How do you DM's deal with "Dogpile on the evil wizard" tactics?

[kamosa]

Pfftp.

Where's the fun (for anybody) in letting the players walk all over a challenge the same way every time? Of course the DM could just wave his hands and say 'Ok, everybody's dead'. But he wouldn't. If a tactic is going to be %100 successful, why even bother to roll the dice. Heck, why have the encounter anyway. Just say 'You break into the wizard's tower, grapple him and cut his throat. Here's your XP and loot.'

One of the best things these boards have to offer is the ready availability of alternate tricks and strategies for keeping the combat sessions fresh.

I agree to a point. That's why I threw in my two cents on how to combat it. But, I also think there is a large area between cakewalks and crushing a viable tactic and some GM's ignore that ground.

Why is disrupting a mage a tactic that needs to be curbed? One player is spending all their time using all their resources to prevent one monster from acting. That doesn't sound like something that is stealing the spotlight from the rest of the party and isn't so powerful that it needs to be crushed every time.

A lot of GM's think of combat like it is a Samurai duel. Both sides swinging their attacks at eachother until the side that does the most damage wins. They hate tactics that prevent attacks or take away actions from the other side. That's why spells like Hold Person and Sleep were nerfed in 3.5, because they prevent actions by the NPC's and monsters.

There is sort of a "How dare the players try to prevent themselves from getting fireballed?" mentality among GM's that I think deserves to be challenged just a bit. I'm not saying combats should be cake walks, far from it. But I do believe that nerfing player tactics just because they prevent things from happening to the players is ultra lame. If you find yourself always wondering how to prevent the players from taking valid actions, then you might need to look in the ol GM mirror and change your tactics instead.

 

[Felon]

I agree to a point. That's why I threw in my two cents on how to combat it. But, I also think there is a large area between cakewalks and crushing a viable tactic and some GM's ignore that ground.

Fair enough...

Why is disrupting a mage a tactic that needs to be curbed?

Fiirst of all, because sure-fire foolproof strategies in general make for a game that's predictable and scripted. And second of all...

...One player is spending all their time using all their resources to prevent one monster from acting. That doesn't sound like something that is stealing the spotlight from the rest of the party and isn't so powerful that it needs to be crushed every time...

...it's very easy for one character to use this tactic against a much more powerful caster, one that was intended to use its spells or spell-like abilities to challenge the entire party. Every mage shouldn't have a glass jaw that prevents them from getting off a single spell before they go down. That's pretty anti-climactic.

A lot of GM's think of combat like it is a Samurai duel. Both sides swinging their attacks at eachother until the side that does the most damage wins. They hate tactics that prevent attacks or take away actions from the other side. That's why spells like Hold Person and Sleep were nerfed in 3.5, because they prevent actions by the NPC's and monsters.

And it seems pretty clear you think there's something wrong with that, so much so that you state it as if it were a tautology. You previously remarked "It isn't you vs them in a battle for cleverness." Maybe for some groups it is. Please realize that your way to DM is not the way to DM.

Personally, I love the tatical aspect of combat and do everything in my power to challenge the players and keep them on their toes.

There is sort of a "How dare the players try to prevent themselves from getting fireballed?" mentality among GM's that I think deserves to be challenged just a bit.

The mentality is more like "what can intelligent, competent opponents do to keep themselves from being ignominiously obliterated by obvious, simple tactics?"

If you find yourself always wondering how to prevent the players from taking valid actions, then you might need to look in the ol GM mirror and change your tactics instead.

OK, great. We've got the obligatory "blame-the-DM" post out of the way for this thread.

 

[stevelabny]

kamosa...its exactly the opposite.Its not nerfing player (or any) tactics, its making sure the bad guys use them to the best of their abilities also.

The DM has to use EVERY trick in the book for the mage to survive.
Not to nerf player abilties but because the mage has at least an 18 intelligence and is smarter than the DM. There is NOTHING the DM can think of that the mage hasnt already thought of, especially if the mage has survived to a high level.
Any mage with half a brain will have come up with some way to counter his main weakness, which is being grappled.

The trick for the DM is to not always use the same methods, Or else the party will find a way around that. Intelligent NPC construction should always have strong points and weaknesses and NPC tactics should always maximinze the potential of the strengths while minimizing or hiding the weaknesses. The same wya the PCs are made.

 

[ph0rk]

It does get annoying when my players all default to grappling in order to defeat enemies.

Against wizards; anything else is almost stupid. Try noncasting enemies. (granted, wizards and clerics and druids do usually make the best enemies.)


Sans grappling; fighter types are really SOL vs casters unless they have fabulous gear - even with really good items the caster usually has the upper hand.

Wizards (in particular) are supposed to be the masters of planning ahead; there are a number of spells that they could use to deal with being grappled. A +concentration item could make it so they can cast relatively easily; grappled or not.

As for the archer with a readied action to tag the caster; they've given up all their attacks for the round to do this.

IMHO; casters are already nasty enough (and have enough ways out of the mentioned tactics). No wizard with his or her salt will put themselves in striking (or grappling) range if it is avoidable.

However: if you do find a viable way to make the wizard ungrapplable; expect a lot of pcs with bows and readied actions.

 

[kamosa]

kamosa...its exactly the opposite.Its not nerfing player (or any) tactics, its making sure the bad guys use them to the best of their abilities also.

The DM has to use EVERY trick in the book for the mage to survive.
Not to nerf player abilties but because the mage has at least an 18 intelligence and is smarter than the DM. There is NOTHING the DM can think of that the mage hasnt already thought of, especially if the mage has survived to a high level.
Any mage with half a brain will have come up with some way to counter his main weakness, which is being grappled.

The trick for the DM is to not always use the same methods, Or else the party will find a way around that. Intelligent NPC construction should always have strong points and weaknesses and NPC tactics should always maximinze the potential of the strengths while minimizing or hiding the weaknesses. The same wya the PCs are made.

But if every NPC knows all the tactics, than you have nerfed the ability. You just don't admit it. What you've told the player is, "You had a good tactic, so good in fact that everyone in the world has now figured out how to counter it. So, it won't work any more" I agree that not everyone should fall victom to this the same lame tactic again and again, but when you just have every NPC immediatly deploy the counter to good player tactics, you lose something as well.

Good play is just that, good. It shouldn't be punished every time by GM's that are just a little too attached to getting off their own tactics.

 

[SteveC]

Novice players think that the way to deal with evil wizards is to close in and take swings at them with melee weapons, and pray for the wiz to blow a Concentration check when he casts defensively. Now, the players in my group have learned the way to do it right. They've got their act pretty down pat when it comes to big bad mages: one guy hangs back with a ranged attack (preferably touch-based like a spell or a vial of acid) and gets ready to disrupt the wiz's spellcasting, while others charge forward to grapple him. A grappled wizard is a dead wizard, and wizards aren't great at avoiding touch attacks or winning grapple checks.

Of course, the obvious thing to do is have some bodyguards to run interference, but they often just don't do the job they're supposed to do. With the sheer number of players I have, at least a few people beat the bodyguards' initiative, and they just run right past. Even if the bodyguards go first and/or have combat reflexes, a bodyguard generally only intercepts one character (one player basically just maneuvers so that the bodyguards have to leave an opening to intercept them).

I use flight at times to eliminate the grappling problem, but that doesn't eliminate the ranged disruption problem, especially if it's a touch attack that's targeting them.

I'm not really complaining that there's nothing that the mage can do, but rather I'm just looking to hear other folks' notes on the subject. I don't want to keep repeating the same counter-tactics if there are fresh ones out there.

Like most gaming problems, I think there are two ways to deal with this one: with an out of game meta discussion or in-game tactics.

To deal with it out of the game you should talk to your players and see what they think about the situation. Is the game fun like this? Is the game the sort of thing they want to play in where these kinds of tactics are common? I know that if I were expecting a typical high fantasy campaign, grappling with the wizard and sticking him with a dagger would not be something I would expect. It kind of reminds me of the latest version of The Count of Monte Christo where Edmund's retainer suggests that it would probably be best if they just went up to Paris and put a bullet in the men who had done him wrong. Maybe that would make sense, but it wouldn't make for much drama! It also makes me think of the movie Wizards, which has a very nontraditional ending, which works very well too.

I think this might be the best way to deal with the problem: talk to the players about the campaign's feel and focus, (for lack of a better term). I think this might help with a number of related issues and make the campaign a better one overall.

Of course if you establish a set of rules of the road for the campaign you need to stick to them too, or have a darn good reason for not doing so. Have the world be consistent and reward acting with a "high fantasy" mentality. There is nothing worse than a GM telling players they should behave in such a way, and then having the campaign world enforce an entirely different play style (but I suppose that's another thread).

If you want to deal with this issue in game, and just deal with as a role playing issue. A BBEG wizard is probably going to be a very smart guy, so he would have thought of this issue, wouldn't he? Assuming he is not surprised by the group (a very likely situation) he or she will have a plan formed for how to deal with this contingency.

As for how to deal with it, Still Spell is a must! In one game a 5th level wizard with stilled shocking grasp made short work of a monk that tried this move ("what do you mean there's no save and my evasion doesn't apply! EEK!") Most importantly, any wizard worth his salt will have a plan to get away from a situation like this. A fairly high level wizard will have dimension door or teleport ready to save their bacon, and no issues about leaving their hired help behind to deal with the PCs!

Just some thoughts...

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Against wizards; anything else is almost stupid. Try noncasting enemies. (granted, wizards and clerics and druids do usually make the best enemies.)

I don't know. At low to mid levels, a good charge+power attack can often put the wizard on the defensive immediately and a chage+power attack+smite can often take him down. When wizards get enough hit points that they can live, even when face to face with a fighter type, then grappling becomes one of the better tactics. But, even then, it has significant drawbacks against any foe with minions.

Stunning Fist is often a better option.

Sans grappling; fighter types are really SOL vs casters unless they have fabulous gear - even with really good items the caster usually has the upper hand.

Not really. There are other good things for fighter types to do to wizards. Hit the wizard with a silenced net and he's nearly as SOL as if he were in a grapple. Carry a silence spell and trip the wizard and he's in a bad situation too.

Wizards (in particular) are supposed to be the masters of planning ahead; there are a number of spells that they could use to deal with being grappled. A +concentration item could make it so they can cast relatively easily; grappled or not.

They're still limited to verbal only (either naturally or because of metamagic feats) spells in a grapple. That tends to ruin most wizards' days. However, it's not as bad as silence in many cases.

As for the archer with a readied action to tag the caster; they've given up all their attacks for the round to do this.

Manyshot makes that hurt a lot less.

IMHO; casters are already nasty enough (and have enough ways out of the mentioned tactics). No wizard with his or her salt will put themselves in striking (or grappling) range if it is avoidable.

Probably true but remember that all wizards don't fear melee combat; some are built for it.

However: if you do find a viable way to make the wizard ungrapplable; expect a lot of pcs with bows and readied actions.

Exactly. There are a variety of ways to deal with wizards. Often spending the effort to make them invulnerable to one will leave them with less resources to counter other methods. A wizard focussed on verbal only spells and stilled spells so that he fears grapples less will be more vulnerable if he's tagged with a silenced net or tanglefoot bag. The wizard who doesn't fear grappling because he's got a ring of free action and consequently hangs out within melee range of the PCs is likely to get tripped and stuck in a silence spell. The wizard who's got a rod of silent spell to deal with that contingency probably doesn't have as good a cloak of resistance. And that will hurt him when a monk tumbles up next to him and slaps him with a stunning fist or quivering palm.

 

[Felon]

I think this might be the best way to deal with the problem: talk to the players about the campaign's feel and focus, (for lack of a better term). I think this might help with a number of related issues and make the campaign a better one overall.

I don't have a major problem with them using the tactics I described. I use them myself when I play. I was just interested in how other folks keep their mages active long enough to be worth his Challenge Rating.

It also makes me think of the movie Wizards, which has a very nontraditional ending, which works very well too.

Sure, but it was hardly a sure-fire tactic. I bet the next SOB doesn't leave the same opening as Blackwolf.

 

[Felon]

Incidentally, I thought I'd share that both the Benign and Baleful versions of Transposition (from the Minis Handbook) have only verbal components.

Imagine, one minute you're grappling a wizard, and the next you're grappling his troll bodyguard

 

[milotha]

The main problem that I see is that almost all of the mage's defensive spells got nerfed in 3.5. It used to be that the durations of spells were long enough, that you could pretty much count on the mage having them up when you walked into the encounter. We used to see flying, invisible, stoneskined, mage armoured, mirror imaged, buffed, etc mages. Now, by the time you get all that off, the first spell has worn off or the combat is over.

The mage's poor AC, poor BAB, and poor hitpoints is a glass jaw/achilles heel and is hard to compensate for. I remember the days when everyone was complaining about how undefeatable mages were. It likes like times have changed. Now we have posts discussing how to keep the mages alive. If you find it difficult to keep the NPC mages alive, imagine how the players of mages feel. They are susceptible to the same tatics.