How do I get better tactics from my players?

[Leopold]

My players are more of a team than anything. They know the wizard is going to cast fireball, stay back and let the cleric buff you, don't charge the enemy, let them come to you type deals.

Why do they do that? Because they have seen me do that. My monsters aren't stupid (well maybe the black pudding...) and they are organized (sans the chaotic goblin barbarians...) and will fight in a cohesive team using stealth, tactics, subterfuge, and ambush.

Now they have said "Fighters, hold for the mage and cleric, wait for the bard to sing, then go in and kill, and stay out of the mages lightning bolt arcs!"

Since then we have had one PC that constantly gets in the way of the mages spells and i have spoken to the mage and told him his alignment, his PC's temperment, and so forth. Now said PC will be on the recieving end of some lightning bolts because he won't work as a team player...:shrug: not my deal. Adapt or die as i always say..

 

[Sialia]

OK, so I'm a player who likes having tactics beaten in to the party.

I frequently beg for this kind of treatment.

One of the best I can recall was something very simple: the party was walking through a dark area using torches.

The enemy stood in the dark area beyond our torch radius and fired ranged things at us.

They could see us, we couldn't see them.

Simple.

Lethal.

We learned.

Another case--same GM--we walked in to an area and got in to combat with the obvious group of combatants. When we were thoroughly committed to dealing with them, their second wing stepped out from behind a wall and pummeled our unprotected backsides.

They were not magically cloaked or anything--just standing behind a wall that had an open archway in it. A small amount of scouting or scrying would have revealed them to us, but we didn't think to do it.

For one character who had a weapon that magically returned to his hand after being thrown, he simply set a villian with a range: touch attack inside an antimagic shell. Come and get it, boy.

The GM I'm thinking of was a fine chess player. He used a lot of that kind of thinking in setting up the encounters. An obvious attack to lead you in to a position where the unobvious attack would come from, or where you'd practically nuked yourself and there really was no one else to blame.

And when we walked in to obvious, simple traps, he was nearly merciless. We were badly humiliated over and over until we learned. It was apparent that we were missing obvious, easy things that we really could have anticipated if we'd been paying attention.

Getting nearly killed is one thing--almost anything can be healed-- having the enemy loot (or tattoo, or shave, or plant eggs in) your bodies while you are unconcious--that hurts.

Set yourself up a villian who likes to gloat. The bad movie villian kind who wants to set the party into an escapable death trap instead of killing them outright, or who has a reason to take their stuff without killing them.

Or a cat burglar who lives for the thrill of sneaking into an unprotected camp at night and making off with stuff, but who is CG and won't kill helpless foes.

Or a band of tricksters -fairies, brownies, quicklings, leprechauns . . . something that is enjoyng thier humiliation more than their deaths. A band of illusion-using sprites who know how to trip up a party by adding extra steps to the end of a staircase will put ideas in their heads, all right. Slapstick is very educational--everybody loves mocking somebody with egg on his face--and no permanent damage is done.

Ooh--Set them up as the "victims" in bet by two competing teams of tricksters--the team that counts coup on them more times, wins the trophy. This can happen completely incidentally to your regular campaign--the PCs don't know why these little bastards are out to get them, but the jokes might be occasionally ill timed. Lose a night's sleep when you really really need to get your spells back, and your paranoia level should skyrocket. Or wind up with donkey ears just before you need to do a good roleplaying scene with a romantically inclined lady or irate employer.

Just make sure the pranks were things they had a reasonable chance to see coming, if they were paying attention.

Good responses to hazardous situations = treasure. Bad responses to tactical situation = poverty and embarassment.

Finally, the place to pull punches is not when the foe is attacking--the place to pull punches is when the party is starting to get the idea. Give them big success for attempts at teamwork, lots of praise, good, even specatacular outcomes. The PC who gives up a chance for personal glory to support someone else's attack, that PC deserves acknowledgement. Can be a treasure no one else can use. Perhaps the party has a magic item that responds well to . . .oh wait--I got it--I'll write it up next post.



They will learn.

 

[kengar]

Kengar, I'm copying that lecture and posting it to my group of Living Greyhawk players up here. They're about to make the transition from playing mods designed for 6th level characters to mods designed for 8th level characters so it's quite appropriate.

Be my guest! It's nice to see that my ideas aren't TOTALLY in left field. Do me a favor and post a link to your site, I want to show my players that I wasn't talking crazy and that other DM's have this problem.

 

[Sialia]

Amulet of the Pack

This item is charged by good teamwork. When PCs do something that counts as good teamwork, the amulet glows briefly, and stores a luck point. It can hold up to three luck points.

If a PC wants to use the luck points, he/she must announce before making his/her roll how many luck points are needed --probably there is some invocation that must be recited-- and the luck point(s) will be used to positively affect the outcome of the roll.

Any member of the party may store or invoke the luck points--they are a group asset. Any bickering over who's act charged the stone will cause the stone to fade and lose a point.

The amulet is able to sense who "belongs" to the group--there must be a general consensus among party members that the invoker qualifies. The invoker need not have been present during the moment when the luck was stored, but at least one person must be present who was part of the party that stored the luck.

 

[Kyramus]

Amulet of the Pack

This item is charged by good teamwork. When PCs do something that counts as good teamwork, the amulet glows briefly, and stores a luck point. It can hold up to three luck points.

If a PC wants to use the luck points, he/she must announce before making his/her roll how many luck points are needed --probably there is some invocation that must be recited-- and the luck point(s) will be used to positively affect the outcome of the roll.

Any member of the party may store or invoke the luck points--they are a group asset. Any bickering over who's act charged the stone will cause the stone to fade and lose a point.

The amulet is able to sense who "belongs" to the group--there must be a general consensus among party members that the invoker qualifies. The invoker need not have been present during the moment when the luck was stored, but at least one person must be present who was part of the party that stored the luck.

Nice but instead of stating who was part of the party that stored the luck, just have anyone who possess the amulet be able to use it. Makes the party want to work more together in keeping it save in case an enemy takes away their precious luck points and use it against themselves.

 

[Sialia]

Listen to the Sialia, for she is wise:

A persistent campaign of "nuisance" tricks should help to slowly ratchet up your group's paranoia without having to kill them. Some plot convenience or minor and expendable villian can be used for this purpose.

But hold something Dangerous, Important and Flexible in store. The kind of foe you could throw at them almost anywhere or anytime without upsetting your plot. Especially good if it is something that will advance your plot. And then wait for the moment.

At some point they should start to respond to the nuisance pattern: that imp always steals our socks at night. Let's post a guard.

And when they get that, when the lesson is actually starting to grip them at least a little, hit them with the Big Dangerous Thing and ensure that it is at least partially foiled by their preparations for dealing with the little thing.

So they can have a moment of wonder: gee, we'd have been COMPLETELY screwed if we hadn't set up a guard in advance.

This is a big, big reward players can appreciate. Even if they got it right only by mistake, getting it right should feel good, and be something they want to do again.

Getting killed feels awful, and players ought to work to avoid that. (Stick) Feeling pleased with yourself for doing something right feels good, and almost no one can resist that (Carrot), even if you really know you mostly got lucky. Spoonfuls of sugar will help the medicine go down. Success is a better sugar than treasure.

Pulling punches once the combat has begun is pulling punches too late. The PCs gain confidence that you're not really going to hurt them. Pull the punches earlier when you let them get away with preventing or evading a difficult situation and still reward them for it.

Not that you want them to refuse the dungeon altogheter. But if there is a choice of two ways and they pick the better one, they deserve points for choosing well.

Always reward positive behavior.

 

[The Fifth Elephant]

Humiliation traps. Have them go through a dungeon designed by gnome clowns with a twisted sense of humor. After the second water balloon land on their heads(filled with bright green dye), maybe they'll start looking around more and watching for stuff.

 

[Leopold]

Humiliation traps. Have them go through a dungeon designed by gnome clowns with a twisted sense of humor. After the second water balloon land on their heads(filled with bright green dye), maybe they'll start looking around more and watching for stuff.

greyhawk ruins??

 

[Ashy]

Dr. SM - listen to Salia, for she is wise. I agree with ALL of her points. (With the sole exception that I would chunck the luck points on the Amulet of the Pack and replace it instead with an all time +X circumstance modifier to all party actions - other wise, have it work just the same!)

Another thing that I have found that helps in this scenario is having a strong party leader. Way back in the day I was playing in a 2e FR campaign and I was playing the party leader - a real headstrong lass who put up with ZERO flack from her party members. At first, it was all a dynamic for "whose gonna be the alpha dog", and with luck (and a girdle of giant strength) my character won out. However, after leading the party through several frightful battles wherein only her brillant tactics saved them, the party began listening to her barked orders WILLINGLY. After that, there was no looking back - the party became a tactical machine - we even had battle formations, a code language and all sorts of cool "in character" team additions. It helped immensely, however, that the characters had a supreme threat before them - they were taking on the Red Wizards of Thay, so there were only two choices - be smart and live or die.

So, in summary 1. have a strong, smart party leader and 2. have a very real and very deadly threat.



HTH!

(and yes, I'm gonna reply to your email!)

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Wow!!! Most useful/fun thread ever!!!

Some of these posts are going to end up on my wall:

"Good responses to hazardous situations = treasure. Bad responses to tactical situation = poverty and embarassment."

If I don't get some sort of NPC to scream this at his minions I will regret it for the rest of my life. I may in fact get it cross-stitched on a pillow.

And I will listen to the Sialla for she is wise. In fact, I think a lot of what's been said in the last few posts will chime in nicely with some of what I've planned and has been said earlier. Their new employer isn't exactly nice and I can easily picture him sending nuisance threats their way. Not too mention I now cannot wait to loot the PCs. The villain who does that will be doomed in ways I cannot even begin to describe, but they players will be so into it that they will have the time of their lives.

Oh and:

"Getting nearly killed is one thing--almost anything can be healed-- having the enemy loot (or tattoo, or shave, or plant eggs in) your bodies while you are unconcious--that hurts."

Is so going to be some graffitti they find in a dungeon of despair some place.

Yea, Ashy!!!

I actually just picked up Minions and Plains both of which have put loads of new info and ideas in my head.

Also the very situation that provoked this thread was the final fight between Zul's council and the PCs. Mind you I had restatted the council since another player was borrowing the book to create a character, and they had come up with the clever idea of following the water system through the place as opposed to using the stairs from the entrance level down, so I had to come up with a medium sized black dragon that Zul was using to police the pipes. Still the fight itself played out proper with the council wading in while Zul looked on with amusement and eventually troops were summoned.

But they just kept dying in that council fight. Wouldn't take cover, one of them kept charging Zul and getting despair auraed, and never used any buff spells. They had haste potions and healing potions and kept just taking healing potions until I pointed out to one that taking the haste before the heal would be ever so much more effective. Forunately they'd picked up the Ort cleric from earlier in the campaign. He's turned into such a great character that I'm statting him tonight.

They also fell for the teleport trap even after Zul was gone figuring it must have lead to a treasure room, course there was a natural 1 roll involved.

The upshot was they barely defeated Zul and his council and walked away with his treasury-that portable hole is filled up I don't care what they claim- leaving the rest of his army fleeing from the massive black pudding that was created when they foollisly pulled the 'general alert' chain. Their toasting of the slaves is why Flollo is transferring them to a 'special' branch of his administration.