How do you approach tactics?

[Hussar]

You'd think so, wouldn't you.

But then I look at my crew, and the amazing variety of creative ways they find to kill off their characters whether intentionally or otherwise, and I realize it just ain't always so.

Lan-"but it's still the same campaign"-efan

ROTF. Too true. No matter how tactically minded a group is, it never, ever fails to amaze me that so many players play their characters as if they had the self preservation instincts of a moth.

 

[Barastrondo]

ROTF. Too true. No matter how tactically minded a group is, it never, ever fails to amaze me that so many players play their characters as if they had the self preservation instincts of a moth.

I've found that in particular where D&D is concerned, you have to play a character with some impediment to the thought of self-preservation to choose "go into dungeon full of monsters and traps, get rich" as your career path in the first place. After all, GMs get remarkably tetchy if all you want to do is hang around in town and try to make money off safer things like scams or investments.

 

[Mallus]

I am glad that, in the real world, I don't need to deal with determined perversity among the people with whom I play games.

What are you going on about, mate?

If someone's idea of fun is to act in bad faith after voluntarily agreeing to the terms of an undertaking...

There's no 'bad faith' here. I really have no idea where you get that from. I'm saying all of 2 uncontroversial things:

1) If you're players aren't good tacticians, or they prefer playing rash, imprudent characters, lower the difficultly of your opponents accordingly. Step down your game. This is a lot easier than asking them to step up their games. For that to work, you need their consent and help. As DM, you can lower the combat difficulty all by yourself.

Note my advice is often deeply rooted in practicality.

I don't see the need for a DM to run combat to the best of their abilities, if that's proving to be too much challenge. I DM to entertain my friends (and myself). I have precious little desire to "teach" them how to play the game. I use however much "force" is required to challenge them. I get the level wrong from time to time, sometimes spectacularly, but as Kurt Vonnegut says, so it goes.

2) Since the players don't seem to like challenging, tactical combat, find out the ways they do like to be challenged, and put more of that in your campaign. For instance, perhaps they enjoy solving puzzles and riddles.

I agree the game of D&D needs to be challenging. But a campaign can feature easy combats, which cater to tactically disinclined players, and still offer the players robust challenges in other areas.

Mallus, I really think you're just arguing for the sake of arguing.

I admit that's always a possibility... but I don't think that's fair in this case.

 

[Ariosto]

I've read two volumes of REH Conan in the past few years - that's 20 or more stories - and they're chock-full of Conan throwing himself into fights and winning. No doubt he is also a great tactician and general, but often he just cuts down multiple opponents with his superior fortitude and fighting skill.

So can you, if (in AD&D) you get 12 attacks per round, and have a base (pre-weapon) 70% chance to score a hit versus plate and shield! Of course, it helps also to have as many hit points as a dozen (or in Conan's case closer to a score) of normal men.

That's Conan well past his prime, at age 70, as Gygax described him in The Dragon #36. He had Conan at 4th level around 15, hitting a peak of 24th at 40 years old. His ability scores at the peak are spectacular.

Gygax (I am pretty sure) had only the de Camp edition available. However one judges his translation at that time of Conan into AD&D terms, the essential fact remains:

A high-level fighter can wade in and scythe down normal men! It just gradually takes a toll, wearing down hit points.

I would note that Gygax gave Conan a wisdom from 8 (as a teenager) to 15 (at 70), and an innate intelligence potential of 18 that at first has been developed and used only to an effective rating of 12.

 

[Ariosto]

I'm saying all of 2 uncontroversial things:

You are acting as if the fact that people have fun in different ways means that there are no standards of conduct.

There's nothing underhanded about calling setting up the team to lose "playing badly".

There's something a little, well, incorrect, in assuming all D&D players have the same set of victory conditions...

That is you implying that I have so assumed, which is false.

You are entitled to do as you please. You are not entitled to force it on anyone else. If your eccentric "victory conditions" are at the expense of everyone else's fun, then it is not everyone else who is not fitting in.

It's not just "an RPG". It's a particular game.

A particular game played many, many different ways, since the very beginning.

Here's a clue: if what you mean by "particular game" is so useless, then maybe it's not the meaning in use! Look a little closer. It is possible to be more particular.

 

[thewok]

I don't mind if people rush in to fight, as long as it fits the character. In a 3rd-editon game I was in a while back, we had a dwarf who literally glowed with the favor of his god. Stealth was pretty much right out, and his preferred method of combat was to charge in and smack the bad guys in the name of his god.

My character was a former paladin Holy Liberator. He understood the need for stealth, and he knew that combat was won with superior tactics. He sighed whenever the dwarf charged in, but it always turned out okay. The two became good drinking buddies over time.

As a player, I always want to beat the bad guys with good tactics, but my desire as a player comes second to the desires of the characters. Besides, sometimes it's good tactics to say "And the Barbarian goes in and salughters everything."

 

[Mallus]

If your eccentric "victory conditions" are at the expense of everyone else's fun, then it is not everyone else who is not fitting in.

This isn't the situation Hussar described. He said his the rest of his fellow players had "the tactical sense of a concussed badger on peyote".

Note the odd man out was Hussar.

So the DM could dial down the overall campaign difficulty, while still trying to adequate challenge Hus. Or Hus could try to teach his group better tactics, but only if they're amenable to that. Note at no point was their any bad faith, breach of etiquette, or 'forcing' of anything.

I have to ask: did you bother to read the thread before you posted? Look, we've all been there. Just be gracious enough to admit it. From my perspective, you're posting virtual non sequiturs.

Oh, and personally, I don't find my particular definition of D&D is so broad to as to be useless. It's no impediment to discussion here, people understand me just fine. Heck, some people even liked the Story Hour based on one of my campaigns, even though it was pretty far removed from a traditional dungeon crawl.

 

[Hussar]

Mallus, just to clear something up because I think it's been lost a bit in the scrum:

How does one player convey to another player in an effective way, that following a plan or doing X instead of Y is a good idea without being a dick about it? "Yer Stoopid" is probably not the most effective means of communication, nor is giving the offending player a noogie whenever he screws up.

So, how do you get your fellow gamers to up their game a bit?

I'm actually not the DM in this case, just a fellow player. Although, looking back at the responses, nearly everyone took it to mean that I was the DM. I never really bothered correcting anyone because there was lots of good advice in any case.

But, just for clarity, I was actually asking what a fellow player could do.

 

[Mallus]

I'm actually not the DM in this case, just a fellow player. Although, looking back at the responses, nearly everyone took it to mean that I was the DM. I never really bothered correcting anyone because there was lots of good advice in any case.

But, just for clarity, I was actually asking what a fellow player could do.

Thanks for the clarification. I totally got that wrong. I do that from time to time.

Can you just (openly) ask the rest of your group if they'd like some help w/their tactical skills? Personally, I'd like the chance to work on my tactical skills --one of my weaker areas, natch-- but it's just not realistic to expect that response. There are too many different things people get out of the game.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, that's the trick isn't it? How do you say to someone, "Gee, umm, you suck at this don't you?" without actually coming out and saying that.

BTW, before any of the people I currently play with jump into this thread and think I'm pooping on them, it's not. I've seen this in multiple groups and from multiple players.

Like I said before, if someone's tactical sense only impacted that character, that's fine. It's their character, if they're having fun with it, groovy. But, often, someone's lack of tactical sense impacts the group. Someone does something rather blindingly stupid, but lucks out and survives, but, the guy across the table buys it instead.

It's pretty hard not to have some hard feelings about that. When Player A does something stupid and Player B (and possibly C and D as well) get punished for it, it's a problem.

How does one deal with this problem, errr.... tactfully?