How do you approach tactics?

[renau1g]

It's the guy (or girl as the case may be) who insists on battling mano a mano. That sort of thing.

I had one of these, although he was a Paladin of Tempus and felt that every combat was a test of strength and to prove himself in the eyes of his god, the Paladin MC Avenger would challenge one foe and fight him in a "duel"

It was usually a soldier or brute so he'd be tied up while the rest of the team battled, but it was cool because that's what he wanted to do RP wise and we didn't want to crash his party.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The deaths will continue until play improves.

This really isn't an issue as long as the players don't view survival as something they are entitled to regardless of their approach.

 

[Hussar]

It seems a bigger problem in 4e, which relies heavily on tactical synergy between the PCs. I've seen the more tactical players offer to rebuild the charge-n-hack guy's PC to take advantage of his tactics; I've seen them try to work around it in their own tactics and builds, but there is no perfect solution.

It seems less of a problem in 1e, which is more environment-simulationist and less rules-tactical. I've seen comments like "Why are you specialised in longbow if you never use it?" but in 1e having PC X be less effective than PC Y is not a big problem, the game design already does that - X might be a non-optimised Fighter, but he could just as well be a Thief. And it's easy to roll up a new PC.

Honestly, I've never seen this as game specific, much less edition specific. I've seen this in pretty much any game. Any game that focuses on combat anyway. Leroy Jenkins - yup, that's the MtG term for it isn't it.

renau1g - I got no beefs with it if it gets his or her character killed. No skin off my nose. But, when other PC's get killed because of the actions of another player, it does tend to raise at least an eyebrow.

 

[Umbran]

I think it's important to realize that while there are players who relish tactical combat, there are also players who relish clobberin' time.

This suggests to me another minor variant - there are some who relish tactical combat. There are others who relish cinematic combat. Efficiency, careful plans, and optimization are often not cinematic.

 

[billd91]

Honestly, I've never seen this as game specific, much less edition specific. I've seen this in pretty much any game. Any game that focuses on combat anyway. Leroy Jenkins - yup, that's the MtG term for it isn't it.

While there are edition-neutral aspects of tactical proficiency, I do think there are games out there that make certain types of tactics far more dangerous than others. It may always have been a bad idea for the fighter to rush across the trapper-covered floor to flail away a the mimic on the other side of the room with his bare hands, but it didn't used to be particularly dangerous to stand between two thieves until 3e. Before 3e, surprise was a necessary condition for a backstab to occur. The tactical consideration of being directly between two roguish opponents changed from losing AC to one of them to conferring a bonus to hit AND suffering sneak attack, possibly multiple dice and attacks worth, from both. That's significant.

 

[ExploderWizard]

This suggests to me another minor variant - there are some who relish tactical combat. There are others who relish cinematic combat. Efficiency, careful plans, and optimization are often not cinematic.

This where we get into genre convention bending. Rushing headlong into action and expecting to come out on top by virtue of being the hero is a common convention of the supers genre.

One wouldn't approach combat that way in a horror game and presumably not in a fantasy sword & sorcery game either.

Conflicts arise from making assumptions about the true genre being represented by focusing too much on the trappings presented.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

My current group is having trouble with tactics; we usually wind up with tic-tacs instead.

We have one of those "Charge!' types, me mostly. In my defense my character is light cavalry, her job is to run around being a target. She's good at it. In most fights she takes the most damage. I consider this a victory of sorts.

Our wizard is pretty good, rarely hits us with area of effect spells. He does have a knack for picking spell loads that are exactly wrong for the situations that we subsequently find ourselves in. Not a tactical error of course, just Murphy's Law.

But our big fall down is our Cleric of Kord. He just doesn't get it. Doesn't like to heal in combat. Power attacks everything. Blows his big attacks/spells in the first fight of every day. Frequently ignores allies in trouble to go kill mooks. Last fight we ran he stood in a bonfire (without any protection) because that was the only place his Great Cleave could reach all the mooks.

All up it's a wonder we survived to adulthood at all.

 

[Mallus]

The deaths will continue until play improves.

Not to pick on you, EW, but that particular meme is a pet peeve of mine. It's really disingenuous. What it really means is: the deaths will continue until you all agree to play like me. Adopt my play style or watch your characters die!

'Improvement' has little to do with it. Players who like to swashbuckle or play rash, imprudent characters aren't playing badly, they're merely have different goals vis a vis the role-playing experience.

Personally, I wouldn't try to school my players in tactics, unless they asked me to. I'd take a cue from comics/superhero games and try to design combat challenges custom fit to each PC's fighting style. Isn't it funny how superheroes always seem to square off against well-matched rivals, and not foes that could squash them like bugs?

I'd look at it as a DM'ing challenge: how can I run an interesting fight which takes into account my players, umm, anti-tactical predilections?

 

[NoWayJose]

This thread has inspired me to roleplay a character who is slightly deaf. In the heat of the battle, with swords ringing off steel, enemies howling in pain, and heroes bellowing out warcries, and the warlord in our party shouts out a tactical-based power, my PC will have to say "What?" and the power won't work.

Because at the end of the day, sometimes someone could be reminded that the PCs don't have an omnipotent bird's eye view of the battlefield, and that it's OK not to be perfectly tactical 100% of the time.

 

[Hussar]

This where we get into genre convention bending. Rushing headlong into action and expecting to come out on top by virtue of being the hero is a common convention of the supers genre.

One wouldn't approach combat that way in a horror game and presumably not in a fantasy sword & sorcery game either.

Conflicts arise from making assumptions about the true genre being represented by focusing too much on the trappings presented.

Wait, why not? Why wouldn't you charge headlong into battle in a fantasy S&S game? This is precisely what pulp heroes do all the time. I'd go so far as to say that this is actually a staple of the genre.