How Do I DM to Promote Combat as War?

[gfishfunk]

I have seen several posts now discussing 'Combat as Sport v. Combat as War'. Usually these comments are from the players' perspective.

Here is my quick and dirty definition which is maybe somewhat correct:

Combat as Sport: this implies an even playing field, where both groups play optimally on a battlefield using the rules of the game. This is a fairly normal dungeon set-up: we move to the next room and see a group of orcs and attack in formation. This views combat as a contained, encounter by encounter experience.

Combat as War: this implies the party is going to do everything they can outside or inside of combat to skew the results. An example may include attacking an enemy in the middle of the night and destroying their food and then running under the assumption that the party would then wait several days and attack again, whilst this time the enemy is running low on moral and is quite hungry. This views combat as the last step in a more complicated plan to first influence the environment.

Someone else could give a better explanation, feel free, but lets not get sidetracked over the exact definition and which style is better.

Instead, my question is what can I do as a GM to set up Combat as War scenarios and themes on a campaign level, on a session level, and on an encounter level?

[VoxRationis]

Yeesh... This is a bit tricky for me—normally the group I game with defaults to Combat As War, and needs to be kicked in the shins to do a proper crawl.

The simplest thing I can think of is to make the encounters appear (whether they are or not is irrelevant) to be far beyond what the PCs can take on in a fair fight. Large groups of opponents, each too tough to take out with a fireball, mixed units with lots of spellcasters, that sort of thing. Make it clear that the large-scale enemy is similarly too tough to challenge to a fair fight.

[Tanarii]

Tell the players it is a Combat-as-War game.

Warn them they have no expectation that they can win a fight. That encounters won't necessarily be level-appropriate, and they can easily get in over their heads if they're not careful and smart. You also have to decide if you're going to save their asses when that happens, or just let them die. IMO CaW works best if the answer is yes, they're gonna die if that happens.

You might want to have some level appropriate encounter zones aka Dungeons. That's their original purpose. Players can still choose to go to more dangerous areas (ie above their level), but the area should have a level it's all appropriate for if you choose to do that. (This feels a little gamist to some people.)

All this assumes a sandbox game environment. Which is IMO where CaW works best.

[Democratus]

All this assumes a sandbox game environment. Which is IMO where CaW works best.

Agreed. Sandbox games are the best place for "Combat as War".

The world has dangerous places and safe places. It's up to the characters to decide how much they can handle. And it is up to them to avoid getting in over their heads.

A few PC deaths usually does the job of exemplifying that the universe does not exist to coddle them. :smallbiggrin:

[smcmike]

Step 1: clearly signal that the group is up against a foe that cannot be solved by simply running in and attacking. This could be because the enemy is simply too strong or too numerous, or it could be because simply attacking wouldn't accomplish the party's goals at all.

Step 2: be very responsive to player ideas, especially as they get used to the idea. Do you know what stinks? Getting set up against an impossible-seeming challenge, then getting nowhere as you try to come up with creative solutions.

I was in a group where the party spent literally weeks trying to figure out how to safely attack a dragon, only to have every single idea go nowhere. The dragon's lair was at the bottom of a lake a hundred miles from civilization, in a landscape completely devoid of interesting or helpful features, and once the party discovered the lair, the dragon simply didn't come out (despite being apparently unaware of our presence). In the end we just lit a bonfire and drew the dragon into a boring and lethal fight. Then the campaign ended.

So encourage creative ideas by rewarding them, especially at first. Give them surprising twists, but don't slap them down and make the player regret trying something out of the box. And if your players don't come up with something, or seem stumped, have hooks ready - but try not to make them straightforward.

[DaveOTN]

If you want to promote a "Combat as War" mentality, you have to give the PCs some warning before a major encounter and let them decide how quickly to approach it. In a Combat as Sport-style game, you can get away with just having some narrative set scenes that lead up to each encounter:

"The six-day journey is mostly uneventful, save for the horribly unskilled bard on board, and you make it Newport with the wind at your back. As you leave the Merrimac and walk down the pier, the ripe smells of the seaport overcome your nose. All around you, longshoremen are unloading freight and merchants are busy hawking their wares. Suddenly, you spy Mr. Evil across the square, and it looks like he's seen you at just the same time! He puts his fingers to his lips and whistles sharply, and a half-dozen orc thugs leap out of a nearby rowboat and try to cut off your escape routes. Roll initiative."

That may be an interesting tactical combat, with all the dockside clutter around and the chance to fall into the ocean, swing on a rope, or upend an apple cart, but there's no way of approaching it strategically. The characters are thrust into combat and forced to react. That might be appropriate once in a while, but a Combat as War player will want to occasionally get the chance to outsmart the bad guys. Maybe after they defeat those orcs on the pier, and Mr. Evil scrambles away into the crowd, they find that one of the orcs has a clue in his pocket that gives the PCs the address of Mr. Evil's manor house. Now they have a clue that they can scheme around. Do they send the thief around to case the joint before they attack it? Maybe he sees that the whole first floor is packed with guards and traps, so the wizard and the thief come up with a plan to get the whole party in through a third-story window instead. Now they just have to defeat two guards and a trapped desk to get the evidence they need - but they need to be silent, and quick, or all those guards are coming upstairs.

Basically, you need to give the PCs clues that they can actually use to make the combat easier for them, and resist the temptation to just have things jump out at them all the time. If they're in the woods, they can see claw marks on the woods and the ranger notices owlbear tracks heading into the cave. If they're in a dungeon, one of the goblins tells them about the fire-breathing monkey two rooms ahead in exchange for his freedom. A Combat as War mentality rewards the PCs for scouting, investigation, and preparation, which means that as the DM you have to build out a map that allows players to bypass encounters completely at times rather than fade from one cut scene to the next.

[JellyPooga]

Tell the players it is a Combat-as-War game.

All this assumes a sandbox game environment. Which is IMO where CaW works best.

Pretty much this. Tell them it's CaW and run a sandbox.

The trick to a well run sandbox is to telegraph appropriately and to be lenient with the Players' ideas. You can put whatever encounters you like into the world and the players are at their liberty to explore them, but if you don't telegraph the difficulty of those encounters and don't give them the opportunity to prepare, or you clamp down on their more unusual solutions to problems then the players are likely to complain about the game being "unfair" and simply won't have fun.

For example; you've come up with a little dungeon, full of Trolls. A tribe of them, in fact. You've set the bait, with the local village/town complaining about the local monsters running off with their livestock, etc. and now people are going missing. The plucky young adventurers, all fresh-faced level 1's hear the rumours, think "ah, a simple monster quest", go exploring and promptly get eaten by the first Troll, who was hiding in the entrance of the cave and ambushed them.

You didn't telegraph the danger well enough (either that or the PC's ignored your clues, but that's on them). Make sure that any hooks you throw at the PC's include details that will hint at, or even outright state the danger-level. At least at first. Eventually, the PC's will actively look for those details and you won't have to be so blatant about it; if anything, they'll come to appreciate the intricacy of the methods you hide this information. The harder the challenge, the greater the enjoyment of overcoming it; this applies just as much to research as it does to combat.

Let's reset the scenario. You've put out the hooks and telegraphed well; the players realise the danger they're in (or at least know that they're well out of their league). Rather than face the trolls head-on, they decide that the best option would be to collapse the entrance to the cave. After all the hours you've put in to creating the cave-system, you don't want to see that effort wasted and rule that this simply isn't an option; there's not enough explosives, the troll in the entrance is too wary, the villagers don't want them to, or whatever excuse to make the PC's walk away and come back another day to tackle the dungeon the way you want them to.

You've squashed the Players agency. The point of CaW is that you need to let the players ideas fly. You don't have to bend over backwards and give them everything they want, but you need to give them the liberty for even the crazy ideas to work or at least for them to try them.

When running a sandbox, it's important to remember that you can always alter an encounter, use maps, traps and encounters elsewhere in the world when the Players skip something and most importantly, you can repopulate "cleared" areas. Those Trolls the players buried in their cave? One survived by eating all the other Trolls and is now some bloated mega-Troll, has dug his way out and is going on a rampage. In the wake of his destruction, something else has moved into the cave system; perhaps it used to be a mine and the villagers have reopened it, little realising that the accumulated dook from years of troll habitation has taken on a life of its own; cue a re-jig from a Troll dungeon to an Ooze dungeon and a plot alteration from clear-the-dungeon to rescue-the-miners.

Oops! This has turned into a "how to run a sandbox" digression...well, it's done now. I hope it's useful in some way, even if it doesn't really answer your question!

[Stan]

You can also demonstrate the concept on them with low CR creatures such as kobolds or goblins. For example, the kobolds steal stuff and retreat down small passages in their lair instead of waiting for their turn to get killed. When the party calls it a day, they kobolds do things to harass them and prevent them from getting a long rest. When the party is busy invading the dungeon, a few sneak out and steal or kill their mounts and take their gear.

I assume creatures like kobolds with smart leaders see attrition as the long term threat, not territory. So, whenever threatened, they take all their good stuff and run away through places only small creatures can go through. They can always find another cave or wait a week and come back. The party may have taken the kobold lair but will find that they really haven't dealt with the problem of kobolds raiding the locals if 90% of the kobolds survived.

[BRC]

Avoid situations that create a sense of artificiality to the encounters.

The classic example is a dungeon of 30x30 rooms, each containing some number of monsters and treasure. The Orc Room, the Ogre Room, the Ghoul Room, ect. The monsters stand there until you enter the room, then they fight you, die, and you move on to the next room.

This is an extremely artificial setup that is designed to feed the PC's Distinct, CR- Appropriate encounters. This leads to Combat-As-Sport, the monsters are not inhabitants of a living world, they're obstacles for you to overcome.

The Monsters shouldn't just be standing there, waiting for a fight. If they're on Guard Duty, they should act like Guards, and there should be something they are Guarding. They should try to sound the alarm and summon help. They should patrol, and change shifts, and kill time. If you kill some guards, the rest of the place should react in some way, rather than just waiting in their rooms for the PC's to show up.

[ClintACK]

Pretty much what everyone else has said.

Instead of meeting a level-appropriate patrol of goblin raiders, let the stealthy scout discover the main goblin encampment in the area -- from which all the raiding parties are coming. Make it clear there are too many to take head-on. Give lots of little details that might spark ideas (old abandoned mine that looks like it might collapse, ramshackle (flammable?) huts, improvised barricades between buildings -- ongoing construction, a couple of archer/look-outs up on roofs, and a small raiding patrol just arriving back). Be prepared to improvise answers to questions you haven't thought of -- what are they eating? Is there a barn full of grain or a pen with a bunch of pigs, or are their raiding parties the sole source of sustenance? Do they have prisoners?

"Open world" isn't just about long-distance travel or choice of encounter. It means there are vastly different ways to solve a challenge. Do they start a fire or set loose the pigs to make a distraction that lets them cave in the mine tunnel? Do they ambush patrols in the woods, or throw summoned creatures at the encampment while they hide and watch to analyze the goblin's defensive tactics? Do they set fire to the barn with the grain, or poison the water supply? Or maybe *talk* to the goblins -- why have they shown up in your peaceful little valley, could they be persuaded to keep moving rather than settling here?

Then go with whatever your players come up with. There's an old trick for generating story plots -- your protagonist is trying to do something. Does he succeed? Yes and No are both boring answers. Much more fun are: "Yes, and..." and "No, but...". Whether or not the party's plan works, always throw out some wrinkles. Something they didn't expect. That's what makes it fun.

[gfishfunk]

Then go with whatever your players come up with. There's an old trick for generating story plots -- your protagonist is trying to do something. Does he succeed? Yes and No are both boring answers. Much more fun are: "Yes, and..." and "No, but...". Whether or not the party's plan works, always throw out some wrinkles. Something they didn't expect. That's what makes it fun.

I would only add a single caveat to that: "Yes, and" or "No, but" cannot work to undermine what the players did: what was accomplished is done, what is not accomplished is not done, and the added aspect should be tangential or progressive.

[Armored Walrus]

I like Stan's post. Demonstrate the concept by having some low-CR monsters use combat-as-war techniques on the players.

In my teens when we were playing 2e, our "campaigns" initially were more or less all of us sitting down, the DM thumbing through the Monstrous Compendium and picking some monsters that looked like they'd be a cool fight, and then us trashing them with our over-powered group. We didn't get the idea of strategic thinking being an important part of the game until one of our friends picked up a module that included an encounter where a goblin, hiding behind a large, moveable shield, lobbing burning flasks of oil at us in a narrow dungeon corridor, nearly took out our entire level 5 or 6 party.

We spent almost an entire session, flabergasted that a goblin could be causing us this much trouble, and trying to change our thinking to encompass a situation that went beyond the monster's stat-block and became an actual tactical battle (so this still wasn't even combat-as-war as defined in this thread, but it was eye-opening to us at the time).

[kaoskonfety]

I ran into this issue with a group of dyed in the wool power-gamer-template-prestige class stackers years ago.

I opened setting the scene with an escalating conflict between nations. I set the encounter difficulty starting at with "its not a fight" - 4 kobolds vs a group of 6+ of ECL 10+ combat machines, and for each significant encounter doubled the opposition and added bells and whistles and from the start was not playing fair.
The 4 kobolds were dug in with traps, snares and favorable terrain and knowledge of the terrain. The 16 kobold fight had a couple dire weasels, cave in traps, almost cost them a member.

In the roughly '256 fight' the half dragon was sick of my crap and charged in "they can't kill me, its just kobolds, my AC is x and I have x HP" and jumped over the fort wall into the fort with no scouting. A round and change later the party was running from a rail of arrows and in need of diamonds. At this point they kinda figured out "head first" was not the solution (the scripted solutions were band the nations together against the shared threat or flee the nations with as many survivors as could be managed before the tidal wave of half starved kobolds killed and devourer everyone - ALL HAIL KING TORG!).

Combat as War is the good old route - the bads don't "play fair" because they are not playing. They are the people of tribes and empires who can hold off the run of the mill D&D monster fodder. The PC's win not because they defeated the 5000 orcs in the Valley of Bent Spears but because the Orcs leaders never knew they were there (several Orcs very briefly knew they were there...)

[Notafish]

I've seen scouting mentioned a lot here. What do you think is the best way to model effective scouting on the players' parts? Do you require regular perception and investigation checks? Make use of passive perception and investigation by default? If the party has forward scouts, should some organized enemies like bandits and hobgoblins have Observant (as in the feat) guards as a precaution?

[kaoskonfety]

I've seen scouting mentioned a lot here. What do you think is the best way to model effective scouting on the players' parts? Do you require regular perception and investigation checks? Make use of passive perception and investigation by default? If the party has forward scouts, should some organized enemies like bandits and hobgoblins have Observant (as in the feat) guards as a precaution?

I expect the party to try to make themselves aware of the opposition before they initiate a fight, and to not initiate a fight if victory is not clearly possible and likely. Details may require checks. "In the distance there are over 20 mounted knights and at least twice as many footmen" does not.

Quite often this isn't a roll as noting that there are several dozen structures and a few dozen troops in combat drills requires no roll. Most "overwhelming forces" are painful in their obviousness with checks being warranted to notice say the camp fires from several miles off or to get an idea of their composition and numbers from damage to the underbrush. Armies, even rather small ones, are HARD to hide.

Similarly in the parties favour an *army* doesn't make perception checks for "a halfling" or makes such checks at disadvantage. Because who cares - its a halfling, not an invasion. And if your scout is the kind of level 6+ bad ass some army grunt may actually know by sight: what were you doing for them to actually see you? The camp guards probably do not have observant. Their forward scouts might (or have if Perception and Stealth proficient instead of say Athletics and Intimidate)

For most of the above if a perception check is called for its going to be passive unless the player calls out they are paying that extra attention (spends turns).

Closer to the players scale "fair-ish" fights might call form more detailed and active rolls for not getting into tough fights, setting up traps and similar "winning before the dice are rolled" tactics. I've played characters several times with the stated goal of never rolling dice in combat and never using my AC (I've never REALLY succeeded at this in D&D but I've definitely been able to cut back ALOT). In this 'war' style fights are dangerous, win before they start whenever you can.