My party has a problem. They seem to freeze in combat when they are not sure what to do. The fights that were pretty much straight forward went fine and people even tried some innovative things.
For instance, in the initial encounter with thugs the diviner attempted to scare them off with an illusory sound of approaching guards (worked fairly well actually) and the monk grappled one of the thugs and the party was able to question them. Likewise, the encounter with the skulk in Ghelve's was quick and brutal.
But once the PCs got down into Jzadirune battles have become more tricky. The two that have given them the biggest problems so far are the Raggomuffyn and the damaged pulverizer in the invisibility spheres. The first got control right away of the biggest fighter in the group as he went and grappled it.
They just didn't know what to do at that point. Do they hit their friend? Do they not and leave him to be controlled? I have never seen a group of people pass on so many actions. "I hold my action" or "I take a full defensive action" was the most common action I heard from players. It took some pretty heavy "hinting" to get them to use flanking and Aid Another actions.
Likewise the PCs are in a tough spot with the pulverizor, the only thing keeping them from being whiped out is that I have been rolling poorly and it hasn't gotten to take many actions yet. But once again, they just moved out of the invisibility spheres and are waiting for it to come out. This is despite the fact that it sees multiple foes grouped together and uses it's shriek ability instead of coming out (to be fair it has only done this once and the combat isn't over yet).
So... how do I encourage them to take more action? All but one of these players has said they wanted to have a game with more tactics and thinking and rated themselves as very knowledge in the d20 rule-set. I am just surprised at how hard they are finding this.
I have a message board that they all look at for the campaign, should I start some sort of Strategy Workshop for them on this site? I just don't know...
Sean Mahoney
My party experienced many of the same problems. They just couldnt figure out how to work together as a team. In the end, it took a total party kill, followed by a session with me to explain to them where they went wrong. The two problems I identified to them as being the most critical were a.) Lack of an arcane spell caster with the appropriate level spells. The party had two sorcerers, and a multi class wizard. It is critical in many of the SCAP encounters that an arcane caster with spell access to appropriate spell level for the adventure is present, or that the party at least understand how they are going to work around that missing element. b.) Certain classes are counted on to bring particular attributes to the table. If you are going to play a rogue that is heavy on charisma based skills let the party know ahead of time, not when you arrive at the first trapped door for example. c.) Any plan is better than no plan.
Im not sure about a message board, but what I did is play a game as a player and allow one of my players to DM. It was an unrelated game with different PC's, but they learned alot about working as a team, IDing party weakness, and overcoming the weakness.
I have 3 suggestions:
1) When my players are confounded, it's frequently because I haven't described things well enough for them to know what is going on. Frequently when this happens, I haven't described it enough for them to even know what questions to be asking.
2) I find a strategy session at the end of the night is frequently helpful. "That dragon nearly ate the party, how come nobody flanked him?". This gets them thinking about it, maybe brings an option up that they hadn't considered, etc. so that they'll do better next time.
3) Give hints but not descriptions. The school of hard knocks is the best teacher.
1) When my players are confounded, it's frequently because I haven't described things well enough for them...
This was actually my first thought as well, so I starting going back to the players to find out how I could have done better. The answers I got were that they very clearly understood the situation, they just had no concept what to do about it.
If the group weren't so large I would have a NPC (marshal or something similar) join the group as an experienced adventurer who gives direction. Once I felt that the PCs were onto the basics of tactics I would kill him off (hopefully to their horror).
2) I find a strategy session at the end of the night is frequently helpful.
This is probably the best idea. I play in online using OpenRPG, so directly after the game doesn't work too well, but I certainly can start a discussion on the message board over the intervening week.
Sean Mahoney
It is critical in many of the SCAP encounters that an arcane caster with spell access to appropriate spell level for the adventure is present, or that the party at least understand how they are going to work around that missing element.
Walter, could you expound on that (i.e., particular examples)? I'm running this for a group starting in about a month. I'd like to help them with character builds as much as possible. Thanks.