Outfoxed
Well then. Good thing Artificer failed to get the TorpOrb. Who knows what shenanigans she might have perpetrated had such a powerful technomagical artifact fallen into her clutches? I’m sure Handbook-World can rest easy knowing it’s safely in responsible hands. ಠ_ಠ
Any dang way, today’s comic is closely aligned with “Calling the Audible.” Last time we talked about the concept, it was about the perils of locking yourself into one trick builds, up to and including giving up when your main shtick proves ineffective. It’s this inflexible thinking that’s liable to get you killed, and that’s just as true at the strategic level as it is at the tactical.
The thrust-parry-riposte of Street Samurai’s verbal duel with Artificer mirrors the “I only attack” style of neophyte players. Sure you came up with a clever solution. But if that solution fails to get results, you can’t just keep trying the same thing over and over again. You’ve got to introduce another variable.
This mess is on my mind on account of my current binge of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. The combat in that show is all about creativity, unexpected vectors of attack, and novel uses of familiar abilities. It’s when you stop trying new stuff that you lose.
In other words, some monkeywrenching jerk named Dungeon Master is always there to screw up your well-laid plans. That makes Plan B-Z every bit as important as Plan A. Or in more concrete terms, it doesn’t matter how many hacking rolls Street Samurai aces or how many resources Artificer pulls out of her cargo hold. Neither can win the duel when the victory condition just wandered off into the sunset.
So for today’s discussion, why don’t we talk about backup plans? When have you watched your brilliant strategy fall apart? How did the team adapt? And what Gordian Knot did you manage to slice apart? Tell us your tale of furious improvisation and adapting on the fly down in the comments!
I don’t really make back-up plans. That would require me to have a plan A, and I don’t really. I do however have a fine collection of back-up characters.
If were discussing backup plans I think this has got to be our group’s episodic Shadowrun campaign and this poor hospital. The first one started with a GM that in retrospect really didnt want to lose. We were breaking into the hospital to steal some expensive thing from the basement and he had this thing where literally only the elevator could go down. No stairs, no way to bypass the cameras just an elevator. So we did manage to get down by disguise but triggered alarms on the way out. Well the front door had security coming down so we had to blow up a wall in the cafeteria in a mad rush to just book it.
Well we had to do another run at the hospital, this time extracting someone who got caught who was current there. The hospital has upped its security again now having a full armory and security force. Once again in was fine, we got the guy but out was proving more dofficult as an alarm was triggered and we had a lot of security after us. Well since we ran past the armory full of ammo and explosives to cover our escape we threw yet another grenade into the room once again proving we shouldnt be around hospitals.
I do recall a third run at the hospital, I do not remember why or what went wrong. I do remember my rigger driving her armored van through the wall of the hospital to make an escape route. That hospital just became a running gag for us.
I didn’t know Kool-Aid man was a playable race in Shadowrun.
Do you and Prince Chrom game together?
Probably not, given that I’ve never played Shadowrun.
Fair. Just trying to parse the connection to your comment. 🙂
I have backup characters.
Does that count?
It’s good being a laser printed hero:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlqWFXbuNco
I don’t think we have ever had a plan B (or any other letters of the alphabet).
There is only “the plan”, because as players, we know the meta game is that we make a plan, and as soon as the dice begin to roll, the plan either works or it doesn’t.
I suppose we always go with “plan I”. Improvise.
It usually works out.
Correct attitude right there. 😀
I’m agreeing with everyone who says they have backup characters, not plans.
Mostly because my party will make war plans in the chat pre session so it doesn’t hold up the game, have our characters discuss it briefly in game with the expectation that they say what we’ve said in the chat, and then we end up completely winging it when it comes time to put the plan in motion. Meanwhile, I have two backup characters and am having to resist the urge to make more, because apparently I love putting together characters. So many character ideas, so little time.
Heh. I like that your character building incentivizes you to suicidal acts of heroics. Game working as intended.
I am constantly making characters because I love to make them. I have a family group of characters I need to finish along with an addition to an earlier family group. It’s just fun to see the different builds I can do.
My group doesn’t spend an excessive amount of time on plans… indeed, it’s almost guaranteed that at least one of us will be playing a character with a low tolerance for standing around talking — so if the planning goes on for too long, it’s going to suddenly become irrelevant.
In general then, we’ll have a quick discussion of a few ways to approach things, then improvise from there. It works for us, and tends to result in a great deal of entertainment as things get chaotic. And to be honest, it probably works better for us than most of our actual plans, which on more than one occasion of seen us sneaking out of a burning city, one step ahead of civil war breaking out.
Why do we always touch off a civil war every freakin’ time we go out for beers!?
The main one I recall, it was supposed to be a small spot of burglary. The target turned out to be at home, a plan to lure him away having failed, we ended up having to fight him, and it sort of snowballed from there. The authorities found the body, suspected a revolutionary movement was involved, clamped down hard on the city (our cue to leave), provoking riots in response… you know how these things go. We didn’t even get paid!
I know that feel, bro.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-cleaner
Tired of PCs smashing their way through traps and puzzles and tanking the damage, I once created a dungeon with a logic puzzle involving three different-sized drinking vessels. The pint glass is smashed, leaving only the wine glass and the tankard. The procedure to solve the puzzle (set exactly 16 ounces of wine on the pedestal) proved to be irrelevant, as the fighter dug into his inventory and pulled out a long-forgotten and hitherto-unused magic crafting hammer with the *make whole* power usable once per day. ‘Poof!’ One mended pint glass full of merlot and the door opens.
The player looked at me, sheepish, then added “I’m sorry. I can see you put a lot of work into this. Out of curiosity, how were we *supposed* to solve it?”
Heh. Dude un-cut the Gordian knot. XD
I love that these two suddenly have a vicious ongoing rivalry where they’re obsessed enough about each other to prepare multiple contingencies to face one another. Artificer probably would have been really peeved if Street Samurai hadn’t shown up. What a weirdly instantly compelling ship.
It’s the great reward of the sprawling cast. Getting mash unusual characters together is my favorite.
Of course, some inevitably get shortchanged. 🙁
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/unarmored
I’ll be free to admit that I’m one of those players that doesn’t really use their brain in combat situations. I’m even worse about it when I’m RUNNING the game.
I’m much more at ease in more roleplay-oriented scenarios. I’ve mentioned to my players more than a few times that I consider myself in my element when my job becomes that of Drew Carey from Whose Line is It Anyway? and I’m just watching the players do their thing.
Maybe that’s the source of villainous nihilism?
“There is no good or evil. It matters not what we do in this world. Everything is made up and the points don’t matter.”
My FFXIV Pathfinder group was a great example of where plans go to die, if only because of amazingly bad dice luck; I’ve found trying to adapt plans around my party members in the heat of battle will fall apart very fast so I usually focused on ways to even the odds such as “put the enemy’s heavy-hitter in the time-out ball” and “half the party’s down, summon 1d4+2 voidsent and cast deeper darkness if we’re dealing with things that lack darkvision” and, failing that, I always had the tried-and-true “grab the one person in the party I care about and cast teleport”
We’re starting a new campaign in a new setting in July, and I’m making a simpler goblin rogue character to provide cover fire from the sidelines and not get involved with the plot. Still the same fallback though, just with more legwork
At one point I even skipped the pain of party attrition when we saw a large contigent ready to take us on with more planning than we had, so I just threw my buffs on my best voidsent, cast deeper darkness ahead of time, queued up some Andrew W.K, and said “Skoll, go for a walk.”
If you’d like ideas for that goblin rogue, I may have you covered:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-help
Plan A – Diplomacy or sneakiness
Plan B – Bash it
Plan B – Burn it
Continuing last week’s comment to be relephant to this week, some more wisdom from Sir Truehammer the Tool: (Read in a Dwarven accent, which is to say an over-the top New York one. Basically Buggs Bunny)
“One plan is no plan. Two plans is a plan.”
“A plan that doesn’t plan for plans outside of the plan is not much of a plan at all.”
“Idiots think only of smashing. Pretentious idiots think smashing is beneath them. Smart people recognize that smashing is often an effective option and should always be considered as a fallback plan.”
I would also remind you of some of the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries — “don’t be afraid to be the first to resort to violence”, and “if violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.”
And of course, “the longer everything goes according to plan, the bigger the impending disaster.”
Are Swash & Buckle about to pull a switcheroo? The orb wasn’t pink before…
The comic totally reminded me of the Mexican Standoff sketch by Rocketjump. See it on Youtube if you haven’t already – it’s basically an escalating version of the comic for several minutes, and it’s hilarious.
Generally what I see on the DM side:
Plan A – Plot and lore relevant, formed after hours of discussion.
Plan B – Violence Solves Everything.
Plan C – Violence didn’t work, RUN!
If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
While Maxim 6 is the basis of Plan B (along with Maxim 27), there are unfortunately situations in which the party simply doesn’t have enough violence at their disposal to solve an issue. At which point, they attempt to employ Maxim 35 by at least surviving long enough to take revenge later.
Maxim 6: If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.
Maxim 27: Don’t be afraid to be the first to resort to violence.
Maxim 35: That which does not kill you has made a tactical error.
Congrats on taking the plunge into JJBA! And I’m definitely feeling everyone here who has more backup characters than backup plans.
And that’s an interesting topic; improvisation is often the most fun part of the game, and honestly as satisfying as it can be to have everything go to keikaku, no plan survives contact with the enemy, and sometimes you just don’t have the information to make a plan to begin with.
Funny enough, the most egregious moments of improvisation in my current group tends to involve doors. We find a door that’s weird in any way beyond your basic lock, suddenly we start thinking of workarounds. In Pathfinder 2e I carry an Insistent Door Knocker at all times for a reason.
In our group’s 1e game way back, with my Undine Magus I like to mention, we came across a dungeon with a lot of gold built into the structure but some instability. There were heavy golden doors that separated portions of the dungeon, which had to be physically lifted up as some of the magic of the place had faded or failed. We were worried about getting stuck behind these doors if anything happened to one or two members of the party, as none of us were very strength-focused and thus it was a group effort to move the doors, so one or two of us getting KOed and not having an easy escape route or dying and leave the rest trapped was a concern.
Then we remembered we had a portable hole, and we walked out of that dungeon with 6 solid gold doors. The DM has since held a half-joking feud with anyone who dares to try and steal doors. Another door-related shenanigan from that game came in the form of an artifact in the form of a sharp key that, if stabbed into a door, allowed you to form it into a portal to any plane you cared to make it- though it’d be a one-way trip since the portal closes if the key is removed from the frame. We used it to defeat the last of several apocalypses that were set for the world, luring the sapient plant monsters at the core of a growing hive mind to a location and dropping a make-shift ‘door’ onto them leading to the Void, the door breaking (and the portal with it) when it hit the ground, trapping them on the other side where they would wither away to nothing.
A Starfinder oneshot had an odd example, improvisation during character gen; I liked the idea of my character being able to control the ship via remote. You can get a computer to work with just about anything technological, and you can access computers remotely, but while the materials I had access to stated you could use the computer item to interface with a ship, it also said that the cost of the computer was based partly on the cost of what you interface it with… and ships are built using a different currency/point-buy system. My workaround? Hacking Kits. Make a computer I could remote-access that is meant to work with the Hacking Kits, stick a Hacking Kit on our own ship (which given the party was a rather chaotic and neutral-ish bunch, was probably not actually our ship) and boom, problem solved.
And then I made a few more of those for fun and profit, which worked out very well when we boarded an enemy ship and I started playing merry havoc with door locks and their artificial gravity during some of the fights, my mechanic character using her drone and its climb speed (the party’s awakened bear using his bulk in hallways just big enough for him, and our fearless leader who was a not!Stitch from Lilo and Stitch but fully chaotic evil borrowing my fire extinguisher) to get around while our enemies struggled in the sudden weightless environment.
In general, it’s always good to pick a skill or two to focus yourself in to have something you can try out of combat to progress things- stealth to sneak around, face skills so you can talk your way out of trouble, heck, even climb with a good rope and grappling hook can bypass some problems. Mundane equipment is often underrated for how much you can do with it in a pinch! Get creative! The 10 ft pole is a classic, though I’m also a fan of a Quarterstaff paired with the Mage Hand cantrip.
Though speaking of planning in advance, we ARE going to have a game with elements of intrigue coming up, so that’s something to look forward to… though my character for that is practically built for improvisation. Did you know that dipping 1 level in Arcanist in PF1e, spending under 4k gold on transcribing spells, and taking the Quick Study arcane exploit could net you access to any 0th or 1st level sorcerer/wizard spell you care to name with a Full-Round Action to replace a prepped spell with it and 1 point from your Arcane Reservoir?
My Phantom Thief Unchained Rogue is built for improvising her way around almost anything, with a ton of skill ranks, that 1 level dip up her sleeve, and her true form as a kitsune affording her some tricks, especially going into Human Guise feat to count as Human to get Racial Heritage (Ratfolk) to count as a Ratfolk and not only get access to Alchemical Tinkering (turn an alchemical item or firearm into a cheaper one of the same, hella versatile but a spell limited to Ratfolk normally) but Ratfolk tailblades (wear it on your tail to get a tail natural attack, ratfolk only, counts ratfolk who wear it as proficient in it, guess what race can have potentially nine tails and what class gets dex to damage with light weapons?). I can turn into an inconspicuous fox and hide in a pinch.
The concept is she’s basically the ultimate roadie/stage hand, suffering from terrible stage fright but supporting the performance troupe that raised her with excellent special effects work, playing extras, and in general slipping around unseen, inspired by the ninja pajama look’s origin (stagehands in Japanese theater wore all black and moved on a lower layer of an elevated stage in front of a black background moving levers and such, one writer had an assassin appearing in their story do so by having a stage hand hop up and ‘stab’ the actor before disappearing back down below, less talented writers imitated the trick en masse without getting the point, history was made).
Finally caught up after binging! Any plans me and my party make are usually in the moment, and failure of those isn’t so bad that we need a backup.
Congrats on finishing the binge! Any characters / plots you want to see more of?
Semi-serious question though: What’s the difference between an “in-the-moment plan” and improvising?
I imagining improvising is more one is constantly reacting to whatever the antagonist does (in a sense, they are in control of the situation), while an in-the-moment plan is more you’ve come up with a goal and are trying to accomplish it, it’s just you figured out this goal in the moment.
in the moment plan: devised before initiative is rolled – about half an hour of overthinking.
improvised plan: after initiative is rolled, sometimes as simple as „run awaaay“
In the moment plans are usually a collective effort for our group, when we all have a goal and communicate tactics, as opposed to our usual improvisation of doing our own things our turns.
As for characters and plots, I’d like to see more of poor gunslinger, and I’m interested in how Paladin’s quest to become a demi-god is going.
We once did a bank heist in World of Darkness. We were a team of a forger, a con-woman, a gunman and a mugger, brought together by an escaped convict who turned out to be a mystic, with a sniper partner. We were supposed to go in under cover of a business meeting, blackmail the manager, then have him bring us to the outer vault with the lock-boxes, where we would have some time to gather loot while he used a drill to get into the inner vault where something special was kept.
Once he got in and had his prize, he betrayed us though. Triggered the alarm, locking us into the vault. His partner shot a bullet into the lobby, creating panic. We didn’t have a backup plan, but we did have backup components. I don’t remember everything we did, but our gunman created a diversion in the lobby, we used the drill to get out of the vault, and we made it to the alternative exit through the car park.
Our GM’s original plan was to have us get captured, but he was impressed enough with our preparations he decided not to railroad us and give us a chance to pull it off.
” I’m sure Handbook-World can rest easy knowing it’s safely in responsible hands. ಠ_ಠ”
Actually… in the case of things like this I find that the least responsible, or my accurately the least //competent and ambitious//, hands are the probably the best. It’s not like Buckle and Swash are going to get to very much with it, maybe some mildly funny shenanigans, but it’s not like they’ll be taking over the continent with their plot-device powered automata…
Or as one of my Players once quipped to the guardian of a world ending MacGuffin: “You can trust us with it, we’re not gonna use it wisely or unwisely, it’s just going on the pile with the other shinnies!”
We’ll see if Laurel lets me do this comic. 😀
My groups tend to try to make a plan that kind of sort of gets through most of what we’re dealing with and that almost immediately always devolves into “Yeah get ’em!”
Here’s a relatively recent story:
We had to sneak into a fortress in the middle of a river held by hobgoblins and we decided our best bet was driving up to the front door hiding inside of a wagon driven by an invisible party member and with a bunch of undead hobgoblins around it. However, NONE of the party speaks goblin, none of us have the ability to cast Tongues or anything like it, and we had no plan for what to do once we got through the door. The driver improvised by yelling at the gate guards in Infernal, which due to some devil allies that the hobgoblins had made, was enough to get us through the door and then we had to fight because we couldn’t understand what was being yelled at us by the hobgoblins.
just thought i’d give an honest answer for the last question for swash and buckle in the comic:
“do you think they’ll notice?”
– Does it, or did it ever, change what were going to do about it?”
well, in reference to my comment on the last comic, The wizard flubbed their magic. My stepping in with a sweet fucking line was an on-the-spot plan B
My best improvisation and plan was when i bluffed the DM about having plan B, C, D and E:
Me and another PC were making some plans, and as this DM sees no issue in separating the party in two or more parts and having each waiting for the other for a hour or two, so we had plenty of time to create plan A, B and C. When we finally went on, the other player had to leave and it was up to me to describe the plan, which for some reason the DM downplayed to something that did not much, even though he had not reason to (and it wasn’t even important as now after two dozen sessions we have yet to hear about the victims), and some misunderstandings from his part in how turns in DnD work.
Me, a bit pissed, when it came to escaping tell the DM: ”as you well said we had plenty of time to think, so we left prepared escape plan A, B, C, D and E, in case you are planning to pull something”, with a look that said ”bring it on, we can avoid anything you think about”. That was enough to convince him to not let anything happen and us leave unharmed even though he was quite active in reducing the impact of our plans before.
I’ll just use on of my favorites quotes from Vorkosigan Saga (just re-read it again recently): “The key of strategy… is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory”.
If your plan is to complex, then it has too many points of failure. Better a simple plan, and lots of contingencies. At least that’s how we prepared our Sahdowrun heists
Seems better than our strategy of discussing plays for two sessions before getting bored and quitting the campaign.