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Several threads I've read lately have made me think about party tactics and how to make the most effective use of them.
To start this off, here's a fairly typical definition:
The techniques for using weapons or military units in combination for engaging and defeating an enemy in battle.
Many people confuse strategy and tactics. Heck even people who know the difference misuse the terms sometimes because there is significant overlap in their defintions.
Strategy deals with the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of forces, and the deception of the enemy
I'm just going to lump the two together without trying to separate tactics and strategy just because that simply opens the door for semantic arguments about what is strategy and what is tactics.
So the purpose of this thread is to start a discussion so that people can suggest strategies or tactics that have been successful for them.
To do that I think it would be nice if the strategy or tactic being described would also include a short description of what the objective of the strategy or tactic is.
For example:
In order to maximize the number of encounters per day, I try to utilize tactics that reduce the party's expenditure of resources of all types, but particularly of daily use resources such as spells. One way I have addressed this is to have my spell-casting characters always have some non-magical way to contribute meaningfully in combat, unless I have a role-playing reason for a character of mine to focus entirely on spells.
The game impact of this sort of approach is that my spellcasters are rarely optimized specifically for spellcasting because being competent in combat without casting spells generally requires investing significantly in physical attributes, in my case that usually means dexterity since dexterity can increase both your to hit chance and your AC. Since spellcasters are almost always at best 3/4 BAB characters, that means it is usually necessary to invest a buff spell on the character to allow them to be in the same combat impact range as the party fighter or barbarian. But a single buff spell (i.e. bull's strength) will usually last an entire encounter so that casting one spell allows the caster to perform well enough in combat to meaningfully contribute without needing to cast a spell every round.
It is important to not lose track of the ability of full casters to use powerful spells as encounter changers, so when the encounter requires a full caster's attention, the caster still needs to be able to throw down with the heavy magic as well. The point of the non-magical combat option is fundamentally around resource management. There is some trade-off on pure magical effectiveness and being versatile enough to go through entire encounters without having to cast a single spell. The question that constantly comes up for this sort of approach is whether it is worth sacrificing that bit of spell-casting effectiveness to gain the versatility and time management capabilities.
But that question leads to investigating other strategies or tactics which provide a means to enhance spellcasting when that is the required strategy for a specific encounter. But that should probably go in a new comment on the thread.
Build would be your strategy: Your big picture overall plan of what you plan on doing in combat, your theme.
How you execute it would be your tactics.
Good tactic number 1: Focus fire. Objective: Take the least damage possible per round.
In the D&D system you are just as lethal with 1 hp as you are at 100. If you have an orc with 1 hp left killing him this round stops any damage that he'd do the next round. If someone is wounded take advice from the sage of mortal combat and FINISH HIM.
The only possible exception is if you auto kill an enemy at full HP with one shot. IE, your first level fighter with a greatsword against the kobolds. If you hit, you kill. Use that massive attack against a fresh one and let the wizard with his crossbow deal the 1 point of damage.
Good tactic number 2: meat shielding and positioning. Objective: Take the least damage possible per round.
The best piece of armor a wizard can own is a suit of full plate... on his fighter.
Cleric Wizard Rogue Fighter Thing with sharp pointy teeth.
This keeps the thing with the sharp pointy teeth attacking the person he's least likely to hit (saving you from spending healing resources) and attacking the person he's least likely to kill (keeping everyone alive.
The cleric in the back is in case you get snuck up on from behind. A cleric can make an ok meat shield, at least long enough for the fighter to take his place.
Good tactic number 3: Attacks of opportunity.
Don't give them away when you don't have to. If there's a large giant with a club do NOT just walk up to him. Use spells at range and move back as a group. He'll charge, take one attack, and the fighter will 5 foot step into range.
3a: Get attacks of opportunity: Objective: kill things faster, protect the squishies.
May fall under strategy, since you have to build for it, but reach is amazing. Carrying a reach weapon and switch out mid fight is a no brainer at lower levels since you don't loose much. Getting the wizard to toss an enlarge person on you turns you into a wall of meat that can one shot minions coming towards you or trying to get around you to the squishies.
My most hated tactic as a GM: the "grab and stab." Melee character grapples a mob, the rest of the characters stab the monster while it tries to escape. Deadly to casters at low levels.
Strategy/tactic/wtfever: If something has more attacks than you, or does something grisly on its attacks (fishing for crits, paralyzation, etc) DON'T give it a full attack. Stick and move.
This happened at level 1 fighting a grell. Everyone was just standing there and fighting it and it got like 10 tentacle attacks a round, each with a chance to paralyze. I'm just like...if you move, it only gets one AoO, and one more attack IF it chooses one person to focus on. And in that case everyone else gets AoOs on IT. Don't stand and fight! But alas, no one listens to me.
Another good tactic: diagonal 5-foot steps to get out of the old flank n' shank, i.e. two rogues who rely on one another to get sneak attack. If you move diagonally adjacent to one of them, at best someone is getting a single attack rather than a full (TWF rogues...) and you might get an AoO.
Tactic: divide and conquer. On so many levels. Pit spells, wall spells, save or suck spells. They don't kill the enemy, but it allows you the luxury of focus firing on the ones who pass the filter without accumulating damage from the others.
Tactic: Pressing action advantage. If a Cleric can sound burst and make 4 rogues drop their weapons, that's one cleric standard action for 4 enemy move actions (at least) which will provoke. If you can rob your opponent of a turn, it's as good as your team going twice in a row. Dazing spell, spells that stun, dazing assault, all effectively press your action advantage.
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These are simple and effective.
Focus Fire: The most commonly learned tactic in RTS games and similar. Focus on one foe at a time, kill it, then move to the next. Removing an enemy removes their contribution. Spreading out your attacks means enemies will harm you more overall. When fighting 3 hobgoblins, it is better to kill 1 hobgoblin per round than wound each once per round and kill all three on round 3.
Kill it With Fire: An evolution of focus firing that involves literal fire. Energy damage (natural or otherwise) ignores damage reduction, and many also ignore or have impressive bonuses vs AC. Have an entire party throw alchemist fires on a single enemy and light them up. You can kill some crazy stuff at low levels by just dowsing it in tons of alchemist fire. Acid, alchemist frost, and alchemist shock have similar effects.
Missile Storm: Another example of focus firing done right is the magic missile spam. A deadly tactic in parties that are heavy on arcane casters. Magic missile deals fair damage but is nigh unavoidable without shield active. Since shield cannot be made into a potion, most enemies will not have access to it. An amulet of shielding can absorb about 100 points of magic missile damage, but it's fairly expensive and can be burst through surprisingly easily with focus firing.
A caster level 9 magic missile deals an average of 17.5 damage. No saving throw, no rolls to hit. If four are launched in the same round, the target will take about 70 damage with no way to avoid it. As a 1st level spell, it's a good option for metamagic rods (rods of empower raise the average damage to 26.25 per missile).
As a 1st level spell, it's also not very resource intensive, and you 1st level pearls of power are pretty cheap (1,000 gp market, 500 gp crafted). In an arcane-heavy party, this spell is a staple.
Archer Volley: The martial version of the missile storm. Simply shoot a crapton of arrows at a single opponent relentlessly. In a party of primarily martials and/or hybrid classes (such as Bard + Inquisitor + Zen Archer + Ranger) it is brutally effective against most foes. It's likely many of them will never actually reach the party if you engage at range.
Poisoned Gas + Undead: A classic strategy is having one of your arcane casters drop spells such as stinking cloud or cloudkill on your enemies while having undead minions and/or constructs wade into the ranks of your enemies. Skeletons and zombies are immune to stinking cloud, but stinking cloud can force enemies to lose actions and thus be unable to fight back. Cloudkill deals unavoidable Con damage every round you remain in it, and the undead can make moving out of the cloud a real pain.
AoO Shields: Creatures cannot make attacks of opportunity against creatures with cover (or soft cover). By placing a minion between an enemy and yourself, the enemy can no longer make attacks of opportunity against you (because the minion now provides you soft cover). Thus a summoner can use a wand of Summon Monster to poop out critters on the battlefield to disrupt folks with reach weapons or natural reach, and allow squishy or wounded members the chance to simply leave their threatened areas unharmed.
Paint the Floor with Hell: Many lingering AoE effects are pretty bad. Stuff like grease, entangle, cloud spells, wall of fire, incendiary cloud, black tentacles, and so forth are bad. However, throwing them down in layers can utterly destroy an opponent. Having multiple instances of bad effects in the same area can be useful. The most common benefit is layered saving throws. If you hit an area with 2-3 grease spells, then anyone moving across the area will have to make a save for each spell. Likewise, 2-3 entangle spells means 2-3 chances every round to get rooted to the spot. 2-3 black tentacles means 2-3 chances to get grappled and damaged. Sometimes a creature will fail against multiple instances of an effect. Throwing 2 entangle spells can be bad (if you get caught by both, the chances of escaping are slim as you have to spend an action to try and break out of just one of them).
Do Not Open 'Till Midwinter Fest: Nets are pretty nasty. As Exotic weapons that deal no damage, they are often overlooked by both the new and experienced player alike. However, they allow you to make ranged touch attacks that entangle foes. To end the entangle effect, the foe may attempt to break free as a full-round action. Worse case scenario, the foe loses their whole round. If you hit them with multiple nets, the are effectively screwed. While the entangle effect doesn't stack on itself, if you have 3 instances of nets entangling you, you have to escape all three. That's a minimum of 3 full-round actions to escape. Most foes will suck it up and accept the penalties, or get dismantled as they seek freedom. It's a win/win.
Tastes like Unlife: The life-drinker is a weapon in the core rulebook that is by default a great-axe (but other varieties are possible). The weapon inflicts 2 negative levels with every hit, but also inflicts 1 negative level on the wielder. However, Paladins and Clerics can cast death ward on the wielder to make them immune to the drawback. What's even better is that attacks that inflict negative levels multiply the negative levels on critical hits (so a critical with the x3 axe inflicts 6 negative levels). Each negative level inflicts a -1 to all checks (attacks, saves, skills) and -5 HP. So each hit is a -2 checks/-10 HP. If negative levels equal or exceed your current HD/Level, then you die (so if you're fighting a creature with 12 HD, after hitting them 6 times they die, regardless of HP).
And Unlife Tastes Good: Speaking of negative levels, the life-drinker notes it's favored by undead and constructs who are naturally immune to its drawbacks. Of course, being undead has a number of perks. If you can become undead (mummification is a classical example, as is the route the 10th level cleric mummies in the Bestiary went with; but ghouls, ghasts, and shadows are other potentials for PCs to become). Undead characters have a lot of bad weaknesses, but they can enjoy a number of nice benefits like immunity to a lot of annoying status effects (remember the undead desert guy in Clash of the Titans and how he was immune to the Medusa's gaze?), and they don't have to eat, sleep, or breath. Most of them get some interesting abilities (ghouls and ghasts get paralysis, mummies get fear aura + mummy rot curse, etc). Especially nice for PCs with high Charisma scores (Charisma replaces Constitution for undead).
But Mechanical Options Exist: If you're not in for undead, but like minions, consider crafting Intelligent constructs. The craft construct feat can be used to produce golems, shield guardians, and animated objects. You can use the Intelligent Item rules to create golems that are also sentient, which can be very useful. This allows you to create your own loyal cohort, become iron man, or make your own adoptive son in the form of an adamantine golem. As an intelligent item, your golem can even be gifted with useful spell abilities as well.
Who Wants to Apply the Lotion?: Potions and oils are often overlooked tools. You can apply a potion/oil to someone else as a standard action. If you have an ally between you and your enemy, you will not provoke attacks (see above) for applying a potion/oil. So you can lather down your friend until they're buffed out the ears. Run up and splash your friend with an oil of enlarge person in time for their next attack routine. Smear some barskin, or make them fly. The sky's the limit, and Brufus will love you for it.
A Brave New Age: The reincarnation spell is pretty good for those who want to live forever. Each time you use it, you come back in a new youthful body but you retain your mental ability scores untouched. That's pretty sexy. If you're an old fart (venerable grants +3 to all mental statistics and -6 to all physical statistics), it might be time to trade in the old body for a new one. One reincarnate later (costs 1,280 gp to have an NPC cast it for you) and you have a sexy new body. You may also wish to use some high level magic like limited wish to get the race you wish to reincarnate to as well. Alternatively, you can use wish or miracle (miracle costs 1,530 gp to have an NPC fix your form for you you) to have your body turned back into the original younger you. Young and sexy again!
Why Do You Wear That Stupid Hat?: This one is a personal secret of mine. If you want to know it, send me a PM. All I have to say is that there's a reason that Wizards wear those goofy looking hats.
Sweatshop Simulacra: If you're sufficiently high level, you can create Simulacrums of yourself via the appropriate spell. You get a copy of yourself under your control who's 1/2 your level. You can put this copy to work producing magic items with your feats like Craft Wondrous Item, Scribe Scroll, and Craft Wand. Each simulacrum can work on an item at a time. This is a handy way to mass-produce those cheap consumables that your party likes using (such as elixers, elemental gems, and wands).
There's an App for That: Magic items are wonderful. Martial characters get tons of mileage out of some well thought out items. At high levels, items that give you temporary buffs and wards are staples to surviving the big bads of CR 11+. Once your AC is sexy enough, you should generally get your armor or items pimped out with little x/day effects that you can use when needed. Having fly 1/day on your armor can be useful. As can death ward 1/day. Being able to use greater-invisibility 1/day is pretty nice too. Spell turning 1/day on your shield can be a cute way to surprise enemy mages. Be creative. 1/day effects are pretty cheap, but they're like condoms! (Better to have and not need than need and not have :P)
Like a Good Neighbor Necromancy is There: Get a flesh sample and stick it somewhere where it won't rot (gentle repose helps). If you snuff it in a way that makes resurrection or reincarnation a pain in the butt, have a necromancer cast clone to recreate your body (costs 2,700 gp). Now collect on your own life-insurance policy.
Use Your Surroundings: Lots of things can be improvised. Turning over a table can provide you with cover or total cover versus enemies. Carrying around some potted plants can mean you always have entangle ready to go even in a barren desert. Having a height advantage grants a +1 to hit (so if fighting on a staircase, be the guy on top). Keep difficult terrain, lightning conditions, and obstacles on tab (moving from a lit area to a dim area nets you concealment, which is great if you're getting shot at or need to hide).
The Name's Holly, and Yes it's a Pun: Druids use holly/mistletoe as a focus for their spells. Cover yourself in it. It's free and its weight is negligible. Put it in your hear, stuff your pockets with it, have some on your belt, wear some around your neck. Put some inside your gloves. When someone has to preform a full-body cavity search to find the stuff, you're doing it right. Never be without a divine focus again. Plus, druids look awesome with tons of plants hanging from them; so that's a plus too.
Get out of Dodge: This one is really simple, but too many fools forget about it. When things are looking bad, it is better to delay enemies and run away than it is to stand and fight to a loss. I'm fond of carrying bags of caltrops, marbles, or anything else you can just let loose while you're running (but dropping grease or entangle spells works well too in most cases). Make the ground behind you difficult terrain and you can escape stuff that's even faster than you are. As Khalid says: "The better part of Valor!!"
If you're an archer or spell caster, seek a position with cover early in the combat with your superfluous move actions. Far too many gamers do the tabletop equivalent of the FPS n00b cliche of reloading while standing in the doorway.
Do not shout Leroy Jenkins: If your party has a plan, do not abandon it in the first round
Don't scout. Sad as it is to say, adventure writers don't reward scouting. No matter how good you are at Stealth, you'll inevitably roll a 1, run into a creature with scent or see invisibility, miss a trap... and then the rogue gets to face off against an encounter designed to challenge an entire party for several rounds while the rest of the party catches up. Here's the life of a scout in brief: scout, scout, scout, scout, oops, dead. Think about whether the information you bring back from scouting is worth a 1 in 20 chance of character death.
Why Do You Wear That Stupid Hat?: This one is a personal secret of mine. If you want to know it, send me a PM. All I have to say is that there's a reason that Wizards wear those goofy looking hats.
Necro. Great post! Would love to know this secret, but it doesn't appear that you accept PMs. Could you shoot me one instead?
Thanks!
Why Do You Wear That Stupid Hat?: This one is a personal secret of mine. If you want to know it, send me a PM. All I have to say is that there's a reason that Wizards wear those goofy looking hats.Necro. Great post! Would love to know this secret, but it doesn't appear that you accept PMs. Could you shoot me one instead?
Thanks!
I don't know if this is what they where talking about, but I remember someone talking about a trick where a wizard could cast shrink object and hide a diving bell under their hat. When in danger, they can simply dispel shrink object and be relatively safe inside the bell.
If I remember right, the trick is kind of like that.
Get an enormous cone, shrink item on it and wear it as a hat. If you enter an AMF, the cone unshrinks and surrounds the wizard, blocks the AMF, allowing the wizard to teleport out (or whatever, the point is they have options).
Line of effect is blocked by a 'solid barrier'. A GM might not accept cloth as solid enough, so you should probably make your cone out of something else - ideally, adamantine. Then cover that with a light cloth hat with the word "Wizzard" on it.
I'll put in that having snowball on hand is never a bad idea. No SR, no partial damage saves, touch attack, its a good way to counter AMF if your GM doesn't allow shrunken hat shenanigans.
Though for the shrunken hat, I would imagine a wooden cone would suffice, and be available closer to level 5 than an adamantine cone 16x larger than a hat would be. So maybe start there. Immediate cover has uses far before AMF is a concern after all, and if nothing else it makes for one hell of a fun headbutt.
If I remember right, the trick is kind of like that.
Get an enormous cone, shrink item on it and wear it as a hat. If you enter an AMF, the cone unshrinks and surrounds the wizard, blocks the AMF, allowing the wizard to teleport out (or whatever, the point is they have options).
Doesn't work. The minimum size for a cone shaped hat on an average size person is about 10cm radius (to fit on the head) and 12.5cm tall (to expand to 2 metres tall, something a medium size character could stand under). At it's original unshrunk size, that is 5.36 cubic metres, or 189.3 cubic feet. At 2 cubic feet per level, you would need to be a 95th level caster to make that work.
Perhaps a butler monkey's fez could be achievable. It would still need to be about 12cm tall and a minimum 4.7cm wide to expand enough to fit a squeezed [in both length and width] medium creature. Expanded that is a cylinder of radius 0.376m radius and 1.92m height. That is 0.85 cubic metres, or 30 cubic feet. Achievable for a 15th level caster - who doesn't mind walking around with a baked bean tin on his head.
Achievable for a 15th level caster - who doesn't mind walking around with a baked bean tin on his head.
Well that's around the time AMF starts to be super common, not to mention top hat wizard is almost as good as pointy hat wizard. A little less accessible sure, but still pretty effective at countering what its supposed to.