How do you deal with players who suck at combat?

[BettaGeorge]

We've all been in a situation where we have to plan around that one guy who min-maxes his character into curb-stomping level-appropriate encounters, but in my current group, I am faced with a novel problem: they are all terrible at D&D combat.

Their characters are not min-maxed, which is cool. But they also do not use their existing abilities to their full extent and do not coordinate their actions at all, which leads to even underleveled encounters quickly killing them if I don't pull my punches a lot.

Luckily, my campaign is very RP-heavy, but the players have unanimously requested at least the occasional fight as well as "some dungeon crawls", which prevents me from just shrugging and focusing on the RP. Besides, if we wanted a combat-less roleplaying experience, we would've picked a different system.

Have any of you been in a similar situation? How do I proceed? I have talked to them several times about at least coordinating in combat, but so far it hasn't stuck.

We have a big confrontation coming up that will likely escalate into a fight, and I'm having trouble coming up with a balance where I don't just curb-stomp the PCs but also the opponents have more than 4 HP.

I'm considering just throwing a few better magic items at the party to help up their raw power, but once that's done, it's hard to take back, so I would like to hear alternatives first.

It probably doesn't help that I am a) pretty good at strategy games and b) much more familiar with the rules than my players. One thing I've started doing is have all low-intelligence monsters act really, really dumb (going after the last person who hit them, even if that means wasting a turn running after a ranged fighter), which has helped the party barely survive an encounter with them.

Any tips are much appreciated!

[JNAProductions]

Well, let's start with the obvious:

Talk to the players. Guide them through some better tips and tricks, see if you can get them to coordinate their abilities better. And make sure they're having fun, of course!

[BettaGeorge]

Well, let's start with the obvious:

Talk to the players. Guide them through some better tips and tricks, see if you can get them to coordinate their abilities better. And make sure they're having fun, of course!

So far they're having fun, even though they usually lose battles. I would just like to keep the fun while also adding a few battles where they don't almost die.

Would you happen to have a link to a good 3.5e combat cheat sheet? When you've been running a system for a long time, it gets very hard to think like a newcomer.

[JNAProductions]

So far they're having fun, even though they usually lose battles. I would just like to keep the fun while also adding a few battles where they don't almost die.

Would you happen to have a link to a good 3.5e combat cheat sheet? When you've been running a system for a long time, it gets very hard to think like a newcomer.

Nope. I do not. Plus, it'd vary from PC to PC-a charger Fighter isn't the same as a tripper Fighter.

Maybe post their PC sheets here too, so we can offer more tailored advice?

[RNightstalker]

A way to RP it would be to incorporate an NPC party leader to help direct combat, and "teach" them basic strategy.

[Lapak]

I don't know if any of these work within the setting or story you're creating together, but:

You could put them through a mirror-match with someone who wants to defeat but not kill them. Literally throw their own characters at them, but use the tactics you see them not using. Gives them a chance to see their own potential. Wizard running them through an illusionary gauntlet? Mirror of Benign Opposition? Give yourself a reason to model the behavior you want.
Give them a combat mentor character, a low-powered Captain America to help call the shots for their Avengers. No one loves escort missions, but escorting the battle-savvy elder who can suggest combat strategies might give them some combat training they carry forward into future sessions.
You never learn something completely until you teach it to someone else. Do a mind-swap, forcing them to run each other's characters for a combat or a session with the goal of getting back to their proper bodies. Reading someone else's abilities may force both the owner and the borrower to understand the abilities attached better. Bonus points if you actively encourage them to do 'their character's approach to this character's abilities,' as it might provoke some new tactics.

[RNightstalker]

You could put them through a mirror-match with someone who wants to defeat but not kill them. Literally throw their own characters at them, but use the tactics you see them not using. Gives them a chance to see their own potential. Wizard running them through an illusionary gauntlet? Mirror of Benign Opposition? Give yourself a reason to model the behavior you want.


If going this route, there's the Aleax for exactly that purpose.

[BettaGeorge]

If going this route, there's the Aleax for exactly that purpose.

What is an Aleax?

I love the idea of giving them a mentor. I might even have a suitable NPC they already know. I'll ask them whether they would be okay with that.

[RNightstalker]

What is an Aleax?

I love the idea of giving them a mentor. I might even have a suitable NPC they already know. I'll ask them whether they would be okay with that.

Aleax is in the Book of Exalted Deeds. The entry is normally listed as something a deity sends when one of their followers screws up. But you don't need to use it that way.

[JNAProductions]

What is an Aleax?

I love the idea of giving them a mentor. I might even have a suitable NPC they already know. I'll ask them whether they would be okay with that.

A construct made by a deity to hunt someone down. Completely immune to harm from anything except their intended target.

Probably not suitable for this situation.

[Bohandas]

Buy them a copy of the CRPG adaptation of Temple of Elemental Evil so they can practice at home. It's 3e and turnbased so exactly what you;d get in a real game minus any ad-hoc use of the scenery

[Lapak]

A construct made by a deity to hunt someone down. Completely immune to harm from anything except their intended target.

Probably not suitable for this situation.
Aside from the plot issues, Aleax would super-enforce a one-on-one situation when you're trying to teach them to work together. Nothing that can't be handwaved and homebrewed, but as written they're not quite the thing.

[JoeNapalm]

They need a mentor and a training montage.

60% of the time, it works every time.


-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[BettaGeorge]

A training montage, why didn't I think of that! I'll start searching for power ballads right away.

[RNightstalker]

Aside from the plot issues, Aleax would super-enforce a one-on-one situation when you're trying to teach them to work together. Nothing that can't be handwaved and homebrewed, but as written they're not quite the thing.

It can be...you're right it probably isn't the best for this situation...but it's another tool in the toolbox.

[Jazath]

We've all been in a situation where we have to plan around that one guy who min-maxes his character into curb-stomping level-appropriate encounters, but in my current group, I am faced with a novel problem: they are all terrible at D&D combat.

Their characters are not min-maxed, which is cool. But they also do not use their existing abilities to their full extent and do not coordinate their actions at all, which leads to even underleveled encounters quickly killing them if I don't pull my punches a lot.

Luckily, my campaign is very RP-heavy, but the players have unanimously requested at least the occasional fight as well as "some dungeon crawls", which prevents me from just shrugging and focusing on the RP. Besides, if we wanted a combat-less roleplaying experience, we would've picked a different system.

Have any of you been in a similar situation? How do I proceed? I have talked to them several times about at least coordinating in combat, but so far it hasn't stuck.

We have a big confrontation coming up that will likely escalate into a fight, and I'm having trouble coming up with a balance where I don't just curb-stomp the PCs but also the opponents have more than 4 HP.

I'm considering just throwing a few better magic items at the party to help up their raw power, but once that's done, it's hard to take back, so I would like to hear alternatives first.

It probably doesn't help that I am a) pretty good at strategy games and b) much more familiar with the rules than my players. One thing I've started doing is have all low-intelligence monsters act really, really dumb (going after the last person who hit them, even if that means wasting a turn running after a ranged fighter), which has helped the party barely survive an encounter with them.

Any tips are much appreciated!

Force the characters to enter situations where thinking things out is a must. If your players can't think you shouldn't pull your punches. Throw at them things that they find challenging and since they lack coordination put them in situations were they face combatants who have coordination and are better off for it. Let them figure out how THEY should coordinate their efforts. If they mess up jokes on them. Life is tough.
Let them learn from their mistakes in combat, if they don't fate shouldn't pull its punches and roll over cause they are the main characters, it should be merciless.

[JNAProductions]

Force the characters to enter situations where thinking things out is a must. If your players can't think you shouldn't pull your punches. Throw at them things that they find challenging and since they lack coordination put them in situations were they face combatants who have coordination and are better off for it. Let them figure out how THEY should coordinate their efforts. If they mess up jokes on them. Life is tough.
Let them learn from their mistakes in combat, if they don't fate shouldn't pull its punches and roll over cause they are the main characters, it should be merciless.

That is a fine way to play. It is not, however, the only way to play.

In this situation, I think we should defer to the person who actually knows the players and trust them to know better than we do what would be fun for the table.

[icefractal]

Similar to a Mirror of Opposition but with a reason it isn't deadly, what about a magic item that requires defeating yourself to activate?

When you touch it and say the command word, you fall unconscious, and have a mental fight with a copy of yourself. If you win, it activates. If you lose, you just wake up with a headache and/or nonlethal damage.

Why would it work that way?
* It's a training tool.
* It's a holy relic of the god of battle.
* The psychic duel is what powers the item.

This would be annoying to do too often, so maybe once you win enough fights you've mastered the item and can activate it normally, or maybe it's an item that would only get used occasionally.

[Calthropstu]

Take them into a dream world where the group fights carbon copies of themselves.
Use their characters and obliterate them. Let them see their characters being used right, and it will cue them into possibilities of how they can improve their own strategies.

Edit: Pass it off as some fey or friendly concerned outsider trying to teach them they could be so much stronger.

[liquidformat]

Out of curiosity what are all your players characters? Do they have a dysfunctional mix of characters?

[gijoemike]

So, my GM had to handle this issue a few times because of me. Everyone in the group noted that I would roll an unusual # of natural 1s. They even tracked it in a few different games and was always rolling on the low side with d20s. This went on for years. Said GM banned me from using my own dice at one point not because I was cheating but because I was breaking the laws of statistics to the detriment of the group. They also started having me play casters because the enemy makes the saves.

Back on topic, his solution was to use enemies as normal showing the group better tactics. But he would lower the hp of those enemies by 12 to 20 hp. Basically, 1 good 2 handed weapon swing. This put a handicap on his minions. As we slowly got better he would lower the handicap by only 5 to 12 hps, finally to 0. This way the GM was in complete control of the handicap, no items to deal with. It was invisible to the players so progress wasn't constantly being strived for.

Sadly, I have still managed to wreck entire campaigns by rolling a nat 1 on a spell resistance check when a 2+ would have succeeded. As the wizard they expected at least 1 of my spells to get through to the demon that had SR. And I still avoid 2 weapon fighting blenders like the plague. Then one day and several sets of dice later it just stopped. I now roll an average of 9.5 to 11 during games sessions. I grant you I haven't needed to track that in years. But I am not the joke of my friends with 'you cannot roll a one...' anymore. I just had a really really long run of bad luck with dice.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

I don't know if any of these work within the setting or story you're creating together, but:

You could put them through a mirror-match with someone who wants to defeat but not kill them. Literally throw their own characters at them, but use the tactics you see them not using. Gives them a chance to see their own potential. Wizard running them through an illusionary gauntlet? Mirror of Benign Opposition? Give yourself a reason to model the behavior you want.
You never learn something completely until you teach it to someone else. Do a mind-swap, forcing them to run each other's characters for a combat or a session with the goal of getting back to their proper bodies. Reading someone else's abilities may force both the owner and the borrower to understand the abilities attached better. Bonus points if you actively encourage them to do 'their character's approach to this character's abilities,' as it might provoke some new tactics.


Both of these sound like fun one-shots I might have to steal!

But for the first one specifically, I think the best way to run it would be one evil counterpart at a time, versus the whole party. This has several advantages over a full on scrum. First, they're much less likely to lose, which means you don't even need to come up with a reason for the competent evil counterparts to spare the party. Second, it really hammers home how much of a difference these tactics make, essentially going "Your character, run properly, is strong enough to be a full on boss fight"; relatedly, this means each one will have the party's full focus for a time, rather than splitting that focus up for a longer fight. Third, the whole party ganging up on one challenging opponent should encourage more cooperation than each member squaring off with their clone in a 1v1 duel.

[TheFamilarRaven]

Out of curiosity what are all your players characters? Do they have a dysfunctional mix of characters?

I'm curious as to the party composition as well. Also some details on HOW they don't coordinate and HOW they don't fully utilize their abilities might be helpful too. Like, is the wizard (assuming one is exists) only preparing Charm Person? Do they prefer to cast Magic Missile because DAMAGE, instead of casting a battlefield control spell like Sleep? Does the fighter forget to use Power Attack? Are they not flanking things? Do they not focus down targets and instead spread their damage out amongst their opponents (this, and not flanking are the two I see most often in newer players).

Regardless. You said you've already brought this up with them, so I'm not exactly sure what you can do to drive the message home. I suppose when a player is about to do something in which a tactically superior option is obviously available you can say "are you sure THAT's how you want to do this?", to try to get them to reevaluate things. It's meta-gamey and can take away the immersion and can slow things down, but it's a decent way to remind them that they need to look closer at the battlefield. On the flip side you should remember to act impressed and congratulatory when they DO take the appropriate tactical option. IMO, letting the players figure out the best tactical solution (even with a few hints) is gonna be better long term than an NPC that walks around telling them how to fight.

I do commiserate with you. I run a game that has a similar (though it sounds like it's not as severe) situation to yours. And it sucks because I want to create these epic encounters where the big bad is super savvy etc but then I know I'll just win because my players won't account for X, Y or Z.

Of course if everyone (yourself included) is having fun with the game then there's no real problem, and this doesn't actually need to be fixed.

[BettaGeorge]

Wow, lots of excellent suggestions here!

Since two of you have inquired after the party composition: The party is a bit skewed since one player left very unexpectedly. Currently (and for the foreseeable future … cough pandemic cough) we have (all at level 3):

A rogue with str 8 who hence only uses ranged attacks and never gets in more than one sneak attack per encounter.

A wizard who basically prepares a combination of Magic Missile and Burning Hands because, you know, damage!

And a druid who actually thinks about tactics and carries the entire fight by himself, or at least starts to before having to spend all his actions healing the other two. If it weren't for Summon Nature's Ally's crazy action economy, the party would be dead thrice over.

Basically, everyone is having fun with the roleplaying parts and the murder investigations, but I have no idea how to do a dungeon crawl that will be fun for this group.

I had a bit of free time this week and actually playtested two encounters with copies of the party's character sheets, and they actually stood a fair chance in both of them. The only character who was really quite useless was the rogue – those 1d8 damage per round just don't influence the outcome of the battle. As far as I can tell, "ranged rogue" is just not a viable thing before level 8 or so, so he basically just stands around and lets the fight happen around him.

So I'm guessing my main problems are that the wizard player (I've talked to them about this) refuses to prepare spells that don't make them "the hero" (damage spells kill people => good; other spells "only" help your allies => bad) and that I have no idea how to help the rogue player if melee is not an option. (Though I maintain melee is fine even at 8 str – sneak attack makes up for that IMO.)

(Incidentally, how overpowered is Entangle at low levels? It completely incapacitates large groups of enemies, as no enemy spellcaster will be able to make a DC 20 str check like, ever, and the Concentration check to get off a spell while entangled is ridiculously high.)

[Troacctid]

My secret technique is setting up convenient Roll20 macros for the attacks they ought to be using, and linking the macros to their character sheet so that they pop up automatically when their token is selected. If you stick buttons in front of their face, they won't forget about the options they have available!

As far as magic items that would power them up: if they're panicking when their health gets low and begging the druid for heals, they might enjoy the helm of glorious recovery. Rogue is having trouble getting sneak attacks? How about a shroud of night, or a wand of swift invisibility? And I bet that wizard would love to get their hands on a burning veil and empowered spellshard.

[icefractal]

3rd level is a bit early, but there are a number of items that would help the ranged Rogue do their thing.
A Ring of Blinking is of course the gold standard, allowing Sneak Attack on all attacks and some defensive benefits.
Additionally, there's seeing through smoke (you could port the Goz Mask (https://www.aonprd.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Goz%20Mask) from Pathfinder) plus a source of smoke (Smokesticks, an Eversmoking Bottle, etc). It might take an action to set up, but from the sound of things that would still be an improvement.

The Wizard can choose to stop sucking whenever he wants to, maybe give him an enemy spellbook with some non-blasting spells so he has no reason not to try them out.

Additionally, it sounds like a significant problem is people going down too quickly, forcing healing. Does an NPC healer make sense to add to the group, story-wise?

[RNightstalker]

So, my GM had to handle this issue a few times because of me. Everyone in the group noted that I would roll an unusual # of natural 1s. They even tracked it in a few different games and was always rolling on the low side with d20s. This went on for years. Said GM banned me from using my own dice at one point not because I was cheating but because I was breaking the laws of statistics to the detriment of the group. They also started having me play casters because the enemy makes the saves.


I made a series of three attacks one time and rolled a total of 4...



A rogue with str 8 who hence only uses ranged attacks and never gets in more than one sneak attack per encounter.

A wizard who basically prepares a combination of Magic Missile and Burning Hands because, you know, damage!

And a druid who actually thinks about tactics and carries the entire fight by himself, or at least starts to before having to spend all his actions healing the other two. If it weren't for Summon Nature's Ally's crazy action economy, the party would be dead thrice over.

So I'm guessing my main problems are that the wizard player (I've talked to them about this) refuses to prepare spells that don't make them "the hero" (damage spells kill people => good; other spells "only" help your allies => bad) and that I have no idea how to help the rogue player if melee is not an option. (Though I maintain melee is fine even at 8 str – sneak attack makes up for that IMO.)

(Incidentally, how overpowered is Entangle at low levels? It completely incapacitates large groups of enemies, as no enemy spellcaster will be able to make a DC 20 str check like, ever, and the Concentration check to get off a spell while entangled is ridiculously high.)

Show them the effects of entangle, grease, blur/blink for the Rogue, a druid using animals to create flanking opportunities...use them against the party with characters that use non-lethal damage...so it isn't a TPK.

[TheFamilarRaven]

Wow, lots of excellent suggestions here!

A rogue with str 8 who hence only uses ranged attacks and never gets in more than one sneak attack per encounter.


Sounds like this player could benefit from a higher power floor? Looks like you're playing 3.5e, as opposed to Pathfinder 1e, but I'd recommend subbing in Pathfinder's unchained rogue (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/unchained-classes/rogue-unchained/) over the 3.5 one (or at least cherry pick a few features from it). Gives free Weapon Finesse, and grants Dex-to-damage with one finesse weapon at level 3, so that Rogue won't have to worry about a low strength score. And given the druid has been using SNA, the rogue should have flanking buddies.



A wizard who basically prepares a combination of Magic Missile and Burning Hands because, you know, damage!

Yeah, this is a hard habit to break. Also, I totally called it.

The way I've always tired to handle this is to phrase it is thusly, "Would you rather cast a spell that wins the fight or spell that wastes your time?". Or rephrase spells that don't do damage as spell that functionally do damage. "Yeah so magic missile always 2d4+2 damage which will kill a goblin on average, but sleeps can functionally kill 4 goblins. So what seems like a better use of your time?"



And a druid who actually thinks about tactics and carries the entire fight by himself, or at least starts to before having to spend all his actions healing the other two. If it weren't for Summon Nature's Ally's crazy action economy, the party would be dead thrice over.


May add in a wand of cure light wounds as treasure or quest reward? Then the druid can top off their temamates after each fight and can spend more time doing their druid things.



(Incidentally, how overpowered is Entangle at low levels? It completely incapacitates large groups of enemies, as no enemy spellcaster will be able to make a DC 20 str check like, ever, and the Concentration check to get off a spell while entangled is ridiculously high.)


Very powerful. The problem tends to be the size it's area of effect, as it tends to muck up anyone trying to wade into melee. But your party doesn't seem like they rely on a heavy-hitter melee type so it should be good.

My biggest pet peeve is, (and this MIGHT be just how I've always read the spell), that everyone uses it like it's a WoW spell and ignore the fact that there needs to be some actual vegetation around to, y'know, entangle people with.

[False God]

I agree with the "training montage", give them a "coach" and some "training" fights (which you purposefully pull your punches), even a "training dungeon" to help get them to coordinate better.

Be willing to let players rebuild their characters. Heck, be ready for players to ask/want to bring in entirely new characters once they start getting a feel for how all the little parts interact. If you want them to keep the same "character" (ie: persona), be willing to let them "suddenly be a whole new class". Remind players to be respectful of other player's choices. It's not that you can't have two druids. It's that Druid 2 shouldn't be an attempt to copy Druid 1's success.

The point here is to have fun, AND be good at their jobs. They might be better at a new job!


Wow, lots of excellent suggestions here!

Since two of you have inquired after the party composition: The party is a bit skewed since one player left very unexpectedly. Currently (and for the foreseeable future … cough pandemic cough) we have (all at level 3):

A rogue with str 8 who hence only uses ranged attacks and never gets in more than one sneak attack per encounter.
The rogue might well be reminded that Str determines his bonus damage. You can convey this in a training montage. Rogues are notoriously MAD to cover everything they're supposed to be good at, dexterous scoundels, clever schemers, silver-tongued, and they rely on the remaining stats to cover their two deficient saves and power their bonus damage.

Alternatively, you could just allow dex to damage. It's not game breaking, but it can be strong with a min-maxer.


A wizard who basically prepares a combination of Magic Missile and Burning Hands because, you know, damage!
Wizards can literally be gods in 3.5. Your player may honestly know how to "be a good wizard", but chooses not to because they prefer cool blasty effects. Honestly, I wouldn't stress this too much. There's a certain talent IMO for being the "support" or "control" guy and I know I'm personally not that. I suspect your wizard doesn't either. Doesn't mean he can't be a great blaster! He just might need to be a Focused Specialist Blaster (not a great build, but more slots for the stuff he likes lets him do the stuff he likes more).


And a druid who actually thinks about tactics and carries the entire fight by himself, or at least starts to before having to spend all his actions healing the other two. If it weren't for Summon Nature's Ally's crazy action economy, the party would be dead thrice over.
Well, at least someone knows what they're doing.


Basically, everyone is having fun with the roleplaying parts and the murder investigations, but I have no idea how to do a dungeon crawl that will be fun for this group.
Try playing with the Morale rules. Use mildly intelligent enemies with a commander. Roll regularly upon hits and deaths for them to continue to fight. Play it up and let the party overhear the whining of the kobolds and encourage the party to "trash talk" the enemy as a way to "beat them via role-play".


I had a bit of free time this week and actually playtested two encounters with copies of the party's character sheets, and they actually stood a fair chance in both of them. The only character who was really quite useless was the rogue – those 1d8 damage per round just don't influence the outcome of the battle. As far as I can tell, "ranged rogue" is just not a viable thing before level 8 or so, so he basically just stands around and lets the fight happen around him.
See above, morale rules. Maybe the rogue can't break them physically, but he might be able to break their spirits.


So I'm guessing my main problems are that the wizard player (I've talked to them about this) refuses to prepare spells that don't make them "the hero" (damage spells kill people => good; other spells "only" help your allies => bad)
Coordinating doesn't have to mean "You CAN cast buff spells, so you MUST cast buff spells." Work with him to enable him to do what he wants: blast stuff! And frankly, if you do, you'll never have to worry about a god-tier wizard later on.

[Faily]

If they have trouble with remembering their abilities and what they can do, you could do some things like Tokens or Power-cards. Sometimes that can help better visualize what your options are.

If those with Power Attack often forget to do use it, one of the things I did myself for that was to tell the GM that I *always* will use Power Attack (in Pathfinder, so the Power Attack scales automatically) so that I didn't have to remember to declare it all the time, and just write it in on my sheet.

[Fizban]

The second question is: just what encounters are you fielding that you find to be average or even weak, which they're getting completely rolled by?

Followed of course by a summary of the sort of failed and wasted actions that tend to happen.


A rogue with str 8 who hence only uses ranged attacks and never gets in more than one sneak attack per encounter.
Is this because they simply don't care, or because they don't know how? I would try to teach them the magic of popping out from behind corners and out of fog to sneak attack things.

A wizard who basically prepares a combination of Magic Missile and Burning Hands because, you know, damage!
If those are their highest level spells and you're fighting proper level appropriate foes, these should do their part just fine.


And a druid who actually thinks about tactics and carries the entire fight by himself, or at least starts to before having to spend all his actions healing the other two. If it weren't for Summon Nature's Ally's crazy action economy, the party would be dead thrice over.
I assume that in talking about it you've mentioned how the Druid is carrying the party. My first recommendation would be for them to stop doing so.

And, wait- that's it?

Well for starters, you're short a party member. Of course their action economy is terrible when they've go three actions and the game expects four. There's no meatshield/beatstick, so absent that damage, of course the wizard's choice of standard blasting spells will look bad: the damage is sufficient when it is accompanied by a fighter, rogue, and cleric making weapon attacks, not by itself when the two squishies are being chain-healed by the last party member.

In light of this, I would expect the Druid's Animal Companion to be taking the Fighter's role (though you didn't mention this), and no further summons on top of that. It's not as good as an actual PC, but geared up and used with PC-level tactical ability, it should do just fine for the first few levels.

I had a bit of free time this week and actually playtested two encounters with copies of the party's character sheets, and they actually stood a fair chance in both of them. The only character who was really quite useless was the rogue – those 1d8 damage per round just don't influence the outcome of the battle. As far as I can tell, "ranged rogue" is just not a viable thing before level 8 or so, so he basically just stands around and lets the fight happen around him.
Again, if these are 1st, 2nd, or even 3rd level characters, and d8 attacks "don't influence the outcome of the battle," I'm mighty skeptical of the battle.

So I'm guessing my main problems are that the wizard player (I've talked to them about this) refuses to prepare spells that don't make them "the hero" (damage spells kill people => good; other spells "only" help your allies => bad) and that I have no idea how to help the rogue player if melee is not an option. (Though I maintain melee is fine even at 8 str – sneak attack makes up for that IMO.)
Damage spells deal damage, which combines with the rest of the party's damage to put foes down faster. Non-damage spells often have a significant chance of failure, and Wizards. . . don't even have any significant buffs in the level range it sounds like you're talking about.

The way to help the rogue player is again, teach them to corner shoot. Hiding is part of a move action: you move behind a corner (or pillar) out of sight, turn around and go back to the corner, make a hide check with the half-cover, and if you count as hidden then boom sneak attack is active. Repeat every round forever, substitute edge of a fog spell if there's no corners. It's not even that complicated really, worst part is tracing lines of sight and making sure you have enough movement.

But if single d8 attacks aren't good enough, somehow I doubt single d8+d6 attacks will be good enough.

(Incidentally, how overpowered is Entangle at low levels? It completely incapacitates large groups of enemies, as no enemy spellcaster will be able to make a DC 20 str check like, ever, and the Concentration check to get off a spell while entangled is ridiculously high.)
Absurdly overpowered. Except it doesn't matter for this party, because they're missing the party member who is supposed to have the reliable damage for "finishing off" rooted enemies. Entangle is not going to increase the outgoing dps of this party, so. . .

[Gruftzwerg]

Try to have a few low lvl encounters that are just for educational reason there to show em some combat tricks. E.g. let a goblin caster use Enlarge Person on the Ork at the start of the combat and show em the potential from this lil teamwork. They should be able to copy these kind of tricks. Show how the enemy caster has options to cast safe without relying on defensive casting and so on. And in the main battles you hope that they have done their lessons.

[Berenger]

So I'm guessing my main problems are that the wizard player (I've talked to them about this) refuses to prepare spells that don't make them "the hero" (damage spells kill people => good; other spells "only" help your allies => bad) and that I have no idea how to help the rogue player if melee is not an option. (Though I maintain melee is fine even at 8 str – sneak attack makes up for that IMO.)

(Incidentally, how overpowered is Entangle at low levels? It completely incapacitates large groups of enemies, as no enemy spellcaster will be able to make a DC 20 str check like, ever, and the Concentration check to get off a spell while entangled is ridiculously high.)

1. If you want to nudge the wizard in a more useful direction, drop a few good scrolls for buffing and battlefield control spells as a "free trial version" of the spells he refuses to prepare. If you are willing to accomodate the blaster wizard, maybe drop a wand that gives him access to a better blasting spell that is at least more useful.

2. I fail to see how STR 8 hinders the rogue from going into melee. A rogue with minimized STR, Two-Weapon Fighting and Weapon Finesse is basically my standard build and seems to work decently in melee if the enemy is susceptible to sneak attacks and there is a flanking buddy. Maybe allow him to retrain his feats into those or gain a flaw in exchange for an extra feat if necessary. Have a look at the Halfling Rogue substitution levels and check if you want to give them an item or homebrew feat that replicates the Ranged Sneak Attack for his chosen weapon and / or Sniping Mastery (http://marksworld.zeemer.com/files/Racial%20Substitution.html#22).

[BettaGeorge]

I fail to see how STR 8 hinders the rogue from going into melee.

So do I, but the player doesn't agree ;-)

There's even usually a Summon available to flank with.

Anyway, this thread has generated more ideas than I would ever have been able to come up with. I'll definitely try these out. I'm sure my players and I will eventually find something that works for them.

Thank you so much for all your incredibly informed answers!

[Nightcanon]

What level are the PCs? One option might be to put them up against a Tucker's Kobolds scenario: fighting a force of obviously weaker foes who through good tactics and use of terrain are able to punch far above their apparent CR. Have the PCs be tasked to take a stronghold from a dug in enemy, then hold it for a few days until help arrives. You then get to play out 'the battle of wolftooth keep' 2 or 3 (or more) times, first with the PCs as attackers and their much weaker foes nonetheless put up a good defence by demonstrating the tactics you want them to learn, then they play the defenders using said tactics. Perhaps they free a small garrison force of friendlies who will help (their commander, though low level and/ or wounded, knows the stronghold like the back of his hand, and can advise on strategy: "set up pinch-points here and here, and fall back to here when you are being over run").
Once they hold the fortress, you can effectively run a series of trading scenarios: a band of orcs with longbows breaks into the sparring yard (lure them down into the twisty tunnels where lines of sight are limited and flanking opportunities are many). A single, strong creature wanders in. Then a numerically superior but weaker force. Basically, think about the tactics you want them to learn, devise a series of small maps to allow them to be used to obvious advantage, and link them together.
Note that while the original Tucker's Kobolds was, as I understand it, used to take down arrogant players a peg or two by kerbstomping them with obviously weaker foes, that isn't what you are aiming for here. You just want them to cotton on to how effective combat tactics can be ("remember that bit where those goblins attacked from cover in that cavern, how hard it was, even if you won in the end? And how easy it was for you to beat that bunch of Ogres two days later in the same place, by taking up the positions that the goblins used against you?")
An alternative, if the players are enjoying themselves, is not to worry about it too much, and make combat less of an issue in your games. 3.5e is very much about the tactical boardgame in combat, but earlier editions not so much. I had plenty of fun in first and second edition where combat was just two groups rolling D20s at each other until the PCs (usually) won. The interest was in other aspects of the story.

[Sneak Dog]

You could try and teach them weird combat strategies videogame style.

Have them encounter a gimmicky foe, in non-threatening situation. There aren't many, or there are guards to back the players up, or the foes aren't trying to kill the players.
Then, encounter them in a more ordinary situation, but give the players advance warning. The foes are spotted busy with a fresh kill, they might even be wounded.
Then, just a plain old encounter.
Lastly, a twist. The archers are encountered in an open field. The salamanders in a burnable environment. The rogues during an escort mission. The wabberjocky with the previously learned zombies.

Introduce, experiment, test and master. If they figure out how to trivialise the foe in step 2, reward them in step 3 and complicate their solution in step 4.
Or whatever that weird article I read suggested.

[SangoProduction]

Well, there are a couple solutions: One - play to their characters' weaknesses. For example, if they are particularly bad at Area Control, have it be a dumber monster that just goes after the first character it sees, rather than going after the mage.
Two - play into their strengths. If they particularly like ranged combat, give them an environment that enables quickly putting distance between them and enemies - like an air geyser or something like a jump pad.
Three - just...send fewer and/or weaker monsters at them.

Granted, I'd say you should probably talk with your players and ask if they're ok with potential character death. If they are, just embrace the lethality. Don't go out of your way to kill them, but if it happens, it happens. Make sure to ask them for their character's final words, and to let them get off one last action before dying.

[Elkad]

Kill them until they get better.

[Tiktakkat]

This was my general situation when running Living Greyhawk adventures, and later doing my home game.

I started as a wargamer, and know stuff like "tactics" and "strategy", things the majority of players I encountered were clueless about.
I mostly resolved that by not using a battle mat and blatantly lying about battlefield positions so I could casually give them flanking bonuses and deny the same to the bad guys and other things.

As for optimization, I caught a bit from LG players and more eventually reading some handbooks.
I did what I could to pass "suggestions" and links along to players, most of whom would get into the recommendations.

To help with both, I would run things as written, particularly published adventures with their lousy builds, lousier spell selections, and lousiest tactics. Sometimes the monsters really just need to be dumber than the PCs no matter what.

Regarding the players enjoying themselves, well, let them!
If that means going so far as to have 1 or 2 or even 3 levels above the recommended levels for published material, then do it. If they are still barely surviving such encounters then they are getting an appropriate challenge, regardless of what the rules say, and their experience is more important than the text.

For "teaching" them proper tactics, try it on the sly and place treasure that supports alternative tactics. Wands and such with battlefield control spells for the wizard, stealth and sneak attack boosts for the rogue, and perhaps some alternative healing so the druid can spam more summons instead of having to play healbot all the time.

[Quertus]

The simplest answers are to play dumb and dumber with their opposition, and to not put them up against CR appropriate encounters.

"Oh, no, it's a band of 7 goblins! How ever will our party of 12th level charters survive?"

Being me, and giving them realistic defeats, is also an option.

And I won't advocate fudging the dice.

Those are the options I see.

-----

I guess it depends on how interested you / they are in them getting better.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, is playable and fun in no small part because he is tactically inept.

If they're really big into RP, even if you teach *them* to do better, they may still run *characters* who don't.

But the lack of teamwork is probably an issue regardless.

[D+1]

Kill them until they get better.
:smalleek: In D&D that which kills you does not make you stronger. It just kills you. The more you try to teach players this way the more you destroy your own game and any desire that the players might have to participate in it.

[Quertus]

:smalleek: In D&D that which kills you does not make you stronger. It just kills you. The more you try to teach players this way the more you destroy your own game and any desire that the players might have to participate in it.

Are you sure? How do you account for all the oldschool meat grinder players who *did* get better?

[Jay R]

You can train the players up to the level of the encounters, or you can design the encounters to the level of the players.

Even if you prefer option 1, you still need to use option 2 along the way. The DM's job isn't to design encounters for some other hypothetical players, but to design encounters for these players with these PCs at this time.

This approach has one advantage -- you know it can be done. You hope that your players have the interest and motivation to learn tactics, but you don't know it, and can't guarantee it. But you have complete control over the composition and tactics of the encounter they meet.

You can combine the two by sending a party of adventurers after them, well below their level but who actually use tactics effectively. Maybe your players will see how it works and start copying them. Maybe not.

But in any case, whether they become better players or not, your job remains designing encounters that challenge your players, not encounters that would challenge somebody else.

[Weasel of Doom]

I don't see the problem.

If the party is weak but they're all weak to the same degree then just drop the CR of encounters until you find the right level for them. Burning hands is just fine if you want to roast a gang of goblins for example.
My only concern is if the druid player is feeling frustrated about carrying the other two but it doesn't sound like that is the case.

Personally I'd be leery about giving them a mentor or anything like that. I can't imagine it would be much fun to have someone essentially come in and tell them what to do.

Letting the rogue find some smoke bombs and letting them hide then snipe might at least enable more than one sneak attack/encounter.
Alternatively they might find skirmish damage easier to activate so pointing them in the direction of the scout class and swift ambusher feat might be an idea (then later greater manyshot, hardly optimal but probably enough for this group).

[Elkad]

Are you sure? How do you account for all the oldschool meat grinder players who *did* get better?

Exactly.

We died. A lot. Hell, my first TPK was in about our 5th session. All new players, including the DM.
Ghouls in the Caves of Chaos paralyzed us all...

You know what else helps? PvP.
In the back of the party's mind is "the DM doesn't really want to kill us, just make it feel challenging".

Another player trying to save his own character doesn't have that restriction.

One-shot arena? Dream sequence? Mirror of Opposition? None of those are as good as the real thing either.

Have a vampire dominate them and make them fight to the death for his entertainment.

[Lapak]

Are you sure? How do you account for all the oldschool meat grinder players who *did* get better?
While this is true, it's also a matter of game/setting expectations. One of the ways in which the hobby has improved is a broader approach to what makes a good game and actively seeking a consensus on that between players and game-runner; shifting gears to a meatgrinder without warning or discussion would indeed have a pretty good chance at blowing up the table. In part because part of the old-school ethos was, low-level characters being pretty flimsy, you wanted to put less personal investment in them early. I enjoy a 'players can die and aren't significant until/unless they earn it during the campaign' approach sometimes, but I like to know that's what I'm getting before it happens.

[BettaGeorge]

I do not agree that killing off characters helps at all, but the other suggestions on this thread are excellent. I'll drop the encounter CRs by a few more points and place some items that enable more tactics.

I think the teamwork thing is actually getting better – talking to the players has helped here.

We'll see how it goes.

[InvisibleBison]

Are you sure? How do you account for all the oldschool meat grinder players who *did* get better?

I imagine those players knew what they were in for and wanted to keep dying until they got good enough to win. There's no indication that's the case here. In fact, there's no indication that the players are at all unhappy with their current level of tactical skill. It's just the DM who is concerned that they won't be able to not defeat the players should a serious fight occur. This isn't an issue of some players who want to improve their skills; this is an issue of differing preferred playstyles among members of the group. In other words, it's an out-of-game problem, and requires an out-of-game solution: Talking to the players about the issue and working something out (which could very well be that the DM has to just accept that the players don't care about tactical prowess and will only be fighting seriously under-CRed encounters).

[Jay R]

Are you sure? How do you account for all the oldschool meat grinder players who *did* get better?

Mostly we were miniatures wargamers, chess players, AH & SPI gamers, and others who really wanted to learn tactics. The hobby appealed to only a very small, isolated group compared to today.

[Kitsuneymg]

Mostly we were miniatures wargamers, chess players, AH & SPI gamers, and others who really wanted to learn tactics. The hobby appealed to only a very small, isolated group compared to today.

I kept wanting to say stuff to the person you quoted but it all came out too mean. Thanks for pointing out this. I know a large number of people back in the TSR days quit the hobby after a few sessions because they never could survive and it wasn’t fun.

I’ll also point out that death is only a teacher if you happen to get lucky on a build, or if your GM takes the time to demonstrate why you’re dying. Since the latter falls under teaching, and this thread seems to be about ways to teach, saying “kill them until they get better” is, at best, the slowest way to accomplish the goal, and more likely to drive them away from the game than teach optimization.

[Jay R]

I’ll also point out that death is only a teacher if you happen to get lucky on a build, or if your GM takes the time to demonstrate why you’re dying.

You're still missing some understanding about early D&D. There wasn't much "build" for you to do. No feats, no skills. Your fighter or wizard was pretty much like any other, except for spell choice, and you usually had access to 1/2 to 3/4 of all available spells.

Even the stats didn't make much difference. The only differences between a STR 7 Fighter and a STR 16 fighter were a 10% xp bonus, +1 to hit, a 1/6 improved chance of opening doors, and a minor increase in carrying capacity.

Tactics, not the character sheet, was the difference between a good character and a poor one. I never saw a character die, or even thought a character was less effective, because of a poor build. Good decisions made a good character; poor decisions made a poor character.


Since the latter falls under teaching, and this thread seems to be about ways to teach, saying “kill them until they get better” is, at best, the slowest way to accomplish the goal, and more likely to drive them away from the game than teach optimization.

Also, the tales of killer DMs are exaggerated. While Gygax was a killer DM by all reports, I never met one in the 1970s. Of my eleven earliest characters, only two ever died, and both happened because I did something stupid.

[One big difference seems to me to be that today's DMs are far more likely to save you from your own stupidity than 70s DMs were. That's not a "killer DM"; it's a neutral DM.]


I kept wanting to say stuff to the person you quoted but it all came out too mean. Thanks for pointing out this. I know a large number of people back in the TSR days quit the hobby after a few sessions because they never could survive and it wasn’t fun.

In the games we played, it had all too much to do with how good your decisions were. Our D&D group in 75-77 had one player that several of us would not adventure with any longer; he was unsafe. Eventually, he was running his own party, all by himself. His most famed moment was with a party of first levels (because nobody survived to 2nd level).

DM: Going along the road, you see a sign saying, "Danger! Cockatrice Valley."
Player: We enter the Valley.
DM: At the Valley's entrance, there is another sign: "Turn Back! Cockatrice Valley."
Player: We keep going.
DM: The valley is filled with many stone statues, all looking up.
Player: We keep going.
DM: You hear large bodies moving around the bend.
Player: We run around the bend.
DM: You hear a heavy flapping above you.
Player: We look up.

Later the DM bemoaned the fact that he was trying to keep this PC's characters alive, and he couldn't do it.

Meanwhile, five players from our group won the first D&D tourney we ever saw, at Tacticon II, killing a 134 hit-die monster along the way. [No, that is not a typo. The hydra had one hundred thirty four heads. The crucial tactic was area effect attacks, obviously.]

[Elkad]

Kill them until they get better.

Oh sure, maybe there should have been some blue text there.

But the fact is, you get better with experience.
Get your first thousand hours of combat in, and you'll be good at combat.

I wasn't a minigamer, or a chess player, or anything else. I was a 12yr old kid who liked Tolkien, Heinlein, and Andre Norton.
My brothers were even younger, and my Mom was the DM.
We died.

Then my brothers and I started taking turns being the DM, plus I played with friends at jr high.
I'm sure I averaged 20 hours a week all the way through highschool (plus school and working 30hrs a week).
In the Army we played every chance we got - which was a lot. I was at Ft Bragg right after Tucker, and while our games probably weren't up to that, they were still meatgrinders.
Got out and played with my brothers again, and our wives, and sometimes went to a wargaming club downtown that ran a D&D night. Not as often, but we still did a full weekend (Friday night to Sunday night) at least once a month.

Played a bunch of other systems - both D&D adjacent (Gamma World) and different (Gurps, Traveller, etc). Couple years I think we solely played Star Fleet Battles, which is VERY tactically complex.

Rotating DMs, lots of PvP, and lots and lots and lots of deaths.

20 hours a week is a thousand hours a year - and I bet we got close to that at least half the years. Times 20 years until we scattered and had kids and switched to MMOs. (where we all played on the PvP side of things)
And another 20 years of much-less-often play, but still playing some sort of tabletop game. In 2010 my wife and I joined a 3.5 group (first we'd played 3.5), and then I made my own table.

Last year we dropped the guy with Covid terror (not officially, he just made an excuse to miss every single session), and kept right on playing a couple days a month. When someone had a sniffle, we dosed ourselves with pony paste and showed up anyway.

I hope I'm in a game with friends and physical dice and sheets of paper in another 40 years.

[Tiktakkat]

Mostly we were miniatures wargamers, chess players, AH & SPI gamers, and others who really wanted to learn tactics. The hobby appealed to only a very small, isolated group compared to today.

Very much this.
And as wargamers, we were used to having troops "die" on a constant basis. Having that happen to characters was on the same level, and so irrelevant except for issues with adding replacements to higher level games.


But the fact is, you get better with experience.
Get your first thousand hours of combat in, and you'll be good at combat.

But that is not a fact.
Some people just do not care enough to get better at tactics, no matter how much experience they have with a system.
Other people are just lousy at tactics and never improve, again despite multiple hours of play.

[Quertus]

Very much this.
And as wargamers, we were used to having troops "die" on a constant basis. Having that happen to characters was on the same level, and so irrelevant except for issues with adding replacements to higher level games.



But that is not a fact.
Some people just do not care enough to get better at tactics, no matter how much experience they have with a system.
Other people are just lousy at tactics and never improve, again despite multiple hours of play.

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, was my attempt to understand such people, whose seeming inability to learn baffled me.

But, for everyone else, do you feel that having troops die is educational, or no?

More to the point, could those who cannot learn by having troops die… actually learn? Are there significantly better learning methods to teach those who don't care, or who are inherently tactically inept, than experience?

-----

My point is, some people demonstrably *did* learn through meat grinders. So they cannot reasonably be argued to be ineffective at teaching tactics through experience.

Some people, however, did not learn, as I am all too aware (and my account name is a constant reminder of that fact). Would a significant portion of the set of people who would not learn tactics through experience learn them through other techniques?

[aglondier]

Sounds like they are more of a social roleplay group, perhaps forcing them into combat isn't the right path.

Let them do the roleplay and social stuff, and give them a brute squad or two in support to call upon when combat is threatening. Give them a chance to buff and support their guys, but do the fast and dirty dice rolls behind your screen before describing the outcome.

Don't get bogged down trying to force your square peg players into a round hole campaign...

[Batcathat]

I suspect the issue might be not whether having your characters die teaches you tactics but whether or not it motivates you to get better. It's like with any sort of setback, really. Some people can get beat down (metaphorically or literally) time and time again only to come back up swinging and eager to fight again every time and some people just stop finding it fun after repeated failure.

[Zerryzerry]

So, my GM had to handle this issue a few times because of me. Everyone in the group noted that I would roll an unusual # of natural 1s. They even tracked it in a few different games and was always rolling on the low side with d20s. This went on for years. Said GM banned me from using my own dice at one point not because I was cheating but because I was breaking the laws of statistics to the detriment of the group. They also started having me play casters because the enemy makes the saves.

Sadly, I have still managed to wreck entire campaigns by rolling a nat 1 on a spell resistance check when a 2+ would have succeeded. As the wizard they expected at least 1 of my spells to get through to the demon that had SR. And I still avoid 2 weapon fighting blenders like the plague. Then one day and several sets of dice later it just stopped. I now roll an average of 9.5 to 11 during games sessions. I grant you I haven't needed to track that in years. But I am not the joke of my friends with 'you cannot roll a one...' anymore. I just had a really really long run of bad luck with dice.

I found where i have been sucking out luck all this time.
In 19 years of playing D&D i have a statistically measured (for a time) average roll of 14.5, with an extremely high % of critical threats (21%) with a mix of weapons, none better then 18/20.

For the low-tactics players: Everything depends on the personality of the players. For my players, I found out thet the best tactics to get them to move their asses to improve has been to get them defeated (but not killed) and robbed of everything. And i mean everything, they even captured, roasted and eaten the sorcerer's familiar.
A way to help them is to make a kind of "what can you do" reminder on the first page of the charachter's sheet. All my PNGs I gave ready (and are truly a lot) have a bright yellow post-it on it with everything they can do (except spells) to get a quick reference in combat, especially if i have not used that particular PNG in a long time.
You can adapt this to your players. Get them a post-it with the things they can do, all toghether in a bright, easy accessible place.

[BettaGeorge]

Sounds like they are more of a social roleplay group, perhaps forcing them into combat isn't the right path.

Let them do the roleplay and social stuff, and give them a brute squad or two in support to call upon when combat is threatening. Give them a chance to buff and support their guys, but do the fast and dirty dice rolls behind your screen before describing the outcome.

Don't get bogged down trying to force your square peg players into a round hole campaign...

(Filtering out the inane "kill their characters" discussion to find actual responses)

Yes, we are very much social roleplaying-focused. I wouldn't even be thinking about this if my players hadn't unanimously and explicitly requested that I let them do some good old-fashioned monster bashing in-between all the drama. They want to kick some butts themselves, not have NPCs do it for them. Which has brought me to the question "how to design fun combat encounters for people where ECL is not an indicator for survival chances".

I do fudge the dice a lot in combat (especially since I am known for my roughly 1-in-5-chance at a crit, no matter whose dice I use), and I sometimes lower a monster's hp during combat when it becomes evident that the players will never survive otherwise. But I don't want my players to feel like I am cheating to keep them alive (which is what I'm doing at the moment), which prompted my search for alternatives.

[BettaGeorge]

A way to help them is to make a kind of "what can you do" reminder on the first page of the charachter's sheet. All my PNGs I gave ready (and are truly a lot) have a bright yellow post-it on it with everything they can do (except spells) to get a quick reference in combat, especially if i have not used that particular PNG in a long time.
You can adapt this to your players. Get them a post-it with the things they can do, all toghether in a bright, easy accessible place.

That is a good idea. The party wizard keeps forgetting that he owns magic items, so this might kill two birds with one post-it.

I'll have a look at the tactics I would use and make a small reference sheet for each character.

[Quertus]

I suspect the issue might be not whether having your characters die teaches you tactics but whether or not it motivates you to get better. It's like with any sort of setback, really. Some people can get beat down (metaphorically or literally) time and time again only to come back up swinging and eager to fight again every time and some people just stop finding it fun after repeated failure.

Which implies that the question is, "how does one motivate otherwise unmotivated players to get better?". (And that "killing their characters", while good for teaching, isn't good for motivating)

[Tiktakkat]

But, for everyone else, do you feel that having troops die is educational, or no?

Educational for what:
Learning how to manipulate the rules of a simulation?
Learning how to command troops in battle?

There is a scene in a novel where a character with a military background who reminisces how he taught some academics how to wargame during a space trip and how by the end of the trip he was appalled by their disregard for casualties.

I have certainly learned how to sacrifice cardboard counters to beat multiple sets of game rules, and in the process not have any emotional attachment to said cardboard counters.
And I could translate that to having no emotional attachment to a sheet of paper with numbers on it.
I also happened to learn some tactics along the way.

But that was me, with several years of wargaming experience, and then another couple of decades while playing D&D before 3E was released and I began encountering large numbers of people without any such bakcground.


More to the point, could those who cannot learn by having troops die… actually learn? Are there significantly better learning methods to teach those who don't care, or who are inherently tactically inept, than experience?

Given the number of professionals - doctors, lawyers, and such - I encountered with zero tactical ability, I would have to say "yes", they could actually learn. Just not tactics.
That also extends to mid-level professionals, craftsmen, and the like.
All with skills, knowledge, and expertise that would leave me scratching my head, while my tactical acumen, game system knowledge, personal library, and such left them awed.


My point is, some people demonstrably *did* learn through meat grinders. So they cannot reasonably be argued to be ineffective at teaching tactics through experience.

No one said it is not ineffective.
People are just noting that many who did had a different entry background to the hobby, that not everyone will enjoy that method, and . . .


Some people, however, did not learn, as I am all too aware (and my account name is a constant reminder of that fact). Would a significant portion of the set of people who would not learn tactics through experience learn them through other techniques?

Some people just do not care to learn tactics.
Or they are just never going to be that competent at tactics.
Or they do not have the time to invest to learn tactics, particularly in a context of a social gaming environment like an RPGA Living Campaign.
Or any of a number of other reasons.

As it goes, I have taught many people a particular group of skills that involve tactics unrelated to gaming.
A few are exceptional.
Some are pretty decent.
Most are barely adequate, including the great majority who just plain quit before getting very far.
I have employed multiple techniques in teaching them, with anecdotes that would take dozens of post to detail, and among the constants have been:
You cannot teach someone who does not care to learn;
Such people can still be quite pleasant to hang out with.

I am a wargamer.
I love me some hardcore tactical games with the dice and casualties flying fast and furious.
I love crushing an opponent at them.
I love being crushed because I meet someone just plain better than me.
And I also like hanging out and socializing with people over some role-playing with rules and deaths handwaved with gratuitous abandon in favor of crafting a memorable experience and legendary tales to bore the daylights out of any innocent bystanders with trap into listening to them.
The two extremes are in no way incompatible for me, and looking at a lot of other replies, in no way incompatible for many people.

[Tiktakkat]

A way to help them is to make a kind of "what can you do" reminder on the first page of the charachter's sheet. All my PNGs I gave ready (and are truly a lot) have a bright yellow post-it on it with everything they can do (except spells) to get a quick reference in combat, especially if i have not used that particular PNG in a long time.
You can adapt this to your players. Get them a post-it with the things they can do, all toghether in a bright, easy accessible place.

I have been doing something similar recently, both to help a player who has me design his characters for him so he can play different things and expand his role-playing experience, and for two players from a group from 20 years back who wanted to play again.

I did it slowly, but I have gradually expanded the entries on their character sheets to detail their various options, including spells, so they can more easily recognize their choices.

It was very time consuming as I made the changes and upgraded things the first time, but once in place, updating from level to level is quite easy, and the players really appreciate having the options presented directly and integrated into the whole character sheet layout.

[Fizban]

I'd still like to know what this (undersized) party is fighting, and how those combats go. So far I've heard that the rogue doesn't seek out sneak attacks, and that the wizard prepares blasting spells and forgets they have magic items.

Neither of those are sufficient evidence to pronounce them horrible dunces who can never learn tactics. Those are perfectly normal and extremely common behaviors to run into*, and the biggest problem I've seen evidence of so far is that they have no meatshield. Which means that of course the druid is going to have be be a tactical god of summoning, because the party is missing a standard role. The role that happens to be the most tactical of the standard low-power party. And walking in with low-power old-school tactics with an undersized party is never going to work. Simple tests where a fighter is standing in front of a zero-op party as expected show that they can win, but take away the fighter and they're obviously screwed.

It is entirely likely that they would be just fine if they had their fourth member, unless there is some particular boneheadedness the DM has failed to mention so far.

And I'd still like to know what level this is, as complaints about low level spells do not mesh with a caster that can apparently spam both combat summons and heals, or "mere d8s" not mattering, while if they were high enough level for Greater Invisibility there should be no complaints about failing to sneak attack. It's also required to give actual encounter suggestions. Really, I don't see how the thread is three pages without any serious detail so far.

*Hell, I had one of those rogues alongside me in a game, and they contributed just fine, even while never using the simple-as-pie feat I suggested (Deadeye Shot) or using Greater Invisibility. Because a few extra d6s from an energized bow does in fact matter, even when my character is slinging auto-60's and the tank is literally invincible. But we had a full party with 50/50 optimizers, not an undersized party with only 1/3 optimizer.


Another possible "fix" for the rogue is to un-rogue them. Turn them into a Scout, or just swap sneak attack for skirmish. Now you don't even have to teach them how to pop 'n shoot (and once they're regularly triggering skirmish, I expect the next complaint will be that they aren't full-skirmish-attacking). Or Telling Blow and my homebrew feat for "aimed" auto-crits. But I really don't think it's going to matter if they're short a party member and being sent against formula encounters, particularly if those encounters involve magic, leveled NPCs built by the DM, or monsters from later books.

[Elkad]

On the subject of "sticky notes with what you can do".

If I hand a new player a pregen character sheet now, it's a Warblade.
With the maneuver/stance cards printed out.

Then I simply recovery slightly.

"play a card"
or
"make a standard attack and get your cards back"

Everyone picks it up instantly.

[Quertus]

Given the number of professionals - doctors, lawyers, and such - I encountered with zero tactical ability, I would have to say "yes", they could actually learn. Just not tactics.
That also extends to mid-level professionals, craftsmen, and the like.
All with skills, knowledge, and expertise that would leave me scratching my head, while my tactical acumen, game system knowledge, personal library, and such left them awed.

First things first - yes, I definitively meant "can they learn tactics", not "have they the capacity to learn anything".

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, has learned a great many things - *tactics* simply is not among them.


Educational for what:
Learning how to manipulate the rules of a simulation?
Learning how to command troops in battle?

Interesting. I think the scope of my question is limited to the game, although, IIRC, there have been posters who claimed that war games were literally used as instructive war games IRL.


There is a scene in a novel where a character with a military background who reminisces how he taught some academics how to wargame during a space trip and how by the end of the trip he was appalled by their disregard for casualties.

I have certainly learned how to sacrifice cardboard counters to beat multiple sets of game rules, and in the process not have any emotional attachment to said cardboard counters.
And I could translate that to having no emotional attachment to a sheet of paper with numbers on it.
I also happened to learn some tactics along the way.

But that was me, with several years of wargaming experience, and then another couple of decades while playing D&D before 3E was released and I began encountering large numbers of people without any such bakcground.

There are decisions which I know in my head / heart are the correct ones. And I hope that I am never asked to make those decisions.

Senility willing, I may edit this to include a specific movie reference.

EDIT:In "The Rock", the President orders an attack on a (terrorist-taken) populated area, ordering the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in order to save the lives of millions. Or something like that.

One of my friends, who watched the movie with me, was upset that the president seemed distraught over this obviously correct choice.

I commented that I agreed that it was the correct choice, and that I hoped that, were I in such a position, that I would make the same choice. I also hoped that I was never in such a position.

I further said that, I would not want as leader someone who would make that decision easily, would not want someone who, as you put it, showed a clear "disregard for casualties".


No one said it is not ineffective.

While I believe this statement to be technically true, I'm curious as to whether it's what you actually meant. I'll agree that I recall no one previously to have explicitly, definitively stated that it was effective :smallamused:


People are just noting that many who did had a different entry background to the hobby, that not everyone will enjoy that method, and . . .

As I recall, there were explicit claims that character death was an ineffective technique, so I do not agree that they were "just" making the lesser claim you ascribe.

Granted, this particular technique may not be of value to the OP, but it may be of value to other readers with not entirely dissimilar issues.

Or it may be possible to understand *why* it is an effective technique, and to repurpose certain elements of it into something that *would* motivate the OP's party. For example: defeat, or death of NPCs, clearly caused by failed strategies. If *something* that they care about is on the line, it may provide incentive for them to care.

[Vaern]

Is a DMPC an option? Don't feel the need to force them to play differently if they're having fun doing what they're doing. Just give them a bit of help so they don't die horribly while doing it. Maybe toss a tanky character into the mix to soak up damage for them, or a healbot to help them deal with damage if directing attacks away from the PCs outright seems like it may be cheesing fights a bit too much.

[SirNibbles]

So I'm guessing my main problems are that the wizard player (I've talked to them about this) refuses to prepare spells that don't make them "the hero" (damage spells kill people => good; other spells "only" help your allies => bad) and that I have no idea how to help the rogue player if melee is not an option. (Though I maintain melee is fine even at 8 str – sneak attack makes up for that IMO.)

(Incidentally, how overpowered is Entangle at low levels? It completely incapacitates large groups of enemies, as no enemy spellcaster will be able to make a DC 20 str check like, ever, and the Concentration check to get off a spell while entangled is ridiculously high.)

You could have an enemy Wizard (or other caster) using control spells to show how useful they are when they completely stump the players. Even something like a Kobold Sorcerer 1 casting Sticky Floor (Races of the Dragon, page 117) and then attempting to kill the stuck player(s) with smoke or something (see Smoke Effects in the Dungeon Master's Guide, page 304) would teach them a lesson.

[aglondier]

(Filtering out the inane "kill their characters" discussion to find actual responses)

Yes, we are very much social roleplaying-focused. I wouldn't even be thinking about this if my players hadn't unanimously and explicitly requested that I let them do some good old-fashioned monster bashing in-between all the drama. They want to kick some butts themselves, not have NPCs do it for them. Which has brought me to the question "how to design fun combat encounters for people where ECL is not an indicator for survival chances".

I do fudge the dice a lot in combat (especially since I am known for my roughly 1-in-5-chance at a crit, no matter whose dice I use), and I sometimes lower a monster's hp during combat when it becomes evident that the players will never survive otherwise. But I don't want my players to feel like I am cheating to keep them alive (which is what I'm doing at the moment), which prompted my search for alternatives.

Perhaps, rather than having npcs bail them out when they bite off more than they can chew, you have the players be the ones swinging in to rescue npcs that are being overwhelmed by the monsters. That way the monsters are already tenderised, and the players get the satisfaction of being heroic.

[Jay R]

Don't confuse a test with a lesson.

Having your characters die does not teach tactics any more than getting a failing grade teaches you algebra. It shows that you haven’t learned yet. It gives you data from which you could choose to learn, and it adds to your motivation to learn if you have any. But you can’t learn just from having your characters die, for the same reason you can’t learn from a book, unless you choose to read it.

In general, the problem isn’t people who cannot learn tactics, but people who do not want to. I have taught fencing, and algebra, and in both cases, the people who learn the least are the ones who do not try to learn, because they don’t want to.

I have had fencing students who wanted to “fence” – to hold a sword while fighting somebody else – but did not want to learn the stance, the hand positions, the parries, or the attacks. Losing a fencing bout doesn’t teach them anything.

The solution for this party is to send them challenges that match this party’s ability. That is not simply the abilities that these PCs have, but the actual ability of these PCs as played by these players.

I recently ran a game for ten-year-old kids. I didn’t run it the same way I would have run it for the same PCs played by my usual group that includes a naval officer, a history teacher, and three excellent SCA melee fighters.

[Paragon]

I happen to roll a nat 1 sometimes but that is IF the player seems to even care, if not, I kill and kiss him bye bye but that's just me :)

[RexDart]

Any tips specifically for nudging novice caster players away from direct-damage spells (or at least encouraging them to mix the direct damage with other stuff too?) I'm playing in a campaign now where I've definitely noticed similar behavior to that described here - lots of Magic Missiles, plus other ranged damage spells of questionable utility (especially because the casters aren't good enough to reliably hit things when firing through occupied squares and/or into melee.)

I certainly threw my fair share of Magic Missile while playing a sorcerer, but tried to have a lot of useful spells to mess people up in other ways too.

[Batcathat]

Any tips specifically for nudging novice caster players away from direct-damage spells (or at least encouraging them to mix the direct damage with other stuff too?) I'm playing in a campaign now where I've definitely noticed similar behavior to that described here - lots of Magic Missiles, plus other ranged damage spells of questionable utility (especially because the casters aren't good enough to reliably hit things when firing through occupied squares and/or into melee.)

I certainly threw my fair share of Magic Missile while playing a sorcerer, but tried to have a lot of useful spells to mess people up in other ways too.

Have you tried just having enemy casters use that kind of spells against the party? Seems like it should demonstrate their usefulness quite effectively.

[Troacctid]

Any tips specifically for nudging novice caster players away from direct-damage spells (or at least encouraging them to mix the direct damage with other stuff too?) I'm playing in a campaign now where I've definitely noticed similar behavior to that described here - lots of Magic Missiles, plus other ranged damage spells of questionable utility (especially because the casters aren't good enough to reliably hit things when firing through occupied squares and/or into melee.)

I certainly threw my fair share of Magic Missile while playing a sorcerer, but tried to have a lot of useful spells to mess people up in other ways too.
Don't? Direct damage spells are useful and good. Obviously some of them are better than others, but as a category, they're something you absolutely should be preparing.

[Unavenger]

Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named

*Drinks*



I would do a mirror match where you demonstrate how much better they could be if they used real tactics - or even send in weaker opponents with some of the same abilities to show them up. Just kicking their butts isn't helpful, but showing them how to kick butt by example is.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Don't? Direct damage spells are useful and good. Obviously some of them are better than others, but as a category, they're something you absolutely should be preparing.

They're something you should have available on demand but, if you're a prepared caster, actually preparing them isn't ideal. Every orb of fire or vampiric touch you have prepared, while it'll certainly help in the inevitable fight, is one less goldilocks spell for weird situations or one less open slot to prepare the same.

Having a runestaff or domain staff loaded with your staple combat spells is pretty sweet though. A wand or traditional staff with something you like to spam the crap out of, like magic missile, doesn't go terribly amiss either.

[BettaGeorge]

*Drinks*

That's a good drinking game.


Regarding direct damage spells, I am convinced that they are overused, especially by new players. Our current group wizard thinks Scorching Ray is the Holy Grail of level 2 spells, because it deals 4d6 damage. Nevermind he never hits, and when he does, he might take out one opponent (who only had 6 hp to begin with) before being overrun by the rest.

Especially if you're a Vancian caster, this is a waste of spell slots. Just get a wand of Magic Missile and save your slots for something useful.

I agree though that having an enemy caster use "better" spells seems like the best way to teach. One just has to be careful not to accidentally kill the party.

[Quertus]

Multiple calls for Wand of Magic Missile? My tables have declared such to be suboptimal.

Iirc, wands weigh in at 15*SL*CL GP per charge, and 50 charges when full.

For 9th level Magic Missile, that's 6,750 GP. For 5d4+5 (average 17.5) damage per standard action.

And, if that looks good for your table, compare to the efficacy of buying several Pearls of Power.

I'm not seeing the value in the Wand.

[BettaGeorge]

Multiple calls for Wand of Magic Missile? My tables have declared such to be suboptimal.

Iirc, wands weigh in at 15*SL*CL GP per charge, and 50 charges when full.

For 9th level Magic Missile, that's 6,750 GP. For 5d4+5 (average 17.5) damage per standard action.

And, if that looks good for your table, compare to the efficacy of buying several Pearls of Power.

I'm not seeing the value in the Wand.

The wand is nice at lower levels. Once you can afford it, you're gonna want a staff or something anyway.

[Calthropstu]

The wand is nice at lower levels. Once you can afford it, you're gonna want a staff or something anyway.

It's good if you are in a campaign featuring large numbers of incorporeal creatures, or creatures immune to all elements and high ac. Otherwise, it's useless and there are so many better choices. Now maximized empowered with an addition damage each missle, or adding more missiles however is another story. But you can't get that on a wand.

[Kelb_Panthera]

It's good if you are in a campaign featuring large numbers of incorporeal creatures, or creatures immune to all elements and high ac. Otherwise, it's useless and there are so many better choices. Now maximized empowered with an addition damage each missle, or adding more missiles however is another story. But you can't get that on a wand.

Yeah you can, it just costs. The wand cost formula is 750 X spell levels X caster level. Extra missiles just means paying double the cost of the wand for each extra missile up to 5 missiles total for 9X the original cost or 6750. Not a great idea unless you're an artificer gearing up a magic missile macross but technically an option for anyone.

And since people will be curious: Magic Missile Macross is where you take 3 wands of magic missile at CL 9, stuff them in a rod of many wands and use metamagic spell trigger to twin the whole shebang when you activate; releasing 30 missiles at once and burning charges off those wands at an obscene rate. 30d4+30 (about 105 average) guaranteed against anybody not properly shielded is nothing to scoff at. Great mental image too.

[Madwand99]

Give them a magic item designed to teach them how to fight. Call it the "Orb of Dreams" or something. Basically, if they use it, they go to sleep and their minds wake up inside the orb. Give them the option to change something about themselves: a new spell, a new feat etc. Optionally, this "starting area" might include a helpful NPC that provides advice if asked for it. Then, they fight something. It might be a mirror match where you use smarter tactics, or use different spells, or be some monster. Every encounter will be difficult but beatable if they use good tactics. Each encounter uses different terrain (i.e. dungeon, swamp, arena, town etc.) Each encounter is designed to teach. If they fail and die, they wake up without lasting consequence. If they beat the encounter, they gain some small reward, for example they might be able to retrain a feat or swap out a spell known. Hopefully, over time they'll learn and improve both their tactics and their builds.

[Quertus]

Suppose the question had been, "how do you deal with players who can't RP?"? How would we have tried to solve the problem then? Or "how do we handle players who can't grok THAC0?" - what kinds of responses would that have garnered? Lol, or, to use the pillars, "players who cannot explore"?

What solutions do we get when we apply those responses back to the issue of combat?

[BettaGeorge]

Suppose the question had been, "how do you deal with players who can't RP?"? How would we have tried to solve the problem then?

50% would still have been "kill them off".

1% would have been snarky suggestions of switching to 4e.