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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6342546" data-attributes="member: 22779">I wonder if the difference isn't more strategic vs logistical.  Tactics refer to what you do after you are engaged with an enemy.  Tactics are very short term and tend to be reflected in D&D in round by round decisions.  Strategy, on the other hand, is more long term - things like scry/buff/teleport routines are strategic, rather than tactical.  Decisions about how to clear a dungeon (using a dungeon crawl as an example) like sending the scout forward to gather information, various skill uses like tracking and whatnot, taking prisoners for questioning/charming are all good examples of strategic play.  Logistical play is much more what I think of when I think of old school style play.  Bringing in how much food, wagons for carrying supplies, tracking supplies that sort of thing.  Additionally, older versions of D&D supported this much better by making virtually everything other than the most basic of actions, a very limited resource.  Healing was extremely limited - not only no wands of cure light wounds, but, no healing spells at 2nd or 3rd level.  You had nothing but cure light wounds spells until your cleric hit 7th level.  Couple that with fairly slow healing and logistical play becomes extremely important.  Add in the length of time it can take to regain spells (IIRC, 15 minutes/spell level/spell after your 8 hours of rest) means that the Magic User is pretty much limited to his or her initial load out of spells, plus whatever scrolls and whatnot you can find along the way.These two play styles -strategic vs logistical are where the big difference is, IMO.  3e supports strategic play very well since logistics isn't generally much of an issue.  4e actually doesn't support either terribly well, IMO, which I think is a weakness of the system.  You don't really have to worry about logistics at all - you aren't even supposed to track ammunition, and strategic play isn't generally as much of an issue since the focus is so strongly on the encounter.  Within an encounter, you have a richness of tactical choices that leaves any other edition in the dust, but, because there aren't really any major decision points between encounters, at least as far as combat is concerned, strategic play isn't a major issue.  It's all about the tactics.This is one area where I'm rather glad 5e has focused more on the scenario as a base unit of time, rather than the encounter.  3e's weakness was in tactical play.  Once you found a tactic - usually because you spent feats, or chose a certain suite of spells - you spam the heck out of that tactic.  You have "trip build" fighters, for example, where every single encounter, virtually every single attack, this fighter is going to try to trip stuff.  The rogue is constantly setting up that sneak attack because if he doesn't, he's basically a peasant with a nice sword.  That sort of thing.  Granted, I believe 3e is quite far ahead of AD&D in tactical play.  There's a lot more tactical level choices in 3e than in AD&D.  It's all a spectrum.Hopefully, and at first blush it looks like 5e has, 5e will bridge the three levels to some degree.  You get the logistical level of play - tracking ammo, somewhat limited healing (although far more than AD&D) and hit dice allow for logistical level decisions.  The focus on the scenario rather than the single encounter makes strategic level play important and the number of powers and variety of tricks and things you can do in a round make the tactical level important as well.It's a nice balance IMO.((Heh, since I've now said bad things about every edition, I wonder if that makes me a meta-edition warrior.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> ))</blockquote>

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