Players expectations in combat: how to handle.

[Kalmageddon]

I've recently had a big argument with one of my players, the details of which are not important. Suffice to say, amidst a lot of stuff, he commented how the enemies during combat never behaved like he expected.
He cited the example of our last session, which I will now quickly describe:

-The players are assaulting a fortress full of xill.
-They arrive at the heart of said fortress and I describe the placement of the enemies and their surroundings (we actually drew a map on the tactical grid), which consisted of them being scattered roughly along the borders of a more or less circular arena, with the boss at the center.
-The characters come in from the top and player X has his character move halfway to the center and then ready an action to move again if the enemies come close.
-At this point I have to mention that the PCs had already encountered xills, which, as presented in pathfinder, have both ranged and melee weapons.
Conclusion: the xills pepper him full of arrows, while a few of them move between him and his allies and him and the boss in order to block his retreat and prevent him from advancing further, therefore negating his readied action.

The critique I recieved was that xill are stronger in melee and that I had described them as a warrior race (which they are), therefore they should have all charged in melee. Anohter more veiled complaint was that it was somehow unfair to have them play tactically and do more than 40 damage to this character in one round, the underlying statement being that since this player obviously didn't expect this outcome I made him look like a fool by punishing his action so much.

This raises the interesting point of player expectations in combat and during challenges in general. If a player decides that the best way to overcome an obstacle is X, should the GM try to play along with the player and make X work, or should he aim to challenge his players and play out the outcome logically, therefore potentially either making X a sub optimal choice or even, as I did, a critical mistake?
(of course sometimes X might just work, but I'm talking about those times when it obviously shouldn't, like in the case of the example above)

[DuxAstrorum]

It sounds like the player decided to solo tactic an arena. Having npcs take advantage of a lone wolf is actually pretty common. Warriors aren't constricted to only using melee either, so if he separated himself from the group it is completely fair to have the minions DO THEIR JOB and take advantage of a weak point. If he can't understand that basic concept then he may need to be sat down with and explained how minions are supposed to work.

I have myself learned from experience as a player that rushing in alone is generally a bad idea. It's just something that needs to be learned. He made a mistake and had to pay for it.

[hymer]

An interesting exercise might be to try giving the actions of the monsters over to the players to decide. You could start by explaining what you wouldd have had them do, but the players collectively decide for an encounter or two. If that's too radical, a few simulated encounters could be used instead.
It should give you something fairly concrete to base the discussion on (after the encounter is played out). Re-enacting that xill encounter could be the first experiment.

[Surpriser]

For this specific encounter: Xill are smart and often trained combatants, especially so with a leader (with presumably more experience and higher intelligence) present.
Their ranged options (3.5, PF is probably similar) are actually not inferior to their melee attacks, with the additional advantage of being, well, ranged.

So they behaved exactly like one would expect of intelligent opponents: Make use of an opportunity created by a tactical mistake on the player's part and take him out before the others catch up.

In addition, the player was metagaming in a way: there is no tactical advantage in running a bit, then stopping and waiting for the enemies to close before continuing your movement. This tactic could have worked only due to the way ready actions can be used to force enemies to "waste" their action by running towards an empty spot.
Now, there is nothing wrong in general with using this tactic - after all, this is D&D and not real life and some abstractions have to be made. But since the complaint by the player was that the behaviour of the xills was not "realistic", you can point out that neither was his.
If he is using rules quirks for a tactical advantage, so can the enemies.

Also, running ahead and trying to solo a group of enemies (without a specific plan) should nearly always be a mistake and result in consequences.

To sum it all up: I would have let the xill act exactly the same, although I would have probably pointed out the flaw in that player's plan before he rushed in.

This raises the interesting point of player expectations in combat and during challenges in general. If a player decides that the best way to overcome an obstacle is X, should the GM try to play along with the player and make X work, or should he aim to challenge his players and play out the outcome logically, therefore potentially either making X a sub optimal choice or even, as I did, a critical mistake?
(of course sometimes X might just work, but I'm talking about those times when it obviously shouldn't, like in the case of the example above)

This depends on your style of play. If you are going for a more cinematic style, then that million-to-one chance might actually work out, simply because it's a cool idea. For a more "realistic" (I think the term simulationist is used here) style, enemies should make tactical decisions according to their knowledge and intelligence. If that means exploiting mistakes made by the PCs, so be it.

Personally, I prefer the second variant, because it promotes tactical thinking and simply feels ... right.

EDIT: Of course, you should talk about this with your players (preferably before the game starts, but better late than never) and clarify how adversaries and obstacles will work in your game.

[Broken Crown]

The critique I recieved was that xill are stronger in melee and that I had described them as a warrior race (which they are), therefore they should have all charged in melee.

Klingons aside, warrior race ≠ tactical stupidity. Generally, being a successful warrior means using tactics that will help you win.

I'm not sure what the player in question was trying to achieve here. If he was hoping to engage the xill boss in melee, why did he stop halfway? And if dealing with the boss wasn't his plan, why did he deliberately surround himself with enemies while cutting himself off from allied support? Was he counting on support, but the xill cut him off due to initiative order?

Do your players know the old military adage, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy"?

If plan X is a good plan, it should work, up to the point where the enemy figures out that the players are doing X and take appropriate countermeasures. (If the enemies are unintelligent or have poor situational awareness, this might not happen before the battle is over.) If X is a bad plan, the players will find out soon enough (and hopefully be able to retreat and regroup before suffering too many casualties).

You shouldn't completely discount a plan that's "so crazy, it just might work"; that's valid from a narrative standpoint at the very least. But there's a difference between being taken by surprise because the enemy did something unexpected, and not taking advantage of the fact that the enemy did something stupid.

[Kalmageddon]

EDIT: Of course, you should talk about this with your players (preferably before the game starts, but better late than never) and clarify how adversaries and obstacles will work in your game.

This player is unable to take any level of criticism, so this really did not work. I actually gave him a detailed and in-depth explanation of why things happened the way they happened, including advice on how to handle similar situations in the future (which boiled down to "if you want to tank, raise your armor class and saving throws and please try to coordinate with the rest of the group"), all I got in return was a load of insults and accusations of being arrogant and saying these things just to "be right".
As I said, there was drama.
But this is not what I want to discuss, I just want to consider the merits of making stuff happen the way the players want it to happen in combat, like you would outside of combat to facilitate roleplaying or simply to have a campaign include stuff that the players want to see.

[Satinavian]

Include things in a campaign the players want to see is one thing (and generally good)

That is not to make the stauff happen exactly like the payers want it. I don't do that in combat and i don't do that outside combat. Instead stuff happens like the rules say and (if left open by the rules) i think is most plausible.

That is because most players i game with want versimilitude. And as long as that is true for you and most of your table, the most plausible way is the way to go. If your tabel is different, well, you could try the other approach, i guess. It is not something i would do as GM or would want to experience as player, but people are different.

[goto124]

It makes me wonder...

Let's say there's a game with a untactical player. Could be dumb, could be bad at thinking in general, could be just plain new to the type of games that require combat tactics. Lack of RL intelligence is enough to do addition and subtraction, but not enough to know stuff like 'flanking' or what we usually refer to as 'basic tactics'.

Should the GM make the NPCs 'stupidier' to accomodate for this player?

[Avalander]

I should say, it's not uncommon that some courses of action look great in our head, but we only realise how stupid they are after executing them. Add to this that you have your own idea of what's going on and each player has his own idea, which will probably differ to some degree from yours, even if you draw a map and take time to explain everything carefully. When they are acting stupid, then, they might just have a different idea of what's going on.

After some years, I have discovered the power of three simple words: are you sure?

When a player proposes an action that seems stupid to you, he might actually have a different idea of what's going on in his head, but he might also have a crazy idea that could work. Anyway, when used appropriately, the players can learn to recognise these words as a signal that they could be missing something and should reevaluate their chosen action.

[goto124]

After some years, I have discovered the power of three simple words: are you sure?

A related link.

It's better to (in no particular order, and not necessarilly all of them):

- explain what will happen, possibly phrasing it as if the character had made an intelligence check and is realizing it,
- ask "what do you expect to happen after you do that?"
- ask why the player expected things to happen as he/she expected

[Avalander]

A related link.

It's better to (in no particular order, and not necessarilly all of them):

- explain what will happen, possibly phrasing it as if the character had made an intelligence check and is realizing it,
- ask "what do you expect to happen after you do that?"
- ask why the player expected things to happen as he/she expected

Granted, that's what I do when they answer with "yeah, why?", but I don't see any issue with letting the players figure out what's the problem before explaining it. I guess different tables have different preferences.

[goto124]

IMHO, if a player has announced hir actions, the answer to "are you sure?" is going to be "yeah, what's wrong with it?" anyway. Especially in the cases of "I thought it was 20ft tall" or "I was planning on casting Feather Fall".

By now we're just quibbling over minor differences in playstyles though!

[The Fury]

Maybe this comes down to difference in player preferences, though for my part my favorite DM I've played under is one I'd describe as "tough but fair." I've made my share of tactical blunders over the years and my characters have payed dearly for them. Though I think I'm better at having my characters come up with plans for dealing with encounters now. I gather this player may just simply prefer encounters that they can win.

Not to say that I wouldn't react like this player did if an encounter was legitimately unfair. By which I mean, no amount of clever tactics would allow the player party to prevail. Like if the orcs that we were warned about turned out to all be wizards twice the party's level or something.

[valadil]

Everyone's a critic. Your player is a butthurt critic. I think he's pissed because he's secretly ashamed of his choice to charge into battle.

I have two suggestions for dealing with this kind of thing. One is an overt hint. Just say the xill have their bows out. If they're standing around on guard duty, that's more likely than having their melee weapons out. The other is some sort of sense motive check. Let the player use his skills to analyze the situation and guess what the enemy will do. Since it's a check it can be botched, but most of the time it should help.

This raises the interesting point of player expectations in combat and during challenges in general. If a player decides that the best way to overcome an obstacle is X, should the GM try to play along with the player and make X work, or should he aim to challenge his players and play out the outcome logically, therefore potentially either making X a sub optimal choice or even, as I did, a critical mistake?
(of course sometimes X might just work, but I'm talking about those times when it obviously shouldn't, like in the case of the example above)

All paths do not lead the victory. The GM should allow the players to go down any path they choose. He should warn them if them if that path is particularly stupid. But if you only let them down paths they can win or turn every path they take into a path they can win, what's the point of playing your game?

[Honest Tiefling]

I agree, ditch this player. A player who cannot take criticism is going to make issues later down the line. Save yourself the pain.

I do not agree that every group should change how NPCs work. In my groups, the other players don't want to treated as idiots who cannot take a challenge, nor would I find it fun to basically describe another person's story. There might be a case where people would enjoy it, but I cannot honestly think what it might be like.

[goto124]

When I play a game, I expect eventual victory. There will be many setbacks and difficult things along the way, but if the quest was "kill the dragon and save the princess", I expect to eventually kill the dragon and save the princess by the end of the campaign.

Is this unreasonable to expect?

[Broken Crown]

I think it's reasonable to expect victory, but not to assume victory.

If the DM gives out a quest, it should be one that the PCs can achieve. If the PCs undertake a quest on their own initiative, I likewise think that the DM should at least warn them if it's beyond their abilities.

It's very different, though, for the players to feel entitled to succeed, just because the quest was given to them. As with any game, you don't win a prize just for showing up; you have to earn it, by actually overcoming the obstacles in your way.

[Deophaun]

About the only thing I can say from player expectation is that since combat rounds are an abstraction, it is reasonable to assume a level of chaos on the battlefield that makes opponents behave in a non-optimal fashion. Large groups of enemies probably shouldn't be focus-firing down PCs as a matter of course.

But then, when someone is so willing to offer themselves as an easy and obvious target, it's tough to ignore it.

[Slipperychicken]

them being scattered roughly along the borders of a more or less circular arena, with the boss at the center.

What's the in-universe reason for this configuration? Without much more info, that sounds a lot like the setup to some kind of honor-duel.

[Surpriser]

About the only thing I can say from player expectation is that since combat rounds are an abstraction, it is reasonable to assume a level of chaos on the battlefield that makes opponents behave in a non-optimal fashion. Large groups of enemies probably shouldn't be focus-firing down PCs as a matter of course.

By the same reasoning, a player should not employ ready actions in a way that seems more like spontaneous teleportation: "I wait until all the xill rush me and then suddenly I will have been somewhere else all along".
At the very least (assuming the xill actually do what the player expects and try to close to melee), the xill would have acted one after another, with the first one rushing the player's old position (thus triggering the ready action), and all others closing to his new position.
Congratulations, you just sacrificed your standard action to put a single enemy 30ft behind you.

So no matter whether you go for "versimilitude" (as in: the rules are an abstraction for what is really happening and have to be bent to accomodate reality) or whether you see the rules as defining the reality of the game, this specific tactic simply should not have worked.

[Kalmageddon]

What's the in-universe reason for this configuration? Without much more info, that sounds a lot like the setup to some kind of honor-duel.

I gave an oversimplified descritpion, the "arena" was actually the control room for a fortress able to move through the ethereal plane, at the center there was the commands and a sort of "security console", so to speak. I went a bit magitech with that, but given how boring the ethereal plane is, I thought giving it a bit of an alien vibe would have worked.
Anyway, the boss was at the center because she was keeping an eye on the ongoing battle through that object, while the guards were simply at their posts around the room, at vantage points that let them keep an eye on things. They weren't expecting the PCs to barge in, but they weren't caught completely off-guard because they knew there was a battle going on.

[YossarianLives]

When I play a game, I expect eventual victory. There will be many setbacks and difficult things along the way, but if the quest was "kill the dragon and save the princess", I expect to eventually kill the dragon and save the princess by the end of the campaign.

Is this unreasonable to expect?

If a campaign run by me? Yes. But it is variable and depends on the group. I find a story that has a real risk of failure to be ultimately more satisfying.

In my opinion being TPKed by a random encounter can be fun, but it can also be very anti-climatic. Once again it depends on your group's personal tastes.

[Mr. Mask]

Does separating yourself from the group really matter in DnD? I mean, tactically all the minions should focus on one PC at a time, so they can take out the party's damage output as quickly as possible. So if you stay together as a group, unless yuo're actively preventing the archers targeting the same person, they ought to do that.

[Vitruviansquid]

While I'm sure you're trying to present events and characters as close to the truth as you can, I have doubts about your perceptions of events. I mean come on, you make this guy sound like the worst player ever and a terrible person to boot.

That said, I would agree you need to set up situations as the GM where players can fail if they make the wrong choices (or at the very least, have the illusion of failure). After all, if you can't fail, there is no excitement in succeeding. If someone does something patently ridiculous, like stand out in the open to soak up missile fire from an entire encounter's worth of monsters, let them die. That is fair and realistic.

However, I suspect that's not how your player actually feels about the situation. What I see happen fairly often from DMs who like to believe they are tactical masterminds is the DM will set up situations according to "how the monsters would behave if they were intelligent," which end up being totally unfair and unbeatable ultimate death traps for the PCs. Because the DM conjures his fictional spike traps, murder holes, and boiling oil out of nothing, he gives no thought to the appropriate amount of resources or paranoia for the situation. Instead, that DM always thinks "well, there's no reason why a pack of kobolds serious about defending their den would *skimp* on a scythe trap here," ending up with supposedly shoddy monster lairs pimped out with defenses far more paranoid than any actual medieval fortresses could've ever had. Likewise, the DM will set up battles where the monsters "use tactics based on terrain" by making the perfect Hannibal-chosen terrain that the monsters happened to bring the perfect cheesy weapons to. If the party is fighting monsters with spears, of course it'll be at a narrow pass of perfect width that flanking is impossible. If the party is fighting monsters with bows, of course they have to go uphill through mud and over earthworks. Then, once the players fail, the DM gets to jump up, puff out his chest, and say "ah ha! Looks like this whole time you weren't prepared to fight monsters with REAL tactics! You can't just charge in with swords swinging to every situation and expect to win! Looks like you were outsmarted once again by your tactical genius DM!" Even more annoying is when the DM has some obscure notion about how real life fighting was done and expect players to figure out what it is and execute it perfectly, like to say "you should've ran into the orc pikemen while declaring you would leap down and roll under the pikes, because that's how real life Spanish swordsmen defeated the pikes of their enemies!"

In any case, I'm not saying you were probably doing this as severely as described above, but it is worth some introspection to see if you've really designed encounters that are fair and fun for players. I would avoid any encounters where you put in some mechanic to negate player strengths. A player specializes toward blasting (or any other kind of) power because they think blasting (or that kind of power) is fun, so when you present an interesting tactical challenge by somehow negating the advantage of blasting, you've just served up a heaping spoonful of unfun times to your blasting player. Your xill fight sounds like it's designed as a death trap for melee players, which will obviously make the game unfun (honestly, what is he supposed to do? Wait out the fight against an entire room full of missile enemies? Do something crazy and sneaky that you thought of and wouldn't tell him? Stay in cover so that the next turn, the xill can all spam missiles another, even more vulnerable player?). Instead, fights should be difficult enough but vulnerable enough to make it mandatory for players to leverage their strengths. In other words, you don't want to design fights so that the player with reach can't use reach - you want to design fights so that the player with reach better abuse his reach hard if he wants to win.

In fact, I find the best encounter design to come from giving no thought at all to tactics. Make interesting enemies (it's as easy as "this dude can go through opponents instead of having go around, and these other dudes hit people harder with every attack.") put the fight in interesting locations (that's as easy as "there are lava geysers here, here, and here"), and then have the fight play out. Once you are starting to come up with synergies in designing your fight, you are *already on the road to making your encounter unfair and unfun.*

[Mr. Mask]

That's sort of the problem with DnD's set up in general. "Encounters," AKA: Walking into an ambush. Surviving that, realistically, is fairly unlikely, especially not if it's on a regular basis. If players can't choose their fights, and how they approach situations, then there's very little they can do tactically to subvert an enemy's strength.

For this reason, I suggest setting up a living/defensive area for the enemy as if they live there and have their plans of attack and defence, where how alert they are depends on the situation (if the players have been raising a ruckus nearby, they'll be on full-alert--so you might want attack three days later). This way, the players can investigate, plan, and decide on a venue of attack, the defences they face being dependant on how and what they do (where luring the enemy out of the fort ahead of time could make it much easier).

[nedz]

This player is unable to take any level of criticism, so this really did not work. I actually gave him a detailed and in-depth explanation of why things happened the way they happened, including advice on how to handle similar situations in the future (which boiled down to "if you want to tank, raise your armor class and saving throws and please try to coordinate with the rest of the group"), all I got in return was a load of insults and accusations of being arrogant and saying these things just to "be right".
As I said, there was drama.
But this is not what I want to discuss, I just want to consider the merits of making stuff happen the way the players want it to happen in combat, like you would outside of combat to facilitate roleplaying or simply to have a campaign include stuff that the players want to see.

What do the other player's think ?

Is it the case that you have one player who can't take this, or did all of them complain ?

I often find that peer pressure is the best solution to this sort of problem: if everyone else tells him he screwed up then there should be less drama.

Ultimately I think one lesson you could take from this is to never explain and never apologise to this player since that is obviously counter productive. I don't like this, but then life is short.

[Kalmageddon]

While I'm sure you're trying to present events and characters as close to the truth as you can, I have doubts about your perceptions of events. I mean come on, you make this guy sound like the worst player ever and a terrible person to boot.

It wasn't my intention.
But he does play pretty badly, it's just that this time it had more of an impact on the encounter as a whole.

That said, I would agree you need to set up situations as the GM where players can fail if they make the wrong choices (or at the very least, have the illusion of failure). After all, if you can't fail, there is no excitement in succeeding. If someone does something patently ridiculous, like stand out in the open to soak up missile fire from an entire encounter's worth of monsters, let them die. That is fair and realistic.

However, I suspect that's not how your player actually feels about the situation. What I see happen fairly often from DMs who like to believe they are tactical masterminds is the DM will set up situations according to "how the monsters would behave if they were intelligent," which end up being totally unfair and unbeatable ultimate death traps for the PCs. Because the DM conjures his fictional spike traps, murder holes, and boiling oil out of nothing, he gives no thought to the appropriate amount of resources or paranoia for the situation. Instead, that DM always thinks "well, there's no reason why a pack of kobolds serious about defending their den would *skimp* on a scythe trap here," ending up with supposedly shoddy monster lairs pimped out with defenses far more paranoid than any actual medieval fortresses could've ever had. Likewise, the DM will set up battles where the monsters "use tactics based on terrain" by making the perfect Hannibal-chosen terrain that the monsters happened to bring the perfect cheesy weapons to. If the party is fighting monsters with spears, of course it'll be at a narrow pass of perfect width that flanking is impossible. If the party is fighting monsters with bows, of course they have to go uphill through mud and over earthworks. Then, once the players fail, the DM gets to jump up, puff out his chest, and say "ah ha! Looks like this whole time you weren't prepared to fight monsters with REAL tactics! You can't just charge in with swords swinging to every situation and expect to win! Looks like you were outsmarted once again by your tactical genius DM!" Even more annoying is when the DM has some obscure notion about how real life fighting was done and expect players to figure out what it is and execute it perfectly, like to say "you should've ran into the orc pikemen while declaring you would leap down and roll under the pikes, because that's how real life Spanish swordsmen defeated the pikes of their enemies!"

In any case, I'm not saying you were probably doing this as severely as described above, but it is worth some introspection to see if you've really designed encounters that are fair and fun for players. I would avoid any encounters where you put in some mechanic to negate player strengths. A player specializes toward blasting (or any other kind of) power because they think blasting (or that kind of power) is fun, so when you present an interesting tactical challenge by somehow negating the advantage of blasting, you've just served up a heaping spoonful of unfun times to your blasting player. Your xill fight sounds like it's designed as a death trap for melee players, which will obviously make the game unfun (honestly, what is he supposed to do? Wait out the fight against an entire room full of missile enemies? Do something crazy and sneaky that you thought of and wouldn't tell him? Stay in cover so that the next turn, the xill can all spam missiles another, even more vulnerable player?). Instead, fights should be difficult enough but vulnerable enough to make it mandatory for players to leverage their strengths. In other words, you don't want to design fights so that the player with reach can't use reach - you want to design fights so that the player with reach better abuse his reach hard if he wants to win.

While I disagree with your philosphy, I'm actually not deviating from it all that much.
I do not design dungeons or encounters to be death traps, this encounter in particular was meant to be extra-hard because it was completely optional for the group and not something they were forced into, more of a "bonus" if they wanted to really triumph, something which they knew. But it was beatable and they did win in the end.
Anyway, with that said, the encounter was in the ethereal plane, which means everyone flies. So getting in melee and staying there was actually really easy from the first round.
Also, the room had quite a few bits of cover, so ranged combat didn't have much of an advantage.

So, to recap: I'm not the kind of GM you are describing.

That's sort of the problem with DnD's set up in general. "Encounters," AKA: Walking into an ambush. Surviving that, realistically, is fairly unlikely, especially not if it's on a regular basis. If players can't choose their fights, and how they approach situations, then there's very little they can do tactically to subvert an enemy's strength.

For this reason, I suggest setting up a living/defensive area for the enemy as if they live there and have their plans of attack and defence, where how alert they are depends on the situation (if the players have been raising a ruckus nearby, they'll be on full-alert--so you might want attack three days later). This way, the players can investigate, plan, and decide on a venue of attack, the defences they face being dependant on how and what they do (where luring the enemy out of the fort ahead of time could make it much easier).

I disagree with the first part.
There is always an optimal strategy and when there isn't, escape is usually an option.
Yet again, I'd like to stress that getting into this fight was entirely up to the players. And they won, in the end. The encounter was difficult but doable, it's just that the way Mr. A played, he made it even harder.

As for the second part, I already do that. What's so strange about the HQ of the enemy having a commander and a few guards to attend her? What does it matters if there were living quarters somewhere else in the building? There was a battle raging on outside, anyway, so everyone was either buisy at the front or guarding key locations, which, surprise surprise, included the very core of their fortress. I don't see anything counter intuitive or even "gamey" about it. The players made their way to the HQ by various means and they found the enemy commander and her bodyguards and associates.
That's it.

What do the other player's think ?

Is it the case that you have one player who can't take this, or did all of them complain ?

I often find that peer pressure is the best solution to this sort of problem: if everyone else tells him he screwed up then there should be less drama.

Ultimately I think one lesson you could take from this is to never explain and never apologise to this player since that is obviously counter productive. I don't like this, but then life is short.

You couldn't be further from the truth. The main source of frustration from this player is that he's bad at the game, everyone thinks that he's bad at the game and even during and after the session, everyone was telling him exactly what he did wrong. He's convinced that he's right and that nobody else understands or that they maliciously disagree just to be right at his expenses.
And seeing that everyone agrees and doesn't have a problem with me made him mad, but that's something more to do with personal problems he has with me.

I'd like to point out that, again, discussing this specific episode is not the objective of this thread. This guy left the campaign shortly after this argument and my other players don't have any problems with me, so really I don't need advice on how to handle it.

I just wonder if he had a point in thinking that the GM should play into the PCs plans and tactics regardless if they are sound or not, just so they can feel smart and awesome. A bit like how in action movies, plans that should obviously never work are allowed to be effective, potentially making the villain look like an idiot, just because it's cool.
Personally, I disagree and I think that a plan can be both cool and functional and that tactics and teamwork should be encouraged instead of making everyone a Leeroy Jenkins. But that's because I see roleplaying games as probelm solving experiences first, so I like when faliure is an option. Otherwise it's just mindless escapism and we are all just playing make beliefs with imaginary characters instead of actually playing a game with rules, objectives and obstacles.

[mephnick]

Sounds fair to me. My group expects me to prepare fair combats mechanic/number-wise and I'll give them opportunities to avoid, ambush, converse their way through encounters. However, once combat has started I will do everything in my power to see the side I'm running win. I'm role-playing the monsters and the monsters don't want to die, intelligent or not. If this means five rangers nuking the fireball slinging wizard in round 2 then so be it, she should have found cover. It's the player's responsibility to plan somewhat tactically and to respect their opposition. If my paladin demands a duel in the middle of battle with a hobgoblin warlord...it might happen! If she tries to duel the leader of a bandit group trying to rob her, he'll lie, and then she'll get jumped once she's separated.

Of course, everyone has a different play style and two styles coming in conflict with each other is no one's fault. All you can do is explain that's how you run combats and he'll have to adapt or find a DM more suitable to his needs.

[Vitruviansquid]

That's sort of the problem with DnD's set up in general. "Encounters," AKA: Walking into an ambush. Surviving that, realistically, is fairly unlikely, especially not if it's on a regular basis. If players can't choose their fights, and how they approach situations, then there's very little they can do tactically to subvert an enemy's strength.

For this reason, I suggest setting up a living/defensive area for the enemy as if they live there and have their plans of attack and defence, where how alert they are depends on the situation (if the players have been raising a ruckus nearby, they'll be on full-alert--so you might want attack three days later). This way, the players can investigate, plan, and decide on a venue of attack, the defences they face being dependant on how and what they do (where luring the enemy out of the fort ahead of time could make it much easier).

Any time I ambush my players, I can control how many monsters are attempting the ambush and how tough they are. I can set how likely it is for the players to detect the ambush and come up with a counter, and I can force the players to fight their way out of it, or just escape, and so on. In a situation where the players have the initiative and come up with a plan to attack, it is still my whim as to whether the players' plans work or backfire, or how likely they are to either.

Make no mistake, the DM has total control over the likelihood of player characters surviving any encounter. Whenever a DM claims not to be in charge of this, he/she is usually screwing over the players in an unfair way.

[Mr. Mask]

Well, you can try your best to keep the players alive against all odds, but that can get difficult. If they decide to attack the king's castle by trying to storm the front gates, it'll be tricky for it to result in much other than the guards coming down and slaughtering them. You could have the world fold to the PC's will, where because they tried the direct approach it turns out most of the guards are out of the castle, and the guards who are there get confused and so behave in a way that allows the PCs to survive, but after a while you start to need increasingly complex justifications for why the PCs survive. While the GM should try to have the players survive, I'm not sure that's to an unlimited extent.



Kalmageddon: Oh, that wasn't a complaint directed at you. It's just the way I often see DnD played nowadays, where you go from ambush to ambush with little choice.

It does of course make sense some areas will be prepared against attack, like your commander's throne-room.