What are your party's combat tactics?

[kigmatzomat]

In the one group I actually play in (as compared to DM), we had a painful exercise in learning tactics with the switch to 3.0. The ranger would get surrounded and nearly die, the rogue would scream for someone to flank somebody but wouldn't stand in a position that made flanking reasonable and the wizard would invariably walk in front of the cleric/archer's line of fire. I was the lone fighter, fortunately blessed by 2.0->3.0 conversion with 22 Str, who seemed to grok anything like tactics. (Not that I'm a genius, but people were near death every fight!)

The first learning experience was the room full of goblins. We're 9th level and we encounter a room of goblins. I position the rogue on one side of the door and the ranger on the other. I kick in the door, mock their heritage and claim to have tainted their beer with my urine, and step back 5'. They charge and the goblins are turned to mincemeat by the combat-reflex'ed rogue and his partner in flank. I hold action so that any goblin smart enough to try and tumble/charge past still gets a good shot of fighter-lovin'.

We then start the "broken triangle" tactic. Me at point, the ranger on the left and the rogue ten feet to my right with the wizard and archer/cleric picking off wingers at distance. Everytime someone tries to move through the space between me and the rogue he sneak attacks them. If they survive that for too long, he tumbles over to us for more support. If he's damaged he can tumble to the cleric. I convince the ranger to attack the opponent we can both reach first so we can churn through more foes.

In the pre-Status levels (great spell, every cleric should have it up and extended almost constantly) there was also the art of prepping the cleric. I'd give a count-down of how many rounds I could survive the abuse I was taking once I'd gone past "nuisance" damage as a free action. When I hit "2" I expected healing or everyone else should expect me to break off (or we were looking at TPK). Our party had this weird chant going on that really helped us coordinate and prioritize. It also helped the GM start estimating CRs better. (7th level and an Iron Golem! Ack!)

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Gnome wizard: cast daylight (via spectral hand) on fleeing drow fighter-mage.

Also, prepare greater invisibility 6+ times per day, and prepare Mord's lucubration at least once. Dish out sunburst any time he can ... even during stealthy operations

Possesses more than 100 hp at 17th-level.

This guy isn't too familiar with 3e rules, but he's played with mages in 2e.

Druid: summon elementals, occasionally use animal growth. He didn't pull his weight in the party until I sic'd a really overpowered monster on them. Oops. However, getting him to use better tactics sort of made it worthwhile.

Animal companion has really low defense.

Barbarian: do massive damage, and rely on 200+ hp score to not die.

Fighter: same, but behind the barbarian.

Martial Artist (Hong's class + a PrC): duel wtih opponents. Has amazing speed and willing to use Spring Attack. Doesn't do great damage but cuts through every possible DR.

Cleric/rogue: cast that 2nd-level cleric spell from FRCS that dazes opponents. Low save DCs and inability to spontaneously convert cure spells is a liability.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Tactics?...We don't need no stinkin' tactics!

Ours mostly center around trying not to die and trying to eliminate the enemy as fast as possible.

For example, when running through one adventure from Dungeon (uh...one with big huge white dragon in it), we ran into the main fight with little warning.

Party: Paladin-priest
- paladin-weapon master (cohort)
tiefling rogue-acrobat
half-dragon werewolf ranger (NPC)
Oppo: Half-dragon blademaster
Barbarian berserker-type
2x simulacra of BBEG
3x big honking ice golems
ogre fighter
ettin werebear berserker
rakshasa monk

Enemy is arrayed in a line of ice golems, then barbarian, fighter, and monk, and then the berserker. Simulacra are arrayed far behind the line and to the right at a 90-degree angle. Blademaster is perched on the ceiling hiding in shadows.

Round 1: Rogue moves in front of ice golems, and tosses dust of sneezing and choking. Rest of party starts in on ice golems. Werebear fumes, blademaster drops in and starts fighting the weapon master, and one of the simulacra dispels the dust.

Round 2: Repeat.

Round 3: Repeat. Ice golems go down and explode.

Round 4: Rogue is out of dust and is now fighting the rakshasa. Paladin-priest realizes that the barbarian is a huge threat and mazes her with a miracle.

Round 5+: Paladin-priest starts scything through remaining enemies one/round. Rogue and other party members try not to die in the meantime.

The main lesson here is that by judicious use of the dust of sneezing & choking, we were able to take the fight in stages; otherwise, we surely would've been defeated and our Phat Lewtz added to the dragon's already impressive hoard. We were supposed to come in with another heavy combatant, but he didn't make it to that session.

Otherwise, we try to make best use of our abilities. The rogue does his best to flank (when he's not fighting an undead, construct, plant, ooze, elemental, or fortified creature...or a half-elemental gelatinous nightcrawler in heavy barding), the paladin goes and hits things, the schmoozy-rogue points wands at people and occasionally cuts someone, and the wizard throws big bang spells, occasionally on the rogues (who will evade and don't care).

Brad

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

I give up... have you got the forum set to display threads in chronological order, ascending instead of descending?

Or are you just on a crusade to see how many two-year-old threads you can resurrect in one day?

-Hyp.

Good to know I wasn't the only one noticing all these old threads re-appearing.

 

[Believer]

Hack-Slash Game:

Fighter 1: Rushes anything that moves with his two handed sword
Fighter 2: Sword/shield guy, has a sense of tactics, but can't really convince anyone else to do those tactics. Group leader, managed to teach us to flank (only took a few weeks) Currently afflicted with Lycanthropy
Half Dragon/Half Minotaur Cleric: Rushes in and smashs stuff, uses his lightning breath to cut down lines of enemies. Only heals AFTER the battle. Decent healing now, but soon the level adjustment is gonna be a bother.
Halfling Thief: Runs around using dual slings (don't ask), rarely uses her rapier despite having a focus in it... we are working on that though
Human Wizard (me): Low-Level (i.e. almost worthless), uses magic missles to do damage, and disrupt undead rarely when it hits (in Hollowfaust, city of necromancers ) I sooo want to make a wand of magic missle
Human Monk: Wizard and Thief's meat shield. Started out slow, is starting to do some decent damage now that his fists count as enchanted weapons.

Tactics... Fighters and monk rush, thief stands back and slings, I stand back and throw my few spells... and that's about it.


RolePlaying Game:
We've had one combat so far, and we were surprised so don't have much to comment on

 

[Wormwood]

These have probably been mentioned previously mentioned, but here goes:

1. A cleric used to cast silence on the Monk whenever I threw a spellcaster at them. Tumble, tumble, trip/grapple---and unless I had the foresight to prepare both stilled *and* silent spells, the NPC was hosed.

2. My new group is now using enlarge type spells on the rogue, which grants him an increased area for flanking.

 

[Schmoe]

I think that my group uses at least rudimentary tactics, and sometimes (when hardest pressed) their tactics are actually pretty sophisticated. That's probably a result of being out-smarted one too many times on a battle field. The group has learned to avoid the unnecessary battles and stick together. They make frequent use of flanking, and use formations and spells to divide the battlefield to their advantage. Their biggest weaknesses are probably a lack of reconaissance and lack of planning.

A typical combat generally involves the fighter/cleric, fighter/barbarian, and paladin/bard mucking up the front lines. The fighter/cleric has a reach weapon and Whirlwind Attack, and is an excellent tactical combatant. The fighter/barbarian is an extremely heavy hitter, but his HP suffer (+4 LA from his race). The paladin/bard has the best defenses but average offense, and is great for front-line healing and melee support. These three try to keep the opponents off the rest of the group. Both fighters have Spring Attack, so their mobility is good.

The rogue/sorcerer provides magical firepower, throwing fireballs against massed opponents or magic missiles against single opponents.

The bard/rogue/sorcerer/cleric/virtuoso (!) hangs back and sings inspiration and tries to stay alive. He used to have a staff of fire, but that ran out. His bardic performances are his main contribution to a battle, but he is the tactical leader of the group.

The druid/ranger switches between ranged attacks with bow or flamestrike, or jumping into melee with her flail and dagger, depending on the needs of the situation. She will also run to heal the front-line combatants, if needed. She's probably the most flexible of the group, and often hangs back to protect the two non-melee PC's.

The virtuoso has a monk cohort who runs around the fringes of the battle, taking out lesser threats. He's been dead for the last two sessions, though (actually died from falling, with a Reflex save to avoid ... a monk!)

 

[Imperialus]

my group right now has a severe lack of tanks. The only one that would really fill that role is myself as a Paldin/Hunter of the Dead and due to an untimely character death I'm almost 2 full levels behind everyone else. Other than that we have a gnome paladin on a flying wardog who if circumstances warrent and there is a line of enemies in a corridor or something can be a wrecking ball but is normally confined to sitting a ways back and pokeing at enemies for 1d6+2 points of damage with her lance. We also have 2 druids, a generic cleric henchman and a priest of Pelor.

Our tactics typically consist of Cheery Pri (the gnome) trying to herd the enemies to a point in which they are in front me while the druid's animal companions harrass the flanks and keep them boxed in. I soak most of the damage and generally run around with bells on trying to keep the enemies in place and from killing the clerics. Once in position we'll open up with 3 flamestrikes a round untill there is nothing left. It's kinda tough sometimes trying to manuver everyone so that we'll hit all the enemies but none of our allies and it's not the most efficant method for dealing with combat as we tend to burn a lot of spells but we do have the distinct advantage of every party member being a healer to some extent so our survivability is pretty good.

It's when dealing with undead that we truly shine. I have a flail of spell storeing and will typically have a cleric cast a cure moderate wounds on it before any expected encounter with undead. Between that, smite evil, smite undead, power attack and other assorted damage bonus's I can dish out 80 to 90 points of damage with a single hit. Of course that's a one shot wonder as I only have 2 smite evils and 2 smite undead but it's fun to see the DM's face crumble when I take out the BBEG with a single smack to the face.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

These have probably been mentioned previously mentioned, but here goes:

1. A cleric used to cast silence on the Monk whenever I threw a spellcaster at them. Tumble, tumble, trip/grapple---and unless I had the foresight to prepare both stilled *and* silent spells, the NPC was hosed.

We once dealt with an elder vampire wizardess who was kicking our collective tails (in this case, tiefling rogue, paladin-priest, and badly-built fighter-mage) by tossing the held rogue at the vampire while the fighter-mage came up behind her with an anti-magic shell around him, giving the priest time to heal himself and then start thwacking the vampiress while the rogue grappled her.

It was *cool*. Though we had to practically shout at the player of the mage to move up next to the vampiress to put her in the shell.

Brad

 

[Lord Pendragon]

My current group uses what I'd call non-collective tactical thinking. That is, each member of the team is a fair tactician and uses fair tactics during combat, but there aren't really any group-as-a-whole tactics. As someone else already pointed out, this may have something to do with there not being a party leader. But then, most people I've gamed with don't like to play under someone else's command.