We don't spread our attention. Which is why we funnel to a kill zone using a vertical set up to focus damage.
How exactly do you funnel and draw monsters into hallways? Because with how you describe it, it seems like someone is just opening the door and the enemies just follow them like an old roguelike.We did this in a giant battle a few days ago. Drew them into a hallway, lined them up, tripped them as they came, smashed them as we stacked bodies. Trip is particularly effective against giants due to their weak Reflex saves.
Think for a bit about it.
You have the martials set up at the door or hallway. Understand this requires martials who don't mind doing this which is what I think most groups don't have.
Then you hit he monster with ranged attacks if they don't come. They have a simple choice, die at range or close the distance to where we want them to fight.
It's why on these boards I see people undervalue archery. Sure, archery doesn't do as much damage as melee martials, but it is useful in that you can use it to draw monsters in by hammering them from range until they come. Same as casters can do this.
So say you have monsters in a 30 by 30 room. You open the door. Your frontline martials don't enter the room. They position at the door using a delay action depending on where the monster is in the room.
Your archer and ranged casters start to hit the monsters. If the monsters have a decent ranged attack, maybe you have a problem. If not, then you hammer them from range until they come. We don't care where or how they die if the DM did something odd like have them stand there in the room taking cover waiting to die.
But your frontline martials have to be the kinds of players that understand the strategy and don't go rushing in rooms or what not unnecessarily so you can set up the vertical kill zone.
It's why I get a hard time on these boards. Been playing with the same group for 30 plus years. Controlling the location of the fight is something we've done for decades as that is an incredibly important part of easy victory. Our martials and casters all work towards this goal even if we're using delay actions or ordering initiative or what not.
We're a very organized group that operates in a very coordinated manner. Getting spread out or drawn into disadvantageous positioning in fights to get flanked or spread out beyond healing or in front of the heavy martials is something we actively work to avoid.
If you're not setting up for trip very well, I guess I can see why it doesn't seem too effective. If your a coordinated group using trip, it's the god maneuver. Makes everything very easy. That's my group. As a DM Trip is not fun in a group that coordinated because it wrecks the monsters unless I modify them accordingly to counter it.
1. Be in position.??
You have another action to move and you are a mobile Monk. Or you can just use a BOW and do it from range.Shock!! Horror!?! You have to think about when it is appropriate to use.
But you know what is good about it? It costs you nothing. Most Monks are going to take Stunning Fist anyway. It is still good value even in your normal turn. So no net feat cost unless you want a bow (1 level 1 feat), no resource cost. Use it when it makes sense.
Depends on what your monk is doing.
Monks have a lot of stuff they can do. My particular monks are focused on control a lot of the time using Flurry of Maneuvers to play Clown games with trip where they are knocking people over with Flurry of Maneuvers and using their reaction for Stand Still. If a Stand Still monk crits with their hit, the action is halted meaning they don't stand up. Now I imagine we can start the arguments over whether they already stood up, but the Stand Still clearly states the move action Stand Up is disrupted on a crit meaning they weren't able to complete it. Thus still prone, possibly wasting another action to stand up.
Like I said, the FoB stunning fist tactic has been recommended on here a while back, maybe by you or someone else. I did not find it to be a very efficient use of actions.
It was a worth a shot. I tested the theory. I allow it because it's better in theory than in practice.
Wouldn't the monsters just move to the front left or right side of the room, the part the ranged attackers can't see them (which is like most of the room if they are in a hallway). Hell if they have reach they can stab one of the front liners and then...We don't spread our attention. Which is why we funnel to a kill zone using a vertical set up to focus damage.
How exactly do you funnel and draw monsters into hallways? Because with how you describe it, it seems like someone is just opening the door and the enemies just follow them like an old roguelike.We did this in a giant battle a few days ago. Drew them into a hallway, lined them up, tripped them as they came, smashed them as we stacked bodies. Trip is particularly effective against giants due to their weak Reflex saves.
Think for a bit about it.
You have the martials set up at the door or hallway. Understand this requires martials who don't mind doing this which is what I think most groups don't have.
Then you hit he monster with ranged attacks if they don't come. They have a simple choice, die at range or close the distance to where we want them to fight.
It's why on these boards I see people undervalue archery. Sure, archery doesn't do as much damage as melee martials, but it is useful in that you can use it to draw monsters in by hammering them from range until they come. Same as casters can do this.
So say you have monsters in a 30 by 30 room. You open the door. Your frontline martials don't enter the room. They position at the door using a delay action depending on where the monster is in the room.
Your archer and ranged casters start to hit the monsters. If the monsters have a decent ranged attack, maybe you have a problem. If not, then you hammer them from range until they come. We don't care where or how they die if the DM did something odd like have them stand there in the room taking cover waiting to die.
We'll position far enough back their reach won't work. What do we care if they take a while to kill.
Some people earlier were saying we can't drop nukes in the room. But if they move out of range, we'll nuke them.
So now you're saying move up and use reach then move back? We'll be nuking them as they stand back. Caster will pop up and nuke them.
Players have far more variety than monsters most of the time. If you're going to keep bringing up corner cases, just spend time thinking out how to deal with each issue if the enemy tries to use it.
If reach, move far enough back reach doesn't work.
Pop the door and nuke if they hide around corners and such.
We don't really care where they set up as long as we control where we fight. We don't care how long it takes to kill them, so have them hide in the room. What do we care? We're still controlling their actions and not the other way around.
Main thing to avoid is getting spread out, flanked, and them dictating how the fight goes.
Your tossing out variables we've dealt with many times. We adapt the vertical kill zone strategy as needed. If the DM wants to hold them back and let us whittle them down at range using move actions in and out of battle, we're perfectly ok with that. We'll win that fight as well. Medicine works to heal all day.
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Like this tactic requires
1) a chokepoint that the party can use to funnel which is long enough that the backliners are safe and can actually see into the room and narrow enough that frontliners can block movement though it.
2) The enemies not to outperform the party at range (Which is mostly outperforming the caster's blasting as non-AoE attacks will have line of sight issues)
3) A room small enough that an AoE spell can hit a reasonable number of the enemies in it from the center (Which means that you can probably cover said room in 1 move action, which is weird from an encounter building standpoint but you are going to have to clarify if by 30 x 30 you mean squares or feet, because if its feet a 6x6 square room is extremely small for basically any tactical game, a character with reach covers over half the map)
4) A door you can break so it doesn't just get closed
5) The enemies and party's only real goal being to kill each other, as if there is any kind of time crunch in the fight its going unopposed by half the party.Like I could see this occurring in combats where you are defending something but to have it be common enough as to be a default tactic seems odd.
Why does that seem odd considering how many times you're doing an interior room by room clear in APs?
The conditions you just listed are all extremely common. It's one of the most common layouts in almost any interior dungeon, fort, or place you're attacking. That's why it works so well.
Now outside or wide open areas we set up with as long a range attacking as possible to soften targets as they close. So our set up is different if playing outside. Which is another reason we like archers and nukers. If you ever watched Aliens, the saying, "Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure" is more how we do it outside. Martials stand around waiting for the monster to close as we hammer it, then engage when it gets close enough.
Nothing is 100%. You have to be able to adapt to different circumstances. If something calls for social interaction, you're not going to break in and waste everyone.
The vertical kill strategy is primarily for indoor battles. Dungeons, forts, cave complexes, and things of the nature.
All that being said, once the battle gets up close and personal, we still use trip heavily. It's the best maneuver in the game by a country mile and works for everyone.
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As a GM id have the less smart things fall into the vertical trap cause they really should. Even some smart things might too if the circumstances leave them no better options, or if they realize they don't have a chance they may try to surrender if they are the type that would do it.
The smart things with options and even anything that is an instinctual predator type is attempting to use its situational/natural advantages and wont give it up and chase the party into the hallway. Especially if spells are flying out from there. They might retreat if that is an option and go after the party from somewhere where they do have advantages.
Organized enemies that are based in the place your raiding might even take advantage of the players not coming into the room. They could position themselves out of line of sight for player spells and ranged attacks if possible. They might end up alerting the rest of the complex because they now have the time to do it, this could lead to the party being surrounded and outnumbered if there is more than one way in and out of the place. They might have known you were coming already from the din they heard down the hall as you slaughtered the last group of them, and prepared to attack from ranged positions with cover stealth and readied actions.
Another factor is why you are attacking this place. If you have all the time in the world then you have an advantage in choosing when and how you engage. IF you have goals to accomplish that are time sensitive then you are at a disadvantage and cannot always choose when and where you fight. Not moving forward might cause you to lose out on an opportunity or the bad guy completes their horrific ritual or whatever.
6x6 is suffocatingly small even in games where you are slower and have less range than pf2e and the idea that it is treated like a normal map size is giving me an aneurysm, I always made my maps at least 10*10. Like my points with 1, 3 and 5 was that those things mean that you can't really have a tactically interesting map. There is 1 chokepoint that the players start with access to and the rest of the map is too small to have anything interesting like flanking routes or a 2nd chokepoint because around 8/36 squares are going to be filled with characters.Like this tactic requires
1) a chokepoint that the party can use to funnel which is long enough that the backliners are safe and can actually see into the room and narrow enough that frontliners can block movement though it.
2) The enemies not to outperform the party at range (Which is mostly outperforming the caster's blasting as non-AoE attacks will have line of sight issues)
3) A room small enough that an AoE spell can hit a reasonable number of the enemies in it from the center (Which means that you can probably cover said room in 1 move action, which is weird from an encounter building standpoint but you are going to have to clarify if by 30 x 30 you mean squares or feet, because if its feet a 6x6 square room is extremely small for basically any tactical game, a character with reach covers over half the map)
4) A door you can break so it doesn't just get closed
5) The enemies and party's only real goal being to kill each other, as if there is any kind of time crunch in the fight its going unopposed by half the party.Like I could see this occurring in combats where you are defending something but to have it be common enough as to be a default tactic seems odd.
Why does that seem odd considering how many times you're doing an interior room by room clear in APs?
We always like a challenge. A DM that can push us makes things more fun. Our group DMs don't try to make everything crazy all the time, but they definitely design a few encounters a module, usually boss encounters or something important, to mess up our strategy. Then we have to adapt.
I'm a little surprised this isn't more common. I'm assuming players like Gortle, gasalt, and the other optimizers play this way or at least a lot of the time. I figure people coming from MMORPGs probably seek optimal strategy as well.
Knowledge. One of my players wanted to solo a lvl 15 challenge, he has a lvl 14 fighter. I gave him full info on the monster so he could prepare in advance. Four rounds latter and two lucky critical hits he destroyed the hell out of the enemy.
Lesson learned on my part to never again pull my punches.
Knowledge. One of my players wanted to solo a lvl 15 challenge, he has a lvl 14 fighter. I gave him full info on the monster so he could prepare in advance. Four rounds latter and two lucky critical hits he destroyed the hell out of the enemy.
Lesson learned on my part to never again pull my punches.
If anything that sounds like the ideal outcome to me, rather than a mistake or problem. Provided the player had to work to get the info and you didn't just hand it to him.
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As funny as landing readied FoB is, it's still 2 actions and a reaction for the pitiful chance of landing a stun against any target it'd be worth using it on. You'll likely have better outcomes for the party with wolf drag+stand still or similar.
I actually don't even bother with stunning fist on monk builds anymore. You get more mileage out of getting more focus points so you can pump out more ki strikes. Something like wolf+ambition ki rush, SoP, stand still, wolf drag, wholeness of body, multitalented rogue, sneak attacker. Two focus points at level 2, reaction attack, auto trip, a 3rd focus point at 6 or 8 and a secondary damage booster at 10.
For the trip thing, I evaluate all options based on their performance in extreme encounters. Solo +4, duo +2s, eight -2s, whatever it is, so long as it does well in at least a few of those scenarios, I consider it a useful option. Trip combined with slows and silences can absolutely trivialize encounters that rely on one or two strong opponents even before you consider something like eviscerating mooks one by one in a slowly advancing meat grinder or through natural or self-made choke points.
Though seeing things like "but in such and such kind of party" makes me want to see a party optimization thread where such configurations and their strategies and tactics are brought out and examined. That seems like a far more interesting angle than talking about individual options in a vacuum.