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

[Helldritch]

I only CaW at all times. I don't like whack a mole or fudging combat to ease things for the players.
Last session players 5th level, 6 characters and 3 NPCs, faced an illithid arcanist with its retinue. They littoral crushed it but it got away. Right before leaving, it left this message in the mind of one player:" I will be back. Prepared this time." They were quite proud of themselves.

The next encounter came with a group of orcs, a warrant, and the players were almost killed but prevailed through sheer luck and a good use of their skill. When a high AC fighter fell, three orcs immediately attacked him. Two hit, causing two failed death save. Not taking any chances thw last orc archer tried to finish the fighter but missed. The players won the initiative and healed back the character with their best spells. 3 cleric and a bard can heal quite a lot. But it also meant that they did not attacked that round. They finally won, but being outnumber 7 to 1 brought them to only a few hp each and all their ressources were spend. They were particularly shocked when the four orcish clerics rose a few of their friends as zombies... the only surviving orc said that they were brought there by an illithid that paid their leader good gold to send a squad against the PCs. They now know that the illithid was true to its words.

That is combat as war. That illithid will harass the PCs as best as it can. It will not be fair, it will not be glorious either. If they do not act, that illithid will get them. They are in the underdark and searching for a way to get out. I wonder how they will manage.

 

[dave2008]

The tactics employed in combat as war are inherently about making the encounter unfair.

Are you saying that in a gamist way, such as the DM always stacks the deck in favor of the Monsters? Or in a realist manner? If you build a "real" world, Combat as War, as you seem to define it, is not always possible. Sometimes the PCs are the big bad. They have more resources and abilities than the monsters or NPC they face. So even if the monsters do everything (un)realistically possible, they still may not have the advantage.

 

[el-remmen]

I just want to know what it means that neither of these described ways appeals to me to those to who this dichotomy is some basic lens all D&D games fall into. So either my games are a third thing, a combination of both, or I am just not understanding the criteria.

 

[FrogReaver]

I just want to know what it means that neither of these described ways appeals to me to those to who this dichotomy is some basic lens all D&D games fall into. So either my games are a third thing, a combination of both, or I am just not understanding the criteria.

That's fair. Maybe if you described your games we could tell you our thoughts?

 

[FrogReaver]

Are you saying that in a gamist way, such as the DM always stacks the deck in favor of the Monsters? Or in a realist manner? If you build a "real" world, Combat as War, as you seem to define it, is not always possible. Sometimes the PCs are the big bad. They have more resources and abilities than the monsters or NPC they face. So even if the monsters do everything (un)realistically possible, they still may not have the advantage.

You seem to be stuck on the notion of a single group of monsters. There's a reason I used the word 'eventually'. The PC's may have a sizable advantage advantage against enemy group A and may completely demolish them, but enemy Group A isn't the only enemy group and the PC's won't have a sizable advantage against every enemy group.

 

[FrogReaver]

So... couldn't the DM just cheat then?

You'll have to elaborate on what you mean.

 

[Xetheral]

I just want to know what it means that neither of these described ways appeals to me to those to who this dichotomy is some basic lens all D&D games fall into. So either my games are a third thing, a combination of both, or I am just not understanding the criteria.

Here's a different way of looking at it that might help. Let's say you as the DM plan out an encounter in a fun location with a particular difficulty level in mind, and then the PCs spend 30 minutes of real time trying to lure the enemies onto a different battlefield where the PCs would have a tactical advantage.

At your table, would these PCs be playing the game exactly as intended, or by refusing to engage with the encounter as presented by the DM, are they being disruptive? The former would be more indicative of a Combat as War game. The latter would be more indicative of a Combat as Sport game.

 

[FrogReaver]

Care to explain your reasoning here?

I see you rebutting lots of counterarguments, but I just don't understand your affirmative case.

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

Combat as War means enemies will create every advantage they can to defeat their enemies. While the PC's can have a decent run treating combat as war and gaining overwhelming advantage after overwhelming advantage against their enemies, eventually in combat as war there will be an enemy that gets an overwhelming advantage against the PCs, because if enemies treat combat as war that is bound to happen eventually (barring campaigns where the PC's are set up as the most powerful in all the land from the start of the campaign on).

 

[tetrasodium]

I try to run combat as war pretty exclusively but find myself chaffing more & more over how much of the tactical elements & hooks for it were removed in 5e the longer I run it

 

[overgeeked]

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

Combat as War means enemies will create every advantage they can to defeat their enemies. While the PC's can have a decent run treating combat as war and gaining overwhelming advantage after overwhelming advantage against their enemies, eventually in combat as war there will be an enemy that gets an overwhelming advantage against the PCs, because if enemies treat combat as war that is bound to happen eventually (barring campaigns where the PC's are set up as the most powerful in all the land from the start of the campaign on).

Sure. But so what? That’s part of the point of CaW. If the players are smart enough to run good CaW, then they’ll probably be smart enough to know when to cut their losses and run. CaW doesn’t stop once initiative is rolled. Good GaW avoids needing to roll initiative in the first place.

If the players are running that clever they’ll also be paranoid and looking for traps. If they lose that, they likely die. It’s not that CaW is bad or hard, it’s mostly exhausting.

If the PCs can walk over the monsters, then the monsters can walk over the PCs. I don’t see the downside. Unless it’s bad because it subverts the notion that the PCs must always win. Well, frankly, good.