Devise Your Strategy, Execute Your Tactics

“Do nothing that is of no use.” – Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

Faster Combat through Brilliant Play

Today, we’ll look at critical strategies and tactics you need to apply to speed decision- making and execution of all player turns, GM included. Remember that your own mastery of tactical maneuvers and tactical speed sets an example for the players to follow and learn from. Sound strategy and tactics for any combat situation: that’s what you’re about to learn.

Why Practice Strategy and Tactics?

Knowing core strategies and tactics to defeat an enemy makes you a more efficient killing machine – whether you’re the GM, a PC or a group of PCs. This means combat starts, flows and finishes quickly and decisively.

Look at a party of PC adventurers as an elite strike force, a team of professionals.

Account For Enemy Factors

The party’s adversaries might be similar, though you should vary the complexity of their strategy and tactics based on factors such as:

• Goals • Motivations • Intelligence • Ability to communicate • Origin • Alignment • Gameplay variety

Core Strategy and Tactics

Four concepts form the foundation of sound combat strategy and tactics: • Target identification

• Positioning • Focus fire

• Resource management

Identify Targets

To properly select and prioritize targets, start by identifying the basic in-game role of each target or combatant on both sides of the battlefield. Figure out what types of threat each monster poses and who the biggest threats are. Then employ the best tactics among the party to defeat each target.

For the party, this means understanding the general role each of their classes play on in the party. Like members of a sports team, each of them has strengths and weaknesses, such as speed or toughness.

Visual description and cues are the strongest way for each side to know who they’re dealing with. Cloth-wearers and other lightly armored combatants are usually frail ranged casters or artillery. Heavily armored characters with large melee weapons tend to be tough to punch through.

While you have the advantage of knowing the players’ combat roles in advance, keep in mind the importance of painting a picture of the roles their enemies embody. These clues are critical information for proper enemy targeting.

Example: Goblins, Weapons Ready

Which of the following two descriptions at the start of combat is more helpful for the party to hear?

A: “You see thirteen goblins in the ruined audience chamber, weapons ready.”

B: “You see thirteen goblins in the ruined audience chamber. Seven file down the stairs

with scimitars raised high. Five scramble to the balcony level, longbows in hand. Meanwhile, the one bearing the banner of their clan confidently remains where he is, muttering oaths to his dark goblin gods.”

Eliminate confusion on the types of threats the characters are dealing with as early as possible to save time and increase combat tempo .

Tip – Reinforce verbal descriptions with artwork and matching miniatures or monster tokens. These visual alternatives or supplements to descriptions often include a lot of equipment that immediately communicates the monster’s likely tactical role.

Tip – Encourage PCs to make more perception checks and monster knowledge checks if they don’t feel they have gained enough initial information on the type of threats the monsters pose. As most of these checks take little or no effort, it’s a smart course of action where they feel they need to know a little more to formulate effective strategy and tactics.

Get Into Position

Consider combat movement rates and modes, plus starting encounter distance, so each role can get into optimal position.

Ranged and artillery might be weak, but they are often mobile when needed. In

addition, they have the advantage of being able to cover great distances and areas with their attacks. Start ranged attackers at long or maximum range.

Melee defenders and soldiers tend to move slow. On top of that, they often have to spend time just reaching their foes at the beginning of combat. Charge or run with these combatants to close large distances and threaten as many creatures as possible right at the start of battle.

When facing adversaries, try to foil their movement or distance advantages, or amplify their disadvantages. For example, take cover against artillery and casters; walls might give you opportunity for total cover. By the same token, archers might set up behind arrow slits, cutting down the party before they can even reach the gates from their superior cover.

Ideal positioning helps a combatant be as effective in their role as possible.

• Damage dealers flank more often and easier, or otherwise deal more damage and kill enemies faster.

• Defender-types tie up and cut off more monsters from damaging the rest of the party.

• Healers and buffers provide healing and bonuses to as many allies as possible, increasing both party damage and toughness.

You can’t control, debilitate or kill what’s too far away or under cover. You can’t defend allies when you’re in the rear. You can’t heal allies out of casting range.

Move for Your Teammates

Be aware of ally positioning needs and distance advantages, and help them achieve

them.

Help your melee combatants achieve flanks, or move out of the way of a breath weapon or cloud spell to avoid possible friendly fire. Use your own attacks and powers to funnel enemies towards fighters and paladins and into your debilitator’s wicked area effects. Don’t skip or waste any opportunities to act or move so it helps an ally, especially if it makes their attacks more effective!

The Value of Initiative Varies

View initiative as a tool to get into position faster to accomplish your role. This varies based on the role and class you’re playing.

For example, it’s generally a good idea for tough characters like those aforementioned fighters and paladins to get into the fray and lock up their enemies as quickly as

possible. Area-damage dealers, controllers and disablers can also wreak havoc by getting the jump on a large force.

By contrast, healers and buffers don’t necessarily need to value initiative so highly, as a key part of what they contribute – healing – is reactive.

Melee bruisers can be anywhere on the spectrum. Sometimes a quick, brutal strike is great, yet it can also lead to quickly being surrounded, so you need to consider your mobility and both willingness and ability to take some early punishment.

Tip – You do not need to stay at the mercy of the dice for initiative. Plan foes to act in optimal order through delays. Encourage players to do the same. Just because someone rolls highest does not mean they must act first. Forgoing the opportunity to act right now to go later in the round can increase damage or effectiveness of the group.

Focus Fire

Focusing one enemy with all your attacks and damage, sometimes called “bursting them down” or “nuking” them, is a proven tactic. Focusing your damage output on one enemy at a time is the fastest and most reliable way to defeat an enemy force while taking the least amount of damage yourselves.

As such, employ focus fire every chance you get, whether you’re a monster or PC (with creatures that die from one hit, such as minions, being the lone exception).

Example: 4 x 4 x 4

Imagine 4 monsters with 4 hit points each. If 4 PCs are each capable of dealing 1 hit point of damage with their attacks, should they each attack a different monster during round one? Of course not, you say, nothing will die – or even be close to death!

Exactly right.

But if all 4 PCs focus on one monster in round 1, they kill it, and there will be three instead four monsters attacking and doing damage in round two.

The longer it takes to kill foes, the longer they are up beating on you and taking chunks out of your own hit points.

Manage Resources Wisely

Manage your attack, utility and healing resources well. Identify the threats you’re dealing with (see Identify Targets above), to best match up where most attacks, powers and healing will likely be spent.

Damage

Damage bears special mention. You always want to damage as many enemies as possible, as efficiently as possible, with a given attack. A weak single monster doesn’t need your most powerful attack. Wasting damage well past what’s needed to kill something is inefficient. There’s a time and place for every type of attack.

For example, if you’ve identified a horde of minion creatures, save your rare-use heavy hitter lightning spell or hail of powerfully envenomed arrows for when you’re confronted with a large force of standard or tough monsters instead, such as when you finally reach the top of the gnoll tower where the gnoll chieftain and his elite muscle and champions await.

By contrast, use monsters’ heavy hitting attacks as soon as possible, within reason, so they’re not wasted. Try to find a balance between affecting as many PCs as possible and using the attack within the first two or three rounds of combat. Otherwise, you risk these monsters being killed before they can get their best attacks off, greatly reducing their threat and challenge level.

Utility Options

If one of your utility options allows you a ton of free movement in an otherwise open field where enemies are already nearby, don’t decide to use that option because you can. Look for a better tactical choice and better way to spend your turn and action, even if it’s simply a shift to help an ally flank next turn.

Healing

If you need healing, consider all the resources available and their time or action cost. For example, you should lean on the cleric in your party for most healing, but otherwise consider your options through your own feats, utility options or consumables, especially if everyone just took a pounding from enemy artillery.

Sometimes your party’s healer is overburdened in a given round or even entire

encounter. It’s a tactical mistake to rely solely on his healing. Find another option, even if it’s a brief strategic withdrawal. Dead characters don’t win battles.

Command the Battlefield

Congratulations, General – the battlefield is yours! You’ve studied and executed efficient and deadly strategies and tactics in your games, and are ready and able to play monsters and enemies to their tactical strengths. Along the way, you’ve taught your party of

adventurers some stark lessons of war – lessons you and the party will take with you into the next hundred battles.

See you in the next lesson.

Resources

Find more at Roleplaying Tips: Strategy, Tactics and Logistics, 8 Tactics for Mooks, and

6 Devious Villain Tactics.

And even more at Leonine Roar: Encounter Start: Distance Matters, Initiative: Role Matters and Strikers: Assassins vs. Bruisers.