Tales of terrible tactics

The guys ion our group are - especially now that we play 4e mostly - highly tactical powergamers. There is one particular character that has had issues with putting "squishy" characters in rough situations.

Early into our first 4e campaign, we were assaulting this wall across a mountain pass. We're battling with some skirmishing spearmen in front of the gate while some "crossbowmen" fire at us from atop the wall.

The party warlock decides that he's going to get up to the top of the wall to stop the "crossbowmen" from attacking, uses his 1/encounter teleport, and appears in their midst. Only when he's there does he discover that they are not, in fact, crossbowmen, but halberdiers who happened to find some crossbows lying around.

He failed two death saves before our cleric could get close enough to heal him, then almost died again once he was back up. If the rogue hadn't dropped one of the enemies and triggered the worlock's Fey Pact boon so he could escape, he probably would have died.

In our 2nd campaign, the same player had an elven predator druid. With a daily power active, his speed was more than double most of the rest of the party.

Cue them arriving in a heavily overgrown area with some kenku opening rifts to the abyss all around a clearing. Using a "shift your speed" druid power and his elven "ignore difficult terrain on shift" property, he gets into the middle of the enemies on the first round.

He goes down in the first round.

He fails his third death save on the fourth round, which happened to be a round before the party was able fight their way through the underbrush and demonlings to even see the clearing that he'd gotten to in one round.

Boy, I really love that Darkness spell!

Just today, while playing 3.5 with my group, the Hexblade/Warlock (mentioned in my previous post!) did it again!

The party was ambushed by some lizard men. 3 Barbarians, 4 regular lizard men soldiers and one sorcerer. The lizard men start by firing some poison tipped arrows, several party members fail initial savings throws and lose 1 point of Con (temporary). Only one fails secondary save and goes unconscious.

Hexblade/Warlock puts darkness on a pebble and throws it towards 2 lizard men that she can see. Not bad, really. Botches the throw and it drops 15 feet in front of her. Still affects 1 lizard man, and affects line of sight for the second. Still, not bad.

Hexblade/Warlock has recently leveled up, and now has Devil's Sight. So she enters the darkness to melee the Lizard Man. Too bad it was one of the barbarians, and has Blind Fighting as a feat (this is the stock Dark Talon Champion Lizard Man, MM IV). Hexblade/Warlock gets 1 melee attack a round. Lizard man gets 2 claws and a bite, and even with the 20% miss chance, he manages to hit at least 2 out of 3 every round.

Warlock/Hexblade was only saved by the Belt of Healing that she had. She was able to withdraw and heal up once. She was still down to 5 hp left before she finally defeated it.

The only real example that sticks in my mind was when I ran a GURPS OGRE game at a con years back, using one of the scenarios in the books that involved the PCs having to go acquire some powersuit components for their squad on the eve of a major push.

They decide to steal them from the black market. They figure, hey, we're soldiers, they're criminals, let's just charge in. I warned them that this was not necessarily a good idea. I reminded them that combat is incredibly lethal.

They bust in the door and rush in, standing in the open.

The criminals open up with their machine pistols, slaughtering the PCs in the first round.

Bullgrit said:

Let's hear stories about terrible party combat tactics.

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Okay! Last night's 3.5 game:

SPOILER ALERT: I'm running "Wingclipper's Revenge" from Dungeon #132

The party (average level 5) is about to attack a small force of hobgoblins guarding the entrance to a ruined keep. The terrain is difficult (2-foot-deep water) except for huge stone blocks that have fallen from the keep's walls, which I tell them require a move action to climb up on. The players decide, based on past encounters with these kinds of hobgoblins, that they have the advantage at ranged combat, so that's what they'll do.

The encounter starts and they immediately discover that the leader of this particular band of hobgoblins is a much, much better archer than they've met before. Nevertheless, they stick to their plan and take cover behind a stone block, intending (I assume) to make ranged attacks from there.

Despite the decision to focus on ranged attacks, the druid buffs the fighter with a bull's strength and never casts the produce flame he has prepared. Hmmm, okay... The wizard (the only spellcaster with almost 100% of his daily spells still available) starts firing his crossbow, and doesn't change tactics, despite an abundance of wands and scrolls, even after the situation really changes (more on that in a moment).

The rogue fails to spot a gray ooze in the water, and gets hit hard. His shiny mithral shirt is destroyed, dropping his normally astronomical AC down to mortal levels. This causes him to feel extremely vulnerable, and he spends the rest of the encounter essentially running away.

The party now knows there's a gray ooze in the water with them (that will only attack things in the water), and they are pathologically fearful that it will destroy their weapons and armor, but they (1) don't climb up onto the stone blocks--because that would expose them to the hobgoblin leader's arrows--and (2) decide the best course of action is to run away (at half-speed because of the difficult terrain), even though they know that the leader's dire toad mount makes him extremely mobile and he can continue to full attack them every single round at range.

No one wants to deal with the ooze trying to eat them, because they're all afraid it will destroy their weapons and armor. The wizard casts one (very effective) magic missile spell at the ooze...then goes back to using his crossbow, even though he has a wand of magic missile. And the druid refuses to send his animal companion (which wouldn't have to worry about its weapons and armor being dissolved) against the ooze, because he's afraid it will get hurt, leaving the rest of the party in a panic.

Finally, the party realizes they can't run away (about the time their fighter gets dropped with an arrow in his back), so they make their stand, fully expecting a TPK. The druid's animal companion quickly tears the ooze to shreds, they kill off the non-leader hobgoblins in remarkably short time, and now that they aren't running about in all directions at once but are instead focusing their efforts on the leader and his mount, the battle is all but won.

We had to stop before they could actually finish the leader off, but it's in the bag. Finally.

Krensky said:

They bust in the door and rush in, standing in the open.

The criminals open up with their machine pistols, slaughtering the PCs in the first round.

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Were the PCs not given any opportunity to shoot or something?

Saeviomagy said:

Were the PCs not given any opportunity to shoot or something?

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Its been close to a decade, but as I recall they elected to close the distace as fast as possible.

The important part though, is they chose to charge a group three times their number who were armed with mschine pistols.

Duplicate post.

It is interesting that though we have had a few game systems here, the stories are highly game system independent.

I have a lot of oddball stories, but most of them include people forgetting what was on their own sheets.

Jon_Dahl said:

In the current group I'm DMing the party fighter has been very "successful" with his baffling idea of 1st wave/2nd wave-tactics.

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It's not necessarily a bad idea tactically. It does work, even the way they're doing it. I'm not sure I'd have the fighter as the second wave, though. He (she?) needs to be part of the first wave, where toughness and staying power are critical. They should move in, pin the enemy, then a reserve can pick the right place to come up to finish off an enemy that's not ready for it.

My tale of terrible tactics. The PCs have stolen a sacred impala from one of the impala clans in Prax, and are heading back towards safety as fast as they can. Thanks to some delays, the impala riders catch up to them near an old fortified tower on the top of a bluff. The PCs know it's there and know that there's cover from archery, water, some food available there from berry bushes, and that the impala riders aren't likely to find advancing up the narrow path into melee an effective tactic. (For those who aren't familiar with Glorantha, impala riders are pygmy humans with light armour and a preference for skirmishing at range over melee combat). I was assuming the PCs would retreat to the tower and try to hold off the impala clan there. Instead, after getting to the bottom of the path, they wait for the impala riders to catch up with them and then advance into the plain where they could be surrounded and shot at from all sides by five times their numbers of mounted archers. It didn't work well for them. And then they moaned that they had no chance of winning against such a large group.

The water filling the pit in the room came from the corridor through which the PC's travelled. They never thought to close the doors to slow the flow.

Result: Twelve dead hostages.