are status effects they can inflict, bust them out. For example, with the Cie'th monsters I've got, many of them have an ability called Wail, which is an AoE stun. Instead of trying to just run up and bash down an opponent, especially if more than one with the ability are present, they'll have one or two of them move near the group and then stun the lot of them. Especially in upper-level encounters, status effects can damn near be a death sentence if you make good use of them.