Negative Synergy
What’s this? Yet another comic about the importance of Session Zero? Yawn! Boring! We’ve heard this shit before!
Well just one bloody minute, milord Judgypants! Appearances to the contrary, today’s Handbook is not about forming your initial party. It’s about your approach to encounters.
We went over this a bit back in our friendly fire comic, but figuring out how to work together like a team is about far more than picking the most synergistic classes and builds. And if you’ve got different ideas than your buddies about dealing with your game world’s challenges, you’re going to run into some friction. A few general playstyles to give you an idea:
- Paranoid — This approach is all about scouting, checking for traps, and otherwise getting the lay of the land. You know that knowledge is power, and want to gather all the pertinent details before putting yourself at risk.
- Face Tank — You walk face-first into danger. If there’s a trap, you block it with your chest. If there are assassins, you let them to take their shot. That’s because you know that you’re a badass, and plan on dishing out twice what you take.
- Artillery — You’ve got fireballs. You’ve got lightning bolts. You’ve got Sergeant Detritus’s crossbow. You’ll get to melee eventually, but not before you’ve thinned the enemy ranks a bit. That makes initiative order an important consideration, and the phrase “I delay” your bread and butter.
- Sociable — What’s all this bother about weaponry? Surely we can work something out? We’re all reasonable creatures here, and I’ve got +∞ in my “talk to stuff” skill.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but it does offer a few of the go-to strategies that parties tend to adopt. And as Cavalier and Ninja are discovering in today’s comic, mixing them doesn’t always work. Face Tanks who rush into combat get in the way of Artillery. Sociable parties may be too audacious for the Paranoid ones. And if you have different party members that favor different playstyles, the head-butting can get exhausting.
This all leads to our question of the day! Does your party have a general approach? No doubt the answer is “it depends on the encounter,” but maybe you tend to favor one style over the others? Do you think that different styles can exist comfortably at the same table, or is it better to get on the same page as your fellow party members? Let’s hear all about your party’s answer to, ‘You see a pair of goblins, what do you do?’ down in the comments!
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This could work. There’s a long and storied history of employing both covert and non-covert operations against the same target to great success.
Agreed. Ninja and Cavalier are far more likely to break apart over moral issues – him being a hired assassin and her a virtuous knight – than they are over perfectly complementary combat tactics.
The federal government of Handbook-World denies all knowledge of such tactics.
-Gunslinger tries to join-
Ninja: and those are how loud again?
Cavalier: so you just fight at range the whole time?
This is a pretty good play on the Gunslinger’s joke.
But if you’ll permit it to dissect it even through it might kill it, Gunslinger would honestly be the ideal kind of ranged combatant for Cavalier.
A pathfinder gunslinger want to fire from pretty close range (somewhere around where most enemies can just move and attack without even needing to charge). At the same time they get to target touch AC which means that the +4 cover from their melee friends being in the way matters far less than usual.
This means that Gunslinger wouldn’t want Cavalier to stand around waiting for the enemy to close to maximize his firing time, but would instead downright appreciate having a big frontline fighter charge into the fray where she’ll prevent the enemy from engaging with him and allowing him to provide supporting fire against the foes she fights.
Give him time. Gunslinger will try to join everyone eventually.
currently I‘m playing a Hunter with (as soon as he’s raised and the owl dismissed) a Tiger companion.
So I represent Face Tank, Paranoid and Artillery in one build.
The companion scouts (hunter looking through his eyes with improved empathetic link) takes the first hits and Hunter supports with ranged attacks.
Precise Shot negating the „shooting im melee“ disadvantage.
Do any of the other party members make this strategy difficult to execute? For example, an overeager barbarian can make all that scouting useless, while a talky bard can obviate all that effort with a conversational gambit.
nah, it’s a pretty cooperative group.
Our Bard is very squishy and stays back as far as possible.
Why does Cavalier seem to have nine digits on one hand?
I dunno. Why does this woman have a beard?
https://i.redd.it/4bhhgo6a91o71.jpg
It’s my mistake. Cavalier has both hands on her stein and I didn’t notice in time. >_<
Your hunt for the nine-fingered woman who murdered your father must, unfortunately, continue
My name is Rock. You killed my PC. Prepare to die.
The player groups I have played with tended toward the Paranoid tactic. We were applying the standard D&D role filling – a kleptomaniac, a thug, a dog-botherer and a magic school drop-out (copyright Sir PTerry). So, the classical formation, entry specialist at the front, with the big guy not too far behind.
Although there was this group with three (or maybe four) multiclass Rogues with at best average skills at trap-finding, and accompanied by a Chaotic Stupid Barbarian with a battering ram… Despite that overabundance of skulking specialists, discretion was off the table.
Recently, I played a Paladin – Lawful Good, but not too stupid about the lawful part – with a dual focus on shields and diplomacy. I quickly became both the social face and the face tank of the party. We had an Artificer to take care of locks and traps, but our tactics were mostly “try to talk to them”, and if that fails, “charge”. One or two times, it was “charge in a trapped room”…
It helped that I took Improved Initiative. I was almost every times the first to act in fight.
Oh, and the alternated feature from Player HandBook 2 for Paladin, Charging Smite, in lieu of a faithful mount. I highly recommend it. I had a few one-hit kills in the first round of fights, to the gleeful dismay of our DM.
I guess that’s the knightly approach. Go in with peaceful intentions, then resort to combat when negotiations fall through. I could see the rogue party rolling their eyes at that mess. 🙂
Any rogue/ninja/sneak-attacker worth their salt would know that having a flanking buddy (i.e. someone who charges in and keeps the heat off of you) is better than skulking. Because skulking works for one turn and then you get pummeled by every enemy you didn’t kill with that opening strike.
So I guess the lesson from this is that Ninja is really, really bad at his job. And cavalier never leaves her mount’s saddle.
I wonder when we’ll have the inevitable ‘sometimes you have to leave the saddle’ lesson for Cavalier.
For a professional assassin, that opening strike is kind of the point. Hire a thug if you want somebody dead. If you want to get in and out quietly without raising the alarm, you want a ninja.
Only if the ninja has the special ‘target makes a death save if you ambush them’ killing trick, or is a Red Mantis Assassin. Otherwise we end up with the predicament Thief had in stabbing a dragon.
On the stealth side, it’s a difference between rogue talents and ki invisibility spells to not being seen.
My group is a rather large one, so our approach tends to cover a whole lot of these at once: We tend to start with the paranoid approach. My character, a Cavalier, has a Gem of True Seeing that I look through in every single room we enter, while our Paladin detects evil and our Rogue checks for traps. And at the start of each session, our Wizard and Friar pump us full of long-term buffs. Then, once an actual encounter starts, the Paladin and me switch to Face Tank, along with a Dwarf Fighter whose axe is an earth elemental that also functions as an immovable rod that has saved our asses from multiple deadly traps, while our party’s Bard, the Wizard and the Friar provide more short-term buffs like haste, as well as Artillery with damaging spells and magic items that deal damage. Our Ranger is primarily Artillery with his bow, and his sidekick, an Ogre, switch-hits with a spear that splits into 3 attacks when thrown and a pair of swords in melee. My Tinker Gnome aide-de-camp does similarly, switching between a warhammer for melee and a pair of pistols to do Artillery.
And since we’re working our way through the Tomb of Annihilation, we need EVERY ONE OF US operating at peak performance to survive. The game’s a weird hybrid of 2e and 5e with a large amount of homebrew our DM’s been tinkering with since the 80’s.
https://c.tenor.com/Hqyg8s_gh5QAAAAd/perfectly-balanced-thanos.gif
My players tend to favour a mix of artillery and sociable: they want things blown up, but they’re subtle about it and would often prefer to be giving the orders rather than firing the cannon themselves.
The subtle approach can be rewarding, but I tend to get impatient. Spending half the session prepping for a big payoff makes my inner barbarian antsy.
It really depends on the mix at the table. Some of our most level-headed, proactive, and practical tacticians will take a back seat and let the most dynamic personality at the table drive.
So sometimes the result is–
a) “Tank, you go tank. Make a hole that the Sneaky-types can exploit to get to the Encounter Boss. Artillery, focus on halting their advance and maintaining the periphery. Summoners, give us some extra numbers. Synchronize hourglasses and…go!”
But sometimes the result is more–
b) “…and then I said, ‘No, I was talking to the ORC! Ammiright?! What? Sure, okay, roll for initiative. I think we oughta… Where’s Rogue? (First in the initiative order, he pulled a fast fade with his ring of invisibility to go do stealthy things.) Oh, well then who’s next? (The only healer has waded into the fray to act as a secondary tank.) Dang. What’s the barbarian doing? (The gnome fighter is currently riding the minotaur barbarian who is riding a Nightmare; they are en route to headbutt a galleon.) Hunh. I delay action.”
This is what I mean by getting on the same page in terms of approach. If everyone is flawlessly executing their own perfect plan, then the group plan isn’t doing so hot.
Stealth. Range (mostly). Polymorph. And if the previous do not work (which often the stealth part gets messed up pretty early, tho we did stealth a dragon… TWICE! You know, right up until we got into its blind sense range, then we UNLOADED ON IT!), then we just try to DPS the crap out of whatever the situation is… until we realize we are in over our heads and RUN AWAY! Which we also do, quite often.
The point is, we have been on the same page in our general party decisions since very early in the campaign and it has been really fun to know we can each count on the other… to mess up a roll and have to improvise! 😀
Group stealth is hard. Even if you’re all good at it.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/michigan-j-fighter
Often, face tank becomes the default by necessity.
To be fair, Cavalier “charges” quite slowly, given her choice of mount. Skulking is probably quicker.
As to tactics, very variable depending on the composition of the party. The current crowd, you know the two paladins will try talking first, then charging… and the barbarian will of course skip straight to charging. My ranger fits more into the “paranoid” category… he’s a crossbowman, so by preference he’ll scout, figure out the scene, and then open the battle by shooting someone in the back of their unsuspecting head. He’s actually more than competent in melee, and has the highest AC in the group, but tends to be found lurking behind the fight.
How do you decide on which approach to use in any given encounter?
Whatever fits the circumstances. If there’s some realistic chance of negotiation succeeding, the paladins will usually be given an opportunity to try it… my group don’t tend to be unnecessarily murderous. And if setting ambushes or skulking around taking down guards is a viable strategy, it’s usually agreeable to everyone… even the barbarian understands the value of not fighting everybody at once.
Though I’ll be honest… this particular party is not the best at skulking. As I said, two paladins and a barbarian accompany my ranger and our cleric, so subtlety isn’t really a forté.
Ah! A fellow Discworld fan!
This good boy is named Pratchett:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/946F0640-67A8-4DFF-9B3C-541A8A1FC8BE.jpeg
In the 5e game where I’m playing a monk, we’re only 5 sessions in but it has become a meme where we try and sneak past encounters, immediately botch our stealth, and then charge in recklessly instead.
I think there’s a reason that the lone scout goes in alone:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/michigan-j-fighter
Yes they can!
Sam is my talky guy that would rather just be friends, until things go south and his requests start having save DCs attached to them. The rest of the party is a mix of ranged and melee combat who can do that whole fighting thing that he can’t really measure up to… but having one or more enemies run away, or start helping out, makes up for Sam’s overall lacking physical prowess I think…
Our usual approach is more a cautious wait and see. We poke with someone’s ability and draw them in. Be it Sam’s guile, or failing that, his Mind sphere talents, or be it Nadia telekinetically hefting a sleeping goblin-dog-thing into the air and yeeting it over a a cliff to start off combat with the rest of them.
Sounds to me like your party lets you do the Sociable thing before defaulting to Face Tank when that falls through.
I’m beginning to wonder if that’s the most popular approach….
It is one of the most fun…
“I’m so sorry we couldn’t come to a mutually beneficial understanding. sigh I suppose that just leaves Plan:B now…”
“What’s Plan:B?”
Orc Barbarian smashes through wall with multiple buffs already on him
“HE is…”
Too subtle!
https://imgur.com/gallery/2W70MZJ
I find that Artillery and Face Tank can get along swimmingly as long as Face Tank doesn’t mind/enjoys being Ground Zero.
For instance in the party I’m now referring to as Mage and Meatshield, an overly destructive Elven Fire Wizard and Barbarian Ogress. The ogress rushes all threats the Wizard nukes the zone, usually not centered on the Barbarian, but if it happens, it happens. The Wizard does occasionally waste time throwing Resistances and Protections on the Tank, despite my Ogress repeatedly being on fire and just not noticing it (aside from sartorial* destruction).
Of course the Fire Wizard is particularly prudish, so maybe she’s just protecting herself from having to witness, yet again, my Shirtless Savage in all her glorious, monstrously horrifying, nudity…
https://c.tenor.com/dlMPygkeZfwAAAAC/my-eyes.gif
Based on exposure to ogresses in my formative gamer years…
https://gatherer.wizards.com/Handlers/Image.ashx?multiverseid=2808&type=card
…I too prefer them clothed.
Our group dynamic varied with system.
In Pathfinder, we’ve had groups with a single martial to blend/tank and multiple casters as support/enemy shutdown in one AP, and groups with only a single divine caster and the rest martials with crazy damage outputs that get shut down by rocket tag shenanigans.
In the caster group, I was certainly the Paranoid/Artillery as the Wizard, doing monster identification and messing with opponents with spells.
In the martials group, I was the same role, this time as a Artillery Gunslinger who was paranoid of all the crazy traps in the AP. We also had a ‘Face Tank’ barbarian later on.
For Starfinder, we were all mostly artillery due to the ranged-focus of the game, with the exception of our Soldier who was on face-tank and melee-smash duty. It worked very well, as few opponents could actually handle melee and were meant for firefights.
In 4e, the roles are pretty distinct between Striker, Defender, Support, Leader, Controller. Our five-man group features two strikers (rogue & sorcerer), one controller (wizard), one defender (spellsword) and one leader (warlord). The defender fights with marking enemies, mitigating ally dmg and doing AOE-blasts when he gets mobbed. The wizard trolls enemies by making them hit themselves, or blasts them with fireballs. The rogue flanks and does a ton of damage. The sorcerer blasts from a distance but also closes in for electro-punches. And my warlord is a semi-tanky martial who can heal and mess with opponents whilst doing damage.
So if you had to name these “party approaches to encounters” with single words or pithy phrases, what would you call ’em? And how did it go when the group was obliged to abandon their favored strategy?
The first group: Caster Coven
The Second group: Pope Protectors
Starfinder group: Shock & Awe
4e group: Wingin’ it
We had the most group issues in 4e due to how defenses work – most of us target AC and can’t sustain ourselves in a prolonged battle, so enemies can win a war of attrition if they simply hit harder than we do, or if we keep missing due to a high AC. In other words, some fights are difficult simply cause our party composition is a bit unusual and we can’t do much to alter that besides change classes / powers later.
The Caster Coven had issues with any magic-immune critters, which was mitigated by buffing up the martial and having not-magic offense options. They also suffered from the lack of a divine caster when we all got blinded by Shining Child’s.
In the martials group, the biggest issues were swarms (no area damage) and a nasty ambush by some plasma oozes that almost TPK’d us with obnoxious engulf rules and elemental damage.
Our Starfinder group was the most stable – with an Operative for damage/skill monkey-ing, mystic for healing, soldier for melee and a mechanic/technomancer for anything in between. We never really struggled except against grapplers, and a dragon who was simply dishing out huge damage and tricks. If we lacked the Mystic or the Operative, we’d likely have much, much more difficulty, as both of them were a bit ‘OP’ in their own way – operative with their damage output / skill checks, mystic with a healing channel that made HP loss a non-issue.
‘You see a pair of goblins, what do you do?’ Well, my group discusses what to do for at least an hour and a half of real time, allowing me to flesh out the part of the world they’ve decided to go down instead of moving on with the plot – and also allows me to revise the bait-… err… candy… for the plothooks.
Oddly enough, there is a name for that playstyle:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/dithering
Short Story Time!
Once upon a time our rogue popped a potion of invisibility and used their boots of spider climb to walk along the ceiling into the next room of the dungeon WITHOUT TELLING THE PARTY. At least that’s what we think happened, after we tripped over an invisible corpse wearing charred spider climb boots as we explored the wreckage from the wizards’ opening fireball barrage.
That’s some discipline on the rogue’s part to not metagame shout, “”I’m on the roof, don’t shoot me!”
I’d say that my group tends to pursue multiple options simultaneously. One common thing that comes up is players asking enemies to surrender, and DMs refusing to have the enemies give their answer to that question until the enemy’s turn (which is a problem with multiple DMs in the group, not just one)…but the player doesn’t want to give up their precious actions, so they attack, which makes the offer of mercy seem insincere.
Oof. I can see how that’d be a problem.
For my part, that situations seems like a player asking, “Can the combat encounter end now?” If the GM agrees with the proposition, combat ends as a non-action. You transition out of initiative and into RP (either a negotiation or an interrogation scene). If you’re trying to mechanically enforce a surrender, that’s an action at the minimum. Depending on your system of choice, there may or may not be mechanics in place for it:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/call-truce/
But as a GM, I wouldn’t sweat players “cheating” a diplomacy check into initiative. In my mind, it’s more about the “morale” sections you see buried in some stat blocks.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/call-truce/
I read this situation as a player probing for that morale condition. As in, “Hey, I know there might not be a ‘morale’ entry on this guy’s stat block, but don’t you think it might be appropriate here?” It’s an oddly meta part of the game, and one that I’d like to see explored mechanically in combat-heavy systems. Especially since diplomacy checks are generally ineffective mid-combat.
Imagine if diplomacy checks could be used like “recall lore” checks mid-combat, but instead of finding out info about creatures you could deduce something like a “morale condition.” I bet that could make combat a bit more interesting, as players might begin to push for some specific “morale victory” rather than a “to the death” victory.
So for example, if you make your bonus action Sense Motive check, you deduce that at 25% hp this ogre will choose to flee. Then you can make an Intimidation or Persuasion check as an action to increase the % based on your roll. A DC 8 + creatures CR adds 10% to its “morale threshold.” You could even stagger it with certain breakpoints, so a DC 13 + creature’s CR adds an additional 10%, meaning that our ogre pal will hit his “morale threshold” and choose to retreat at 45% hp.
So I’m currently alternating between a Fiendlock and Artillerist Artificer between floors of a megadungeon. The fiendlock is fine with whatever, but as the Artillerist I’m trying to do more complicated choke-points, enfilades, etc. The Monk however makes such things difficult by charging in rather than letting the enemy come to us.
And there’s the headache I’m talking about.
You could of course talk between combats about “optimal strategy,” but the real issue is that charging ahead is more fun for the monk, while setting up complicated positioning scenarios is more fun for you but requires that the monk sits on the sidelines feeling useless. Aside from RPing “charge on my mark” type scenarios, that seems like a big fat “you’ll have to learn to compromise.”
Hell, I was just listening to the Glass Cannon Podcast this week, and the poor cavalier had to wait on the far side of a “create pit” spell while the sorcerer and gunslinger were like, “But it will be safer and more effective if we just plunk away at them from behind our barricade.” Sympathy for both sides there. Strategy is a real thing, but it also sucks to see a charge lane and hear, “Maybe you’ll get to play the game next combat.”
Skulking on the shadows is the best approach 😀
You can get advantageous position, you can dish lots of damage just starting the encounter and that allows someone to botch the stealth roll and so natural selection purges the party of bad rolls 🙂
I guess I’ll add that one to the list.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/dice-rituals
It also doesn’t help that Cavalier is an aquatic knight rather than someone land based. Unless ninja has some method of swimming very quickly and stealthily, they’re a bad fit. Honestly though, I like the idea of a rogue and a cavalier working together. The cavalier is more likely than most melee martials to be able to maneuver into a flanking position to help out ninja, though I’ll admit that their methods are a bit contradictory.
My parties tend to favor an upfront face tanking approach with some artillery support. As in we tend to go in the front by the most direct route possible. Any tanks generally try to go in first along with any other particularly hard hitting melee combatants, with ranged combatants generally sticking back and raining hell on the enemy. In Pathfinder we’d start by having one of the party open a door so the ranger could a clear line of sight and then my warpriest and the bloodrager going in first to wreck faces. In my 5e party, my goliath barbarian and the tabaxi monk would generally get in to melee first and then try to set up advantage for our bard/paladin to come in and smite the shit out of the enemy while our sorcerer and warlocks blast from range.
I think different approaches can exist at the same table, but all party members need to communicate and understand the different strategies involved and recognize that sometimes you can’t bluff your way out, sneak your way through, that sometimes there’s just not enough information for your paranoid players to work with to get anything useful, or that NO the party can’t take on a lich, we’re only level 7! A party that can’t work with one another regarding their strategies or lack there of is one that honestly may be better off finding new party members. No gaming is better than bad gaming.
She’s an amphibious knight. She just happens to ride a reptile.
Also of note, your comment helped me realize why open/close exists as a spell. It’s literally so that the squishy wizard can open the door from safety.
Yeah, but Brick is not exactly a speedy steed on land.
What, and give up on the opportunity to cast fireball as someone else opens the door!?!? But yes, that’s an excellent point. Especially since it gives the wizard a round to analyze the situation and determine just how fucked the party is or if they’ve got the perfect spell for the situation.
You list those different styles as if one has to make permanent choice for only one. I suggest instead that they are all tools in the the toolbox – the toolbox of victory 🙂
Ideally, a well-devised order of battle involves the panzer/tank charging, the skulker hiding and picking off foes with that sweet sneak attack damage, and the artillery hanging back and blasting gaping holes in the enemy ranks. If the foe is instead a dungeon full of traps, then good ole Mr I-cant-really-die familiar gets to scout everything first, anything remotely suspicious gets Detect Magic, followed by Identify or Mage Hand (ie: Tomb of Horrors/Annihilation).
Instead of deciding on a playstyle for the game, the particular challenge of the moment should dictate the roster of feasible solutions.
Needless to say, artillery avoids nuking panzer/tank at all cost. Friendly fire is sloppy and unprofessional. A good artillery is skilled enough to avoid that.
I’m not so sure about that. After all, the 20th Maxim of Maximally Effective Mercenaries is “If you’re not willing to shell your own position, you’re not willing to win.”
I’ve had quite a few battles where a limited and controlled artillery nuking of the party was the best way to deal with the situation. For instance, one time my party snuck up on a Gnoll encampment. I, the fire genasi barbarian snuck into the center of the camp and made a big ruckus to become surrounded by the gnolls before our team’s hidden wizard and sorcerer opened up with the fireballs. Sure, I got scorched, but the gnolls got dead, and it would have been pretty hard to get the gnolls to clump up like that without the tank-bait.
Nope.
One who nukes their own party is sloppy, unprofessional and a new addition to the enemy ranks – as in, knock them unconscious to teach them a lesson – if they survive.
See Gabe’s post a little further up the page. It’s possible for different players to have different preferred styles. It’s about more than tactics. The strategic goal of a campaign is fun. And since fun is a moving target, choosing your approach is about more than ensuring victory.
The point of combat – atleast every combat I have ever played a character in – is to win the combat – that is, minimizing friendly casualties while maximizing success towards party goals. The best strategy is whatever does the best job at the above.
Well, that is your opinion. I would say that the strategic goal of a campaign (combat in particular) should be to maximize achievement of party goals (whatever the party might decide those to be) while minimizing friendly casualties. Of course others might have different opinions, and they are of course free to run their characters as the see fit. But, if you are not working towards the good of the party with whatever you are trying to do, why should others in the party be on-board with helping you do such?
“Fun” is a per-player notion. There is often some common ground and then some aspects of difference. Most players will not have continuing fun with a dead PC. So, in the long run, minimizing party casualties will tend to align with maximizing “fun” summed over all players, over all time. Similarly, a “party goal” need not be a personal goal of every PC in the party. A well-functioning party can include different goals from multiple PCs into a collective set of party goals. Good players fashion goals for their PCs – and PCs in general – that will tend to be compatible with the rest of the party.
You do have a point about hashing out playing-norms in advance – but its not quite what you alluded to above. It is sensible for any player that is not going to make team victory in combat top priority to make that known to the other players at the outset. I have occasionally seen anomalies like this in past games that I have participated in. Generally what I have seen happen is the the rest of the party will leave such a PC to their own devices to pursue their own ends – it is simply as if the party had one less member. In my recollection, the usual outcome of this is that the wayward PC will eventually get themselves killed, and the rest of party will not interfere. So, usually such matters seem to resolve themselves.
So, yes, there might need to be a discussion about PC/player norms in advance of the game – but not about ‘is charging into combat ok?’ or ‘is checking for traps ok?”. Instead the discussion might need to determine if each player’s notion of “fun” is compatible overall, long-term success of the party. Usually – in the vast majority of games I have been in – this is the case and such a discussion was not needed – however, as I’m sure you would point out, sometimes that discussion will be needed.
Sun-Tzu gives a much more succinct reply:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsHDRpwS2SI
My players are generally the Paranoid – carefully scouting ahead, collecting all available information, considering all possible options, and then deciding, almost unfailingly, that the optimal solution is Fireball.
Stupid question. I mean… Serious question.
…
Serious stupid question: Why not just lead with fireball?
We invited the goblins to join us. One ended up leaving from a schedule conflict and the other became a cleric with a Stealth mod so massive that the GM had to make a houserule of skills failing on a Nat One.
Heh. I usually find that the only way to counter silly stealth is to enforce plausibility.
“You’re walking across a street in broad daylight. What the crap are you hiding behind?”
I’ve recently started as a player in a game (who’ve already been playing a together a bit) and have encountered the extreme end of the “sociable” approach – every threat they first try to reason with, or else avoid altogether. I don’t at all mind – I’m happy to adapt to any style (excepting probably the extreme “face tank”) – but it’s taken a bit of getting used to the idea of not burning the grey ooze until we’ve found out what it wants, or pestering a big bad with questions until he caves in and answers so we’ll just leave him to continue his dark magics in peace.
Heh. It certainly can unlock different interactions. Trying to help the poor lost gray ooze get back to is wizard is an unexpected storyline. Of course, spending half an hour talking to every random NPC can get tiresome for some players.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/shopping-expedition
Even when Cavalier Fighter isn’t doing literally PVP she’s still fighting with another player.
Mommy and Daddy aren’t fighting. They’re having a discussion.
Basically if whatever party I’m in dithers about too long*, I will do something. And these moments are generally preceded by “where did x go?” with several OOC “what are you doing” and “HANG ON I DON’T HAVE MY POPCORN!” being tossed around the table. Beware of Chaotic Bored Now.
As GM… I specifically put something in each encounter for everyone. That takes some doing, but I let my players dictate the flow of things usually. Sometimes I’ll throw them into a fight and if they talk in combat and say the right things, combat will stop. Other times I’ll let them try to circumvent encounters, though that usually ends in tragedy.
Now you’ve got me curious. What happened the last time they tried this?
So the last time this happened… I was a younger GM full of bright ideas about simulated realism! This was Rifts, where the rail guns run hot and full of Mega Damage, the missiles are plentiful, and players can be dragons. Our party of bunker busting freakshows (as is the typical Rifts party) had decided that they wanted to save some ammunition, so they elected to sneak around the big patrols and take the base by surprise.
Not a bad idea of course. At least it wasn’t until they got inside the perimeter and I said “Ok, so… we have a full sized mecha and 2 power armors… I need the rest of you to roll Prowl, but… uhm. So, I have the NGR book right here, and so far as I know, none of their equipment outside of the hover tank is allowed to roll Prowl, so does anyone have any special training or mods or anything?”
This was online in a chatroom, so a trickle of ‘no’s’ popped in. I shrug, have them roll Prowl anyway. I know they can’t, they know they can’t, but at this point, I’m just trying to see if they are going to go through with it. They make passable rolls… you know, if they actually had class or equipment features to make them NOT clunk around like a troop of drunken dwarves.
“Right, so… ok. So you come out into the clearing from the mouth of the valley to the entrance of the installation. There’s no one outside. What do you do?”
Feeling emoldened by the lack of guards, they charge into the opening to rush into the bunker “before they get spotted.”
It’s only once they arrive do they realize those two patrol groups they skipped now have them lined up in their sights. Remember Return of the Jedi, where the Empire has all their troops surrounding the heroes and the shield bunker is locked?
Yeah.
After the game, they cried foul. “HOW DID THEY KNOW WE WERE THERE?!”
And I’m like “…they have radios. You tripped all the sensors, were perfectly visible on THEIR radar, and stomped around in power armor and a 30ft tall robot without stealth features. How did you think they DID NOT know you were there!?”
“BUT YOU HAD US ROLL PROWL!”
“Yeah, I gave you a chance. You rolled middlingly, which with the -40% penalty to the check was not nearly enough!”
Nobody died, but several characters took very heavy damage. The 70,000 credits a person payday was a pretty expensive bill for everyone except the dragon who didn’t use mecha.