Please do not start an edition war; I want to get the opinion of my friendly Paizo members, because I respect many of our member's opinions and thoughts. This thread is discussing how we define tactics and what tactical options are available between different editions.
With that out of the way, let's start:
I have a lot of confusion when it comes to defining tactics in roleplaying games like PF or 4e or 5e. I come from a military background and as such view tactics as a plan one has to accomplish a specific goal. In military terms, you have three levels of organizational planning in warfare: 1) Strategy - this is your overall plan. 2) Operations - This is how you organize your resources to accomplish the strategy. 3) Tactical - this is the on-site specific plans used to accomplish the minor goals needed to make the overall strategy succeed. For tactics in the game, I usually define tactics in single battles as using things like concentrating fire to take out single enemies quicker, or splitting opposing forces to make each group easier to eleminate (such as a miniature battlefield version of a divide and conquer strategy), the hammer and anvil tactic for crushing opponents between a strike force and a wall (maybe a wall spell or such a large unit that they're effectively a wall of soldiers), etc...
But I think some people also view tactics as options you have for your character in combat, such as which spell you can cast or what combat maneuver you can use. I think? I don't know. And maybe this is where my confusion lies.
I've seen some people claim that 5e has very limited tactical options compared to 4e or 3.X, and the claim baffles me. And I think I'm baffled by it because I'm used to viewing tactics from a military perspective. Maybe I'm misunderstanding how they are using the term or I'm missing a key definition for the word (tactics may be defined very differently in games than it is in the military). If it is, and it's being used to define the options one has for their character, then 5e opened up a lot of options for me - I no longer have to specialize in combat maneuvers to use them, for example, and many options are no longer hidden behind feat walls. If I want a martial with a little bit of spell utility, I can just grab a single feat for a handful of spells, rather than dipping into an entirely new class for a level. But that's just for 3.X; as I've only dabbled in 4e, I'm not sure how tactics would be defined there or even be able to articulate the differences.
For me, 5e opened up the options because they're less well-defined. I can now use those options in ways that aren't limited to a specific ruling, which increases their value for me. Instead of having a different rule for bull rush, trip, and overrun (each with their own feat chains), I now have "shove," which encompasses all three (and more) and doesn't require specialization to use effectively. But these less well-defined rules have also been used as an argument for why 5e is not a tactical game. I've seen claims that for tactics to exist in a game, you need to have specific rules on those tactics. To me, those aren't "tactics." Being able to grapple or trip isn't a tactic, it's an option or technique. A tactic is a specific plan to achieve immediate goals in battle. Or am I mistaken? I very well could be.
For example, the tactic may be to knock a guy prone; the technique used to do so may be to trip, overrun, shove, lay down suppressive fire in hopes he drops to the ground, etc... I feel like 5e allows me to employ more of those techniques to accomplish my tactical goal, because I don't have to specialize in each of them to use them. Conversely, in PF I often needed specific feats to do one, which left the others as non-options; if I specialize in trip, I won't be able to grapple or overrun very well.
Or maybe I have the whole dang thing wrong and I'm completely missing the point on what a tactic is in terms of games. I honestly don't know!
So, a little help, my Paizo friends?
I've always taken "tactical choices" to mean "options one has in combat".
I haven't done anything like an audit, but it seems likely to me that Pathfinder has more choices than 5th Edition in the sense that you can build a plethora of characters each with their own 'schtick' and that they are each mechanically distinct (you could arguably replicate them in a simpler game, but it's likely you'll be falling back on the same attribute check to cover a whole range of distinct options in Pathfinder).
Having said that, I think each individual 5E character has more choices than a PF character in any given round of combat (since you don't need special training to try most things. Those "things one might try" are also less effective and chance is more significant in the skill resolution due to bounded accuracy - this means it's not so punishing if you try something suboptimal).
I suspect there's equivocation across those two concepts in the forum's use of "tactical choices".
I think 5E has fewer total published options (there's a nifty list of Actions in the PH and a few more optional options in the DMG), but each character has more options because most options do not require specialization to use them.
Also, there are lots of unpublished options you can use--5E encourages trying new and different things.
PF has discrete rules for (almost) every situation, so it doesn't require a lot of GM discretion.
Another difference between 5E and PF is how tactical bonuses work. In PF, you can get a +1 for higher ground, +2 for flanking, +4 for your opponent being prone, +2 from an Aid Another, +2 for your opponent being shaken, etc. etc. So there are lots and lots of different things you can do, and they all add up to give you a little bit of edge.
In 5E, you get advantage from having 1 or 20 different beneficial conditions. You don't need to be hiding, and flanking, and having Help from an ally, and have a prone opponent to get advantage. You just get advantage. There is no "super advantage" where you roll 3 or more d20s.
So in PF, you can do lots and lots of different tactics at the same time to get more and more bonuses.
In 5E, you either have a bonus or you don't. Or maybe a penalty (disadvantage) but not multiple penalties (no "super disadvantage").
Of course, there are some corner cases (like 5E's bless or bane) that provide a benefit that isn't advantage or disadvantage, but they're relatively rare.
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I think there's a tendency in gaming culture to confuse tactics with mechanics. You see it a lot in Warhammer/40k circles where 'tactics' discussions often revolve around building army lists rather than what happens on the table (it's not always true, I've read some very interesting things about deployment, how to retreat etc). I think often it's because once you approach a certain level of mechanical depth, it becomes difficult to see the wood for the trees - and because there's a very human tendency to focus on what *can* be managed ahead of time, over the kind of situational awareness (on the spot) that's needed to think creatively in-game.
Here's the link to the other thread:
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This is an interesting discussion. I'll be honest: my knowledge of 5e is at most cursory, but given that 5e has gone towards a more abstract combat system I understand that a lot of things aren't as clearly hard-coded as they were in 3.X and 4e. While this doesn't immediately mean that players actually have fewer tactical options, in some cases it might potentially translate to those tactical decisions not translating well into the mechanics.
The reason why mechanics will eventually creep into any discussion on tactics and tactical options is that any given tactic is only going to be worth it if it's actually backed mechanically. There is definitely room for using tactics and them being supported in 5e, but since so little of it's hard-coded a lot of it's going to come down to "Ask your GM for Advantage based on your tactical decisions."
Looking at the different tactics you posted, I could potentially see them working in 5e, but said tactics still don't have a whole lot of mechanical support. Concentrating fire is one that is easily supported: if you concentrate fire on a single enemy the better your odds of taking that enemy out, and every enemy taken out means fewer attacks coming from their side of the field, so that's just common sense.
I'm actually at a loss to see a situation when the latter two tactics could be used in a D&D setting to a potential effect. I can sort of see it: divide and conquer is useful when you can use the terrain to your advantage to engage one group of enemies while blocking line of sight and access to another group of enemies, but I'm having a hard time visualizing when such a situation would arise. Similarly, the hammer and anvil tactic I could see as being useful when engaging mobile ranged combatants, because engaging them when there's a literal wall blocking their escape routes is a good way to shut down their ability to move around while firing. So, okay, I guess I can see it.
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I'm actually at a loss to see a situation when the latter two tactics could be used in a D&D setting to a potential effect. I can sort of see it: divide and conquer is useful when you can use the terrain to your advantage to engage one group of enemies while blocking line of sight and access to another group of enemies, but I'm having a hard time visualizing when such a situation would arise.
This is something you would arrange beforehand. That is, you would identify an enemy group (such as via scouting ahead), then come up with a way to get them to split into two groups, and then engage one of the groups, overpowering it quickly so that you're done with them by the time the other group arrives. This might be done by orchestrating something that the enemies want to send some of their members to go investigate.
In this way, 5E actually outclasses Pathfinder. This is most notable with the initial scouting, because Pathfinder Stealth is a joke while 5E Stealth can actually work. That is, Pathfinder requires a check per action, and so you're making about 2 Stealth checks per round as you try to scout ahead, and only one of them has to roll low for you to be spotted and completely wreck your scouting. But in 5E, you're free to use a check to simply resolve your endeavor rather than resolve each 3-second piece of your endeavor. You can just make a single Stealth check (with very reasonable odds of success, especially if you're a rogue or bard with Expertise). Thus, 5E actually supports scouting-based tactics more than Pathfinder does.
You get similar differences when you look at the other steps of the process of dividing a group of enemies.
Similarly, the hammer and anvil tactic I could see as being useful when engaging mobile ranged combatants, because engaging them when there's a literal wall blocking their escape routes is a good way to shut down their ability to move around while firing. So, okay, I guess I can see it.
There's also the fact that there's no penalty to attempting to grab hold of someone to keep them from escaping, and if you're strong and proficient then you've got decent odds. So the "anvil" can be any reasonably well-suited PC simply holding the enemy in place while everyone pounds him (including the person who grabbed them, since 5E grappling doesn't basically take you out of the fight like trying to grapple someone in Pathfinder does).
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Thanks for the extremely informative post, Jiggy!
I've heard mixed things about 5e Stealth: on one hand, just as you stated, it allows for a group to make a Stealth test and not necessarily fail just because the Dwarf in full-plate armor has a terrible Dex, but on the other I've heard that it's very unclear in its wording and thus will require a lot of DM judgments to be made. Having said that, even with the latter caveat I suppose it's serviceable in the "Make a Stealth test versus the opposition's Perception to see if you can ambush them."
So, yeah, I can see a use for this tactic much more clearly now, and it's clear that I've also been thinking of micro level tactics when this is in fact a macro level tactic. :)
Coming to the example of grabbing, you say that there's no penalty to grabbing an enemy (so, unlike in 3.X you don't need to have a specialized feat chain to attempt it without a penalty), but I would argue that there is still an opportunity cost: in grabbing the enemy you're sacrificing your attack to do so. Sure, as you stated the grabber can then wail on the enemy with melee attacks as normal, but the action to grab the enemy is one potentially damaging attack less on the PCs' part. I'd have to see this situation in action before I could judge whether spending an action to grab an enemy in favor of attacking them with a sharp length of metal is worth it.
But yeah, that was a useful post to me, thanks for that. :)
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Some people want a list of everything they are allowed to do, and believe anything not on that list is necessarily disallowed. If you're coming to 5e with that mindset, I can see how it would seem limiting and shallow. Because, you know, it's a game about what happens at the table, not what's in the rulebook.
Grappling is an ability check, not an attack roll, so it can be very useful in a variety of situations:
1. Opponent has a high AC.
2. Opponent forces disadvantage on attack rolls.
3. Opponent has a reaction that triggers on a successful attack (ie. hellish rebuke)
4. Opponent has a condition that forces disadvantage on ability checks, like poison, exhaustion, hex spell, etc.
From what I got in the other thread, people seem to think that character options equate to tactics or that you can't effectively engage in tactics of the rules are not explicitly defined - such as in 3.X or 4e. A rule system like 5e, with much looser rules requires GM interpretation, ergo tactics are less likely to occur.
They've also defined tactics not in a military sense, like I did in the OP, but have defined it via tactical video games. The claim is that 3.X and 4e allow for better tactics in the terrms of games like XCOM, while 5e does not; ergo 5e is not as tactical as the other editions. I've also seen several claim that you can't effectively engage in tactics without a grid/battle mat, and since 5e encourages Theater of the Mind, it is inherently less tactical.
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...but the action to grab the enemy is one potentially damaging attack less on the PCs' part. I'd have to see this situation in action before I could judge whether spending an action to grab an enemy in favor of attacking them with a sharp length of metal is worth it.
Look at it the other way around: maybe the action to stab the enemy on your turn is an action you didn't spend making sure the enemy couldn't get out of range of your four teammates' attacks. ;)
Bookrat, my understanding of strategy, operations and tactics are exactly the same as yours. I've just had to come to terms with the fact that tactical means some thing else when you use it to describe a table top miniature combat game or an RPG. I think you're correct, but the gamer usage is so common that correcting people isn't worth the effort at this point.
Even Theater of the Mind can use tactics.
For example, a fighter or rogue might delay their attack until after the cleric casts guiding bolt on an opponent so they can get advantage on their attack roll.
I really liked what a poster in the other thread had to say about it...
I've encountered this in real life, there seems to be a mild split between people who grew up on books and pen and paper games versus people who grew up on video games.In video games there are as many things you can do as there are buttons to push, tactics in these games is positioning and then pressing a button or combination of buttons. Some people see their character sheet as a collection of buttons that they puch to get the character to do things in the game. These people loved 3.x and 4e because they got so many explicit 'button' abilities on the character sheet and the games were designed to be played by using those abilities almost exclusively. Gameplay would often boil down to declarations of actions and the results of the dice; "Thog goes to the door and uses strength. <roll>" or "Thog moves next to the goblin and uses Slashing Attack. <roll>"
5e, like the old D&D editions, has fewer 'button' abilities on the character sheet because the game is designed around people talking to each other. So some people think they have fewer options, tactically, strategically, etc., because they have fewer explicit character abilities visible to them. But really it just that the video game tactics of positioning and button pushing aren't the focus of this edition.
4E is pretty much all "tactics", there is no other way to play. To play it anywhere close to RAW you need a Battle Grid.And don't read this as edition-war-y. What little 4E I played I enjoyed a lot, just ran out of groups that played it. 3.PF has been less enjoyable on average but mostly it's been the GMs or perhaps my reaction to their style (hard to say which 'cause all the campaigns have folded/imploded by now - once during my participation and the rest shortly after I was no longer part of the group).
While I don't think this part came off as Edition War-y, it's far from my experience with the system as far as I've been playing it for the past 7-1/2 years. I find that the grid is required as much as it was in v3.5/PF in terms of combat.
As for all tactical (compared to other editions), I guess I just don't see it. What examples do other versions have that 4E outright disregards as far as non-tactical elements go?
We might be talking past each other here but one can play 4E, by the rules, as a strictly table top tactical game on the Battle Grid.
4E is pretty much all "tactics", there is no other way to play. To play it anywhere close to RAW you need a Battle Grid.And don't read this as edition-war-y. What little 4E I played I enjoyed a lot, just ran out of groups that played it. 3.PF has been less enjoyable on average but mostly it's been the GMs or perhaps my reaction to their style (hard to say which 'cause all the campaigns have folded/imploded by now - once during my participation and the rest shortly after I was no longer part of the group).
While I don't think this part came off as Edition War-y, it's far from my experience with the system as far as I've been playing it for the past 7-1/2 years. I find that the grid is required as much as it was in v3.5/PF in terms of combat.
As for all tactical (compared to other editions), I guess I just don't see it. What examples do other versions have that 4E outright disregards as far as non-tactical elements go?
Sure, so could pretty much any other edition too. Though the tactics in each edition do change. 4e really promotes party synergy more than other editions do in terms of things like weapon properties, specific attacks, and positioning. For example, in Pathfinder a melee-based character who wields a positive energy weapon isn't getting any additional bonus from his allies spells while in 4e if you have 2 or 3 characters wielding Radiant weapon, a Cleric who makes a monster vulnerable 5 radiant just made those two characters better in combat.
In fact to play 4E at all you need a Battle Grid.
Untrue
But you don't need to roleplay - except in the very loosest non-immersive narrative sort of way.
No edition forces role-play and you can play any other edition without it as well. I'm just not sure why one edition gets singled out for it.
You can go all Theater of the Mind in 4E but then you would have to ignore combat. Combat requires the Grid to arbitrate a large part of the rules.
Like what? Despite powers being square based (which is just 5' increments or basically the reverse of what EVERYONE who's been using a grid has had to do before 4e) it's a very very simple thing to look at an ability and say "Oh, 5 squres? that's 25-ft." it's not very difficult at all. Positioning is important, just as it was in v3.5 and Pathfinder, especially when you consider pretty significant rules like Opportunity Attacks and Flanking and the mechanical importance they have ingrained within those systems.
Theater of the Mind is not edition specific but the editions that encourage more GM fiat and thus more impromptu elements (5E for sure and from what the Grognards have told me 1E was much like this), are also the ones that allow for more creative tactics in game. Creative as opposed to "accounting tactics", where success is achieved on the back of bonus stacking and other rules minutia.
Theater of the Mind, as long as I've been familiar with the phrase, generally is used just to describe non-grid play. DM fiat and impromptu elements are apart of every D&D version. In 4e if the groups wizard has a at-will spell with the Fire keyword I would certainly allow that character to do fire-stuff with that spell other than attacking people with it. Want to melt snow? Use that spell. Want to catch curtains or a wooden door on fire? Use that spell. If a 4e Fighter has Cleave I'd allow him to cleave things other than enemies. Need to cut through wooden supports that hold up a balcony? Use cleave. Want to cut through multiple panes of glass or ice? Use cleave. Or maybe I'm just different when I DM compared to others..
Even in the more balanced published adventures, like PF APs, story Experience Points rewards are far less than the kill-it-and-take-its-treasure Experience Points rewards.
Here I will certainly agree with you on and it's not just Pathfinders APs either.
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Diffan, I don't think the claim that 4e requires a grid for its combat is particularly controversial. I mean, yeah, you can play it without the grid, but if you're playing it RAW the grid is an immense help. The same goes for 3.PF though: playing the game by the RAW means that everything exists in 5-foot-squares, so having a grid really helps with adjudicating position and such.
And there's nothing wrong with a game using a grid to model combat. Hell, I'm currently running a game called Strike! which 100% uses the grid for its tactical combat, and it's probably the most fun I've had running an RPG for a while (mostly because it's got a quick combat system that is simple yet deep, and also because it's really easy to create encounters and custom encounters for it).
But bringing this back to 5e, 5e is weird in the sense that everything in the rules is measured in 5-foot increments but at the same time it's supposed to be more abstract (I can sort of see this: the standard rules don't account for stuff like flanking) so it's actually kind of weird. The game would much better support the theater of the mind playstyle if you went with abstract distances, zones in the style of Fate and others, and range bands in the style of the FFG Star Wars RPGs.
Quark Blast mentioned GM fiat as the difference between theater of the mind and grid-based play, and I think that's what this entire discussion boils down to: (referring to the original discussion posted by Bookrat) the people who say that 5e has no tactical options are referring to the fact that by the book the game doesn't explicitly reward certain micro-level tactics (including flanking, creating bottlenecks [I mean I know you can sort of do it but it'd be easier to visualize if the game wasn't so coy about the grid] and so on), and this is seen as a lack of options. These people would rather the game show them what they can do reliably.
And I can actually sympathize with that: whether a tactic is actually viable in 5e largely boils down to GM fiat. In 3.PF and 4e (and the aforementioned Strike!) players can expect that if they make the right maneuvers in combat they'll be rewarded with explicitly stated bonuses, and thus on a micro level the game rewards certain tactics.
And the truth is that when we're talking about macro level tactics, none of these games are actually all that different: you can engage your enemies in smaller groups in 3.PF, 4e and 5e by using the non-combat rules to maneuver for position. 3.PF and 4e do codify the rules for out-of-combat activities more so than 5e, but not to the extent that it shuts down the use of tactics the moment the characters are off the grid.
Like, the point is that while the focus in 3.PF and 4e's combat systems is more on pushing mans on a grid, the result of this is that they have a lot more tactical depth on the micro level. 5e is supposedly unique in how it allows for the use of tactics on the macro level, but thinking about it I don't think that's the case: the same types of tactical thinking that's being talked about here can be applied to 3.PF and 4e.
I do think there is a difference though, but it's a difference in playstyle really: 3.PF and 4e have really fun grid-based combat systems with lots of moving parts, so people want to engage with those rules! Throw-away combats (like picking off the enemies one by one) are generally avoided, because they detract from the fun part of the game, i.e. getting to push mans on a grid and kill dudes. That doesn't mean that 3.PF and 4e don't have the necessary rules to model those kinds of tactics as well.
Or I don't know, that's what I think.
Bookrat, my understanding of strategy, operations and tactics are exactly the same as yours. I've just had to come to terms with the fact that tactical means some thing else when you use it to describe a table top miniature combat game or an RPG. I think you're correct, but the gamer usage is so common that correcting people isn't worth the effort at this point.
In real life, an in-combat decision (like: "An enemy! Do I shoot him, charge forwards and bayonet him, or duck behind the wall?") isn't what most people would call 'tactics'. It's just action and you can't afford to hesitate.
In a turn-based game, you can think through an action like that. "So, if I charge forwards, I'll have cover from two directions, meaning I'm actually less exposed, so as long as my action succeeds - which has a good chance since he's unarmoured and flat-footed - I'll be in a good position to support my allies next round..." The distinction between tactical plan and actual combat is very blurred.
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How exactly does 5e encourage Theatre of the Mind? Most games making an attempt to avoid a grid (or similar precise location tool) make an effort to provide some combat resolution method that avoids use of that grid. How does 5e do that?
It's perhaps less that it "encourages" theater of the mind and more that it assumes theater of the mind. Someone who'd never seen an RPG before would read through the PHB and it would never even dawn on them to consider that they might need a map full of squares, except for one little sidebar tucked away somewhere that basically says "you could use a grid if you wanted, I guess".
There's no "flanking" in 5E, no abilities like Pathfinder has that let you choose a certain number of squares to exclude from an AoE, no rules about drawing a line from a corner of a square to determine cover, and so forth.
See, 3.PF assumes a grid and builds its rules around that assumption (by defining things like flanking and cover in terms of borders and edges and corners, and giving you AoE templates defining exactly which squares are affected), and if you want to go gridless, you have to abandon or modify lots of rules in order to "convert".
But in 5E, there's no such assumption. There's no such thing as flanking; the cover rules are written in plain English instead of in game terms involving squares and corners and literally drawing lines on the grid; AoE shapes are defined with little more than the basic definitions of the words "line", "cone", and "cylinder"; and so forth. Someone who wants to go gridless can use the 5E rules straight from the book, instead of having to "convert".
Does that make sense?
Diffan, I don't think the claim that 4e requires a grid for its combat is particularly controversial. I mean, yeah, you can play it without the grid, but if you're playing it RAW the grid is an immense help. The same goes for 3.PF though: playing the game by the RAW means that everything exists in 5-foot-squares, so having a grid really helps with adjudicating position and such.
I agree that having a grid makes things easier, but that was also the case when we were using battle mats and pewter minis in AD&D too. One wouldn't say a grid was required using AD&D but it sure made the game a LOT easier to follow when a Wizard's fireball finally went off. I just see this idea of "Must Have Grids" only leveled at 4e when it's just as needed and convenient with other editions of the game too.
And there's nothing wrong with a game using a grid to model combat. Hell, I'm currently running a game called Strike! which 100% uses the grid for its tactical combat, and it's probably the most fun I've had running an RPG for a while (mostly because it's got a quick combat system that is simple yet deep, and also because it's really easy to create encounters and custom encounters for it).
Sounds like a lot of fun. I'll have to give it a look. And I agree that using a grid isn't wrong of bad, however it's been one of those negative things used to bash other version of the game or make it less like an "RPG" and more like a "video game" or "minis combat scenario" when in fact it is a Role-PlayingGame. Like in the post I was discussing, it was leveled at 4e that it could be played almost entirely role-play free, but what edition couldn't be? This isn't new for the genre or D&D/PF specifically.
But bringing this back to 5e, 5e is weird in the sense that everything in the rules is measured in 5-foot increments but at the same time it's supposed to be more abstract (I can sort of see this: the standard rules don't account for stuff like flanking) so it's actually kind of weird. The game would much better support the theater of the mind playstyle if you went with abstract distances, zones in the style of Fate and others, and range bands in the style of the FFG Star Wars RPGs.
I think the biggest difference is that there just aren't a lot of fiddly bits (as one designer put it). You don't get a lot of conditional bonuses or penalties for using rule-savvy maneuvering and tactical jargon or using a strange combination of spells and effects and terrain to make your character mechanically better. So in this regard, not needing a grid or being more "TotM" has more merit than other editions. That's not to say other versions can't just gloss over these qualitative measures, but most player's won't and instead actually pay attention to the minutia of these sorts of details, almost losing themselves in the maths of the game instead of the thematic element right in front of them.
Quark Blast mentioned GM fiat as the difference between theater of the mind and grid-based play, and I think that's what this entire discussion boils down to: (referring to the original discussion posted by Bookrat) the people who say that 5e has no tactical options are referring to the fact that by the book the game doesn't explicitly reward certain micro-level tactics (including flanking, creating bottlenecks [I mean I know you can sort of do it but it'd be easier to visualize if the game wasn't so coy about the grid] and so on), and this is seen as a lack of options. These people would rather the game show them what they can do reliably.
And I can actually sympathize with that: whether a tactic is actually viable in 5e largely boils down to GM fiat. In 3.PF and 4e (and the aforementioned Strike!) players can expect that if they make the right maneuvers in combat they'll be rewarded with explicitly stated bonuses, and thus on a micro level the game rewards certain tactics.
And the truth is that when we're talking about macro level tactics, none of these games are actually all that different: you can engage your enemies in smaller groups in 3.PF, 4e and 5e by using the non-combat rules to maneuver for position. 3.PF and 4e do codify the rules for out-of-combat activities more so than 5e, but not to the extent that it shuts down the use of tactics the moment the characters are off the grid.
Like, the point is that while the focus in 3.PF and 4e's combat systems is more on pushing mans on a grid, the result of this is that they have a lot more tactical depth on the micro level. 5e is supposedly unique in how it allows for the use of tactics on the macro level, but thinking about it I don't think that's the case: the same types of tactical thinking that's being talked about here can be applied to 3.PF and 4e.
I do think there is a difference though, but it's a difference in playstyle really: 3.PF and 4e have really fun grid-based combat systems with lots of moving parts, so people want to engage with those rules! Throw-away combats (like picking off the enemies one by one) are generally avoided, because they detract from the fun part of the game, i.e. getting to push mans on a grid and kill dudes. That doesn't mean that 3.PF and 4e don't have the necessary rules to model those kinds of tactics as well.
Or I don't know, that's what I think.
That's actually a pretty astute observation here. Pushing guys around the board in 5e doesn't have the same weight (and fun?) as 3.PF or 4e does because the systems are different enough that it's time mostly wasted. Optional rules in the DMG like Flanking and Opportunity Attacks sure are nice (as it Marking) but these aren't default measures that I'm assuming most groups utilize.
And thanks for illuminating the situation for me, I think that's what Quirk Blast was attempting to get across but it didn't really click.
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Sounds like a lot of fun. I'll have to give it a look. And I agree that using a grid isn't wrong of bad, however it's been one of those negative things used to bash other version of the game or make it less like an "RPG" and more like a "video game" or "minis combat scenario" when in fact it is a Role-PlayingGame. Like in the post I was discussing, it was leveled at 4e that it could be played almost entirely role-play free, but what edition couldn't be? This isn't new for the genre or D&D/PF specifically.
Firstly, Strike! is cool and good: its tactical combat engine is explicitly inspired by 4e (down to having combat roles, the same ones as in 4e plus the Blaster as a role of its own) but it uses d6 for resolution, and it actually handles itself pretty well without having to escalate the numbers too much. On the non-combat side it has a lot more in common with Mouse Guard/Apocalypse World, but it lives up to its purpose of being a game of heedless adventure. If you're coming at it from 4e you'll recognize a lot of things but some things might surprise you (For an example, class and role are decoupled, so you might make a Necromancer/Striker or a Summoner/Defender). I personally find it to be a good replacement for 4e these days, as it has the same fun and deep tactical combat but with simpler math. Also, it's easily reskinnable to almost any genre: while I'm currently using it to run a very Adventure Timeish fantasy campaign, at some point I intend to use it for sci-fi (probably of the pulpy planetary romance/space opera style, but still).
Secondly, yeah, using a game's reliance for a grid as a criticism is dumb. As is using "You can just play it as a combat game with no role-playing," 'cause seriously that's what D&D at its heart is: it's a challenge-based game where role-playing in terms of play-acting your character is only secondary.
I mean, combat and role-playing as a dichotomy is its own stupid can of worms, but I'm very tired and can't articulate very well at this point.
Wouldn't that make a 5e style "Come up with a good plan that convinces the DM to grant advantage to your attack rolls so long as you maintain X,Y and Z" more true to Bookrat's definition (which I personally have to take care not to call the real world definition) than a game heavily reliant on positioning of miniatures? I don't mean to sound argumentative, I'm just curious of your opinion.
The idea that 4E demands a grid anymore than 3.5/PFRPG is rather ridiculous.
I don't find 5e requires a grid anymore than pre-3.x editions did, but then the 1e Monster Manual did list movement in inches, so . . .
Speaking seriously, I don't think 5e provides a lot of rules that work best with a grid unless you think looking at a grid with minis in inherently better than asking the DM if the orcs are within Magic Missile range.
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Wouldn't that make a 5e style "Come up with a good plan that convinces the DM to grant advantage to your attack rolls so long as you maintain X,Y and Z" more true to Bookrat's definition (which I personally have to take care not to call the real world definition) than a game heavily reliant on positioning of miniatures? I don't mean to sound argumentative, I'm just curious of your opinion.
Absolutely! However, the way I'm reading people's objections the problem lies in the "convince the GM" department. Some people might want a game to give them an objective measure by which their tactical choices are rewarded. Having to convince your GM of your plan's brilliance in order to gain a tactical advantage sort of undercuts the brilliance of that plan: some people want there to be an objective measure in the rules where good planning translates to mechanical bonuses in combat.
I mean, this does exist to an extent in 5e. For an example, setting up an ambush is definitely something that the rules support (Albeit the rules on this are pretty unclearly worded, but that's hardly unique to 5e, having mostly to do with the difficulty of writing sensible Stealth rules. I don't think either 3.PF or 4e had completely unambiguous stealth rules either, 4e's requiring at least a few errata passes before they made sense and 3e having the weird "You can't sneak attack someone in the dark" rules interaction.) and it's an easy way to start combat with basically an extra round to act while your enemies are treated as stunned!
However, as I said above, this is not unique to 5e: both 3.PF and 4e have the rules necessary to support this stuff. That's basically my point.
Having said that, as I pointed above the focus on micro-level tactics and tactical combat in a rules system can (and I think does) inform playstyle. If you have a heavily involved tactical combat system you're probably going to want to use it, and this'll lead to a game with a greater focus on micro-level tactics. Since 5e does not have such a big focus on micro-level tactics, I guess it can be said that it gravitates the playstyle towards macro-level tactics, or at least allows one to focus more on the macro and less on the micro, if that makes sen?
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That totally makes sense; during the D&D Next playtest, I was a huge proponent of going back to 1 minute combat rounds to get away from the tacit endorsement of the micro-tactic playstyle, but the louder I yelled, the less everyone listened, until finally someone called the cops. :P
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AD&D 1e's combat system is so fascinating in many ways, because it basically had tick-based combat of sorts (mostly in relation to spells: when you cast a spell your character would actually start casting it on the initiative you rolled and only finish casting after enough ticks had passed). I can definitely also see one-minute combat rounds working for a more zoomed out and abstract combat system.
However, my old-school D&D of choice is BECMI, and that one has ten-second combat rounds (6 rounds to a minute, ten minutes to an exploration turn). I'm not sure what made the designers of BECMI change the duration of rounds (because I'm pretty sure OD&D also had one-minute combat rounds and the combat was equally if not even more abstract than AD&D's), but given all of this it made sense that as BECMI developed it started to have something approaching tactical elements that could only really work when the combat round was a discrete small unit of time, like the Weapon Mastery rules and Fighter combat options and so on.
I mean, having said that I do think that one-minute combat rounds are perfectly fine and I'm sure they also inform play to an extent: when one round lasts for one minute you're going to have to run things a lot more abstractly than when you assume each combat round to be over in ten seconds.
Wait, did 3e have ten seconds or six seconds per round? I forget.
6 I think, but I'm not near my bookshelf.
I think 5E works just fine as TotM, but I prefer the grid for complicated battles.
If it's just one BBEG in an empty room, TotM works well.
If it's several monsters, in a swamp filled with quicksand and trees and thorny bushes and clearings, a grid is VERY useful.
But the 5E rules don't require a grid. There's no flanking, opportunity attacks are provoked by leaving a threatened space, not moving within it, sneak attacks only require that the target is adjacent or threatened an opponent, etc. etc.
Of course there are options for flanking, etc., but they're just options.
I think the DMG even has rules for determining how many orcs are in your 15 foot cone of burning hands or color spray if you're not using a grid.
PF codified a lot of options (tactics), which I found seems to lead players to limiting themselves because "the rules don't say you can do that."
5e, on the other hand, being less explicit, seems to encourage players to try things. BUT it becomes more of a "Mother may I" game, which many people dislike.
As far as an answer to your question, Bookrat: most of use use "tactics" interchangeably with "options". Not necessarily correct, but it's how I often use the term because I don't come from a military background. Just an average Joe...
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Having seen people who had't played D&D before going through a module and the rules, I very much suspect that the default assumption is that the 5' grid and the movement speeds and ranges and defined areas of effect mean something and are meant to be used. Certainly their response was, "I can't keep track of all this in my head." And if WotC really wanted people to not bother with a grid, there are much better ways to make TotM easy than to provide a lot of rules that work best with a grid and then expect you to ignore them while providing no alternatives to letting the GM handle it.
I'm confused. You say there's an assumption that "the 5' grid" means something and is meant to be used, but there is no 5ft grid in the PHB. So what is it you're saying means something and is meant to be used?
Similarly, you say the same about movement speeds and ranges and AoEs, but none of those things require a grid at all. Speeds and ranges are entirely linear, requiring nothing but knowing how far away the destination/target is, which is easy as pie in TotM. AoE templates are presented with the plain-English meanings of "cone" and "cylinder" and so forth, with visual examples being basic 3-D drawings rather than square-based templates. How do the AoE rules in any way suggest the need for a grid?
You mention "provid[ing] a lot of rules that work best with a grid and then expect you to ignore them while providing no alternatives". Which rules are you talking about? I don't remember any rules in the PHB that work best with a grid. I don't remember anything that I would need to "ignore" in order to go gridless. In the PHB sitting on my desk, using a grid is explicitly a variant alternative, not the baseline assumption. So what rules are you talking about? Can you be specific?
My players did not appreciate LEGOs for some reason!
:-O
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Having seen people who had't played D&D before going through a module and the rules, I very much suspect that the default assumption is that the 5' grid and the movement speeds and ranges and defined areas of effect mean something and are meant to be used. Certainly their response was, "I can't keep track of all this in my head." And if WotC really wanted people to not bother with a grid, there are much better ways to make TotM easy than to provide a lot of rules that work best with a grid and then expect you to ignore them while providing no alternatives to letting the GM handle it.I'm confused. You say there's an assumption that "the 5' grid" means something and is meant to be used, but there is no 5ft grid in the PHB. So what is it you're saying means something and is meant to be used?
Similarly, you say the same about movement speeds and ranges and AoEs, but none of those things require a grid at all. Speeds and ranges are entirely linear, requiring nothing but knowing how far away the destination/target is, which is easy as pie in TotM. AoE templates are presented with the plain-English meanings of "cone" and "cylinder" and so forth, with visual examples being basic 3-D drawings rather than square-based templates. How do the AoE rules in any way suggest the need for a grid?
You mention "provid[ing] a lot of rules that work best with a grid and then expect you to ignore them while providing no alternatives". Which rules are you talking about? I don't remember any rules in the PHB that work best with a grid. I don't remember anything that I would need to "ignore" in order to go gridless. In the PHB sitting on my desk, using a grid is explicitly a variant alternative, not the baseline assumption. So what rules are you talking about? Can you be specific?
I think Bluenose is not talking about the grid explicitly but the fact that 5e measures everything in 5-foot increments.
Like, the moment you start measuring things in absolute distances, distance and relative position become important. Otherwise you're going to have arguments about how Steve's character could totally fit all those goblins into the area of his fireball and that's not how I imagined it, dude, how about you just, like, draw this situation out so we know where everything is relative to each other?
So, it's not like 5e absolutely requires a grid and it certainly doesn't have as many rules that interact with the grid as 3.PF and 4e, but the big point is that it still deals with absolute distances (instead of abstract distances which I'll get to shortly) which means that a visual representation is the easiest and most unambiguous way of modeling the situation.
Like I said above, 5e could work as an abstract Theater of the Mind game if the rules were actually built like that. A lot of new games do this: Fate has combat divided into zones, some of which might be connected, some of which might not. You can punch a dude in the same zone as you, shoot a dude who's in an adjacent (or with the right abilities and equipment even further) zone, and if the enemy's in an adjacent zone and the edge between the zones is on fire you can run from your zone to their zone to punch them but you need to roll a test to avoid being burned by the fire.
Fantasy Flight's Star Wars RPGs use abstract range bands, which are basically punching range, close enough to throw a rock at, pistol range, and so on. 13th Age by Pelgrane Press (which is very close kin to D&D) has a similar system, with the distances being engaged, nearby and far. It even deals with the fireball situation pretty elegantly: when you throw your fireball at a mess of enemies you'll be able to catch 1d3 of them in the fireball, or you might want to gamble and cast it recklessly, getting 1d3 more enemies in the blast but potentially hurting your allies as well.
Of course visual representation helps keep track of things like range bands and so on in those games, but when you're playing 13th Age the moment you tell your player "The orc shaman is far away, the berserker and the grunts are nearby, between you and the shaman" you immediately know what you can do in that situation and what'll happen if you cast fireball on the berserker and the grunts (you'll probably catch most of them in the blast!) or if you try to run towards the shaman (you'll run into the berserker and the grunts in the middle!).
Bringing this back to 5e, supposedly 5e is supposed to be run the same way, without really caring about absolute distances, but everything about the design and its reliance on measuring everything in 5-foot increments runs counter to this.
I think Bluenose is not talking about the grid explicitly but the fact that 5e measures everything in 5-foot increments.
And exactly what increments do you think Pathfinder uses?
HINT: It's 60-inch increments. :P
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I think Bluenose is not talking about the grid explicitly but the fact that 5e measures everything in 5-foot increments.And exactly what increments do you think Pathfinder uses?
HINT: It's 60-inch increments. :P
Yes, Pathfinder uses 5-foot increments as well? My point wasn't "5e uses 5-foot increments UNLIKE EVERY OTHER GAME ON THE MARKET!"
The difference between Pathfinder and 5e in this regard is that the Pathfinder rules explicitly state that "Hey, everything is measured in 5-foot increments and a lot of the rules rely on relative position and distance so you might want to use a grid," whereas 5e is very coy about it with its "Everything is measured in 5-foot increments but you totally don't need a grid, even though many of the rules rely on knowing the position of characters relative to each other!"
The point is that if you want a game where it's actually easy to keep track of relative position and distance without a visual presentation, then you should design the game around that!
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God I miss playing Traveler, none of this nonsensical "5 foot" grid stuff
Give me 1.5 meter scale squares every time
The weird thing is that I'm from Finland so I use the metric system every day, but I still get confused when RPG products (rarely but still occasionally) use the metric system. I learned a completely new system of measurements just so I could play RPGs and I intend to use that knowledge to its full extent!
God I miss playing Traveler, none of this nonsensical "5 foot" grid stuff
Give me 1.5 meter scale squares every time
The Traveller I played had range bands, what are these "squares" of which you speak? :P
I'm not saying you can't see the war-game roots even 5+ editions later, but 5e relies a lot less positioning than PF, and a lot lot less than 4e did. I think this has less to do with 5' increments of measurement than how granular/micro-tactical the combat options are.
Once again, I don't mean to be argumentative, but I don't see a lot of rules that rely on knowing the relative positions of characters.
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God I miss playing Traveler, none of this nonsensical "5 foot" grid stuff
Give me 1.5 meter scale squares every time
The Traveller I played had range bands, what are these "squares" of which you speak? :P
I'm not saying you can't see the war-game roots even 5+ editions later, but 5e relies a lot less positioning than PF, and a lot lot less than 4e did. I think this has less to do with 5' increments of measurement than how granular/micro-tactical the combat options are.
Once again, I don't mean to be argumentative, but I don't see a lot of rules that rely on knowing the relative positions of characters.
Fireball? I know the GM can adjudicate how many enemies get caught in its blast on a case-by-base basis, but that's one example where having a clear visual representation OR abstraction can resolve the potential ambiguity.
In fact, add to that any area of effect spell, whatever it's shape. A grid or some kind of visual presentation makes it immediately clear who's in the area of the effect, or alternately you can do away with measuring absolute distances entirely and just accept a degree of abstraction that makes the game run smoother without a grid.
Basically:
Grids are good when you want to measure things in absolute distances.
Abstract systems are good as well as long as they're built that way.
5e's system is somewhere in between, which results in a lot of ambiguity.