That can't be objectively answered, as it would require an extensive set of mass combat and wartime economy rules that do not exist in an official version, and therefore a conflict utilizing such tactics would most likely be based on 3PP or homebrew rules.
I have been laughed at on these boards because our group actually ROLEPLAYS this way. Too many damned gamists I guess.
To be more specific, our GM played a group of intelligent enemies (half-celestials hellbent on assassinating our evil party) by having them each choose a target PC and focus on that target during their ambush.
It's what any real world swat team would do. One target. One kill. Bad guys are usually down before they knew what hit them.
It makes perfect sense in-game, and that's why we play that way. Cause we're, you know, roleplaying.
Mechanically, however, the bad guys are spreading out the damage. My GM and I were ridiculed by the gamists on these boards for not having the NPCs focus fire on one PC at a time to take him down quickly before moving onto the next.
Thing is, that's metagame thinking in the extreme. NPCs simply don't (or at least shouldn't) think that way.
Good luck in your endeavor. I hope you do better than I.
EDIT
And just to be more contributive: Yes, I think emulating such tactics would work quite well for increasing the feel and fun of your game. As shown above, the results of said tactics may not work out like they would in real life, however.
That's not really Sun Tzu.
Not really when it comes to the specific tactics you are talking about, though. That isn't really the type of fighting the types of armies he led were equipped for.
The RAW doesn't really cover the issue. You'd have to house rule it. I'd think his strategies would be as effective as they were IRL, which is to say very much so, but not so much his tactics due to the altered circumstances.
RAW stands for Rule As Written. It refers to whatever is written in official Pathfinder rulebooks.
EWHM, I'd agree with you on strategy but not tactics. The circumstances are just way too far removed from Ancient China. Sun Tzu's strategies are timeless and effective, but the tactics, while good for their time, are outdated.
I suppose I should explain the difference between the two. Strategy refers to a basic overall campaign or battleplan, such as what regions you will invade or where you will place your armies, and a strategy can stretch over several battles and smaller engagements. Tactics refers to the deployment and use of resources, such as infantry, cavalry or armor, and artillery, within a single battle. Good strategy is timeless, but tactics age quickly with the invention of new technologies.
Yes. I imagine Sun Tzu's strategies would be effective in Pathfinder.
I think real world tactics work just fine. I just ran a large scale battle and my players used all sorts of battle tactics (some of which failed). They assaulted a battalion of troops from the rear utilizing high ground and waited for the majority of the column to pass into a narrowing in the cavern before attacking.
@Ravingdork I wouldn't ridicule your GM for using such a tactic, however SWAT tactics are based on the tought that a shot can kill a man, PF is not based on that assumption, not even in gun combat.
@OP Custom made buddy feats would certainly help such techniques, but it is possible, but not for every technique, for example you can't shoot arrows up in the air to hit an area while the first line holds up tower shields to take cover.
Also magic messes with everything and tactics would have to adapt, no phalanx against fireballs for example.
The charm of Sun Tzu is that he was thinking on a larger scale, strategy instead of tactics, you could say. It applies to pretty much any kind of conflict instead of just war, and in an RPG it would come into effect on a level above the one were stats and dice rolls come to play. So I imagine it would all work very well.
With more situational tactics, one big difference between the real world and most RPGs is the amount of injuries which a person can take without being meaningfully impaired. Which in real life is about zero. In many RPGs, a high level PC can simply cross an open square while there are snipers and machine guns on the roofs and he'll make it to the other side just fine. Patch him up and it's as if he was never injured in the first place.
So everything that relies on pinning your enemy down and making parts of the area inaccessible is very hard to be translated to an RPG. There are some battlefield control spells in many games that could have a similar effect, though.
Anything that relies on formations of troops won't work at all in d20 RPGs. The most that you get is +2 to attack by flanking and the number of individuals that can attack a target at the same time when surrounding it, which both do not apply when everyone is in formation. However, there is no such thing as attacking a formation from the side or the rear. In actual ancient battles, this would be almost instant win, but since d20 doesn't have facing, it doesn't make a difference from which direction you attack.
Encirclement could work, but for that you usually have way to few individuals in an encounter. And given that you can't form real circles, I think that the force on the outside does not actually get more opportunities to strike at enemies than the other way round, making the whole thing pointless.
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I have been laughed at on these boards because our group actually ROLEPLAYS this way. Too many damned gamists I guess.
To be more specific, our GM played a group of intelligent enemies (half-celestials hellbent on assassinating our evil party) by having them each choose a target PC and focus on that target during their ambush.
It's what any real world swat team would do. One target. One kill. Bad guys are usually down before they knew what hit them.
It makes perfect sense in-game, and that's why we play that way. Cause we're, you know, roleplaying.
Mechanically, however, the bad guys are spreading out the damage. My GM and I were ridiculed by the gamists on these boards for not having the NPCs focus fire on one PC at a time to take him down quickly before moving onto the next.
Thing is, that's metagame thinking in the extreme. NPCs simply don't (or at least shouldn't) think that way.
Good luck in your endeavor. I hope you do better than I.
EDIT
And just to be more contributive: Yes, I think emulating such tactics would work quite well for increasing the feel and fun of your game. As shown above, the results of said tactics may not work out like they would in real life, however.
First, you guys are still being gamists. If they want to kill you then then would get you in smaller groups so they can double or triple up. Also they might stalk you and attack when you are being attacked by another foe. They might arrange such an attack. There are numerous strategies for killing people and groups of people and none of them are "let us all attack them at the same time and we will each take one guy." Assassins are not a swat team. In real life a swat team is still trying to NOT kill the persons they are assaulting.
So in short you are not roleplaying you are still game playing.
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Tactics and strategy are a large component of this game. For a lot of groups tactics boil down to "hey, there is a bad guy let us attack him with our swords and spells." Other groups are more tactical and try to put together a strategy for each scenario. It depends on your players and their style. Some players want the simple way and others try to be clever.
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I think we use anachronistic tactics in our group; more akin to a squad of navy seals with a goal-oriented mission. We thoroughly reconnoiter an area, select primary, secondary and tertiary targets, locate points of entry and egress and then formulate a plan of action. We then use our abilities and resources to covertly infiltrate the enemy installation, bypassing defenses and everyone to surprise attack the primary target (the BBEG) first before he's aware of our presence or had a chance to ready himself (preferably while still asleep). Normally we operate in total silence (via the spell) and so avoid raising an alarm. We then work our way through various secondary and tertiary targets as we work our way back out of the installation.
So far it's proven a damnably effective tactic; most targets are never given a chance to counter-attack so we often suffer no injuries on our side.
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None really; the most effective real-life tactics (waiting people out, surrounding a fortress with hundreds of men) don't work in PF because they are boring. Plus, if teleportation and flight are an option for supplies it is hard to cut off supply lines. Diseases are magically cured, and massive battles are too cumbersome.
In real life, one person does not take down dozens of enemies who seem to live without talking to one another. In midevil days, the most effective way to kill someone was trap them under your heavily armored body and have your squire run up and slit their throat.
Face it, real tactics become null and void once you throw in magic and Herculean men with no sense of fatigue that can battle waves of enemies.
Now 300 tactics? Those work... if you're fighting lots of enemies, try to limit the space they have to surround you, as magic healing and a lack of worry about endurance will keep you alive and strong.
I dont think real world military tactics apply for a number of reasons. First of all, the scale is wrong. This is small scale squad warfare. Alexanders fighting methods were based on having large groups of simiarly equiped and similarly skilled warriors. An adventuring party is a very small group of highly specialized warriors with very divergent skill sets. A wizard, rogue and fighter wont stand should to shoulder in a phalanx, that would be silly.
That said, I think modern special forces tactics might work but they arent as well known or as well studied as alexandar, caesar or other classic generals.
Only if the GM allows them to work, because a lot of his tactics don't involve direct conflict, but destroying the enemy's ability to fight.
I guess ): But Sun Zhu strategy would work, yes?
Not really. Sun Zhu's strategy is all about deception, manuevering, maintaining lines of supply and morale. There is no morale in this game, small scale makes manuevering pretty irrelavant and also means lines of supply are not really relevant, and divination magic makes deception very, very complicated.
A Moderator has to do it, if you catch your post fast enough you can delete it.
Real world swat teams don't have to deal with people who can take 15 seconds worth the fire, fire back, take another 15 seconds worth the fire, fire back, ad nauseam. Swat teams, when they're going to kill, divide targets because its easy to kill someone with a fire arm.To be more specific, our GM played a group of intelligent enemies (half-celestials hellbent on assassinating our evil party) by having them each choose a target PC and focus on that target during their ambush.
It's what any real world swat team would do. One target. One kill. Bad guys are usually down before they knew what hit them.
This is the metagame gamist thinking that I've warned against.
Characters don't just absorb volley after volley of arrows and keep fighting. That's completely illogical (unless magic is involved). More than likely they dodged or deflected them. Such maneuvers wear them down (in the same way bullets slow John McClain down), however, and when they are slow, and that last arrow takes away their last hit points, that's when it manages to find a soft spot in their armor. Hit points (and indeed much of the game) is abstracted so as to make narrative sense.
It's not like NPCs automatically KNOW it will take several rounds of fighting to kill the PCs during a first encounter. There aren't neon signs floating over our heads saying "10th-level" or "152 HP."
The argument of using focus fire on a heavily armored target was much, much less gamist. It actually used in-game logic and observation. Something the NPCs CAN observe.
With all the people on here talking about how NPCs would NEVER act like a real swat team because of the game world they live in, it makes me wonder how there is any immersion at all. Such things would only be true in specific situations (such as if the NPCs had fought the PCs before, or otherwise had foreknowledge on just how difficult they are to kill).
Attack a famously powerful (15th-level wizard) archmage? Hell yeah you use focus fire! But the lonely crone of a hermit at the edge of the swamp (10th-level witch) that no one has ever heard of? You're probably going to underestimate her those first couple of rounds.