What are your party's combat tactics?

[Helspar]

On the whole, most of the adventuring parties I've worked with largely enter combat as an unorganized group of individuals, each selecting their own opponent. Occasionally one will get the idea to flank one of the enemy, but usually only when there is a shortage of enemies to oppose the adventurers. Everyone attacks, none stand back and be cowards. Most adventurers are very brave in this way but unfortunately they are not as effective often as the drilled hordes of the Dungeon Master, who attack in rank and file, sometimes in formation if they number enough with un paralleled unit coordination and cohesion, almost as if they were of one mind...

Anyhoo, they usually school the adventurers pretty badly.

 

[Shallown]

Our party tactics aren't as coherent as the where a few sessions ago, we losta front line fighter to get a druid and his megaraptor buddy.

Our tactics are usually not detailed. We tend to work in fire teams of 2-3 characters that concentrate on an enemy. We try to control the flanks concentrating fire power there and killing the bad guys off and then movingon to the next.

We actually have a good synergy between the characters but it is seldom a planned out sort of thing. We just know what the others will likely do and do things to support that or set things up for them.

Our most basic tactic is the tank (a cohort of the bard's) gets in the middle and works his way to the front and holds the line. His bard/rogue/mindbender boss supports by singing or using spells off scrolls and UMD. He is our utility person he usually ends up not contributing much or throwing a spell that completely shifts the battle to our side (usually by blinding with glitterdust).
The cleric archer shoots stuff, the fighter/wizard/spell sword picks a flank and holds it. The druid is new and still finding his feet but usually holds the flank opposite the Spellsword. And I as the mage alternate buffing and blasting. I pack a wide range of spells and am not over specialized with single taregt and group blasting spells etc.

Our other big advantage is except for the tank we are all very mobile and flexible.

One flaw we have is we hate stuff escaping and tend to waste resources chasing crap down when we don't need to.

As far as the ambushes go we pull one off every few sessions. My wizard has several scouting spells and uses them and we are set up for ambushing fairly well with symbols and invisibility spells and such.


later

 

[kigmatzomat]

Gawd, tactics would be nice. Or not, since it would make my life as a DM so much harder.

The best the players have done is learn to spread out so one fireball doesn't anhilate them, not get so far apart that help can't close, and meat (fighters) should do their best to engage opponents so they can't get to the cleric.

Individually, the monk either goes into a stunning frenzy with the rogue playing cleanup or grapples the most dangerous thing he can see which also lets the rogue clean up. We've got 2 archers who are sometimes smart enough to target the same foe, which in rare cases is also something the melees are tagging. The mage does some basic buffing (Haste & fly are the 2 most common) and then starts offensive spells. The cleric will often piddle around the first round or two to preserve spells, maybe firing his crossbow if he remembers he owns it. His favorite spells are Mass Heal, Summon, and Firestorm. The home-brew dervish and rogue/dragon disciple are pretty good at keeping the fight 20-30' from the casters. We've got a devoted defender now who's guarding the cleric the "meat wall" has been reinforced.

The funny thing is that in Shadowrun these same people can often manage tactics. I don't know if it's b/c I'm a player then or not.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Depends on the group, mostly.

Our al Qadim group has casters as all three main characters. The paladin and ranger cohorts keep the melee types off of us, while the hakima casts defensive buffs and heals some, with an occasional flame strike. The warmage lets loose as much mayhem as he can ("Hey...there are almost exactly as many targets as I have bursts from Fire Brand! AWESOME!"), and the sha'ir joins in when he's not dispelling the enemy, casting glitterdust on an invisible opponent, etc.

Our Eberron group is still fairly low level. Right now we're mostly meleers, with no actual arcane support. My dwarven fighter was going for Two-Weapon style until I realized that was boring to work through, and now is going to be an AC monkey. The marshal/shaman does okay in a fight, though somewhat cowardly, and the elven ranger is quite handy, too. There's a (slightly revised) warforged scout in the party, too, who's an artificer/rogue going into arcane trickster, who's been giving us some nice buffs.

Brad

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

I'm a tactic-junky. As I'm usually the GM, where-upon it goes badly for the players. Since I'm mostly playing right now, it goes well for the PCs. Especially since the other players are largely people who've regularly played in my games and have well-honed senses of planning.

We've been pretty frustrating for the GM. I've been trying to scale our effectiveness BACK, actually, before he messes something up and slaughters us trying to make an "appropriate" challenge.

I'm playing an item-creating wizard, myself, abusing the heck out of Craft Wand and frontloaded 1st level spells. I concentrate almost exclusively on buffs and debuffs. Wand of Ray of Enfeeblement, Glitterdust, Pyrotechnics, etc. I don't deal much damage (unless it's an obvious mob of low-level mooks who can all be slaughtered with Fireball) and instead maximize the effectiveness of the other characters. Several combats were cake-walks because of Pyro flashbangs (keep everybody but me out of LoS and let the party handle the rest while I'm blind, say), glitterdust-blinded enemies, weakened Big Bad Melee Monsters, etc.

One player has a melee-beast Bbn1/Clr6. Strength and Destruction domains, Extra Rage and Extra Smite feats. He's the damage-dealer. I Enlarge, he Bull's Strengths, then rolls in with Rage and Smite and Strength Domain on the biggest apparent threat ... which usually ends the threat immediately. Last session he plowed a 70hp crit in the second round with a CR 6 dragon and killed it before it had done more than use its breath weapon once. He is our Hammer.

Then we have a dwarf Fighter7, all about the specialized war-axe and armor. He is our Anvil. We pin things against the big AC and he and the cleric beat it to death. Both of them have cleave, and can go through mid-level creatures quickly.

Then the rogue-types ... one Scout, one Rogue/Assasin. The Scout skirmishes around with ranged attacks, the Rogue skulks around getting into flanking for TWF double-fisted Sneak Attacks. Last session he used his new Death Blow ability to end a combat with a 7th level NPC in the first initiative count. They keep the party safe by scouting ahead, getting the lay of the land, and letting us plan for combats.

It's really been relatively sick. We never have long combats and they've all been entirely one-sided. As I said, I think it's been a little deflating for the GM. It's not that he's a poor GM (in fact, this is the most fun and story-rich game I've ever been part of) it's just that four of the players have had long experience with one another and we're all planners ... and I love it when a plan comes together.

--fje

 

[EvilGM]

We play Grim 'n' Gritty rules in a homebrew campaign with little magic. While our tactics are necessary due to the deadly nature of the world, they may not fit in with "normal" D&D groups.

Party members (I can't list the exact class/levels because I'm not sure what they are for most of the players, but I've listed the general classification in ` `):

Kinel `Tracker` Ice Tracker 6 (4th character)
Narr `Cavalry` Fighter 5-6 (2nd character - eaten by disease, not sure if he'll survive)
Saur `Polearm` Fighter 4-5 (has 2 wolves) (1st character)
Zoe `Archer` Ranger/Fighter?/Rogue 6-7 (original character)
Robillard `Sneak Attack` Rogue/Fighter 6 (1st character)
Kyle `Cleave` Fighter 4-5 (2nd? character)
Orrin `Versatile` Elementalist 4-5 (has small earth elemental servant - Clod) (2nd character - now deceased)

Robillard and Orrin are the information gatherers when it comes to people.
Kinel and Zoe are the trackers/woodsmen.

If we have a defensible structure and time to setup, we'd have Clod make the ground uneven by digging trenches and making "speedbumps", hopefully slowing our opposition down and enabling us to get more ranged attacks in.
Kinel would set snares and other traps, such as spiked foot pits. We'd rig up some traps with nets, use caltrops, and saturate the ground with oil or flammable liquor to be set on fire with flaming arrows.
Orrin would do a ritual to create a wall or destroy part of one to limit entrances or give us an emergency exit.
We always try to limit their numbers at choke points and gang up on them as much as possible.

Narr usually charges on horseback, kills a couple of enemies and tries to split them up. His rideby attacks are devastating. He will chase down runners at every opportunity.

Robillard positions himself for sneak attacks, sometimes relying on called shots to the head.

Kinel disarms weapon-wielding enemies and provides flanking, employing increased threat called shots when enemies are tripped or otherwise engaged. He will track runners when possible.

Saur tries to trip enemies or tanks them. He uses his wolves for flanking, to mob enemies or pursue runners.

Zoe uses rapid shot against most enemies, but relies on called shots to the leg (for trip) or other areas vs. tougher foes (with DR and such).

Kyle usually jumps right into the fray and tanks and cleaves with his greatsword.

Orrin used to plunk away with a crossbow or use a longspear, saving his rituals and imbued items when we really needed them. Clod would attempt to grapple enemies from underground.

 

[clark411]

The Warforged Psychic Warrior / Juggernaut (CR 9) typically uses Expansion, and on the next round charges the closest enemy. If he succeeds, he deals 7d6+10 damage, or more if he expends his focus. In subsequent rounds, he'll either break off to charge other creatures, or he'll remain to be a very big obstacle for his current target to maneuver around. If he's hurt, and he gets hurt thanks to his AC 17, he uses hostile empathic transfer to pull up to 50 damage off his enemies to heal himself.

Meanwhile...

Our Warlock zips around with Fell Flight, using his eldritch blasts to add 4d6 damage per round to the damage totals... If he is threatened, he uses his dimension door-esque invocation to cause major images of himself to appear while he zooms upward or wayward 50 ft, repeating as necessary to distract opponents, assuming they can retaliate when he's airborne with aforementioned Warforged barreling down on them.

As this goes on,

The wereboar Aerenal Scout / Warshaper skims around combat with his base speed of 40, plinking away with his skirmish. He has yet to truly blossom in terms of the damage output or utility, but he hasn't gotten his bow seriously souped up. Typically he's 20 ft ahead of the party prior to combat, and either making lots of noise to be the target, or he's silent to get the drop on foes. This tactic is the cause of his lycanthropy, as the lil squeeker gored him with a partial charge.

And should this all be insufficient,

The conjuror, flitting about with fly, is laying down stinking clouds (which the warforged is immune to), evards black tentacles, and large-huge summoned undead. Depending on his fancy, he might haste the party, or shoot out an enervation.

If things go poorly, the mage has a Wand of Repair Light, and the Warlock has a Wand of Cure Light.

The monsters.. die.

 

[Cyrik Skylark]

Our psychic warrior usually opens with a charge on whatever looks like it can deal the most hurt, and tries to deal enough hurt to make it want to hurt him. With his through-the-roof AC, he tries to keep as many things attacking him as possible, while using his spiked chain to control the battlefield.

The clerics, polymorphed into planetars, fly around the battlefield, healing as needed, laying down hurt where possible, and setting up flanking for the PsiWar and the rogue.

The rogue goes into stealth mode and looks for an oppurtunity to drop a world of hurt on whatever she can.

Meanwhile, we have the warlock circling around, either blasting or readying actions to counterspell using Devour Magic.

Psion #1 (a telepath) either swarms the battlefield with astral constructs, or spends his time trying to dominate as many of the opposition, while Psion #2 (seer) blasts, disintegrates, or does whatever else she can to make life difficult for the opposition. Astral Constructs either set up flanking, take up space, or use Aid Another to help the rogue hit high-AC targets

As needed, we have several abilities to reduce saving throws... for particularly tough (and vulnerable) opponents, we'll stack these on top of each other and let loose with Disintegrate, Destruction, Death Urge, Dominate, or Id Cascade.

 

[Howling Coyote]

Tactics??? Is that a joke???

Seriously our group NEVER (well almost) plays as a group, and generally do more damage to themselves (and their surroundings) than to the enemy.

Our longest running campaign is just one of the many perfect examples that I could give. It's an epic campaign that started 5 years ago, and we stopped counting the party kills 3 years ago when our kill count reached 500,000 from just collateral damage. The party has lost lot more hit points due to actions of other player characters than from enemies, and ALL character deaths have been caused by an another player. All characters started the campaign as paladins from the same paladin order, but these days everybody calls the campaign AP (it shouldn't be hard to guess what it stands for ).

 

[Gold Roger]

Most of the people I play with have no sense for individual tactics, leave alone group tactics. I try to play my characters as tactical as possible and reasonable. But I have no set in stone tactics, I try to adapt.
Of couse there was the "golden age", this was when I played my beloved Ragar, a Razorclaw Shifter Ranger/Fighter/Barbarian/Weretouched Master. Beside being a character I loved to role-play, he was a real powerbuild. At the same time a friend of mine played Korr (shortform of a much longer name, no one but his player could remember or pronuence) a Valenar Cleric and later Warpriest, with strength and destruction domain and a double scimitar. These two powerfull PC's where allready great at slicing through stuff. But also at that time the party had only three PC's. Korr's player and I would however work together really good. It was really the time of power, when only the two of us would kill an Atach and easily go through a 6th level adventure, both at 5th level (the third Players char was useless against the atach or not there). We used buffing to the greatest effect and could even divide our opponents through the right movement. To bad that group was TPK'ed by a drowned that was only thought of as wandering monster by the DM *sniff-sniff*