Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4706600" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, right, our DM is a pushover... Man, you have no idea how evil and cunning any of us is as a DM. Sorry, but the type of simple party tactics envisaged by your average DM or your average commercial module would be seriously simplistic by comparison to most of the stuff we've had thrown at us over the years. The reason we've all become so very tactically adept is quite simply that you HAVE to be if you want to survive for long.The sort of standard party you envisage and the type of character builds and equipment you imagine we would be using are nothing like the sort of tactics and equipment we go with.That rogue scout is Eladrin for sure, fey step gives him a wonderful 'get out of there fast' capability. He's not some kind of optimized killing machine like most people would build because his job is NOT monster killing. His job is to find out the lay of the land. At 1st level his feat was improved initiative and his whole stat build was optimized for perception and stealth, not fighting. He was set up with a smoke bomb ready to go in one hand and a pole for poking around for traps in the other, and he's definitely operating out ahead of the party at all times as point man.If we come to a junction and have to pick a direction, then we're going to DEFINITELY hold at the junction, set up defensive terrain blocking the unexplored direction and have the rogue scout the other way far enough to determine what might try to cut us off, then we'll block up that branch and explore the other one. It always goes like that. Do DM's try to time pressure us? Of course they do, its part of their job to try to put you on the spot, but a dead party is no help to anyone. Why would I assume that some scream I hear coming from ahead is a prisoner we have to go rush up there and save and get ourselves ambushed in the process? We would certainly ASSUME it is a trap. Maybe it isn't, but maybe it IS. I know for sure if Mike is running the adventure, rushing in is practical suicide.This bridge encounter you mention, that kind of thing is what we EXPECT, why would a DM waste an opportunity like that? We're going to have the scout check out those hiding places and yes we would cover our advance with smoke or magic or some other such tactic, or fly over, or whatever depending on the circumstances. Will monsters use every trick in the book to defeat us? Yup they will! They darn well better or they're dead meat. Are they going to be tough? They darn well better be. But lets be realistic, there are 5 of us and one DM. However cunning and creative he is we've got 5 heads to his one to come up with a counter tactic that is just that much more cunning and creative than his. And if we don't like the odds or the terrain, we are NOT going to just live with that, we're going to do something about it. The basic concepts of tactics ARE timeless and universal. Firepower, mobility, superior information, concentration of force, economy, etc. The presupposed sort of tactics that 4e imagines are tricks and whatnot. There's nothing wrong with exploiting the mechanics of the game and getting CA by flanking or whatever, but those are not at all the heart of real serious tactics. Real serious tactics is, we can hit them and they can't hit us. We know where they are and how many of them there are and the terrain we're fighting them on, and they're in the dark about us. We're coming at them from some place they never expected to be attacked from in a million years, etc. It is a whole different mindset from what your average players and DMs are used to. We love it, its lots of fun.</blockquote>

Verification