A journey through a land of fantasy…

The second part of the Tomb of the Fallen has been posted in the campaign journal.  In this session, I noticed (yet again) that even after two years of campaigning, the party has still not learned how to really fight together.  There are some basic strategies that they completely miss, to their detriment.  Rather than fight like a group that has been traveling together for almost a year now, each individual still fights like he’s fighting alone.

The party has taken some steps to fight like a group.  For example, they asked if they could develop a set of code words, so that they could tell each other what to do in a fight without letting the opponent know what’s coming (as in, saying “Vryn! Vroomfondel!” means “Vryn, I’m going to throw a fireball on your spot, so move!”).  However, they rarely use it; they rarely ever suggest to each other what the other might do, or tell someone to move out of the way.

Robert is the best strategist of them all, and he watches carefully what everyone’s doing and tries to work it to best advantage.  However, Vryn is too self-interested to take the first step in working with the group (he is definitely of the opinion that he will survive without any of the others).  Mac is a decent strategist, but his character Mahdi is also self-interested and chooses to look out for himself first, everyone else second.

Asia, Nathan, and Kyle, however, don’t work together.  Asia is a very smart, methodical person, and he always reviews what he can do and tries to choose to best effect, but definitely has problems thinking creatively, strategy-wise.  Nathan and Kyle are not creative — while it is true that fighter-types rarely have much more to do than hit things, they are not creative with what they choose to hit.  I can almost always rely on them to hit whatever happens to be closest rather than what’s most dangerous, and to not take five-foot-steps unless it immediately puts them into a favorable position (thus, if Sparrow happens to be next to Vryn fighting the monster when the fight starts, he won’t edge around to try to flank, unless Vryn moves to a position in which Sparrow sees that he can five-foot-step and flank right now).

In this particular fight, Vryn went first and attacked the wraith right next to him.  Sparrow, rather than ganging up on that wraith to fell it quickly, attacked his own wraith.  Falco also chose to attack the wraith that Sparrow was on.  As it was, when Osiris’ turn undead took effect, the closest wraith was Vryn’s, which had been beaten down to 10% of its health.  If Sparrow and Falco had ganged up on Vryn’s wraith, it would have been dead by that point and Osiris’ turn undead would have hit Sparrow’s wraith instead.  This was important, because a couple of rounds later, it was Sparrow’s wraith that killed Falco.

I find that I have to balance my own strategy against the parties that I DM for.  The major problem is that strategy, especially turn-based strategy, is my strength: I enjoy strategic games and employing my character’s or troops’ abilities to their fullest extent.  I’m not saying that I’m the best strategist out there — I’m saying that of whatever skills I may possess, my best is strategy.  (Those are two completely different statements.)  Thus, when I get into combat and I’m using a number of different units, I immediately start to think, “How can I use them all to best advantage?”

There are a number of problems to this approach.  The very first one is that the units are rarely telepathic:  They don’t know what their comrades are going to do.  One might see another one engage the enemy and move to flank — that’s completely reasonable — but they can’t necessarily anticipate moves, such as, “He’s going to cast a fireball, so I’ll delay now and move in right afterwards.”

Groups can have fought together before and have set tactics, or have a good feeling for what their comrades can and will do, but you have to balance for it.  Units’ Intelligence scores are important here as well; stupid units may not anticipate his companions. 

The second problem is that the GM isn’t necessarily obligated to run his units like a well-trained army, and this could definitely detract from the fun for his players.  While D&D is a strategy game to a big extent, the strategy is within a larger context.  It’s always to the wolves’ advantage to choose to flank, but in context, wolves aren’t smart enough to do so.  Thus, while the party will want to minimize accidental flanking, their strategy should be based on the assumption that they won’t have to worry about it.  Perfect monster strategy detracts from the atmosphere and the game.

The other side of the coin, though, is that you don’t want the players to feel that you dumbed down the game for them, much like you don’t want them to find out that you fudge rolls or added some hp to the monster that had turned out to be too easy for them.  They want to feel that they beat the best that you threw at them, and obviously stupid moves on the GM’s part makes the combat disappointing.

In general, along with the adjustment of strategy that I do based on monster intelligence and background, I find I need to adjust for the strategy on my players’ parts.  What I try to do is balance between matching the level of strategy they use and showing them new things they can do, by having the monsters do them first.  Though, I have to admit, they still haven’t picked up on ganging up on one monster at a time, even though I tend to do that to them with the appropriate monsters, so maybe it’s an exercise in futility?