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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4705525" data-attributes="member: 82106">Nah, you're thinking WAY WAY WAY too much inside the box. We've been playing these sorts of games here for 25 years, at least. If you stick to really seriously sound military tactics 99% of encounters are trivial and the other 1% are simply unwinnable scenarios where you're party is so overmatched that no tactic would suffice.The ghoul encounter example for instance. Any party that EVER closed with the ghouls would deserve to lose that encounter. Pure and simple. Go back and read your Art of War or your Clausewitz. First of all you never take on an enemy without completely understanding what that enemy is and what the terrain is. It is simply not the way to win. In terms of the ghoul encounter, I don't know what the terrain was for that encounter, but lets suppose it is the typical sort of dungeon crawl situation where you open the door and the bad guys are right there in your face. You've already failed because you should have found out what was on the other side before you committed yourselves to the battle. There would be a variety of ways to do that. One would be to simply have a character with sufficient mobility to immediately disengage open the door while the rest of the party remains at a significant distance. We always do that. Another useful tactic is to create some blocking terrain between the party and the door before opening it. Trip ropes, caltrops, portable traps, and portable forms of difficult terrain are all quite feasible, as are fires, etc. All easily arranged by a sufficiently prepared team.It also helps a lot to have various other preparations in mind, like some way to generate a significant amount of concealment to cover any needed retreat. Smoke is pretty easy to do that with. That can also degrade or deny an artillery monster its effectiveness while your ranged attacks take out the front line of the monsters.You should also NEVER fight on the terrain chosen by the enemy. Always force them to come to you and control the parameters of the battlefield in your favor. Got a problem with an orc lair? Smoke them out. Another good tactic is to simply use attrition against the enemy. Sooner or later some of those orcs have to come out to find something to eat or do whatever it is they do. Suppose they all come boiling out looking for a fight? Superior mobility (say being mounted) will allow you to engage selected parts of the enemy force at range and deny them the ability to force you to a battle on their terms.Now, can a DM create encounter situations that are impossible? Of course. But I promise you that if you give me any standard style published type of adventure and myself and the people I normally play with, we won't even normally take more than trivial damage anywhere along the way <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Sure as heck won't absolutely require healing in 80% of these situations.About the best a DM can do is throw a really tough single solo fast flying monster at you, like a dragon. Those can be tough, but they are by far the exception and can still be dealt with if you know exactly what you're up against.</blockquote>

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