Tales of terrible tactics

[Bullgrit]

Let's hear stories about terrible party combat tactics.

For instance:

D&D3
I was DMing, and the group consisted of six 5th-level PCs. They were going up against an evil treant with a small horde of twigblights, (think "wood kobolds" if you don't know twigblights).

The druid cast entangle in front of the treant to hinder the twigblights. The fighters charged into the entangle and engaged the treant in melee. The sorcerer hung back 20-30 feet, just inside the edge of the entangle. (He was confident of spellcasting in the entangle, and didn't have to worry about twigblights attacking him.)

More twigblights started showing up, so the druid threw out another entangle, partially overlapping the first. The treant animated a tree to attack the sorcerer.

Yes, during all of this, the twigblights were pretty much shut down. But the party fighters were effectively locked into their places, toe-to-toe with the treant. None of them could move to help the sorcerer who was grappled and being crushed. And none of them could retreat from the flailing treant.

In the end, the sorcerer was killed by the animated tree, the fighters were all beat to death, and the druid fled for his life.

Yes, the druid cast the two spells that ended up preventing the party from retreating, but when he cast the first one, the area of effect was clear of friendlies. The party charged into the entangled area willingly.

* * *

D&D3
I was playing a rogue in a party of six 9th-level PCs. (Completely different group from the above.) We were investigating a "ghost town". We easily took down the zombies that came out of the buildings, and then some kind of zombie master undead warrior thing came out and engaged us.

The party surrounded the undead warrior, but could only do nickle and dime damage. When the warrior started targeting the druid, she cast wall of fire in a 5'-diameter circle centered on herself. Unfortunately, the undead warrior seemed immune to the fire.

The rest of the party held their ground, within the damage area of the wall of fire to continue attacking the undead warrior. At one point, the warrior shifted 5', out of the melee range of the druid. So what did the druid do? She shifted 5', out of her safe circle, and within the damage area of the fire.

I immediately backed out of the fire area. I expected everyone to reposition outside the ring of damage, but no. I ended up hanging back doing virtually nothing, (my arrows did no damage), while the rest of the party stayed in the fire, taking damage from it, fighting the monster that was perfectly happy standing in the fire.

No PC died in this battle, but everyone was twice as hurt as they should have been, had they just moved away from the wall of fire. I was completely stunned at the shear stupidity of everyone just hanging out in the fire for the whole battle.

* * *

What are your tales of terrible party tactics?

Bullgrit

 

[jedavis]

Once upon a time, we charged a bodak because the DM ruled that our characters knew jack squat about bodaks... The druid bought the farm on the first round, the sorcerer bit it on the second round, and the rogue hid since he couldn't sneak attack against undead, leaving my fighter to keep hammering on it for an average of 1.5 damage per hit after DR... I made twice as many successful saves as expected value, though.

 

[pauljathome]

Not quite sure if this counts, but the group that I was GM'ing deliberately told the story (one of the characters was a bard) about how they'd first called out their challenges to the dragon so as to make the fight honourable and then charged it in a cone formation (the dragon, of course, had a cone breath weapon) and did all sorts of other silly things.

The reason that this may not count is because the characters, in fact, attacked it very intelligently (setting up a quite good ambush when it came out of its lair). But for various and sundry reasons they wanted opponents to think them a very different group than they actually were .

 

[Corathon]

The party was low to mid level fighting a necromancer. The necromancer laired in a dungeon complex beneath a city.

The first time that the group fought the necromancer in the dungeon, they had no idea that he was down there (they had fought him before, in the city above). After a big fight against the necromancer and his undead (mostly zombie) minions, the party was forced to retreat.

Now that the party knew where the necromancer laired, they decided to attack him on their next trip into the dungeon. At first all, went as before, but the necromancer had placed a group of zombies in a nearby room outside of his lair. These were magically called by the necromancer and attacked the party from behind, catching the party "between hammer and anvil". After a tough fight the group cut through the zombies and escaped.

The party's tactics so far haven't been terrible. Not great, perhaps, but not terrible. Here comes the bad part. The next time in they attacked the necromancer in exactly the same way and were caught "between hammer and anvil" again! In exactly the same way (zombies attacking from behind)!

And the next time in they did the very same thing AGAIN!

The necromancer was in no danger of running out of zombies. He was in the dungeon for the purpose of crteating a zombie army to attack the city. He had a lot of zombies.

Eventually they wised up and looked around to find the "hammer" zombies and destroyed them easily before attacking the necromancer. In fact, some fairly inspired tactics involving stone shape and burning oil separated the necromancer from his zombie army and allowed the party to kill him in the end. But they were stupid (and paid the price; 2-3 PCs died in the repeated assaults on the necromancer) before they got smart.

 

[amerigoV]

4e - Keep on the Shadowfell.

For some reason, the group could not grasp the fact that in 4e allies provide no cover for ranged weapon attacks. So the meat shields were one square into a large room that had archers. Everyone kept stepping one square into ther room while the enemy soldier just soaked them up and the archers "darkened the sky with arrows." It was a slaughter given the low level.

I was playing remotely, and just could not get the fact across in time. So my cleric fled when he ran out of heals (everyone was down, maybe not dead), the sole survivor of the slaughter.

Savage Worlds, Fantasy.

We got ambushed by knights near a ruined keep. My Jamacanesque goblin alchemist is trying to get to cover, and is about one round away. The knights charge and are just a couple of squares short (in Savage Worlds, "running/charging" has a random element to it). So what does our knight in shining armor do? Pulls out a bow... Again, I am playing remotely and just stare dumbly at the screen as my poor goblin gets skewered the next round.

 

[Corathon]

Another one, with a different group. This one is partly due to conflicting player/DM expectations so I bear a share of the blame.

The party was hunting down a red dragon that laired in an extinct/dormant volcano. One way in was through the front doors, with the dragon just down a huge hall on the other side of the doors. Wisely the party scouted around and found a back way in, and old lava tube that was nearly horizontal then ended in a shaft descending into the dungeon.

As the party is preparing I had them roll to notice that the sharp edge of the lava at the edge of the shaft might cut their rope. Here's where the conflicting expectations come in. One of the players (fairly new to playing with me) decided that I was giving a clue that they shouldn't go in via the lava tube. I was trying to give a clue that the lava was sharp and that they should take some basic precautions to protect their rope, no more than that. I would never give a clue about which way to go that didn't logically relate to the situation but the player didn't know that. He assumed that the red dragon was probably waiting for the group at the bottom of the shaft, and that I was hinting that they should go another way.

Long argument among the players followed. The player (who never voiced the "DM is giving us a clue" theory) would not back down in his insistence that they should go the other way. Eventually he prevailed and they went in by the front doors. They were meleed by the dragon's minions (whoe were immune to fire). The dragon breathed on the group. Three times.

TPK.

 

[Evilhalfling]

hybrid paladin/cleric. Now the Paladin can choose str or CHR as his primary stat. The cleric can choose str or wis. player uses wis & chr, his race gives chr/dex bonuses. This also means that he has one really good defense (fort/ref/WILL) and too bad ones.

constantly challenging targets that would really have to work to attack someone other than him. Moving out of position, even provoking opp attacks, to allow monsters a clear path to wizard and healer. He once brought himself to 3 hp, after violating an enemies challenge, and eating an opp attack to do so. The guy he attacked was only wounded. Died healing his hit points and failing death saves imposed by a beholder.

Now he is a thief. his favorite weapon inflicts 10 ongoing damage in a burst 1.
no initial damage = no sneak attack or backstab. ~(7d6+11) sigh. He constantly needs help figuring out how to get combat advantage. the rest of the party has his choices down after only a few sessions.

Admittedly Ive done some fairly foolish things as a DM, but I can usually put it down to monsters being dumb. Perhaps the displacer beast did not realized how dangerous fungal blooms are.... (he spent the entire fight taking 10 damage and slowed. he prolly took 1/4 of his hp from that mushroom)

 

[Swedish Chef]

Two incidents. Same group of players, 2 different sets of characters, 2 different campaigns.

1st Incident.

Party is ~4th level. They have tracked down the BBEG on a ship. Most of the party has charged to engage the BBEG and his minions. The Warlock hangs back assess the situation. Next round, Warlock casts Darkness on a stone and tosses it on the deck. The Warlock is the only one who can see in the Darkness. What should have been a 5-7 round battle drags on for 20 rounds as the Warlock proceeds to melee the BBEG (since he can see him) and leaves the rest of the party flailing about in the dark. What made things so bad was 1) the Warlock could only manage a hit on the BBEG 1 in 3 attempts, yet the BBEG managed to hit 1 in 2 attempts, despite the 50% miss chance; and 2) with the rest of the party flailing about, we managed to hit the Warlock 2-3 times by accident as we wandered near the sounds of battle and struck out blindly. The Warlock, down to about 5 hp, finally broke combat and retrieved the Darkness stone and flung it overboard, allowing the party to mop up the rest of the bad guys and the BBEG.

2nd Incident

Party has bedded down for the night. Kobolds sneak up and ambush them (good rolls by kobolds, horrible rolls by sentries). 2nd round, Kobold sorcerer uses Pyrotechnics, and 5 out of 6 party members fail their save. The party hexblade drops Darkness on a pebble, hoping to hide the party from the kobolds. Hexblade then drops the pebble on the ground. So, not only is the party temporarily blinded, but the hexblade has now covered them in darkness so that they don't know when the blindness wears off, and has no way of dispelling it as she no longer knows where it is located, having dropped it. What should have been a 5 round fight turns into a 17 round game of cat and mouse as the kobolds fire blindly into the darkness and wait for the party members to wander out to melee them. 2 party members go unconscious before the party is finally triumphant.

 

[jedavis]

Urgh, yeah, 3.0 Darkness was a massive pain. 3.5 nerfed it down to 20% miss chance, though, which was much saner. We had a fight against drow who used 3.0 Darkness on us once, and it was ugly... Also, I've seen several newbie warlocks go for Devil's Sight and Darkness, not realizing that it's a terrible move if they're operating in part of a team (and then being basically out two invocations once they figure out their mistake). It's all very thematic for the warlock, and great for NPC opposition warlocks, but godawful for PCs. They should've put a disclaimer in CArc about it...

Also:

Terrible Tactics, Traveller Edition:
When in doubt, send in the unarmored psion in front of the heavily-armored ex-marine, despite the knowledge that there are, in fact, heavily armed and safeties-off mercenaries on the other side of that door. Said psion ate three RAM grenades in the first round and was more or less vaporized. The marine and the mercs then mauled each other before the marine realized it was a losing battle and pulled back; the party later ended up securing their objective through sabotage and starship lasers rather than with bullets.

Other fun moments in Traveller: "I attack the flying gun drone with my sword!" roll roll roll "You kill it, but it explodes, severely injuring people nearby." "... like within sword range?" "A little further than that, actually. But yeah, definitely you."

 

[Elf Witch]

We are in the middle of a combat that I really believe will lead to a TPK when we pick it back up.

A dragon attacked the town two of the characters come from so they rode out wanting to hurt it. The dragon was also hunting the town wizard who was said to be at one of the local cairns.

My character kept trying to get them to listen about how important it was to catch the dragon on the ground.

We got to the area outside the cairn it was after dark. I suggested since the dragon has darkvision we wait until dawn. One of the PCs who gets pluses for fighting in the dark says no. I then suggested he take one of his invisibility potions and since he is the rogue and can see in the dark to scout out and see if he could find where the dragon is. He again says no that it would be better for us to all stay together and move silently towards the cairn.

I point out that we have horses and they will make noise and the dragon might smell them. We should set them lose. Again I am vetoed it seems no one wants to lose their horse.

So they come up with a plan to wrap the horses feet and equipment and off we go as quietly as possible. Did I mention we have a paladin in plate armor.

The dragon attacks us from the air we don't see him until he is almost on top of us and his breath weapon knocks two of us to almost half our hit points. The rogue and the paladin don't have range weapons, the warlock can't hit his armor class. My sorcerer is the only one who can hit it. I manage to get two lighting bolts off at it. It saves and takes half damage. I lose two more spells because I can't get through its SR.

The horses freaked out and took off as well as some NPCs that some of the party insisted on bringing with them. The rest of the party is running for their lives to the cairn leaving these NPCs to their fate. But they have a way to go before they reach safety.

I cast improved invisibility on myself and went after the fleeing NPCs to try and save their lives. I am kind of pissed at the rest of the party. First they refuse to listen to me then they insist on bringing innocents when I try and talk them out of it.

I am almost out of spell slots because we have not rested something I begged them to do but they refused. So I entered this battle with almost no open spell slots.

At this point I am going to run and try and save the NPCs and myself.