Are You a Good Tactician?

[FireLance]

I think of myself at the upper end of the good scale, but not quite top ten standard.

Of course, given that 21 people (as at this posting) have voted themselves into the "top ten", perhaps I should have gone for that anyway .

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Of course, given that 21 people (as at this posting) have voted themselves into the "top ten", perhaps I should have gone for that anyway .

Actually 34 of us seem to think we are Top Ten. You need to include those who rated themselves Excellent.

The categories are a little wonky. Perhaps that should be Top Ten Per Cent?

 

[shaylon]

I think I do o.k. but I have not been back playing too long so I hope I improve a great deal. I must say some of the forums here are a big help, and playing with a guy who is pretty brilliant (at times) from a tactical standpoint doesn't hurt either.

Our DM likes to throw curves though, and I know he reads here, so there may be a post about my TPK folly in the next few days which will refute this correspondence.

-Shay

Hmmm... In a shocking preemptive revelation, my PC was killed by his own folly in tonight's game. As I type this, the rest of my party moves forward and my dead body begins to decay. Time to roll a new character!

-Shay x2

 

[shilsen]

I'm an excellent tactician. I do, however, tend to raise or lower my tactical thinking based on the character I'm playing (or the NPCs I'm running, since I DM more often than than I play), so I rarely flex my tactical muscles as much as I can.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Good, I got game.

I am the DM, not a PC. I tend to do quite well at arranging combats with lower power bad guys. I am especially good at setting up combats where the opponents use the envrionment in the fight to gain an edge. I would rate myself higher, but for the following.

1) Due to work, I am unable to game in D&D regularly.
2) I tend to prefer strategies I find intresting to those that are effective.
3) I am too aware of my own limitations to vote myself higher with a straight face.
4) I have never been able to run a game beyond mid levels, and am unfamiliar with higher level skills and abilities.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[sullivan]

I'm generally a good battle tactician, especially at surviving. However my real strengths of tactical abilities are more outside of combat. I guess more akin to strategic longterm planning, but still done to directly improve tactical situations.

 

[Roman]

Heh. If everyone thinks they're "above average", what's true - that they're above average, or that they underestimate what "average" is?

Although there are some selection mechanism in play in this poll, I agree with you. This tendency for everybody to think he/she is above average is especially apparent in various polls or threads about 'real life ability scores' where almost everybody is a superman.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Although there are some selection mechanism in play in this poll, I agree with you. This tendency for everybody to think he/she is above average is especially apparent in various polls or threads about 'real life ability scores' where almost everybody is a superman.

Although some of the people get their 'real life ability scores' from one of those online quizzes. There's one that's popular on the Wizards board that gave me excellent stats, for instance, much better than I would ever have considered giving myself (for instance, it told me I have 18 Int, but then, its rather easy to get 100% on questions of the sort they asked on the test, questions are like the GREs or SATs except with lots of fill-in-the-blank as well as multiple choice)...of course, I've seen people on that site who got terrible scores from the same test, so I can't really be sure what is up.

As for my tactical ability, I can min/max the best option in almost any situation, although I often choose not to do so. Am I in the "few better" category? No. But I know that I am better than 90% of gamers taken in a simple random sample (which proportionately includes casual gamers and those who care nothing for tactics), so I picked top 10%. If the question meant "top 10% on Enworld," then I'm probably not, but I think it didn't mean this.

 

[Old One]

Hmmm...

I would have to say "It Depends"...

I voted "I've Got Game", but that comes from a blending of DM and Player rankings ! Armchair General since 1974...countless hours of Panzerblitz, Squad Leader, Caesar's Alesia and WSIM...West Point...Army Officer...Player/DM since 1981...hopefully all of that hasn't gone to waste !

As DM

I would place myself near the top for any regular campaign session. Most monster/NPCs encounters - even some rated as fairly easy - can quickly turn into TPKs or TPCs (total party captures) if played to the best of my ability. Ambush, feigned retreat, playing dead, concentrated firepower, hit and run, feigned surrender, traitorous mole/turncoat, flanking manuevers, continual harrassment, divide and conquer, psyops, framing for crimes, maximizing critter abilities/strengths while protecting critter weaknesses/liabilities...all the fun stuff.

I do my best to temper this and play creatures true to their nature and/or intelligence. Chaotic and less intelligent critters make mistakes (or, more importantly, don't exploit PC mistakes), smart guys can get over confident and make sub-optimal decisions, etc. However, if PCs drop their pants in front of the wrong opponents (smart & well-trained), the result isn't pretty.

I don't do quite as well with 1-shots and tend to pull my tactical punches a bit because I am often DMing folks I have never met before.

As a Player

This brings my average down...particularly if I am playing a PC I am unfamiliar with or a system I am not well-versed in. I did a 1-shot with PKitty's group as Priggle (and Burr-Lipp, when Priggle got mindblasted) that ranks up there in my 5 all-time uninspired RPing moments - mainly because I kept missing entries on the PC sheet that were in plain view. Fortunately, Kevin still talks to me !

The flip side is when I am playing a smart, tactically oriented PC, because I can turn into a linear plotting DM's worst nightmare. I think big and outside the box. Sun Tzu kicks in and its all about matching strengths to enemy weaknesses while avoiding the enemy's strength.

I look forward to matching tactical wits with Rel and Henry at NC Game Day VII in a few weeks...

~ OO

 

[Galethorn]

Other!

I'm a great tactician in general, and apply lots of tactics into both my tabletop and computer gaming, but I'm terrible with the sorts of things that don't have any real-world bearing that I can identify and exploit; which is why my crappiness at a game is proportional with how detached it is from reality.

For example, I try to use boom-and-zoom/hit-and-run tactics in all sorts of games, when they're the safest course of action: in flight-sims, I do it when I'm in a faster plane than the opposition; in first-person-shooters, I do it when I have a light weapon and cover; with strategy games, I do it when I have cavalry or archers with cover; in RPGs

I also try to use other tried-and-true methods, like always attacking at an enemy's weakness first, trying to do the unexpected, 'divide and conquer', flanking, attacking from positions that give cover but don't give the enemy any cover, and all that good stuff.

All of that said, in D&D, those sorts of things usually don't net you more than +4 to hit (from flanking), +4 to AC (from cover), and sometimes breaking up a tougher encounter into 'easy-to-chew' pieces. If you have a good DM. A lot of the time, it's just not worth the extra work when you have a Good Hope spell, a flaming weapon, or you can fly.

So, as the tactical realism of an RPG goes up, my tactical skill within the game increases. Which is why I tend to do really well in low-magic/no-magic or otherwise gritty games.