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

[DemoMonkey]

I wasn't disputing your thesis Frogreaver; I agree with it. I was clarifying it for doctorbadwolf.

 

[FrogReaver]

I wasn't disputing your thesis Frogreaver; I agree with it. I was clarifying it for doctorbadwolf.

Apologies then. I read it the wrong way.

 

[el-remmen]

Do the PCs always treat "combat as war?"

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."

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

 

[Imaculata]

In my D&D campaigns, enemies sometimes absolutely treat combat as war.

I had a fleet of ships ambush the players and engage them in a naval battle.

I had an enemy pretend to be an ally of the party, seperate them, and then have a small squad of guards attempt to arrest each one of them, while chaining their ships and having their crew imprisoned.

I use war tactics against the players all the time.

 

[FrogReaver]

Do the PCs always treat "combat as war?"

That's an excellent question. I think a game can have a bit of both - but I think it will almost certainly lean heavily toward sport or heavily toward war.

For me, how the opponents react has more to do with the specific situation: Do they know the PCs are coming?

But in a combat as war style game - notice the same question is seldom/never asked about the PC's - 'do they know if the monsters/enemies 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."

It feels like you are trying to pit me into the corner of not having any of these things matter and of course they do. But the general philosophy of combat as war behavior will still tend to have different tactics than the same set of parameters with combat as sport behavior.

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

Not so much in a true combat as war playstyle.

 

[FrogReaver]

In my D&D campaigns, enemies sometimes absolutely treat combat as war.

I had a fleet of ships ambush the players and engage them in a naval battle.

I had an enemy pretend to be an ally of the party, seperate them, and then have a small squad of guards attempt to arrest each one of them, while chaining their ships and having their crew imprisoned.

I use war tactics against the players all the time.

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.

 

[Oofta]

I think this varies a lot by DM and campaign, but I think it is kind of baked into a lot of D&D that the PCs are supposed to "win" most of the time. Even if that means running the monsters stupid. It's so rare that monsters are effective that we have the Tucker's Kobolds story for when they are not.

For example in another thread, there was a bit of discussion of how quickly a dragon would die to a few dozen archers because the assumption was that the dragon would attack in broad daylight. Why? Because dragons are there to be killed, of course. Now, a young dragon may be stupid enough to do this but an adult or ancient dragon? Never. They'd wait for a dark night, preferably with rain for cover or at the very least a moonless night. Then, when no one can see it coming until it's too late they'd strafe and fly off into the darkness until their breath weapon regenerated

With 60 ft blindsight and darkvision 120 ft there are so many options, none of which involve coming into melee range. Start a forest fire to cover the target sight in smoke. Fly high overhead and drop a few boulders just for fun. If a particular individual/hero is being annoying enough don't land and fight, just use your 15 ft bite range attack to grab the offending individual and deal with them alone if you don't just drop them from a thousand feet up.

Battle starting to turn against you? Fly away or use that "get out of jail free" card that you bribed/intimidated/tricked a wizard to get a couple centuries ago. You don't get to be an adult or ancient dragon by fighting to the death unless you absolutely have to do so.

So while I do this sometimes, the question will always be is it fun. Sometimes the PCs will face overwhelming odds in my games and charging in headlong is a good way to start up a new campaign with a different set of characters. Other times I want better balanced encounters because I want the PCs to feel like heroes.

 

[bedir than]

There is no situation in which the behaviour of the monsters is not DM fiat. The monsters aren't actually, y'know. Real.

What was your point?

The claim is that monsters always act a specific way. This claim is completely, and utterly false.

 

[el-remmen]

Not so much in a true combat as war playstyle.

I guess I don't know what that really means then?

 

[Alzrius]

Can you elaborate? I’ve no idea what on Earth you mean by most of that.

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.