"Get Her?" That Was Your Plan?


Advice

Dark Archive Bella Sara Charter Superscriber

I probably make this joke at every single session when the PCs approach any potential confrontation by charging in and fighting. I try to build encounters that can be resolved (or at least made easier) through non-combat efforts or good tactics, and sometimes my players go that route, but not that often.

That got me to thinking - not about what I can do to force them to play this way, but how I can approach it more from their perspective. My usual rule of thumb is that if the players come up with a clever plan, I will try to accommodate it even if it deviates from my thoughts on how the session might play out.

To flip this on its head, I'd like to hear what you, the wonderful Paizo community, have found most facilitates planning and strategic combat when you are not behind the DM's screen. What has your DM done to provide opportunities to use brains over brawn? What plan do you always dream of executing, but can never find the right scenario to put it in place?

Sovereign Court

Not quite what you asked, but as DM I make challenges so overwhelming that sometimes careful planning, strategy and intrigue are the only ways to win. When finishing the first chapter of Kingmaker...

Kingmaker Spoilers:

My PbP group managed to get three bandits eliminated as well as getting Akiros on-side before it all went wrong due to a moral dilemma Dovan forced on a PC. I genuinelly believe it would have been a TPK without care on their part.

Sovereign Court

It's kind of depressing to point out, but I've had alot of aggrivating DM's within the school of thought that if he can think it, even the dumbest of his monsters can execute it. Even his goblins are rediculously apt in tactical combat.

As a DM myself, I only live by one universal rule - "Stick to creature perception." To a degree I throw my own tactical knowledge into combat encounters, but not much. I don't think zombies would know how to hussel in a two-by-two SWAT cover formation...

Yes...he threw that on us once...

Anyhow, as a player I try the opposite approach - to look at it from my character's perspective. While I would see it more tactically efficient to sneak around, my Dwarven Barbarian will face the horde head-on himself if he has to. It's hard for me not to play this way, as I'm a very "in-persepctive" player/GM.

Not sure if that answers your inquiry.

The Exchange

I play hippies and almost never fight.

Dark Archive Bella Sara Charter Superscriber

Thanks, both stories are helpful. I'm not looking for a specific answer, I'm just interested in how people handle these things, particularly from the perspective of players. One of the most valuable lessons I (re)learned, not too long ago, is how different the player perspective is from the DM perspective. I'd like to know what you think your DM could do better to enable you to run your character and play the game. Not playing monsters as tactical geniuses is a good comment in that vein.

Alexander - can you provide more details on the plan? I'd be curious to hear more.

Dark Archive Bella Sara Charter Superscriber

snobi wrote:
I play hippies and almost never fight.

Or bathe? Cause I give my players +1 to caster level of stinking cloud if they are hippies.

Sovereign Court

snobi wrote:
I play hippies and almost never fight.

Win! v(^_^)v


Sebastian wrote:


I probably make this joke at every single session when the PCs approach any potential confrontation by charging in and fighting.

Not about your question, but your quote got me thinking. My players routinely come up with plans and then someone will quip "I love this plan! I'm excited to be a part of it!" and when the BBEG is vanquished, "It's Milla time!"

-Windquake


Unfortunately I think it’s just a matter of the players personalities. Some players just like to charge headlong into combat, and unfortunately again, all it takes is one of these players to drag the entire party into combat even if the rest wanted to talk/strategize. The only way I can think of to force these players to think outside the box is to show them that rushing in headlong doesn’t work. Of course it’s hard to teach a player this lesson without killing their character in the process.

Luckily for the most part my group likes to mix it up, and we can generally tell what battles we’re supposed to talk our way through and what battles we need to bash our way through. Though this hasn’t stopped us from killing off NPCs who we were supposed to talk our way past, or talking our way past NPCs we were supposed to battle.


Bit of an anecdotal story but, when encountering certain monsters its only if our chars roll high on knowledge/perception checks will the dm give out hints as to how to deal with it. Such as a reading from the flavor of the beastiary or going a bit more descriptive with the room/monster.

Example: Four level 5's ran up on a behir sunbathing, we failed stealth rolls to sneak around it but one person rolled really high on knowledge and the dm told us that they like being praised. So the rogue comes up with a plan and drops to his knees and starts worshipping the behir and calling it the mighty lightning speaker. It demands tribute so the fighter takes the backpack full of gear and proceeds to take out eah piece while describing it in vivid detail, while the rogue has retrieved a bottle of armor polish and gives it a nice scale waxing. In the meantime the sorcerer and he ranger were lauding it with tales of how powerful it was while prepping a volley of skorchimg rays and arrows once the fighter/rogue were in position. Sure we resorted to force in the end, but it was a great plan that never would have come to being without some option from the Dm.

Grand Lodge

I did have a group charge headlong at the first encounter of kingmaker...and started by killing the horses. Yeah they TPKed. Fairly certain they didn't learn their lesson tho.


Prince That Rolls wrote:
Some players just like to charge headlong into combat, and unfortunately again, all it takes is one of these players to drag the entire party into combat even if the rest wanted to talk/strategize.

If you have one player like this strategize (is that a word?) around him, make his Leeroy Jenkins a distraction so the rogue can sneak past the guards, or give him something to give him immunity to fire so the wizard can follow him with a fireball. If your entire party is like this then you may have a problem.

As a DM has anyone fought of this: The BBEG thinks since the players are defeating his forces they must be great strategists so he concots an elaborate strategy to fight the players that is completely foiled when the players come charging in without pause to think. It is a little comedic but my players loved knowing, after several times where charging had backfired, that this one time it had allowed them to defeat the BBEG.

Sczarni

Sebastian wrote:


To flip this on its head, I'd like to hear what you, the wonderful Paizo community, have found most facilitates planning and strategic combat when you are not behind the DM's screen. What has your DM done to provide opportunities to use brains over brawn? What plan do you always dream of executing, but can never find the right scenario to put it in place?

passive knowledge rolls by the DM. if he makes a passive knowledge roll (or passive perception - a la spot), then we learn a little more about what we see.. like deja vu or having something randomly fit in the puzzle inside our player's heads.


Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Cold Napalm wrote:
I did have a group charge headlong at the first encounter of kingmaker...and started by killing the horses. Yeah they TPKed. Fairly certain they didn't learn their lesson tho.

Potential Kingmaker spoilers (from the very beginning):

My group wanted to kill the horses after I asked aloud why they had an XP amount given for them. I assured the party I wouldn't give them the XP for killing a bunch of domesticated horses.

I did give them an extra 100 XP (party, so split 4 ways) for successfully engineering their ambush so that the bandits weren't mounted. Not like that was hard or anything, but still.

They wiped out the bandits without taking a hit, and the monk knocked Happs down to -18 nonlethal, so they spent some heals just to wake him up, interrogate him, then execute him.

Although later they totally recruited Kressle at the bandit camp after the monk grappled/pinned/tied her up, so who knows what they're doing. They actually made her execute the remaining bandits at the camp.

And never called for a single sense motive check...although I figure her change is genuine, given that life can't be all smiles working for a drunk like the Stag Lord, who earned her loyalty by killing what minions of his (that tried to rape her) survived her attacks).


Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Which I guess means I don't worry about it. My players will try things without much prompting. They may not always be brilliant, and sometimes I have to shoot things down as unfeasible or just a tough roll, but I try to give them the info their characters would reasonably have, and they mostly respond okay. Occasionally they dive out a window and lead the king's messenger on a long chase through the streets, incapacitating tons of guards just to avoid getting a plot hook letter of recruitment...but that at least makes for an entertaining story later.


I have been on both sides of that coin.

When a friend of mine was DMing for the first time, he was very railroady. After several sessions, we came upon a large battle that was stacked against the good guys. We were probably supposed to watch, and assist from the sidelines. We were moderately sick of the railroading by that point, so I go up to one of the friendly commanders and asked can we borrow a chariot? A few rounds later we were riding it headlong into the middle of the enemy army, we were going to turn the tide of the battle or die trying. We were so far off script, the DM really didn't know WTF to do.

This is the same character who when we met a mind flayer for the first time, none of us made the knowledge check. It was levitating and being a PITA, so I climbed onto a nearby rock formation and attempted a flying grapple. This was in 3.0, and I knew that grappling a mind flayer was a really bad idea, but my character didn't.

In hindsight, I really enjoyed playing an impulsive character, largely because I am not like that IRL.

On the other hand, when I am playing a social or sneaky character, I get annoyed by the other players who want to skip the RPing and get straight to combat. My goal is to see how much I can accomplish without fighting.

Typically as a DM I try to mix it up. If I want the players to use tactics, I try and make it fairly obvious that just charging in would be a bad idea.


ZangRavnos wrote:

As a DM myself, I only live by one universal rule - "Stick to creature perception." To a degree I throw my own tactical knowledge into combat encounters, but not much. I don't think zombies would know how to hussel in a two-by-two SWAT cover formation...

Yes...he threw that on us once...

Heh. This is a little off-topic, but once I had a room in which the bones, upon the PCs' arrival, would assemble into skeletons to attack the party. I rolled randomly to determine in which squares in the room the skeletons would be. And by coincidence, the random die rolls arranged the skeletons into two perfectly formed columns. Really. I should have re-rolled, but didn't bother.

Anyway, about the original question...

How do you encourage the players to come up with tactics? Give them a map of the bad guys' lair, or other details of the bad guys' capabilities. And don't let it be a false rumor either, or the players will never bother basing tactics on that kind of information again.

Or let the PCs come into a room where the dragon is sleeping. They'll slip out and start whispering strategies, casting preparatory spells, etc.

And if you want a subtle encouragement to deal diplomatically with the monsters, just do it the way "The Sunless Citadel" did.

The Sunless Citadel:
Draw the map so that the PCs will have to come into the room with a sympathetic monster.


RicoTheBold wrote:


** spoiler omitted **

FYI, you really should make the players take a sense motive check anyway just to keep them guessing...


I have found that when I DM for seasoned D&D players, with many years of experience, they tend to fight instead of opting for diplomacy. I feel that the 'fight' has been engrained in them from years of D&D style dungeons where everything was black and white, good or evil, and all odds were against them.

Modern games tend to have more gray areas where even intelligent monsters can have their own agendas that might not included eating the party. Like a tribe of lizard-folk who want to reclaim their jungle territory from an encroaching threat. Younger, less experienced players tend to be more diplomatic and prefer the social game over the hack and slash. I am not saying that this is always the case but that this is simply my experience as a DM.

If you feel that there is an imbalance in your group then you could employ some tricks to try and correct it such as awarding more experience if the party manages to cleverly dispatch their foes. This could be misconstrued as you guiding the party and, frankly, it is. But you're the DM, that’s what you are supposed to do.

You could also have the monsters refuse to fight unless provoked which then makes the PCs the aggressors. If the PCs attack the pacifist creatures there might be an alignment shift or untold consequences.

In a setting with older players, one member of the party went and attacked a powerful political figure, unprovoked, and ended up forcing the entire party into a TPK type situation simply because he was not clever enough to figure out another way to resolve the issue. Some players must be pushed in the right direction in order for the entire group to benefit.

Scarab Sages

I think the approach changes based on how your players manage their side of the table. IF they approach every encounter with the 'High Ho Silver! Charge!' tactic, and enjoy it, toss it back at them. The party is likely to get a kick out of an enemy who is actively seeking them and when he finally confronts them, launches into a PC-esque blood lust rage against the party without so much as the obligatory BBEG speech. The 'kill first, questions later' party *should* have fun when their enemies operate in a similar, frontal assault manner. Big, epic, flashy encounters seem to be on the docket for this group.

On the other hand, if your party works together, communicating in-character to gain tactical advantages, they will appreciate it a lot more when the enemies do the same. The worgs who isolate the casters, the huecuva who try to disable the cleric first, the ghouls who ignore a paralyzed fighter in order to gang up on the now unprotected rear-line. The PC's are already thinking tactics, and when their (intelligent) enemies start doing the same, it brings more fun to the table.

Talk to your players and try to understand *why* they default to charge and smash instead of parry and counter. The play-style that the group desires may surprise you, and in the end could save you a lot of headache trying to design alternate means of resolution that you know on the front end that the party will never even consider.


Many of my players have done the 'charge in, ask questions later' style in many games.

They do it less than they used to because I started doing things like having dead remains of creatures near the bad guys lair, also putting traps in the area.

Creatures that live in groups will assign roles, even if temporary, such as scout/lookout or guard, they will setup traps or for something simpler just bang on large metal gong or pot to raise the alarm.

Average intelligence creatures can use alchemists fire, tanglefoot bags, smokesticks in combat, and trap the area before combat to hinder the enemies.

Magical creatures can use spells like Color Spray, Entangle, Grease, Hold Person, Obscuring Mist, Ray of Enfeeblement, Silence. All of these spells are low level.

Hinder is the key word here, if PCs find themselves with penalties to multiple abilities then they will rethink their actions. This will take the emphasis off Damage vs Damage effects, and make people use stealth, detection spells and perception.

For example, an Average Int creatures gets it's minions to pour oil on the entrance tunnel floors of its lairs, then tells them to light it if anyone comes in. Simple, non expensive and non magical.

Your NPCs can want to capture the PCs instead of just kill them. They may want to recruit them, interrogate them, or glaze them in honey before roasting during the evil festival. The point is they get captured and thus have a chance to escape, but also a chance to learn about the bad guys (if they have the same language).

The flip side is they will need opportunities to get in the lair though, so to disguise themselves as goblins they need the goblins to go on patrol and ambush them, the goblins can not stay in their lair forever. If they are more devious they could poison the goblins food/water supply so there needs to be a river or stream nearby, which could also be an entrance point not trapped.


Mr. Fishy once led his party of first level characters against an invading army and won. We poisoned their food, we lit tents on fire we stole their giant magitech battle armor [not in the plan] and crush it after using it to kill their flame dragon... Mr. Fishy only lost one character a fighter and he got better. Mr. Fishy got a God level Geas [save the world] but that fighter got better.

Mr. Fishy has charged in but that is a tactic of shock and awe. Best used on soft targets [casters].

Liberty's Edge

In my last session our group had 3 opportunities for combat, and only took one of those (and then only after our attempts to get them to "step off" failed). We ended up getting a high level vampire to kill a group of bad guys for us in exchange for some of the "goodies" they had hidden in their camp (which was true). Not like having a high level vampire with 4 sentient constructs (all of whom are evil) is going to cause troubles later. Nope. No chance at all. I did get hair/bone samples of the people killed (all LG) to revive them later.

NOTE: The LG dudes were asshats who tried to kill us on sight for unwitting possession of evil artifacts even when we attempted to willingly give them up. The vampire, though evil, was very nice and even made a couple magic items for us.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I try not to have a preconceived notion of what the players plan to do. Sometimes they want to go in, weapons swinging, sometimes they want to go in quiet. I do try to provide options wherever possible - maps, rumours, knowledges. Also my monsters talk during battle (sometimes in a language the PCs can't understand). Sometimes the PCs retreat specifically because they don't want to intrude on a creature's home.

Last night they encountered a pair of trolls (a mother teaching her offspring how to hunt). When the larger of the two trolls was burned to death, the younger was yelling "Mama" in giant, and tried to drag her mother away from the PCs. The only character that understood Giant had a choice to let the Trolls go at that point, but he kept the information to himself and the PCs killed the other troll in a wave of AoOs.


In the campaigns I've been in, the PC's have only stopped to resort to lots of planning and tactics when they did not think a "CHARGE!" tactic would be effective. Sometimes it was because of the unknown (i dunno what that 6 armed thing is, but it looks deadly!).. sometimes its because you know, and are scared.. (man one of those things was bad and that room has 4 of 'em!)..

We, as a group, have never been a "spend an hour making a plan" type, unless it was seen that there was some specific need for it.

My current group has yet to experience one of those moments at all excepting a singular encounter that allowed them to run away, rest completely, and come back in.. and even then they, for the most part, simply.. charged in at full strength.

I guess what I'm really saying is- the characters you are DM'ing for won't ever stop to make a specific strategy until you give them good reason to do so. If they think either because of the critter types or due to your general DM style that they can pack up and mow over any encounter without much tactics.. then that is exactly what they are going to do. And they'll keep doing it until proven differently.

-S


Sebastian wrote:


To flip this on its head, I'd like to hear what you, the wonderful Paizo community, have found most facilitates planning and strategic combat when you are not behind the DM's screen. What has your DM done to provide opportunities to use brains over brawn? What plan do you always dream of executing, but can never find the right scenario to put it in place?

I think if the players have a fairly specific idea of what the "important" encounter is going to be, they tend to come up with a little bit more of a plan than if they just have a vague notion that an encounter might be important.

For example, knowing that most of the bad guys are gnolls or goblins isn't going to engender much planning, but getting an idea that the BBEG might be some kind of warrior with a priest and a monster pet they might come up with an idea of who should hit whom.

But then you get into the concept that you either have to "give" them some hints, or the PCs have to be inclined to do some information gathering and stealthy scouting instead of room to room searches.

Of course all of this is academic because my players have developed a collective ability to find the shortest path to the BBEG which will make sure they arrive there at least a level before they "should" and cutting past any helpful equipment they were meant to find.


Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Charender wrote:
RicoTheBold wrote:


** spoiler omitted **

FYI, you really should make the players take a sense motive check anyway just to keep them guessing...

Eh, I see two ways to play it. Roll bluffs (fake or not) frequently, and call for sense motives at random...or just let them play it out, and always roll a bluff (fake or not) anytime the party calls for sense motive. The second option slows things down less. I've got a new player in this group, but the rest of them have played with me enough to know to call for sense motive if they want an answer from the dice. I'm actually kind of glad they were role-playing it (even if their criterion for trust seemed nonsensical to me) instead of just rolling the dice. With my group, that's not always the first idea.

And I think that's a credit to Paizo and the Kingmaker AP, since they did a good job of explaining

Kingmaker details:
how Kressle joined up with the Stag Lord in the first place. I felt a little weird adapting the "captured bandit won't stay loyal to the stag lord" info with her, since her morale was supposed to be fight to the death if she couldn't escape, but they tied her up without her taking a single point of damage, and it didn't seem terribly unrealistic that she wouldn't want to work for "a bloody drunk" who is "half of what he used to be" if a better offer (that included sparing her an execution) came along.

Besides, my players are pretty paranoid anyway, usually. I'm not unfair, but I have had some devious villains in the past. I've had a PC nearly die because he didn't trust that a ring of fire protection was what he was told it was, so he didn't put it on (in a town that was one elaborate trap...it was full of suicide-bombing gnolls carrying low-level necklaces of fireball, so energy resistance was pretty much the way to survive), then he got all pissed when he summoned a demon that gave him a new spellbook (he'd lost his, along with half the party's gear, due to a ruptured bag of holding) because the demon said it would collect an (unspecified) favor later...because he never read Planar Ally very carefully.

Uh...so, yeah, I don't need to roll extra dice to freak my players out. Tales of what happened with past parties tend to do that pretty well. Although, in fairness, that party did acquire a T-Rex and a Roc as mounts (after jumping through a large number of quest-based and monetarily expensive hoops to do so), as well as conquer half the gnolls in the Forgotten Realms High Forest, so it wasn't all torn bags of holding and towns full of suicide-bombing gnolls.

Also...and more on topic, that tale of this particular town is notable for offering a handful of mechanisms to learn about the trap and protect themselves ahead of time, which they actually used (befriending the town's mayor, who was really on the fence to abandoning the entire plan...which was created by a succubus). I was surprised they actually caught the clues that being aggressive might not be the way to go there, since they greeted the previous town they visited by throwing dead bodies over the gate.

After reading this thread, I can't decide if I'm a good GM or just lucky that my players aren't all complete chowderheads.

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