How can I stall combat for a couple rounds?

[Noumenon]

More ideas I like:

instead of you stalling the combat, have some sort of player-driven mechanism where they stall the combat.

Sure! If the one PC shouts "hold him off!" and then does his maneuver, the paladin can disengage some or do total defense (another good idea).

 

[Doug McCrae]

I am wanting to force a more cinematic style onto my wargame. In a movie, characters will do something like this a lot -- see their friend hard pressed, maneuver to the wrecking ball or horse pen and unleash a diversion, saving the day.

I'm not sure if D&D is the right rule set for this, it's too detailed. For instance in D&D combat rounds have a precise length. If you used a system where rounds are nebulous, then one group could circle round the back without difficulty.

On the face of it, encircling a foe is a good tactic, but the rules make it not, one could argue because of lack of a sufficiently good defensive fighting option. If the paladin had the feat Combat Expertise then defensive fighting probably would be good enough. That would only solve that specific problem though, not the larger issue of the rules not supporting tactics that seem to make sense.

You could adopt a much more free-wheeling approach to the rules. For example you could simply declare one combat round to pass as the PCs circle behind, even though the rules say no. Or declare the paladin to have held off his foes if he goes completely defensive. This is antithetical to the style and culture of 3e tho.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I don't think hero points do the job. Hero points let the players break the rules whenever they have hero points, and not when they don't.

But you don't want the rules to be broken X number of times a session. You want the rules to be broken *whenever it seems cinematically appropriate*.

That said, if your sessions always follow a particular dramatic structure, starting off slow, and rising to a climax, then perhaps per session hero points are more apposite. And I guess the hero points could be doled out according to a different mechanism, not necessarily X per session.

 

[Noumenon]

To expand on the reason I don't want to just play RAW and let the party get its just deserts: for dramatic reasons, I want to be in control of whether the characters have a chance to die. Because there are times when I'm perfectly OK with the dice ruling and characters dying: when they're battling the BBEG, when they chose to stop for a lunch break during their prison escape, etc. Then there are times when it would just be lame for someone to die: when it's a random encounter, when going back to town would throw the whole session off track, etc.

Normally I have a host of options to keep the session's pacing going right -- adjusting encounters on the fly, different tactics, putting up dead ends. So I don't like it when the rules essentially take these choices out of my hands and say "You have to kill this character." Like a character who gets grappled when they're by themselves (very little escape chance), or a combat system that says "You have to swing every turn to make the monsters look like they're real."

 

[Noumenon]

I would like a bit of clarification as to how this specific example happens. Does the party enter the room, roll initiative and then some of the PCs sneak off making all their moves in combat rounds, or do some members sneak off and the paladin walks in, challenges the enemy and then rolls initiative?

In that example, the group pursued two orcs into a room, the hallway became congested (paladin, fighter, and halfling ranger) and the rogue decided to go around to the back. This was about a 170-foot trip (down a conveyor belt, behind an orc sentry, and down a staircase).

Another example: One member of the party fighting a giant scorpion (can't remember if he was already grappled or not) and one of the other two goes around about 90-120 feet to come out in the other entrance of the room.

Third example: Party member gets himself smuggled into the funeral home inside a coffin, other party member gets caught sneaking in and starts a fight, first party member decides his character doesn't have enough proof to want to be a part of murdering funeral home employees. Third party member never enters the funeral home at all. Honestly a lot of my problem is that the players aren't committed to supporting each other in combat, and sometimes I suspect they sneak around just as an excuse to stay out of danger.

 

[IronWolf]

To expand on the reason I don't want to just play RAW and let the party get its just deserts: for dramatic reasons, I want to be in control of whether the characters have a chance to die.

Honestly a lot of my problem is that the players aren't committed to supporting each other in combat, and sometimes I suspect they sneak around just as an excuse to stay out of danger.

I think the second quote sums up a fair part of the issue. It seems the party is making poor tactical decisions that are making it difficult. If you keep wanting to try to save them they likely won't learn to think a little more about tactics.

Now that's not to say they have to plan out detailed combat arrangements and strategies, that isn't everyone's cup of tea. But them realizing that if one person chooses not to even enter a place of danger that they will not be able to help the party as a whole which will likely have dire consequences on the ones that did enter. Saving them via DM fiat is not likely to improve this situation and I suspect you will continue to see it over and over.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I think the second quote sums up a fair part of the issue. It seems the party is making poor tactical decisions that are making it difficult. If you keep wanting to try to save them they likely won't learn to think a little more about tactics.

Now that's not to say they have to plan out detailed combat arrangements and strategies, that isn't everyone's cup of tea. But them realizing that if one person chooses not to even enter a place of danger that they will not be able to help the party as a whole which will likely have dire consequences on the ones that did enter. Saving them via DM fiat is not likely to improve this situation and I suspect you will continue to see it over and over.

A TPK is nature's way of telling you that your tactics need work.

The Auld Grump

 

[ValhallaGH]

To expand on the reason I don't want to just play RAW and let the party get its just deserts: for dramatic reasons, I want to be in control of whether the characters have a chance to die.

1. The DM always has this power.
2. Roll your dice in secret. That way, your players don't know you are keeping them alive(ish).
3. Don't have random encounters. Those tables are dangerous, imply a very dangerous world, exist solely to kill PCs, and I've seen more PCs die to random encounters than I have to all the BBEGs combined.
4. Narrate any encounter where you don't want the PCs to die. "You find the room guarded by orcs. You slaughter them. We'll go around the table describing how." If there's no chance of death then it's a role-playing encounter that happens to be about combat, not a combat encounter. Treat it appropriately.

The hardest DMing lesson I ever learned was "the dice know when I should let a character die. Listen to the dice." In a two week period I fudged three character deaths, and all of them bit me in the butt, hard. Maybe your dice aren't as wise as mine, but my advice is to listen to them.

In that example, the group pursued two orcs into a room, the hallway became congested (paladin, fighter, and halfling ranger) and the rogue decided to go around to the back. This was about a 170-foot trip (down a conveyor belt, behind an orc sentry, and down a staircase).

Another example: One member of the party fighting a giant scorpion (can't remember if he was already grappled or not) and one of the other two goes around about 90-120 feet to come out in the other entrance of the room.

...
In any campaign I've run (or played in), the guy that ran off would have just "kited" one to three more encounters and all-but guaranteed either a) a TPK or b) him getting killed before he could rejoin the others.

It's one thing for a character to slink across the field and trigger the spiffy environment feature that wins the fight (or helps a lot). That's cool, cinematic, and fun. It's fun to be the distraction, it's fun to slink across, it's fun to position the foes, and it's fun to watch the environment do its thing.
It's a whole different shebang for a character to dive into a maze, hoping to come out in time and in location to be useful to the fight. That's one (or more) of: stupidity, cowardice, passive-aggressive PvP, total naivete, campaign sabotage, (bad) glory hogging.

A TPK is nature's way of telling you that your tactics need work.

I'm afraid you may just have to suck it up and follow The Auld Grump's advice.
Pain is the best teacher humans have, partly because everyone can learn from it. The pain of character death a) builds character (no pun intended) and b) makes you realize that you were doing something wrong. The trick to handling a TPK well is to be able to sit down with the players and after-action the fight to help them see what they could have done better and what mistakes they did make.


Good luck.

 

[Verdande]

I don't see that there's any need for you to stall combat to prevent the paladin from dying. All you're doing is rewarding the players for making poor tactical decisions by going easy on them. If anything, as was mentioned by several more eloquent posters, you need to go the exact opposite direction.

You need to hammer the paladin, and show absolutely no mercy whatsoever. If they want to leave the paladin alone to suffer his fate while they try and get the easy victory by subtlety, then they need to make it work. It's not your job to make the players' tactics work, it's theirs.

Look at it this way: If you're trying to teach somebody how to use a hammer, you don't adjust the wood or give them nails with larger heads to compensate for their horrible grip and insane angle of attack, you let them puzzle it out. Otherwise, they're going to try and keep using the claw to hit the nail, and nobody wants that

 

[Saeviomagy]

Another example: One member of the party fighting a giant scorpion (can't remember if he was already grappled or not) and one of the other two goes around about 90-120 feet to come out in the other entrance of the room.

3.5e: Running lets you move some 90 feet in a round.

4e: Running lets you move 80 feet in a round.

Either way, that 90-120 feet is only 2 rounds. 1 round for some characters.

Also: how about you just stop showing the players the entire map? At that point any character who goes running off into the wild unknown in hope of a flank is just an idiot.