I said dumb, you said cowardly.
And the best general alive wouldn't be in melee. He'd have others do it for him.
Master tactician or battlefield dummy?
- Thread starter Kzach
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I said dumb, you said cowardly.
And the best general alive wouldn't be in melee. He'd have others do it for him.
I think this is a case where D&D is much more like One Piece than it is like real life.
In real life, the greatest general alive isn't a particularly fearsome fighter. She might be reasonably bad-ass just from coming through the ranks, but even so, no personal military skill can compete with a mass of troops, so her tactical skill is far more important than military might.
But in One Piece, the great admirals and generals are all personal bad-asses, with superpowers, pussuant kung fu, etc. In that world, it's possible for a person to become much more militarily important than hundreds--even thousands--of average strength troops, so the soldiers that are promoted and promoted until they can't get promoted any more end up being valued as much for their power as military forces of nature as they do for their tactical skill; either way, nobody can reasonably be in a position to give them orders, so they're in charge (and the same is true for the top pirates, of course).
Similarly, in D&D, the better you are at -anything-, the better you are at combat (even if this is less a law of nature in 4e. Even so). And as importantly, it's -possible- for someone to be worth a hundred "normal" troops; that's normal for a paragon or even epic threat. So you better believe the greatest general would be up to mixing it up; if they weren't, they wouldn't be the greatest general -- not in D&D.
Dude, miss the point much?
Let me make it clear. My point is "provoking OAs" (or any bit of D&D "tactics") isn't just based on the intelligence of the combatants. I mean, wolves are dumber than goblins (at least some goblins can read!) but they know how to fight in a group, how to flank, how to ready their attacks, how to focus-fire, that fire is bad and shiny metal is hard to bite through.
Sure, goblins are dumb, but they're ALSO cowardly, and they know that the pointy end of the sword hurts. They know not to let the big guy with the sword get a free swing, but they also know the bookish fellow isn't likely to connect with that staff. When their leader says charge, they do it because they will be hurt later if they don't.
And yes, as you point out, a master tactician won't often be in melee themselves, and so will never need to provoke an OA against themselves, but you better believe they will order some of their troops to do so if it's what's best for the objective.
Intelligence is not the end-all of tactics, and "never provoke OAs" is not the be-all.
I'm pretty sure it's you who missed the point.
My goblins aren't cowardly, they're dumb. If I had intended on them being cowardly, then I would've said, "dumb and cowardly".
Your goblins are cowardly. That's nice. Mine aren't. Is this a concept you can't grasp or are you just being argumentative for the fun of it?
Even IRL, warlords would typically lead from the front, certainly in Western culture. Alexander is the obvious example of the bad-ass warrior legendary general, but there are countless examples; Caesar, William the Conqueror, Richard the Lionheart are a few. My favourite is the would-be Roman usurper Catiline, who plunged into the thick of the foe as the battle turned against him. After his defeat his much-stabbed corpse was found ringed around by the bodies of his dead enemies (Cicero's Roman Republic soldiers), still with an arrogant expression on his face.
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