So I already discussed this a bit in a somewhat rambly blog post.
But, I wanted to bring it here to have an actual discussion on it.
Because, while there are rather lively and tired debates on the stormwind fallacy we rarely talk about how sometimes we refuse to be smart in combat because it's not in-character.
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"Brilliant tactics and poor dice rolls will never succeed against poor tactics and good rolls." - me
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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In fact it tends to be one of the stickier arguments that come up when discussion turns to the idea of healing in-combat. Why, when you have the ability, would you allow a friend and partner bleed on the ground and near the cusp of death?
For the same reason Aragorn, who was skilled in the healing arts, did not stop fighting and perform first aid every time one of his people fell in battle beside him: he knows that the time spent healing one person is time that could be spent winning the fight to keep lots more people safe.
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"Brilliant tactics and poor dice rolls will never succeed against poor tactics and good rolls." - me
Brilliant tactics is never allowing your opponent to roll at all.
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Never allowing your opponent to roll is disgusting and nothing in the spirit of good gamesmanship...wait what are we talking about?
Are we talking about playing pathfinder, and as the DM I get blindsided by a player whose build comes mostly from the d20PSFRD website, so their character automatically shuts down every encounter or has such ridiculous bonuses to their rolls that they cannot lose unless they constantly roll below a 5 - cause I don't want to play that game. If we are talking about the kind of games I like to play, tactics will always be a close secondary to luck.
That's not tactics. That's powergaming.
Tactics is about presenting choices to your opponent that all fall in your favor.
When you force an ogre with nothing but a club to fight you in a ranged fight all his choices tend to be bad. That requires no dice roll.
When the tetori monk with silence cast on his left boot runs over armbars the petty elven mage that mages choices tend to be bad. That requires easy dice rolls.
When you slather the battlefield with movement hindering spells against mounted opponents removing their lance and movement advantage against your group you give them a series of bad choices. That requires no dice rolls.
Luck is nice and certainly helps when the shoe is on the other foot. But, luck is an unreliable mistress and I prefer my games to test the player's ability to work together. Not their ability to buy high rolling dice.
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Never allowing your opponent to roll is disgusting and nothing in the spirit of good gamesmanship...wait what are we talking about?
Are we talking about playing pathfinder, and as the DM I get blindsided by a player whose build comes mostly from the d20PSFRD website, so their character automatically shuts down every encounter or has such ridiculous bonuses to their rolls that they cannot lose unless they constantly roll below a 5 - cause I don't want to play that game. If we are talking about the kind of games I like to play, tactics will always be a close secondary to luck.
I think TarkXT is talking about avoiding combat rolls with diplomacy or some such thing.
EDIT: I was wrong, he talking about right tactics right time makes things easier.
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I've taken the ethic of 'if we have to use dice, we've messed up' before in Dnd and Pathfinder.
It tends to not go over well with the other players.
We once engaged a group of non-regenerating ice golems, they had a maximum movement speed of 10ft and we had three individuals with flaming weapons (to which they were vulnerable).
My party concluded I was being 'cowardly' when I said we could spend several minutes pelting them with arrows at literally no threat. Just shoot, shoot, shoot and then on the seventh or ninth round roundabouts double move back to start again.
As a DM, I find the tactical brilliance of the party comes out when I start having opponents who don't act like they tie their brains on in the morning. A third level party found themselves bolloxed by a horse archer who was kiting them around the map while they were literally unable to catch up, and out came the ideas for traps, increasing movement, etc.
And everyone, even the melee-focused barbarian grabbed something to work as a ranged option.
I personally, as a DM, find it inspires more RP. Especially since it results in high-level groups actually coming across as experienced adventures. Right down to predicting where teleporting fiends are going, or sussing out traps and diversions.
On the PC side, my experience has usually been the one guy shouting about how we could render an entire encounter moot, while everyone else in my group shouts 'charge!'
I've taken the ethic of 'if we have to use dice, we've messed up' before in Dnd and Pathfinder.
Oh, that's a classic (and very viable) approach.
"The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.""To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."
"Security against defeat implies defensive tactics; ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive."
"Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position that makes defeat impossible and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy."
Thank you, Master Sun.
That said, we're talking about role-playing here, and while it's perfectly possible for me to roleplay Sun Tzu, I can also roleplay General John Sedgewick:
"Why are you dodging like this? They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--"
A very smart person might still be very ignorant of tactics. A very good tactician might still panic and react out of emotion instead of training. And even a battle-hardened veteral might still fall for a trap or a ruse.
So, yes, I think that role-playing can demand bad tactics. W.S. Gilbert's Major General -- "when I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery" -- can be fully expected to make a bad decision because, as he himself admits, he doesn't know any better.
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An issue that I have to raise here is one thats haunted RPGs since time immemorial though.
If I sit down and want to play a guy who's tactical brilliance in unparalleled by any, as means of wish-fulfillment, and I have max ranks in Knowledge(tactics), leadership and an intelligence and charisma of 20+, but I myself am a guy who never won a game of checkers in his life.
My character in those situations is smarter then I am in theory, so what happens there? Does the DM hand hold me? Do I just get some goofy little circumstance bonuses?
@Orfamay Quest—You show that bad tactics can be included in good roleplay. You do not, as you claim, show that good roleplay can demand bad tactics.
When a character, through his own admission, disclaims a skill, I would expect to see that character fail at the application of the skill. To do otherwise implies either deceptiveness on the part of the character,... or bad writing/role-playing.
If I'm playing the role of the Major General, that role literally demands a poor grasp of tactics. Good roleplay of a bad tactician demands bad tactics.
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An issue that I have to raise here is one thats haunted RPGs since time immemorial though.
No kidding.
My character in those situations is smarter then I am in theory, so what happens there? Does the DM hand hold me? Do I just get some goofy little circumstance bonuses?
Either/both. My preferred method is to give the genius additional time and information (including letting the other players spoon-feed ideas to him, or even consult external resources) in order to come up with a suitable brilliant plan. One element that does not transfer from the table to the game world is time -- the decision that Sir Loin of Beef made in six seconds may have taken two minutes to work out at the table. And the fact that he can improvise in a few seconds is part of why Sir Loin is a genius.
Ah, okay, I follow now. Yeah, I suppose if your roleplay concept is (or includes) "bad at tactics", then you'll need to back it up. But I'm not sure that's a reasonable goal to bring to a social pastime.
I think it's a reasonable goal in a social pastime for characters to include weaknesses as well as strengths. Superman is a very boring character to play, and that goes doubly for the other players at his table. My dashing swashbuckler may well be terribly impulsive, and that gives the other people an opportunity both to roleplay their interactions with him ("Hold your roll, D'Artagnan, while the grownups figure out what to do!") and to take myself off-stage from time to time and let other people do their thing.
Maybe my goblin mage is terrified of heights and starts complaining every time he gets near a third-story window. Done properly, it makes the character more believable and more fun for everyone at the table.
But if that's how I've been playing my character, I need to stay in character, even when the situation demands that my goblin mage cross a tightrope between two towers. I can't suddenly turn into a circus acrobat; that's bad roleplaying.
And, yes, that's something that the table needs to be aware of. But that's no different than fighters having bad Will saves. If the group knows that the fighter-who-dumped-Wisdom has a bad save, the group as a whole will hopefully be prepared for that contingency. If the group as a whole comes up with a plan that relies on the fighter's saving throw, that's simply a bad plan.
I suppose if your roleplay concept is (or includes) "bad at tactics", then you'll need to back it up. But I'm not sure that's a reasonable goal to bring to a social pastime.
It might not be your primary goal, but I can see someone creating, say, a barbarian whose main purpose in life is to test himself in hand-to-hand combat against deadly foes. From that starting point, it's consistent with good role-playing that he should take on the slow moving ice golems in melee instead of staying at a distance and firing arrows like a sensible person would.
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I suppose if your roleplay concept is (or includes) "bad at tactics", then you'll need to back it up. But I'm not sure that's a reasonable goal to bring to a social pastime.It might not be your primary goal, but I can see someone creating, say, a barbarian whose main purpose in life is to test himself in hand-to-hand combat against deadly foes. From that starting point, it's consistent with good role-playing that he should take on the slow moving ice golems in melee instead of staying at a distance and firing arrows like a sensible person would.
True enough.
It comes through in both places. I've seen it create conflict in parties though especially when it results in resource expenditure issues.
I've seen would be tacticians done in by another player's Leeroy Jenkinism because he didn't want to deal with the 'sitting around.'
As long as it gets resolved ICly, I'm a-ok with it, but it tends to create OOC conflict.
I do like the idea for letting the tactical guy have more input, but the issue in reality is that everyone gets input. The party where everyone sits on their hands with their mouths shut while another players makes his decision might make sense, but it kind of goes against the whole 'having fun with friends' thing.
I suppose if your roleplay concept is (or includes) "bad at tactics", then you'll need to back it up. But I'm not sure that's a reasonable goal to bring to a social pastime.It might not be your primary goal, but I can see someone creating, say, a barbarian whose main purpose in life is to test himself in hand-to-hand combat against deadly foes. From that starting point, it's consistent with good role-playing that he should take on the slow moving ice golems in melee instead of staying at a distance and firing arrows like a sensible person would.
Paizo would like a word with some of you:
Vow of PeaceRestriction: The monk must strive to attain peace and may only use violence as a last resort. He can never strike the first blow in combat. If attacked, he must use the fight defensively action or the total defense action for the first 2 rounds. He must always give his opponent the option to surrender, and cannot purposely slay another creature that could reasonably be influenced to flee or join a civilized society as a productive member (obviously this excludes many monsters).
I'd submit that some of those restrictions are guaranteed to be bad tactics under certain circumstances. Similarly for the paladin's code of conduct:
A paladin's code requires that she respect legitimate authority, act with honor (not lying, not cheating, not using poison, and so forth), help those in need (provided they do not use the help for evil or chaotic ends), and punish those who harm or threaten innocents.
I have no difficulty coming up with situations where the paladin's code is bad tactics.
If I want to play a pacifist monk or a paladin, it's pretty much canon that my character limits my tactical options.
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I find it hard not to think in one of two modes:
(a) What is the best tactic to use here to minimize the chances of someone in the group dying in this battle while conserving limited resources for potential future battle?
Or:
(b) What would my character realistically do here, in a stressful situation with little time to think, given his/her current mood, philosophy of life, etc?
My tactics if I use (b) are much worse than my tactics if I use (a).
I tend to default to (a) because it's while it's hard to role-play well when optimizing my survival chances, it's even harder to role-play well while dead.
I find it hard not to think in one of two modes:
(a) What is the best tactic to use here to minimize the chances of someone in the group dying in this battle while conserving limited resources for potential future battle?Or:
(b) What would my character realistically do here, in a stressful situation with little time to think, given his/her current mood, philosophy of life, etc?My tactics if I use (b) are much worse than my tactics if I use (a).
I think that's realistic given the nature of role-playing. There are lots of people (real and fictional) in the universe of possibilities and very few of them are defined as Sun Tzu/Admiral Thrawn level tacticians.
I tend to default to (a) because it's while it's hard to role-play well when optimizing my survival chances, it's even harder to role-play well while dead.
To some extent that's the GM's problem. If the situation you presented the players with requires Sun Tzu to survive, then don't be surprised when Sam Gamgee suddenly starts acting like Sun Tzu.
To some extent, that might be a disinclincation to run away that for some reason is very common among gamers. Let's face it, the reason we're at the table it to have vicarious adventures. Realistically, most people wouldn't walk into the dungeon in the first place. But it's more heroic to fight and triumph over impossible odds. Whups, I guess I should have specified "barely possible" odds..... time to get the dice.
To some extent, that might be a disinclincation to run away that for some reason is very common among gamers. Let's face it, the reason we're at the table it to have vicarious adventures. Realistically, most people wouldn't walk into the dungeon in the first place. But it's more heroic to fight and triumph over impossible odds. Whups, I guess I should have specified "barely possible" odds..... time to get the dice.
Ultimately the problem with running away is that it doesn't work well if the goal is to have an adventure or get anything accomplished in the limited time you have to sit down and play the game. It's not even a matter of heroics, it's a matter of if one is constantly running away, why are they bothering to play in the first place? And the general issue of tactics is very similar. Realistically, the types of characters that tend to be played aren't very good tacticians, but playing out poor tactics constantly gets very old very fast to the players, and thus some middle ground has to be found.
I personally view it as a matter that the character may not be the smartest in everything, but PCs are routinely in combat, and are going to figure out that certain things work better than others to survive, and they will tend to stick to those things that let them live the longest unless they really, really, really have a good reason not to, even if it's not a conscious thought process or decision. It's easier to run NPCs with less than optimal tactics because 1)it doesn't really hurt the enjoyment of the real people playing the game and 2)it's easier to justify in game why they are doing so. I don't care if you are a stupid barbarian with an int of 5; after even two or three levels of experience, you've seen enough fights to know how to survive and what will get you killed. The character probably wouldn't express it the same way that the player does, but the same basic concept and thought process would be there, so I don't have a problem with that barbarian usually showing good tactics.
"Brilliant tactics and poor dice rolls will never succeed against poor tactics and good rolls." - meBrilliant tactics is never allowing your opponent to roll at all.
So...lots of touch attack spells and Improved Initiative. Got it.
Whoops, rolled a 5. Guess we're back to the drawing board.
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"Brilliant tactics and poor dice rolls will never succeed against poor tactics and good rolls." - meBrilliant tactics is never allowing your opponent to roll at all.So...lots of touch attack spells and Improved Initiative. Got it.
Whoops, rolled a 5. Guess we're back to the drawing board.
No! If ever you need to use Improved Initiative, it means you've given the enemy a chance to roll initiative! That means you've already failed!
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"Brilliant tactics and poor dice rolls will never succeed against poor tactics and good rolls." - meBrilliant tactics is never allowing your opponent to roll at all.So...lots of touch attack spells and Improved Initiative. Got it.
Whoops, rolled a 5. Guess we're back to the drawing board.
Well from the Sun Tzu perspective, you'd never roll initiative. Hell, you'd never be in the same room as the guy you're fighting.
You'd get stuff like rerouting rivers to send water into an enemy encampment, messing with evil army's economics to send them home, hiring people to do your fighting for you, retreating until the enemy is too fatigued to raise a ruckus, etc.
The thing your average RPG is built on 'the dramatic fair fight' is the bitter enemy of most tactical and strategic planning.
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Sooo....if the PCs are played intelligently you pull a fast one just to mess it up? Seems some how wrong...
Tactics, powergaming...
you say potato, and I say potato
Its obviously "tactics" when you* think of a brilliant strategy to shut down the DM (which most likely isn't tactics at all but clever manipulation of your characters build), while it is cheesy powergaming, when your opponent does it to you.
*Not you, as in you personally, but you in the, "another guy generally" sense.
Obviously if you can fight an ogre in a situation where the ogre cannot attack you back, that's smart tactics, and it might come about either because that is just the way the encounter plays out, or because the players think of a way to trick the ogre into such a position and the DM thinks it is a great plan and allows it, but it is also just as likely that the DM will undermine your "tactics" with a dues-ex-machina, "You didn't know the Ogre also carried a wand of fireballs did you, mwu haha" and then it's time for saving throws, and good dice once again.
I am just saying that for me, personally, I don't want to play with people who feel it is their goal to make sure they can win every encounter without using the dice.
I feel like that if you're in a player versus gm situation you're in a bad game.
And that's pretty much everything you described.
You keep using language like "well the gm will just screw you" or " you want to shut down the gm".
If this is the sort of adversarial relationship you find yourself in it's time to get away from that table. Good dice won't save you from an a*&#$~%.
"Brilliant tactics and poor dice rolls will never succeed against poor tactics and good rolls." - meBrilliant tactics is never allowing your opponent to roll at all.So...lots of touch attack spells and Improved Initiative. Got it.
Master Sun, again:
To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
So, if you're rolling initiative at all, you've already failed to be brilliant.
The thing your average RPG is built on 'the dramatic fair fight' is the bitter enemy of most tactical and strategic planning.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
Brilliant tactics is defeating opponents before dice are ever rolled.
But that doesn't preclude simple, stupid, tactical sense.
You don't need Sun'tzu to tell you to take cover when facing ranged opponents nor do you need Patton to tell you that getting surrounded and flanked at multiple angles is suicidal. For some reason people tend to think of this as high order thinking along the lines of theorhetical physics.
In truth I don't even like fair fights on either side of the table. I have a place in my heart for fights sided slightly more towards the opposition with the occasional throw away fight to the players in order to help them feel competent and powerful since the rest of the time they're trying to stop me from driving them face first into the buzzsaw.
And it makes for great drama and satisfying moments where the characters manage to break the front line of rogues to get to the backline cleric by taking advantage of the one AoO limit to push through an opening in the line.
I feel like that if you're in a player versus gm situation you're in a bad game.And that's pretty much everything you described.
Horses for courses. It generally not fun to be WTFpwned without the possibility of response -- and GMs like to have fun, too. A lot of players like the dramatic and cinematic possibilities.
Sun Tzu is nice, but his style of warfare is rather boring.
To get back on topic having bad tactics as part of deliberate roleplay does require a bit of balance I would hope.
So you choose to never try to flank or focus fire opponents because you feel that your character would consider such tactics dishonorable.
But, common sense would dictate that other people are not necessarily going to subcribe to your form of honorable combat.
Therefore you would adjust your tactics to ensure you would get your honorable combat without endangering yourself or the lives of your comrades more than necessary just to suit your personal tastes.
In many ways deliberately using poor tactics is actually harder than using good tactics. So having good tactical sense would be pretty helpful in this regard since you would know what tactics you could use to maintain your characters sense of integrity.
Its quite interesting the kind of tactics players will come up with (good, bad, or downright lunacy) and I imagine that is what makes for memorable sessions.
It would of course make for good roleplaying if the soldier PC comes up with good, practical tactics though that would assume said player is an armchair general or actually had prior experience in small-unit tactics. I always ruled that particularly good (or particularly creative) tactics should have a little GM reward for the player that thought it up.