The Art of Combat - Strategy and Tactics for Intelligent and/or Organized Enemies

[MaxWilson]

Placeholder if I need another post.

I also want to point out that having NPCs with tactics like these are how you scare the players. This is how you turn an opponent into Tucker's Kobolds. The party isn't supposed to be able to fight against this; at least, not without significant planning. What sorts of advice do you have for the dastardly NPC organization?

I would say that you turn an enemy into Tucker's Kobolds by starting with an enemy that the players KNOW to be objectively weaker than they are and ideally are contemptuous towards, so that they will be inclined not to complain of unfairness, and then playing them in such a way to minimize their disadvantages and maximize their advantages and open the player's eyes to how they can still be quite dangerous in their own wheelhouse. For example, imagine a party which is very mobile (mounted combat, ranged weaponry, etc.) who are therefore contemptuous of black puddings and gibbering mouthers as a threat. You Tuckerize those oozes by contextualizing them in an area of darkness and rough terrain (like a cave or dungeon) where the oozes can surround them on all sides in the dark and cut off PC retreat, and the PCs may not even know it yet until an ooze gets within darkvision radius. (If you're evil, you can plan to introduce the ooze threat onscreen by having one crawl out of an unlikely location, such as emerging from up a toilet hole that a PC was about to use.) Then you give the PCs a reason to go in that cave, such as making it the top level of a dungeon with treasure, or the back entrance to the HQ of an organization they'd like to infiltrate. The key thing here is that as long as players are forced to take precautions, they have reason to fear and respect black puddings and gibbering mouthers (and the possibility that there may be dozens of them right now within 100 yards of where they currently stand, silently closing in), they cannot remain contemptuous.

IMO it's that emotional inversion even moreso than "playing monsters intelligently" which is the essence of Tuckerization.

Of course there's no reason you couldn't make puddings even more scary by giving them human-level intelligence and active malevolence, to do things like e.g. silently creep up the walls and then drop on the party en masse whenever they stop moving for more than a few minutes at a time (e.g. resting), while vanishing down holes and drains if the party attempts pursuit.

Sorry, when I say "the PCs" what I really mean is any small group of potent individuals on PC levels of power. That could be other NPCs with class levels, a pair of dragons, a coven of hags, a powerful cult leader and his retinue, whatever. "The PCs" is just easier, and often they are the ones we're focused on.

The issue is that there are lots of NPC organizations which consist of mostly non-extraordinary people in a world with extraordinary threats, of which the PCs are but one. When the actual player characters realize that the powers that be are not able to deal with problems like them, sometimes you get the murderhobo phenomenon. This can help to address what NPC groups would do when faced with a threat like that.

Would you suggest that I try to make the advice more generic as opposed to specific? I am just worried that this would make it more difficult for a DM to put it into action.

The word "PC" isn't the only thing that makes the advice feel a bit too much like DM harrassment for my taste--it's also stuff like laying ambushes to account specifically for the target's goto spells. <<If the dynamic of the group is to have a PC or two concentrate on important spells, then ambushes should be laid for those spells. Elites should reveal themselves to provoke the spellcasters into casting their concentration spells. Once they have done so, units of ranged attackers and area attackers should reveal themselves to hit those mages while the Elites retreat. In general, when the PCs' full might is brought to bear, scatter and retreat.>>

If the enemy truly knows this specific group of actors and is executing a killing ambush, then fine--but then they would also bring enough force to do the job, and it's a TPK by design unless the players find a way to break the trap. That should be rare, but from the phrasing "ambushes should be laid" it sounds like you're expecting this to be a regular thing where the bad guys always pursue them, know enough about them to specifically arrange counterplay to favored tactics, never bring enough force to kill them, and never give up. That mode of play doesn't seem realistic or fun to me. Edit: on reread of the edited OP, maybe you're not suggesting that after all, but it was my initial first impression.

Personally I'd rather talk about enemy SOP and the things they are prepared to do against ANY individually-powerful powerful foe (e.g. "weapon attacks are low priority compared to DMG disarm and running away with the weapon followed by grapple-prone, because dozens of 11 HP NPCs have an action economy more suited to defeating a high-level fighter by depleting his favored weapons first (e.g. magic halberd and backup greatsword) and reducing him to dagger attacks while prone, rather than attempting to deplete HP directly while he still is leveraging PAM and GWM to murder them in great whacking lots every round" as well as against e.g hordes of summoned creatures, or against spell buffs like Spirit Guardians.

Then the PCs can still win fights and it doesn't seem like a failure of planning on the NPCs' part, since the plans weren't targeting these PCs specifically. But part of SOP should be oriented towards analyzing defeats, via Speak With Dead or other means, to build threat models and possibly strike back. PCs should definitely have to get used to the POSSIBILITY of being targeted with overwhelming retaliatory force, and have to engage in counterplay such concealing their identities and/or finding a secure base of operations protected by a neutral or friendly sovereign power with overwhelming military or diplomatic force of its own, compared to the potential retaliators.

Similarly, a highly valuable elite should be protected defensively in this way as well, with the Help action being used to provide disadvantage to attack rolls against them.

Note: imposing disadvantage on an attack isn't an entirely unreasonable improvised action, but it's not something the Help action is able to do. Shoving an enemy prone and grappling them so they can't stand up easily can though. (Then, throw on a net (without disadvantage because advantage from the target being prone and 5' away cancels the disadvantage from using a ranged weapon with an enemy nearby), and add at least one extra grappler.)