I've been playing lots of World of Warcraft lately and it's making me think about dungeon combat in ways I hadn't really done before. Currently I'm setting up a campaign in Rappan Athukk and the environment - enclosed rooms, set numbers of bad guys, the possibility of adds if the group messes up or lets baddies escape - seems similar. So now I'm curious if any other WoW players or gamers in general have attempted some of the same group tactics in a rp setting.
For anyone who doesn't play or hasn't gotten in to any high level instances, WoW can be an extremely unforgiving environment for groups who don't have a plan, stick to it, and work together. One person messes up and the chance for a tpk is incredibly high. Every character has a specific job, they carry that job out, and things stay nice and efficient until things go bad, they adapt as quickly as possible, then try to get back to the plan. The biggest difference would be warriors and the concepts of crowd control and tanking. In a DnD setting a warrior fighting defensively and using combat expertise would get up to -9 to hit, +7 to AC while still being able to do AoO if the baddie tried to get around. Shield Slam from Complete Warrior would allow him to try to stun anyone with a low Fort save and sunder and disarm become very valuable as ways to keep that baddie's attention away from the clothies. This just requires a fighter who isn't trying to do maximum damage every round, something I've almost never seen at a gaming table.
For the finger wigglers of the group this would also call out for a couple rounds of not doing damage. Hold person is an obvious one, but Deep Slumber, Rainbow Patter, and various walls would be good ways of taking baddies temporarily out of the fight. Then once the situation is under control they can lay on the damage.
Rogues would remain one of the primary damage sources in the group with backstabs, Hamstring to keep baddies from legging it, and poisons.
This has really been accuring to me as I've been getting more and more frustrated playing in groups where everyone wants to do the big damage, score the kill, and be the one man army. Does anyone else run into this issue? Is your group a team or a bunch of individuals? Does tanking work in DnD or does the lack of the ability to maintain a baddie's attention make it impractical? Is the magical crowd control viable or do low dc's make it unreliable? Do you despise what has become of DnD when someone compares it to a video game? Let me know!
For anyone who doesn't play or hasn't gotten in to any high level instances, WoW can be an extremely unforgiving environment for groups who don't have a plan, stick to it, and work together. One person messes up and the chance for a tpk is incredibly high. Every character has a specific job, they carry that job out, and things stay nice and efficient until things go bad, they adapt as quickly as possible, then try to get back to the plan. The biggest difference would be warriors and the concepts of crowd control and tanking. In a DnD setting a warrior fighting defensively and using combat expertise would get up to -9 to hit, +7 to AC while still being able to do AoO if the baddie tried to get around. Shield Slam from Complete Warrior would allow him to try to stun anyone with a low Fort save and sunder and disarm become very valuable as ways to keep that baddie's attention away from the clothies. This just requires a fighter who isn't trying to do maximum damage every round, something I've almost never seen at a gaming table.
For the finger wigglers of the group this would also call out for a couple rounds of not doing damage. Hold person is an obvious one, but Deep Slumber, Rainbow Patter, and various walls would be good ways of taking baddies temporarily out of the fight. Then once the situation is under control they can lay on the damage.
Rogues would remain one of the primary damage sources in the group with backstabs, Hamstring to keep baddies from legging it, and poisons.
This has really been accuring to me as I've been getting more and more frustrated playing in groups where everyone wants to do the big damage, score the kill, and be the one man army. Does anyone else run into this issue? Is your group a team or a bunch of individuals? Does tanking work in DnD or does the lack of the ability to maintain a baddie's attention make it impractical? Is the magical crowd control viable or do low dc's make it unreliable? Do you despise what has become of DnD when someone compares it to a video game? Let me know!