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

[Lanefan]

Do the PCs always treat "combat as war?"

If they don't they're probably doing something wrong, and have a much higher chance of dying as a result.

For me, how the opponents react has more to do with the specific situation: Do they know the PCs are coming? What is their goal (both monsters and PCs)? How intelligent are they? How committed? How long do they have to plan? What defenses or useful terrain exists? Do they have a personal motive in combatting the PCs? Is a strong leader present? And so on. . . than it does some abstract idea of "Combat as war."

Which is fine, however I think the OP's premise is based more on once combat has been joined than on the lead-up; i.e. all that other stuff has already been gone through.

Similarly, there are a ton of questions PCs have to ask themselves about the situation to determine their approach, attitude, and goals.

Exactly. That said, once they've decided their approach is going to be combative do they then do everything they can to minimize the danger (war) or just face-charge and hope for the best (sport, or gonzo, depending on situation)?

 

[Lanefan]

The premise of the thread would be that you use them sparingly then, because if you actually had enemies attempt to regularly use them on the PC's then their would be no more PC's.

I kinda disagree with this, in that the PCs in theory ought to realize what's good for the goose is good for the gander; and that if they're coming up with all these cool tactics it's only natural that there'll be times when the same tactics are used against them.

And yes, when done well it means some PCs will likely die; but almost never a whole party. IME someone always has a last-ditch "getaway car" of some sort.

 

[Lanefan]

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

I'll take CaS v CaW every time, thanks, if it's a choice between that and GNS.

The one thing with running combat as war that might not jive with the modern game is that true CaW somewhat requires a more adversarial approach on the part of the DM. You're not cheering for the PCs during the battle; you're in fact trying your best with the resources at hand (i.e. the opponents and whatever they have going for them) to - fairly as per the rules - squash them dead, and you're cheering for the opposition.

After (if) they win, that's when you can cheer for the PCs.

 

[ninjayeti]

If the DM adopted a "RPGs as war" approach, sure. The toughest boss in the campaign would just burn down the tavern the 1st level PCs were sleeping on night 1 of the campaign.

But the NPC's aren't omniscient. The big bad does not realize those meddling kids are going to uber powerful heroes who will be his biggest threat in the near future, and he has lots of other, more pressing things to worry about.

Actual war tells us that commanders make flawed decisions all the time (Hitler invading Russia), and bad luck can mitigate even the best decisions (the US aircraft carriers being away from Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack). The DM can usually set up the stage in a plausible way so that the PCs have a reasonable chance of success, even if the enemies within that scenario are fighting to the very best of their abilities.

 

[Xetheral]

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

Hard disagree there. I find Combat-as-War vs Combat-as-Sport an insightful take on common differences in table expectations for how PCs interact with the DM's prep: are the PCs expected to accept the presented encounters as-is (Combat as Sport) or are they expected to try to engineer encounters on their own terms (Combat as War)? Also, who is responsible for combat balance--the DM (CaS) or the players (CaW)?

In contrast to GNS theory, in my experience I find the CaW/CaS distinction tends to be strongly bimodal, which makes it a particularly useful categorization tool.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

So the claim is that enemy NPCs don’t...prepare for battle?

I am confused. Unless the PCs ambush someone when they have no reason to expect it, enemies are prepared for a fight. Mages have Mage Armor up (even if it isn’t in their stat-block), and everyone is armed and armored, etc.

If enemies know a fight is coming soon, buffs that only last an hour or less might be cast, depending on circumstance. No useful magic items are sitting in chests when they could be of use to the enemies who they’ll be looted from. You want a magic sword from fighting the Troll King’s Champion? Okay, survive him using it against you.

The PCs need to plan and fight smart to survive.

 

[Tonguez]

How many adventures are set up in a situation where WAR is even a motivating factor? Most of the time its monsters protecting their lair from outside raiders and in that case neither side wants to actually destroy the opponent. Sure Monsters want to defend their lair but I always default to Monsters first priority is to survive - so if opposition is too strong their first instinct will be “Run Away”.

Equally as a PC I want to survive, not just exterminate everything in the dungeon

 

[el-remmen]

Exactly. That said, once they've decided their approach is going to be combative do they then do everything they can to minimize the danger (war) or just face-charge and hope for the best (sport, or gonzo, depending on situation)?

This still doesn't make sense to me outside of the specific context.

In the game I ran yesterday, the PCs tried to leave a temple complex they raided, just to find 10 or more armed and armored people waiting for them outside. They slammed the door shut, barred it, and ran away to find another way out. They minimized danger by running away but if they had been less hurt or depleted they may have stayed and fought using the doorway to their defensive advantage and drawn people in a bit at time to try to overwhelm them, etc. If they were higher level or feeling confident the guards were significantly weaker than them, they might have marched right out there and fought OR challenged them to a one-on-one fight between leaders. . .the possibilities are endless.

As for the opponents, they had been ordered to try to capture the PCs, but were give the authority to kill them if necessary, so that also colored how they'd approach the fight.

Sport vs. War just doesn't seem dynamic enough a way to look at the game as I play it at least.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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!

I don't think you can define any specific play experience as CAW or CAG (Combat as Game, whatever you want to call it). There isn't really, in a general sense, enough detailed background to know exactly what the capabilities and options of any given 'monster' force would really be. What tools do they possess? What skills do they have? What are the practical/operational restraints on their activities? How does their mentality/culture/beliefs effect what they will actually do? Mostly we don't really know.

So, 'CAW' as it is called is simply a tone/genre choice, like any other. Exactly what makes sense in a given game is probably more closely related to the goals and preferences of play than anything else. I mean, you might create "Tucker's Kobolds" as a way of implementing a 'player test of skill' meatgrinder dungeon crawl sort of game. Players will then have to respond with elaborate ruses and ploys aimed at thwarting the adversarial plans of the GM. Those plans will simply be based on whatever she finds it interesting to pose as challenges. Any rationalization as 'CAW' is thus post-hoc.

Likewise a more 'story of the characters' type of game (narratively focused) is unlikely to persistently feature this sort of intricate 'puzzle games' kind of approach to monsters. It doesn't generally cater to a sense of the characters operating on a broad stage and undertaking heroic action adventure. Obviously the exact mix can vary, and maybe there's a specific sweet spot where the two can combine, though I haven not really seen it.

I think your 'initial claim' is pretty hard to validate. I mean, back in the day, we played an extremely 'skill focused' game. As players we became EXTREMELY adept at exploiting every sort of ploy you can imagine. Sure, frustrated GMs sometimes just refused to go along, but as players we were vastly more familiar with our PCs and the rules for 'PC stuff' than the GM was familiar with how to have specific monsters stick it to us. Of course he also had the advantage of operating on his turf. Overall things balanced out.

If we had a serious problem with some underground complex, for example, we would just find all the ways air came in and out and fill the place with toxic smoke. It might take a couple weeks, or whatever, and involve labor, time, money, etc. but for how long is the GM going to sand bag each and every step you take? Eventually they will lose credibility in a game where things are supposed to be so 'realistic'. The end result was that, past really low level play, this sort of thing generally petered out. It just got very time consuming and frankly boring.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

Something about this isn’t adding up for me, but I’ll have to dig into it later.