Finding Tactical Depth in 5e Combats

[Argothair]

Hi! New poster here, with a question about the depth of combat tactics in 5e D&D. What I mean by 'combat tactics' is the choices players make once they've already entered a particular battle. There's shedloads of work to be done in optimizing various builds for combat, and I've really enjoyed reading some of the guides that have popped up right hear on this forum. That's obviously a very interesting part of the game. Once you've actually chosen your feats, chosen your spells, chosen your weapons, and your party is locking swords with a trio of bugbears, though, are there any more interesting choices to make? If so, how many?

To me, it seems like there are only three significant choices for players to make in combat:
(1) Can I survive another round of combat without healing or retreating?
(2) Do I want to burn a special ability like a high-level spell, or just use my standard attack/cantrip?
(3) Do I want to attack the monster closest to me, or is it worth skipping a round of damage to target a more suitable victim?

(1) requires some math to figure out how much damage you're likely to take before your next turn, but it's rarely an interesting choice. You either bet that you'll survive, or you don't. If you think you're going to stay in positive HP, it almost always makes sense to crank out some more damage, in the hopes that you can knock out one more enemy before you have to heal. There's no room here for tactical brilliance; it's just bean-counting.

(2) is very meta-game-y. Whether to burn your high-level spells or 1x/long rest abilities depends mostly on whether you expect the DM will drop another high-level encounter on you before you get a chance to rest. To a certain extent, you have to figure out which of your high-level spells (if any) will be most effective against your current enemy, but you're choosing from a pre-selected list of spells or abilities, and there's not *that* much variation from one combat spell to the next. Don't try to poison an elemental, don't try to freeze a Yeti, don't try to use a high-damage/low-accuracy ability against a pixie, and you're basically looking at comparable DPR per spell level no mater which combat spell you pick. Because so few bonuses stack and because of the limiting effects of Concentration, it's hard to find ways to combine spells in ways that are significantly more effective than just using the spells one at a time. The whole is not more than the sum of its parts. You certainly have a choice to make, but it's not always interesting. Also, if you've already burned your 1x/long rest ability, you don't get a choice -- you have to go with something less powerful, whether you like it or not.

(3) involves figuring out whether a monster behind the enemy front line is a significantly more valuable target than an enemy on the front line. Once in a while, this might be true for plot reasons, e.g., the goblin in the back is about to run down a tunnel with the Priceless Artifact, so you'd better incapacitate him quick and forget about the ogre guards standing 50 feet in front of the tunnel mouth. Also once in a while, this might be true because the enemy's got a high-level glass cannon guarded by a solid, disciplined formation of mid-level melee grunts. For the most part, though, your party is almost always better off just killing whoever's closest. The benefits of teaming up on a hapless minion are huge -- if four or five attackers all target the same enemy, that enemy is almost certainly out of commission after one or two rounds. This saves your party the cost of taking damage from that enemy, of being flanked by that enemy, of worrying that the enemy will pull out some kind of deadly item...incapacitating an enemy is like getting a free healing spell every round for however much damage the enemy would otherwise be inflicting. A Rogue might be able to effectively sneak deep into enemy territory, but any character not optimized for stealth is going to be stopped and attacked -- and maybe grappled, slowed, stunned, charmed, forced to pause and heal, or incapacitated along the way. You can also get out of range of your archers and casters by trying to rush ahead, further slowing your ability to kill monsters. In the time it would take you to successfully maneuver around a line of melee guards who are trying to kill you, you could probably just kill the guards. This rule of thumb also applies to a single melee guard, and it goes double for a single caster who's been foolish enough to venture out in front. So 9 times out of 10, the answer is "No, I don't want to skip my round of damage to try to target a victim further back in the enemy lines -- I'll just attack whoever's closest to me, allowing my teammates to help pile on the damage and quickly take my target out of commission."

I've only played a few games of 5e, and I haven't read the DMG cover-to-cover, so feel free to point out what I'm missing. What's wrong with my analysis? Have you seen some amazing combat tactics in 5e? What were they, and how/why did they come up? Were they amazing because they were fun to think up and execute, rather than because casting Meteor Swarm while Flying is "inherently awesome?"

[Cyan Wisp]

Seems a very dry analysis of combat to me and it seems to rely on a scenario where you are robotically hacking from one side of an otherwise empty 20x20 room to the other with very little passion or flair. Surely it all depends on what happens during combat and where the combat takes place. Unexpected things happen all the time. Some of the following things aren't "optimal", probably, but they happen (I've seen them done) and they seem tactical to me. Do all of them fit your 3-part decision tree?


Trying to lure an enemy into more advantageous (for the party) terrain (such as a tight corridor)?
Kiting stupid enemies to maximise area effect spells.
Positioning to take better advantage of things like Great Weapon Master cleaving.
Using Bardic Inspiration dice generously.
Deciding when to Disengage and when to just rely on your armour
Negating Opportunity Attacks through spells like shocking grasp or invisibility or lessening their effects through manoeuvres like Parry or Evasive Footwork.
Activating Bonus actions where possible - dump your shield and finish off your ailing foe with a dagger.
Help action to give others Advantage - the guy with the magic weapon when fighting werewolves, maybe.
Using illusions to confuse or delay (decoys, distractions)
Rescuing a dying friend before they have the Death saves beaten out of them.
Grappling an enemy and moving them where you want them
Battlemaster Fighter manoeuvres add many new options - Disarming, Goading, Tripping, Lunging to name a few.
Setting up sneak attacks or opportunity attacks
Choosing to use cover or Stealth
Shoving the enemy into the lava or off a cliff and avoiding getting shoved yourself (by positioning)
Goading enemies into favouring a particular target (RP dependent, or manoeuvre/spell)
Ready actions (in general)
Damaging multiple foes (not concentrated fire on one target) and then sleep or colour spray
Outpacing slower foes, wearing them down with spells or missile fire.


If you don't consider these things tactical, please help me out by listing some things that you think are tactical and "interesting"! :smallsmile:

[hymer]

It's a hard analysis, but I think you've caught most of it. Still, there are a few quibbles or additions one might bring up:

1: This isn't perfectly predictable. It's almost always something of a gamble; stay in and fight, or take some defensive measure. You might get lucky and take no damage at all, or you could get a damage spike that would maul you if you aren't at or near full health. If this part isn't interesting any more, it's probably more because it's become routine. Varying foes with very steady and very spiky damage can do something.

3: Don't forget simple Shoves. Depending on the character and party composition, it could be very useful to spend an attack on trying to shove an enemy down so everyone gets advantage on their melee attacks against them. It may also be important to engage a particular enemy to keep them away from the squishies, or keep them from running off and fetching reinforcements, or to bring a ranged specialist into melee, or whatever other reason you can come up with.
There's also the fight against a big, fairly slow melee character, where the trick is to stay out of reach at all costs and pelt them with ranged attacks. Don't get cornered, or you'll get clobbered.

There should also be some external factors in the occasional fight to make them more interesting. The fight around the rickety bridge, on the avalanche prone slope, in an area littered with caltrops, in a swamp with a few solid places to stand, in a dark place with enemies trying to extinguish your light sources, and so on. These should put some (fairly) fresh angles into decision-making.

[silveralen]

There are also issue of teamwork to be considered. Setting allies up for attacks or exploiting the set up is a big deal. Things think eagle barbarian+spike trap can be both effective and amusing.

[Gwendol]

There is a lack of cooperative combat in the analysis. A strategy usually involves the whole team.

What does the terrain/theater look like?

How are the enemies organized?

What is the team objective with this combat? Examples:

Escape
Survival
Protect
Kill
Retrieve

Depending on the objectives you can then formulate a general strategy (divide & conquer, shock & awe, lock-down, etc) and use tactics (flanking, kiting, sniping, frontal assault, shield wall, mounted charges, grappling, battlefield manipulation, debuffing etc) to achieve them.

[Argothair]

Cool! Very interesting ideas so far, thank you.

Cyan, I'd call all of these interesting:

Trying to lure an enemy into more advantageous (for the party) terrain (such as a tight corridor)?
Kiting stupid enemies to maximise area effect spells.
Positioning to take better advantage of things like Great Weapon Master cleaving.
Activating Bonus actions where possible - dump your shield and finish off your ailing foe with a dagger.
Shoving the enemy into the lava or off a cliff and avoiding getting shoved yourself (by positioning)
Damaging multiple foes (not concentrated fire on one target) and then sleep or colour spray


I'm not sure what kiting is -- can someone bring me up to speed? Also, does anyone besides Barbarian get a bonus action for killing someone with a dagger?

Hymer, I like the idea of varying foes with very steady and very spiky damage, and fighting in a dark place with enemies trying to extinguish your light sources sounds amazing. I do worry that too many RAW races have darkvision, but I might try to homebrew some other advantage for the Elves besides darkvision-- I can understand Elves seeing by moonlight or starlight, but I don't think non-Drow Elves should have advantages in a dank, dark tunnel.

I also like "the fight against a big, fairly slow melee character, where the trick is to stay out of reach at all costs and pelt them with ranged attacks. Don't get cornered, or you'll get clobbered." I plan to GM a campaign sometime next year, and I'll make sure to include a few of those brutes for my players to learn to stay away from. You could even give monsters a bonus attack if their victim is (literally) up against a wall!

Many of the tactical variants you can get from fighting in dangerous terrain are either too boring or too fatal for my taste. If you're fighting near a lava pit, or by the side of a cliff, then one misstep and your character is dead and probably very far away, to boot. On the other hand, if you're fighting in a swamp that doesn't have quicksand, so what? If you can kill an enemy by standing in disadvantaged terrain, you're not going to be taking that many counter-attacks anyway. You can get around this problem with exactly the right setup by the DM -- a bridge over a 50-foot-deep canyon, or a shallow rivulet of lava that burns your foot instead of a deep pool of magma that disintegrates your entire body. I think it's tricky, though.

I also worry about shoving being too difficult relative to its benefits -- it takes up the same amount of time as making a weapon attack, and even if you succeed, it gives your party one round of advantage. Assuming the best-case scenario, where advantage increases your chance of hitting on attacks by 25%, you'd need five party members attacking the same prone enemy just to break even on the shove (six party members to profit), no?

Gwendol, I'm curious about your proposed "protect" and "survive" objectives. How would you set that up as a GM? When I'm protecting someone (or something), isn't the best course of action usually to just run away with him/her/it? Also, don't you always need to protect your party? None of the PCs are expendable in the same way that a captain on a vital escort mission might consider an infantry squad expendable. And when is survival different from escape? Again, isn't the best way to survive usually to either kill your enemy or run away? How do you engineer a situation where you have to stand your ground against unfavorable odds, but if you can hold out long enough, then you expect to win? I've always thought "reinforcements arriving in the nick of time" was more than a little cliched, not to mention railroady. Can't your party just hide or fall back or delay for another five minutes so the cavalry can get there before combat starts?

[silveralen]

I also worry about shoving being too difficult relative to its benefits -- it takes up the same amount of time as making a weapon attack, and even if you succeed, it gives your party one round of advantage. Assuming the best-case scenario, where advantage increases your chance of hitting on attacks by 25%, you'd need five party members attacking the same prone enemy just to break even on the shove (six party members to profit), no?

Nope, not sure where you got that from. if it increased your chance of hitting by 25%, you'd only need to make two attacks of the same strength to benefit on average. .5*(3A)=1.5A=.75*(2A).

[Myzz]

...I'm not sure what kiting is -- can someone bring me up to speed? ...

Kiting is where you attack at range and retreat and the enemy is dumb enough to follow you... You keep your at range attacks up and the opponent can not close into melee combat before it dies. Obviously only used if the opponent does not have its own ranged attack, or the one it does have is inferior to your parties ranged attacks... The example given was a big slow opponent that you want to stay out of reach of... and you keep at out of reach and finish it while it stumbles about trying to get at you...

Not sure if this tactic was ever done prior to online gaming... I know it was not really used in the parties I was in prior to playing online games... (with the exception of "we blow them all up before they reach us") Although we did lure enemies across traps that we set up, which could partially be called kiting... very few Move + Action (Ranged) was taken in my 2e days...

[Human Paragon 3]

I had the responsibility of RPing an orc warlord in battle recently, a pretty straitforward job, and I took the following tactical actions and choices in combat.

1) During the first round, some of my orcs were put to sleep with the sleep spell. On my turn, I elected to charge into the water so I could kick cold water onto them and wake them up before tossing a throwing axe at the elves. This cost me movement, and delayed reaching the elven general across the field, but it let me gain two allies back.

2) Over the next turn, I made numerous choices about which enemies to attack, whether to use the reckless attack class feature, and where to stand.

3) On turn 3, I was given a choice between closing with the elf general (the primary target of the attack) or going after squishy casters who had the potential to do more damage to my troops. I decided to close with the general.

4) On turn 4, I was in striking distance. I tossed another weapon to see if I could one-shot the general, and assess how many HPs he had.

5) I had another ally close by, and that ally had sneak attack. The elf general was very mobile and had a lot of damage potential, multi-attacking with a greatsword. I had the choice of attacking with reckless attack, or grabbing him, so I could eventually hold him down and let my sneak attacking ally kill him from a distance. I elected to grab him, with the idea of tripping him next turn.

6) I also realized I could move once I grabbed him, so I walked to the edge of a 5-foot ledge and positioned us so I was holding him over the edge, giving my ally advantage on attacks.

On the next turn I was finally brought down by the elf, but as you can see, I made interesting tactical choices each round.

[hymer]

Not sure if this tactic was ever done prior to online gaming...

Back in the 90s, we called it the Houdini Feint, in that you kept escaping. :smallsmile:

[archaeo]

To the broader point, I think Human Paragon basically covers it. 5e provides a wealth of tactical gameplay options, should you choose to take them.


Not sure if this tactic was ever done prior to online gaming...

I feel like the principles of "kiting" have been around for centuries in games like chess, wherein one can threaten wide swaths of the board while remaining out of reach. Indeed, it's a huge part of the midgame, from what I understand. The idea of "attack something that can't attack me back, and continue to do so indefinitely" isn't new at all; "kiting" is just the game-y neologism that's arisen to describe it.

[Ziegander]

Also, does anyone besides Barbarian get a bonus action for killing someone with a dagger?

What are we even talking about here?

[Myzz]

What are we even talking about here?

Drop shield, draw dagger, Two Weapon Fighting = extra attack?

[Garimeth]

Some pretty good ones out there already, but I wanted to elaborate on the topics of mixed enemies, terrain, and survival (specifically the cavalry arrival).

I think you might be focusing too much on micro terrain (I.E. this building) as opposed to macro terrain (I.E. the orcs are arriving from the west to assault the town.) Giving PCs the ability to choose the location of the fight can add a whole new dimension especially if they have time to prepare a defense or plan an assault.

Consider the following (stolen from an upcoming encounter I'm still planning) The party arrives in the town, and checks in with their POC, a platoon commander in command of 45 soldiers, who has been tasked with providing security to the village in response to an increase in orc and ogre raids out of the mountians to the NE. (One of the PCs is an officer, a Captain, and by the time of this adventure will be a knight.) He has command of the platoon. When they go and scout the mountains (presumably with the majority of the platoon remaining in the mining town) they will discover a camp of 100 orcs, 20 ogres, and either two trolls or 2 hill giants. Depending on how well they scouted an alarm may have been sounded an hour out and they may be walking into an ambush, or they may have an opportunity to gather some intel. If they gather that intel successfully they learn that in 1 week's time the camp is going to assault the town, which has very few defenses and few fighting men to supplement the platoon. The nearest city they can request aid from is roughly a 5 days hard ride away. Now they can make an operational decision as opposed to a tactical one.

Do they:

A. Try to assault the camp before the attack?
B. Try to ambush the raid en route?
C. Try to defend the town, and send a runner for aid? (hence the cavalry arriving in time)
D. Evacuate the town and try to return with a greater force at another time to reclaim the town and its mine?
E. Something I haven't thought of or some combination of the above?

So now they have very meaningful "tactical" decisions before the fight even starts. Where should we do the ambush, where is the terrain best, where can we lay traps, can we fall back or escape from there? Can we defend the town, what is the terrain like, can we make our numbers appear larger than they are and bluff them until the reinforcements arrive? Add to this that when combat starts they can easily mow down the orcs (this is in 13th Age btw, but the scenario is system agnostic) who are mooks, but the giants can two shot them. So now they need to pay great attention to the terrain and movement to whittle down the giants quickly via ranged attacks while not being over run or penned in by the ogres (I plan on the platoon mostly dealing with the orcs in order to cut down on the mechanical blost and time sink of the combat, I also may scale the number of ogres and number of days until the attack.

So anyway, my general point is that alot of the "tactics" take place before the enounter even starts, and depends on the ultimate goal of the opposition and the party.

[Cyan Wisp]

Drop shield, draw dagger, Two Weapon Fighting = extra attack?

That's exactly what I meant. I haven't done it, but I've seen it. In hindsight it doesn't actually seem legal considering "doffing" a shield requires an action. Strike that!

The idea behind the "kiting" was retreating in such a way that the enemies come together as a group to pursue, thus setting up more advantageous targets for fireball, lightning bolt and the like (rather than be spread out and behind cover or whatever).

[archaeo]

Giving PCs the ability to choose the location of the fight can add a whole new dimension especially if they have time to prepare a defense or plan an assault.

A trick I saw once in the 4e podcast I listen to (Critical Hit (http://majorspoilers.com/critical-hit/), which is currently running Lost Mines, by the way) was the DM let the players scout ahead and, when they decided they'd ambush the bad guys, let the scouting player draw the battle map as a way of signifying that the PCs got to choose where they'd fight.

Obviously not something to be used every fight, nor something that you can use at every table, but I imagine it could really add to the tactical fun for some people.

[Garimeth]

A trick I saw once in the 4e podcast I listen to (Critical Hit (http://majorspoilers.com/critical-hit/), which is currently running Lost Mines, by the way) was the DM let the players scout ahead and, when they decided they'd ambush the bad guys, let the scouting player draw the battle map as a way of signifying that the PCs got to choose where they'd fight.

Obviously not something to be used every fight, nor something that you can use at every table, but I imagine it could really add to the tactical fun for some people.

Hmm I've never tried that, but I've certainly given players a map and let them prepare emplacements, traps, barriers and the like. It helps if you run a little bit more lethal of a game, or scenarios where they can't simply waltz in and kill everything (in terms of difficulty) or where simply defeating the enemy does not accomplish the objective (strategically).

[Knaight]

You've got tactical positioning, you've got area effects, and you've got variability in combat relevant statistics between characters. Tactical depth has been accomplished with much less than this, as a look at any number of turn based tactics video games shows. Then there's the big advantage to tabletop games where options that haven't been premade are still available.

There's not all that much tactical depth in something like a straight corridor fight, or a big empty room, sure. That's indicative of the area being boring; it isn't a flaw in the system.

[Garimeth]

I think the big drive I'm making is that the terrain is key. Nto to beat a dead horse, but consider the Battle of Helm's Deep, as portrayed in the movies.

The walls, the siege tactics, the narrow bridge, the weak point in the wall that must be defended. These are more important than the individual action economy.

When you get down to it the basics of combat are shoot, move, communicate - but there is alot more to tactics than pulling a trigger, using a radio, and moving from point a to point b.