What's tactics got to do, got to do with it.

[aboyd]

No, its the alchemist's fire too. When you've got a player who "reasons" that normal alchemist's fire does 1d8 damage (or whatever it does, I forget now), and that therefore 50 vials of alchemist's fire stuffed into a small barrel does 50d8 damage, the problem is the alchemist's fire.

That problem isn't alchemist's fire. That is the DM on his knees pleading for rules abuse.

I think I agree with ExploderWizard. I mean, there isn't any text about what happens when you combine vials of alchemist's fire into one massive container, right?* So why would a DM allow a low-level tool to become a high-level bomb? For me, I would want to reward players for sinking all that money into the idea, so I'd give them value for what they did. However, I wouldn't let these things stack like that. Instead, I'd stack the area of effect, I think.

In other words, if it does 1d6 to a 5' square or the target in that square, combining 9 would do 1d6 to the target plus each adjacent square. Combining 25 would reach that plus the immediately surrounding squares. In other words, it only does 1d6 to anyone, but the explody part gets wider, so that you might cover an entire room or cave (or cave system) with 1 expensive barrel of alchemist's fire.

* Actually, there are rules for this. The module, Tower of the Last Baron, contains a section about an expert who creates tons & tons of the stuff for the local army, and how much damage it does. I'm not suggesting it as a guide, however. The module completely breaks the 3.5 rules. First, experts cannot brew alchemist's fire by RAW because spellcaster levels are required (a stupid rule which I houseruled away and which most people don't know about and never follow, but it's there nonetheless). Also, even an expert at the top of his game could never craft the amount of vials this guy does -- it's economy-breaking. He would be filthy rich if he sold in such volume to adventurers. I don't recall how they handled obscenely-huge volumes of alchemist's fire anyway.

 

[Hereticus]

I'd have to say that if one trick (let's go with flaming oil) is your first answer to the question "What do we do about this situation" most of the time (defining "most" is where the subjectivity comes in) then it is probably an exploit rather than a clever tactic.

I know that I DMed for a group in 3E who was all about the following trick: 1) Fill a barrel with 50 flasks worth of Alchemist's Fire 2) Spider Climb at low level, Fly at higher level 3) Drop on your foes from beyond reach. Clever as heck the first time. An exploit by the nth time (where n is defined by the observer - for me it was 2).

Has the DM ever had an enemy hit the party with a fire spell?

Or fought them with a creature that flew or crawled above them?

I had my Wizard fill a Mord's Mansion with rocks, and had the spell expire over an enemy castle. Not just rocks, but Green Slime too.

The NPCs defenses became a constant patrol of Air Elementals and other flying invisible creatures, and other Wizards with Enlarged Disjunction spells.

For every action by a player group, there are some equally devious actions a DM can take to challenge the party.

 

[Noumenon]

This reminds me that the Alexandrian, who's a very experienced and intelligent DM, also allowed the heaps of lamp oil trick to work in this story. (Search on "skeletal" to get to the start of it.) So it's not just something only a bad DM would do.

 

[Hussar]

Has the DM ever had an enemy hit the party with a fire spell?

Or fought them with a creature that flew or crawled above them?

I had my Wizard fill a Mord's Mansion with rocks, and had the spell expire over an enemy castle. Not just rocks, but Green Slime too.

The NPCs defenses became a constant patrol of Air Elementals and other flying invisible creatures, and other Wizards with Enlarged Disjunction spells.

For every action by a player group, there are some equally devious actions a DM can take to challenge the party.

See, while I know this is a perfectly legitimate style of gaming, it's just not one I have any interest in anymore. It turns into a ridiculous arms race and the players ALWAYS lose. I'm the DM, I can't lose any pissing contest with the players. I have unlimited resources and the players only have their characters. I win.

Gee that was fun. Can we go back to killing orcs now?

I totally agree with Amysrevenge and Exploder Wizard in their definitions of exploit vs tactics.

One thing though, sometimes those tactics in the real world REALLY do work. Take the dog pack thing. Dog packs, in cultures that actually use war dogs, are not the yowling bag of stupidity that we make modern dogs. They aren't pets. They are trained not to bark, they are trained to hunt and be stealthy. They are trained not to be scared.

So, it's not all that unreasonable to have a PC with a dog or two as sort of henchmen.

However, it becomes an exploit when you allow the PC to replace dead dogs at will. It takes years to train dogs to that level. You should not be able to buy new replacement dogs off the shelf.

 

[Korgoth]

But by the rules, a pack of dogs are useful on a commando raid. It's only knowledge of those rules that makes use of dogs a good tactic.

What are these "rules" you're so beholden to? I play Old School.

If the PCs bring a dog pack, I decide (given the circumstances of cost, availability, etc.) how noisy these dogs are. I tell the players if they are noisy (they'd notice). That then gives the players an interesting decision to make... which is what makes it a game (as opposed to a dicefest, where decisions mean less than luck).

But you can't write a set of rules to handle the subtleties of "dog quality and availability per polity in a given milieu"... not unless you want the rules to be 800 pages long, anyway. This is the whole reason you have a Ref... he makes a judgment call based on the situation. That's his job, mate!

 

[Hussar]

What are these "rules" you're so beholden to? I play Old School.

If the PCs bring a dog pack, I decide (given the circumstances of cost, availability, etc.) how noisy these dogs are. I tell the players if they are noisy (they'd notice). That then gives the players an interesting decision to make... which is what makes it a game (as opposed to a dicefest, where decisions mean less than luck).

But you can't write a set of rules to handle the subtleties of "dog quality and availability per polity in a given milieu"... not unless you want the rules to be 800 pages long, anyway. This is the whole reason you have a Ref... he makes a judgment call based on the situation. That's his job, mate!

See, this is the problem we get into.

You say that the dogs are noisy. I, as the player, say, no, I bought trained dogs that were trained to be quiet.

How do you resolve that?

 

[Noumenon]

I, as the player, say, no, I bought trained dogs that were trained to be quiet.

Say you fed them peanut butter so their mouths were stuck closed and they couldn't bark. Defy the DM to find rulings on the effectiveness of peanut butter.

 

[Ariosto]

I see a tendency to commit errors simultaneously on both sides of the same coin:
(A) reading too much between the lines
(B) assuming that whatever is not mentioned in the text does not apply

Proficiency at creating problems with such cognitive dissonance suggests to me that it should not be too hard to reverse engineer and use judicious interpretation to solve problems. Whatever WotC may have attempted, Arneson and Gygax certainly did not seek to produce a comprehensively explicit and universally binding set of rules. "Common sense" may be uncommon, but it is among the requisites for good Dungeon Mastering.

"Naturally," Gygax wrote, "everything possible cannot be included in the whole of this work." No RPG text can encompass the breadth and depth of knowledge potentially applicable to what is in effect a whole secondary world.

In that light, I see little point in multiplying such citations as page 11 of The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures (Number of Wandering Monsters Appearing) or similar passages in other editions. Know that the Game Master is the master of the rules, not their slave, and the chief obstacle on the road to understanding is removed.

 

[Hussar]

So, Ariosto, how would you resolve our canine issue? Viking hat DM style and just flat out over rule the player? Passive agressive resolutions where the player can have the dogs, but, suddenly they develop some doggy disease or whatever and become useless? Out of character meta gaming discussions?

Me, I'm more in the passive agressive camp. Sure, you can have those dogs, but, good luck replacing them.

 

[steenan]

Before I tackle this question, I think I need to go back to the earlier question about the distinction between a tactic and an exploit. For mundane matters, the distinction seems fairly simple, at least in theory: if something is about as effective in the game world as it is in the real world, it is a tactic. If it is more effective in the game world than it should be in the real world, it's an exploit.

I cannot agree with it. It would be true if the rules of the game were designed to reflect how the real world works. They are not approximation of the real world - in many aspects they are completely unrealistic. And I do not mean that they are an abstraction.They just describe world much different than our and characters much different than real people. Most tactics that would be effective in real world either depend on GM fiat or just plainly don't work. You need to either have your GM ignore a major part of rulebooks or think of tactics that would work in the game world as opposed to our world. And the rules of the game are the only information we may base these tactics on.

That is why the rules should be simple and clearly state what they describe and what they don't. If one may destroy the game just by using the rules, it just means that these rules are bad. What most exploits are based on is extrapolating the rules outside of their designed range, like in the "barrel of alchemist fire" example.

Some things described in this thread definitely aren't rule exploits from my PoV. There is nothing wrong with using dogs if one is able to buy appropriately trained dogs and is able to command them during a fight. It definitely won't work as a tactic used in every dungeon, just because the dogs will get killed and there is not many appropriately trained ones (silent, not running from monsters, accepting commands from a character who didn't train them) to buy. On the other hand, it will be very good to use from time to time, during missions the party perceives as especially hard.