Am I Being a Jerk DM?

[Retreater]

I had a player complain that I am breaking the rules when controlling the opponents to give myself an unfair advantage over the PCs. I see it as just playing the opponents intelligently. What I'd like to know is: am I breaking any rules by handling combats this way?

When controlling intelligent enemies who have tactical reason to achieve combat advantage (such as back-stabbing thieves or trip-attacking wolves), I have all of the enemies move into position, hold their attacks, and then unleash all of their attacks once they are flanking enemies with combat advantage.

The complaining player is arguing that I need to move Thief 1, attack with Thief 1, and then move Thief 2, attack with Thief 2, etc. I think that I should be able to coordinate attacks by delaying actions so they can deal more damage.

Who is correct?

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

You can do this:

Thief 1 move action: move into position; standard action:ready action attack when Thief 2 in position

Thief 2 move action: move into position

Thief 1 interrupt with readied attack (with combat advantage)

Thief 2 standard action attack (with combat advantage)


So, it's definitely in the rules. Is it worth it? I dunno. Depends on your table's unwritten rules. I do exactly what's above for SOME fights, but not for most of them. Most of the time I would have thief 1 complete his turn (move, attack) and then thief 2 go (move, attack with combat advantage). It's just easier and quicker and usually not worth the extra 2d6 damage (or whatever) to bother with the move/ready crap.

 

[Castellanox7]

I think you should think about differentiating between "intelligent enemies" and "normal mob behavior".

In the case of humanoid thieves, I would say they are intelligent enough to coordinate attacks to maximize havoc and damage.

However, I don't think a pack of wolves would be "as smart" to cooperate in the same way.

With that, is this a complaint coming from your entire group, or just the one individual? If this is a shared sentiment across the board, I'd definitely scale back on how often you do this.

Also, is there an ubiquitous play style your players have? If so, I'd check to see if your "DM style" aligns properly with this.

Just my $0.02, good luck!
-CastX7

 

[Radiating Gnome]

Yeah, BN beat me to the punch.

Keep in mind, once you demonstrate the tactic to your players they're (hopefully) going to learn it and use it against you.

-rg

 

[Nebten]

Nope, not at all. Walking into a thieves' den is a dangerous situation for that reason, or even worse, fighting another adventuring group.

Hopefully your players will learn from this experience and try to mimic the same tatics.

The only question I have is do you break up your initative by individual, groups of enemies or all enemies at once then all players at once.

If you have the last option, all bad guys go then all good guys go, then can be very dangerous to the players if you have around the same number of enemies as you do PCs. The reason is that on the DM/bad guys turn everybody can jump one PC and take him out of the fight and make it very deadly.

Otherwise, you are playing it smart. Most of the time the DM is the one with the greatest game knowledge of the group. This in itself is an advantage. They need to come together and make their, 4+ heads better then your 1.

Enjoy!

 

[Matt James]

You're the DM. You have a golden phallus. Remember that always.

 

[treex]

I'd be pretty mad if my DM suddenly unleashed all hell on one character by focus firing him/her with everything they've got at the same time. But I supposed there are people who play to win and people who play to play. I'd try to have a balance of the two, making an encounter challenging enough for it to be dramatic, yet not killing them as I'd see this as a cooperative game between DMs and PCs (unless they start abusing their semi-immortality).

 

[renau1g]

I don't think it's a dick thing. If your mindless undead/oozes started doing that, then I'd say you're kinda stepping out of their "normal" attack modes, but a group of predatory bandits? yeah, they'd probably do that. Smart players focus fire to drop foes quickly right? why wouldn't smart foes?

 

[Quickleaf]

It's not a dick move so long as the enemies are on different initiative counts, and you declare they are readying an attack and declare the trigger they are readying for.

Readying an action has risks: if the trigger condition never arises then the readied action is lost. For example, if Thief 2 never moves into a flanking position because of an intervening action a PC takes, then Thief 1 never attacks.

You might want to explain that to your irritated player - it's an important part of tactical play.

 

[john112364]

I had a player complain that I am breaking the rules when controlling the opponents to give myself an unfair advantage over the PCs. I see it as just playing the opponents intelligently. What I'd like to know is: am I breaking any rules by handling combats this way?

When controlling intelligent enemies who have tactical reason to achieve combat advantage (such as back-stabbing thieves or trip-attacking wolves), I have all of the enemies move into position, hold their attacks, and then unleash all of their attacks once they are flanking enemies with combat advantage.

The complaining player is arguing that I need to move Thief 1, attack with Thief 1, and then move Thief 2, attack with Thief 2, etc. I think that I should be able to coordinate attacks by delaying actions so they can deal more damage.

Who is correct?

You're good as long as it's the inteligent foes that use these tactics. A wolf pack probably not. Wolf 1 would probably attack when it got there and wolf 2 would then get the advantage for flanking. I can see animals coordinating that well. Now if they're smart wolves....
I'd say it more your player who has the problem.