Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 576399" data-attributes="member: 704">More TacticsNote and Use Terrain:It helps alot to plan your battles out in advance.  To that end, take a look at where your players are going to be having this fight.  The most helpful thing to do is to take a look at the situational modifiers for combat.  Things like cover, bonus to hit from high ground, movement penalties for water, climb DC's for surfaces that must be climbed.  Pick a few to exploit, and then have your NPC's use them.  Once you know where your fighting, you will have a better idea of what to do.Outdoors:If your in open terrain, open with missile fire.  Use grass, bushes and the like to hide.  In battle, use Tree's, Rocks, and changes in elevation to gain cover and concealment.Indoors:  Make note of what doors and secret doors are in the area.  Furniture is a nice secondary tool.  A table can be tipped over for cover, or someone can stand on it for a high ground bonus.Basic Tactics:Draw them out - Players who use melee weapons love to chase down missle attackers.  If you have a group of say, 10 Orcs, have 5 of them use bows at medium range and have the other 5 Hide.  Hiding gets a bonus for distance from players, poor lighting, and other terrain features.  Once the melee types run off after the archers, have the other 5 charge the non melee types.Moving Targets - With low level humanoids using ranged weapons, have the fire, and then move away from their targets.  Ideally in sepearate directions.  This will give your archers more chances to attack your players.Divide and Conquer - If you have spell casters with access to Web, or any wall spell, use the spells to split the party.  Spell casters on the wrong side of a Wall of Ice cannot do much to help the barbarian who charged on ahead.Obstacles - If you can place missile attackers on either the top of a small cliff or the far side of a chasm, go for it.  This is especially brutal if the archers have good cover.Prepared Traps - If your dungeon has Pit Traps, falling Rock traps, or Spear traps, have humanoids take positions so that the trap is between the players and the humanoids.  With luck, the player will spring the trap when they try to close with the humanoids.Use Alternative Attacks - If you have Bugbears using Great Axes, go for Sunder attacks.  If you have a fighter with Improved Disarm, have the others hold their actions until after the Disarm.  If the disarm works, have one of the humanoids pick up the fallen weapon instead.  If someone is surrounded and you have a few to spare, have the first few to go try a Trip attack, followed by a 5 foot step to let another attacker in.  If it works, you can get +6 to hit (+2 flanking, +4 prone).Exploit Immunities - If you are using Fire Giants, have them fight in an area full of fire.  The pc's will take fire damage, and giants take none.  If your using Orcs underground or at night, apply the sight related penalties to those without light.  Undead do not breath, so if they are fighting in water, you can Grapple and hold the PC's under water until they Drown.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

Verification