D&D General Discuss: Combat as War in D&D

[DemoMonkey]

"The claim is that monsters always act a specific way. This claim is completely, and utterly false."

I agree!

No one has made that claim.

 

[loverdrive]

Claim: If the enemies ever adopted a true combat as war mindset then the PC's would eventually be crushed. This does not happen. Therefore, the enemies do not treat combat as War. There's something that seem inherently unfair about that and yet many still find Combat as War fun.

Discuss!

Well, if the monsters are waging war against the PCs, then the party probably has very slim chances of survival.

But the thing is, monsters mostly don't wage war, they are minding their own business, and smart PCs strike and disappear long before the enemy can't mobilize it's forces. Dumb PCs, on the other hand, lie six feet underground.

 

[bedir than]

"The claim is that monsters always act a specific way. This claim is completely, and utterly false."

I agree!

No one has made that claim.

It's odd to continiue be subquoted. It's like you are specifically avoiding the conversation in order to get cache.

THE OP's claim, which you emphasized does in fact say that monsters "do not treat combat as War."

Therefore, the enemies do not treat combat as War.

This is an absolute, because that's the way English works.
It is not a truism and shouldn't be treated as one.

 

[FrogReaver]

THE OP's claim, which you emphasized does in fact say that monsters "do not treat combat as War."

This is an absolute, because that's the way English works.
It is not a truism and shouldn't be treated as one.

I said "If the enemies ever adopted a true combat as war mindset then the PC's would eventually be crushed. This does not happen. Therefore, the enemies do not treat combat as War."

That doesn't say anything like what you are claiming it says.

 

[Xetheral]

Two points:

First, Combat-as-War can be played straight, with the enemies using all the same strategies and tactics as the PCs. In such a game, success depends on the PCs being extremely careful about not becoming a target for any individual or group that could crush them. There are multiple ways to do so, including: staying under the radar completely; making an enemy think you're either a neutral party or an ally; being more useful alive than dead; doing less damage to the enemy than they would do to themselves by expending the resources (they think would be) necessary to stop you, such as hiring a higher-level party to kill you. So "symmetrical CaW" totally works, it just necessarily has more stealth and/or social-engineering elements if the PCs hope to survive.

Second, as a small group the PCs inherently have certain advantages in a CaW game over large organizations, particularly with regards to mobility, stealth, and social engineering. This creates an inherent asymmetry in favor of the PCs when opposing large organizations that have more total power, but not all concentrated in one place like much of the PCs' power is. (It also means, with regards to my first point, that it's easier for a small group of PCs to avoid becoming a target of a larger organizations than vice versa.) So even in an ostensibly "symmetrical CaW" game, some asymmetry is still entirely realistic. (Corollary: the PCs must absolutely be successful at avoiding becoming a priority target of higher-level adventuring parties and similar in-kind threats or else they're probably screwed. Running/staying away and/or surrender are worth trying, but whether those tactics work is up to the enemy.)

 

[Redwizard007]

If the enemies ever adopted a true combat as war mindset then the PC's would eventually be crushed.

Full stop.

Your basic premise is flawed. There are loads of ways that PCs can stay ahead of even well organized and intelligent foes. Modern powers use elite strike teams to strike at high value targets fairly regularly in the modern day. On the other end of the spectrum, there is a real world country in South Asia that has been waging a war of insurgency for something like 45 years. That's completely ignoring the use of mercenaries, assassins, crime syndicates, etc in conflicts.

Running enemies intelligently, including "combat as war," makes things far more difficult for the PCs, but it doesn't make things impossible.

 

[Xetheral]

The term "combat as war" comes from this post, referring (to put it simply) to the idea that characters will approach a potential battle with the intent of leveraging every possible advantage before the fighting starts, in order to maximize their chances of crushing their enemies while minimizing their chances of taking any sort of return fire.

The opposite of this is "combat as sport," where both sides of a fight approach the battle without any sort of pre-preparation (save, perhaps, some modest magical buffing) and simply duke it out, with each side at their presumed strongest a la a sports match.

Excellent synopsis!

In terms of what that looks like at the table, in Combat-as-War games the parameters of the actual fights that occur (foes, location, etc.) tend to dynamically depend on the PCs' and NPCs' actions prior to the fight. If the PCs are doing well, then they're controlling who, when, and where they fight, either to trivialize fights that if faced straight-up would have been more challenging, or else to make ostensibly unwinnable battles potentially beatable. Because the PCs are expected to try to exercise control over the combat difficulty, such games often put less (or no) emphasis on encounter balance, but more emphasis on telegraphing threat levels. (In a "symmetrical CaW" game, where both sides use the same tactics, telegraphing would be replaced entirely with PC-side scouting and intelligence gathering.)

In Combat-as-Sport games, the PCs are expected to engage encounters are presented by the DM. In these games the DM determines who, when, and where the PCs fight (although the PCs can usually try non-violent strategies if they want, once the encounter has started). Since PCs don't have influence over combat difficulty, there is frequently more emphasis on encounter balance to make the game seem fair. Because combat locations are determined ahead of time in Combat-as-Sport, battles often take place at exotic locations chosen by the DM for their dramatic (rather than strategic) potential.

 

[Hriston]

The existence of a TPK isn't related to whether the enemies treat combat as war.

Okay, I thought your this referred to the PCs being crushed.

 

[AOieiosle]

I'd say it should be more than a deadly encounter. More like a triple deadly encounter at minimum

You're playing a game. By definition, it is 'sport'.

So in make-believe land I could say, "ah yes for 10 years this Warlord Bandit has planned for your arrival (because he is very, very smart and ruthless) and put buzzsaws in your seats as you sat down, and you all take 3d6 damage." That's not fun. Remember fun? The point of games?

I, as a GM and a player, have the responsibility to give my fellow players the best possible experience. And they have a responsibility to play with good intentions. It's a social contract. This kind of thinking is silly because you're in an asymmetrical position to make calls and referee (remember when DMs were called that?) the game as fairly as possible. And war isn't fair.

 

[Charlaquin]

The “Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War” dichotomy is drivel on par with GNS theory.