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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 4543245" data-attributes="member: 99">I rate pretty highly as a Tactician on Robin Laws scale so I take an interest in these sorts of things (although I try and tone it down a bit during actual gaming so that I don't make the game less fun for others).  That said, I agree with Krensky that military tactics have only so much to teach us about D&D tactics due to the level of abstraction.If you want to be good at D&D tactics then the only way to do that is to be good at the D&D rules.  Because there are certain military maxims that are flat out contradicted by D&D rules.  One quick example is a wounded soldier.It is generally considered that, for purposes of winning a battle, a wounded enemy is even better than a dead enemy.  This is because a dead enemy takes one person out of the fight but a wounded enemy takes at least two people out of the fight (the wounded enemy and somebody to take care of them).  In D&D this falls apart because of the fact that combatants don't lose effectiveness as they become wounded until they fall over mortally wounded.  This bore some resemblance to reality when the medic (cleric) had to sacrifice taking an offensive action in order to spend the round healing a fallen PC.  But 4e allows a lot of healing to take place while the medic is taking offensive action anyway.I'd say that, if anything, D&D tactics more resemble MMO tactics.  Basically you want the Defender to have as many enemies attacking him as possible because he's the hardest to hit (highest AC thanks to heavy armor), hardest to hurt (most HP) and easiest to heal (has the biggest Healing Surges thanks to high HP).  While that is going on your strikers are concentrating fire on one enemy at a time until he is dead because spreading out damage is of little benefit.  The exception to this are Minions who die in one hit so it's best if you hit as many of them as possible in any given attack.  That's the Wizard's job.That's the basics of it although there are a lot of other little complexities to be considered (like trying to give the Rogue Combat Advantage as often as possible).  Speaking as somebody who likes playing MMO's (I play a Pally Tank in WoW) I can appreciate these tactical approaches.  However I don't think they always make for the best game when repeated in every fight.  So when I run 4e I'll be looking for ways to break this mold.  There are tons of ways to do this so I'm hopeful that the fights will never seem dull and repetitive.</blockquote>

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