Levels of Player Combat Tactics

[RSP]

I think there's a fine line here. Obviously tactical combat in a turn based game is going to rely to some degree on leveraging your turns, your turn order in the initiative list, etc. For example, many combos require leveraging that turn order. First do X then do Y. All of that is metagame info. It's not actually present in the fictional world. So how exactly do you want to see that needle threaded?

Can you give an example of the type of “combo” you’re referring to?

Do you mean two characters working on something in-game? Two Players working on something with OOC knowledge? One character doing something that has a requirement (like Shield Master Shove using JC’s logic)?

[Zuras]

YMMV. As I said, there are many asymmetries between players and the DM. I am rooting for my players and I typically don’t use every unfair advantage at my disposal, but I feel like a cabal of wizards (who should be smarter than me) should have a trick or two up their sleeves.

And sometimes showing players that a tactic is possible is what gives them permission to experiment. I think it made our game better in the long run.

I agree that sometimes it’s fun and instructive to demonstrate tactics to your players, or show that the bad guys can be clever too. It’s all about the execution in those cases—if your players felt you played fair, then everything’s fine. It’s just been a pain point for me, especially in pick-up/rotating DM games.

[Frogreaver]

Can you give an example of the type of “combo” you’re referring to?

Do you mean two characters working on something in-game? Two Players working on something with OOC knowledge? One character doing something that has a requirement (like Shield Master Shove using JC’s logic)?

Let's start simpler. I'm 60ft away from an enemy. Instead of trying to get there as fast as I can. I get there almost as fast as I can and stop 35 ft away from the enemy instead of 30, because I know they are a melee enemy with a 30ft max movement speed and so that enemy can't move and attack me next turn. Isn't everything about that interaction based on metagame knowledge about turns and movement distances within the turn and actions within the turn, etc.

Solid Tactic about stopping just shy of his movement distance. Fairly rudimentary and common as well, but so detached from the fiction that the only way you arrive at this tactic is out of character knowledge about turn structures.

[strangebloke]

I’m not sure what got you to your conclusion: why do you assume RPing equals "Oh your stupid fighter has 6 AC, they wouldn't think to do that?”

I mean, based off of this, you’re assuming I’d have a fighter with a 3 or 4 in Dex (to get the 6 AC, no armor worn so 10 minus Dex mod of -4), as well as dumping Int (for whatever score you ascribe to being “stupid”). Assuming such awful stats for my character isn’t just wrong (current PC is both graceful and intelligent), it’s downright rude.

Other than that, it seems you’re arguing for “just let everyone metagame”, which is, at least as I see it, the opposite of role-playing. To each their own, but why play a role-playing game, if you don’t want to role play?

Also, you sound like someone who likes to study the adventure module before playing it so you can use that “player knowledge” with your character to “win” the game, and impress everyone with how you knew everything that was needed, whenever it was needed. Your argument seems to be: if the DM doesn’t change the game info, it’s not the players fault for using what they know. (This puts a ridiculous bit of more work on the already over-worked DM, btw.)

Again, if that’s what you enjoy, fair enough; it’s certainly not what I’d care for though.

First of all I meant to say 6 intelligence. Typing on the phone ruins a man.

Secondly, yeah metagaming is fine. If I (the player) know what vampires are and i live in a world where they're not real and were only made up in the last few centuries, wouldn't a man who lives in a world where vampires are real know even more? Wouldn't my character, who frequents taverns and travels and fights for a living hear tell of the fearsome vampyr and all the evils they can do?

This "roll to see if you know what you know" thing is pointless. It's not role-playing, not really. It's just arbitrarily enforced character ignorance. It's deciding what a character knows based on randomness or fiat rather than having the player work out for himself what might be reasonable for his guy to know. It's annoying and tyrannical. "Sorry Jim, you may be the hero of seven kingdoms and a legendary warrior, but you rolled poorly on the knowledge check so you don't get to know that the dragon that breathes lightning is in fact resistant to lightning."

As for mechanics, my character may not know what legendary actions are or that a dragon has them but they know dragons are real big and real strong and you have to be careful around them. My character may not know that Johnny is on his last death save but he knows how long it takes for a guy to bleed out and he doesn't want his friend to die. My character may not know that the DM just rolled a 16 but he does know that the enemy swordsman's blow isn't gonna get blocked unless he casts shield.

As a DM, my baseline assumption is that characters know more or less everything their players know because trying to second guess your players at every turn is unproductive. "Bob, would JIM know that counter spell has a range of sixty feet???" Who cares? Just play the game, let players be tactical if they want to be, it's not ruining anyone's fun.

As for adventure modules: I don't run them. If I did, I'd probably not want someone reading ahead, but this is on an entirely different level from just "knowing the monsters statblock." Specific campaign knowledge is different from general systems knowledge.

[Frogreaver]

This "roll to see if you know what you know" thing is pointless. It's not role-playing, not really. It's just arbitrarily enforced character ignorance. It's deciding what a character knows based on randomness or fiat rather than having the player work out for himself what might be reasonable for his guy to know. It's annoying and tyrannical. "Sorry Jim, you may be the hero of seven kingdoms and a legendary warrior, but you rolled poorly on the knowledge check so you don't get to know that the dragon that breathes lightning is in fact resistant to lightning."

Letting the player decide via Fiat as you prescribe above doesn't seem particularly better.

Character Context with dice seem to be a solid way to establish such facts about the character. That some DM's aren't very good at appropriately weighting your background info into the DC/Modifier (or providing auto-success if warranted) - doesn't mean we should fall back to the player decides. I mean, what's next, the player just decides all their starting stats and their starting level?

[RSP]

Let's start simpler. I'm 60ft away from an enemy. Instead of trying to get there as fast as I can. I get there almost as fast as I can and stop 35 ft away from the enemy instead of 30, because I know they are a melee enemy with a 30ft max movement speed and so that enemy can't move and attack me next turn. Isn't everything about that interaction based on metagame knowledge about turns and movement distances within the turn and actions within the turn, etc.

For me personally, this would depend.

As you’re presenting it: yes, it’s Player knowledge and not Character knowledge. That is something I prefer to not do (not judging, just stating my preference), as I’ve stated, I prefer to RP.

However, this could similarly be done with character knowledge. For instance, the idea for the character could just be “I know about how far I need to be to engage and attack in melee, so I’m going to stay out of that range, and take up a defensive stance (Dodge Action), while sizing up this opponent.”

I’m in no way saying this all needs to be expressed this way during a turn; I’m fine giving the benefit of the doubt to Players (and DMs) with just declaring the actions.

Now if Player A took their turn to do the above, and then Player B points out “those are Orcs, they can Dash as a BA. You should just stay back.” That’s something I’d be annoyed with (unless Player A’s character was somehow familiar enough with Orcs that they would know that info, even though Player A was unaware of it; such as a new player with a Ranger who’s favorite enemy is Orcs)..

Most Players have been around D&D enough to have picked up at least some info, like using fire or acid to stop a troll from regenerating. Knowing all that stuff is fine and normal; but using it when the characters don’t know it is, in my opinion, making the game worse. That is, the DM puts the time and effort forth to prep encounters appropriate to the characters; if players are using out of game info to trivialize those encounters, what’s the point?

As a DM, I don’t particularly care if a Player is familiar with a campaign I’m running; but if they start using their knowledge of it to trivialize the encounters, they’re ruining it for the other players and, frankly, wasting my time.

There’s plenty of space, of course, between your example and doing that, but the principe holds: the encounters are designed to the character’s abilities and I appreciate that.

At least that’s my take on it. Again, if a table does DM vs Players (as opposed to NPCs vs PCs), and it works, cool. It’s just not my cup of tea (and my moneys on the DM).

If I (the player) know what vampires are and i live in a world where they're not real and were only made up in the last few centuries, wouldn't a man who lives in a world where vampires are real know even more?

No, this doesn’t actually make sense, logically. I live in a world with at least thousands of different creatures that I don’t know anything about. The simple fact that I exist, and they exist, does not give me knowledge on them in anyway.

Moreover, you and I have been exposed to vampires in multiple ways (different movies, tv shows, books, different editions of D&D possibly). Nothing says the farmer living in the in-game world has ever had any exposure to them, much less to that extent.

Further, I’m pretty sure every one of those different instances of learning about vampires had different (sometimes contradictory) information about them (compare Lestat to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to Lost Boys, to Twilight, to 3E D&D). Assuming that in-game farmer knows not just ALL of that and MORE (as you claim they should), but that they also should know what’s relevant to 5E D&D vampires, without ever having seen a vampire or been exposed to the movies, books, rulesets, etc., just doesn’t make sense.

Basically, this argument is: every creature in-game is aware of every other creature in-game, because they all exist. It’s a flawed argument to say the least.

Wouldn't my character, who frequents taverns and travels and fights for a living hear tell of the fearsome vampyr and all the evils they can do?

Well now this is interesting, as you seem to be switching to a RP reason as to why the character should know as opposed to the metagame reason.

Is your character a traveling fighter, who frequents taverns seeking tales of monsters? Was this part of their background? When back at town, do you make a point of your character going to the local tavern, and questioning travelers and entertainers on new stories? If so, then roll a d20 and we’ll see what they picked up, if anything, about this specific type of creature that they’re currently facing.

This "roll to see if you know what you know" thing is pointless.

I mean, why is it any different than “roll to see if you hit?”

You’re essentially arguing for: “Hey DM, no need for me to roll a d20 for Amazing Fighting Monster Slayer’s attack; as you can see by my character’s name, they are an Amazing Fighting Monster Slayer, and, therefore, the monster is slayed.”

The entire point of the d20 roll is to get a determination of success or failure by a character in the game, when the result of whatever is occurring is uncertain.

You’re arguing that the DM no longer determines if there’s uncertainty, the Player just determines an auto-success.

[Zuras]

If you guys want to have an in depth discussion as to the amount of metagaming involved in advanced player tactics, could you move it to a new thread? I fear otherwise it’s going to derail the discussion.

In terms of tactical sophistication, I hope we can agree that complex, creature specific tactics like Banishing your own teammates to break a vampire’s Charm on them fall into the Advanced tier, right?

[elyktsorb]

In a lot of games I play I actually see plenty of sub-optimal choices made during combat due to the actual character of the characters. So that's interesting.

[Frogreaver]

If you guys want to have an in depth discussion as to the amount of metagaming involved in advanced player tactics, could you move it to a new thread? I fear otherwise it’s going to derail the discussion.

In terms of tactical sophistication, I hope we can agree that complex, creature specific tactics like Banishing your own teammates to break a vampire’s Charm on them fall into the Advanced tier, right?

So I hate to say this but something like that requires alot of metagame knowledge about how the vampire's Charm works (it's very unlikely that's something the characters know) Heck it's also something very unlikely that many players will know.

So based on that I'd put it this way, presuming a player or character 'knows' such an interaction will break the charm, it's a very rudimentary tactic. For me it would fall in my first level of tactics - identification.

However, if the player/character doesn't know or have good reason to believe it will break the charm and does it anyways, it's a terrible tactical decision. In this situation doing nearly anything else was probably a better tactical decision.

It almost sounds like your 'advanced tactics' is primarily about noting the things advanced players would have knowledge of that newbies wouldn't. But knowledge is just the very first step in strong tactical play.

[RSP]

If you guys want to have an in depth discussion as to the amount of metagaming involved in advanced player tactics, could you move it to a new thread? I fear otherwise it’s going to derail the discussion.

As you had the OP, do you want to clarify as to what your intent was with the post? I mentioned this is a previous post.

“Player’s tactics”, the term used, could be either “character tactics” (because the Player is determining the character tactics), or “Players vs DM tactics.”

I mean, having a copy of the Monster Manual on hand to pull up the stats of whatever you’re currently fighting, so as to know all it’s capabilities and weaknesses, and then sharing those with the other Players, is a tactic that can be used while playing 5e, though it has nothing to do with character tactics (I wouldn’t appreciate this type of tactic, btw).

Was your intent to include this type of meta gaming in your “tactics” question; or was your OP about how PCs interact with their in-game surroundings and character-based knowledge more to what you were looking for? Or perhaps a third item I’m not considering?

[KorvinStarmast]

I’m fine with characters acting tactically, but I dislike players using out of character knowledge in combat.

I find this definition of "roleplay" to be altogether too restrictive. Sometimes roleplay can be fun in combat, like when a player is fighting someone/something they hate and they go mega hard, but I would never say "your character is too stupid to dodge in place here." Like come on, that's just mean.

I tend to be on strangebloke's side in this regard.

Obviously tactical combat in a turn based game is going to rely to some degree on leveraging your turns, your turn order in the initiative list, etc. For example, many combos require leveraging that turn order. First do X then do Y. All of that is metagame info. It's not actually present in the fictional world.

Bingo, we once again are confronted with the specter of player/character separation. It's a turn based game. (Which is done for playability reasons).

YMMV. As I said, there are many asymmetries between players and the DM.

You said it better than I did.

[Zuras]

So I hate to say this but something like that requires alot of metagame knowledge about how the vampire's Charm works (it's very unlikely that's something the characters know) Heck it's also something very unlikely that many players will know.

So based on that I'd put it this way, presuming a player or character 'knows' such an interaction will break the charm, it's a very rudimentary tactic. For me it would fall in my first level of tactics - identification.

However, if the player/character doesn't know or have good reason to believe it will break the charm and does it anyways, it's a terrible tactical decision. In this situation doing nearly anything else was probably a better tactical decision.

We obviously play at different tables, because I have rarely (maybe never) been at a tier 3 table without a PC with +9 or more to Arcana. Possibly due to one too many DMs saying “a magical effect you have no understanding of kills you, hurr durr.”

In any event, I would definitely consider the multi-step process involved—identifying the threat and devising a countermeasure—to be more than just basic tactics.

I don’t have clear bright-line distinctions between the levels, but on an emotional level, basic tactics is what I expect from other players as part of the basic D&D team concept and social contract. In Tier 1 or early Tier 2 play, I don’t expect new players to know exactly what they’re doing or how to use their class abilities. In Tier 3, sitting around casting cantrips in the final confrontation with the BBEG when you still have multiple high level slots left is being a bad teammate.

It’s not a big issue if it’s your ongoing campaign, since both the DM and other players are aware and have adjusted, but people playing Tier 3 pick-up AL games who haven’t mastered their basic class abilities bug me. As an AL DM I run plenty of modules where I spend more time working on my NPC voices and motivations than tactics, but those aren’t the Tier 3 mods.

[strangebloke]

Letting the player decide via Fiat as you prescribe above doesn't seem particularly better.

Character Context with dice seem to be a solid way to establish such facts about the character. That some DM's aren't very good at appropriately weighting your background info into the DC/Modifier (or providing auto-success if warranted) - doesn't mean we should fall back to the player decides. I mean, what's next, the player just decides all their starting stats and their starting level?

Seems like a lot of work for no purpose. My attitude is more like this: Players can choose to make their OOC knowledge their in-character knowledge, with the caveat that this information is prone to error and might be wrong. If they want accurate information, they need to roll for it. Perhaps because I run a custom setting and storyline, and frequently reskin enemies (this isn't a hobgoblin, its a guard!) I rarely have a problem with players who gloat about knowing some detail about the statblock.

And if they do, hey, fine for them.

The only thing I ban is looking up monster statblocks mid-combat, and that's more just because it slows the game down.

No, this doesn’t actually make sense, logically. I live in a world with at least thousands of different creatures that I don’t know anything about. The simple fact that I exist, and they exist, does not give me knowledge on them in anyway.

Moreover, you and I have been exposed to vampires in multiple ways (different movies, tv shows, books, different editions of D&D possibly). Nothing says the farmer living in the in-game world has ever had any exposure to them, much less to that extent.

Further, I’m pretty sure every one of those different instances of learning about vampires had different (sometimes contradictory) information about them (compare Lestat to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to Lost Boys, to Twilight, to 3E D&D). Assuming that in-game farmer knows not just ALL of that and MORE (as you claim they should), but that they also should know what’s relevant to 5E D&D vampires, without ever having seen a vampire or been exposed to the movies, books, rulesets, etc., just doesn’t make sense.

Basically, this argument is: every creature in-game is aware of every other creature in-game, because they all exist. It’s a flawed argument to say the least.

Only if your playerhas perfect recollection of every single monster in the MM/VGTM/MTOF, which, uh. Nah man, no way. And I really think people IRL do know about pretty much every animal that could pose a physical threat to them, especially within whatever region they're living/travelling in. When you go to Australia, every local tells you to beware the perfidious Drop Bear. If I wake up on the african savanna and see a pack of wild dogs, I would be pretty aware of what I was dealing with. To drive this point home: I don't think anyone would EVER force a player to make a check to know what a lion is, and yet within a DND setting lions are no more exotic than owlbears.

And even then I rarely run normal monsters, so relying on in-character knowledge can trip you up sometime. Even when I'm obviously running a bearded devil for example, my one player who is also a DM and knows what bearded devils are will still make religion checks to refresh his memory and check if there's anything unusual going on.

Well now this is interesting, as you seem to be switching to a RP reason as to why the character should know as opposed to the metagame reason.

Is your character a traveling fighter, who frequents taverns seeking tales of monsters? Was this part of their background? When back at town, do you make a point of your character going to the local tavern, and questioning travelers and entertainers on new stories? If so, then roll a d20 and we’ll see what they picked up, if anything, about this specific type of creature that they’re currently facing.

...What? Roll for random knowledge every time you hang out in a tavern? Force players to write down all the monsters they hear about in each tavern? What an absurd amount of utterly tedious bookkeeping. I'm going to need a third page to my character sheet to write down "random stuff I heard in a tavern once." I'm going to need to consult that list every time a monster we've not fought before comes at us.

Much easier to just say "The character has picked up some random amount of information over the months on campaign, its not unreasonable for you to have heard about this kind of monster."

I mean, why is it any different than “roll to see if you hit?”

You’re essentially arguing for: “Hey DM, no need for me to roll a d20 for Amazing Fighting Monster Slayer’s attack; as you can see by my character’s name, they are an Amazing Fighting Monster Slayer, and, therefore, the monster is slayed.”

The entire point of the d20 roll is to get a determination of success or failure by a character in the game, when the result of whatever is occurring is uncertain.

You’re arguing that the DM no longer determines if there’s uncertainty, the Player just determines an auto-success.

Wow, lots of strawmen here. I'm not saying people shouldn't roll for anything, I'm just saying that personally I think trying to cut my players' brains in half and force them to not know what they know is tedious and impossible. I am fine rolling for a lot of things, but if a player wants to claim that their character "heard about these Vampires before" then fine, I won't stop them. It's not implausible that they would have. If they want accurate information, from me they need to roll for it, unless this is obviously something they should know (like a cleric asking about the tenets of their own religion.)

You've got a bizarre definition of "roleplay" that seems fixated entirely on systematizing everything about your character. I would argue that being so restrictive about what players are allowed to determine about their own characters is unhelpful for purposes of roleplay.

[Xervous]

You've got a bizarre definition of "roleplay" that seems fixated entirely on systematizing everything about your character. I would argue that being so restrictive about what players are allowed to determine about their own characters is unhelpful for purposes of roleplay.

Dare I hazard a guess of a skeleton/strawman in this closet? Lower ability scores allow for better roleplaying?

[strangebloke]

Dare I hazard a guess of a skeleton/strawman in this closet? Lower ability scores allow for better roleplaying?

I don't want to second guess people's motivations. What I would say is that there's a mistaken idea that RP is something every player has to do and that this is the job of the DM to enforce. It's fine for people play gruff gamist tacticians who don't have very much in the way of social skills. In a sense, that's a coherent character concept for the purposes of roleplay. If a player instead want to play an idiot - I've a zealot barbarian in my party who deliberately refuses to learn anything about her nominal religion - that's also fine.

I find its helpful to figure out what a player finds enjoyable in your game, and, if its not disruptive, to let them have it.

[Zuras]

As you had the OP, do you want to clarify as to what your intent was with the post? I mentioned this is a previous post.

“Player’s tactics”, the term used, could be either “character tactics” (because the Player is determining the character tactics), or “Players vs DM tactics.”

I mean, having a copy of the Monster Manual on hand to pull up the stats of whatever you’re currently fighting, so as to know all it’s capabilities and weaknesses, and then sharing those with the other Players, is a tactic that can be used while playing 5e, though it has nothing to do with character tactics (I wouldn’t appreciate this type of tactic, btw).

Was your intent to include this type of meta gaming in your “tactics” question; or was your OP about how PCs interact with their in-game surroundings and character-based knowledge more to what you were looking for? Or perhaps a third item I’m not considering?

My original question was essentially “regarding player tactics, what do you consider basic/minimally competent, proficient, and advanced”.

To me, the question of metagaming and the player/character knowledge divide is an entirely separate debate. Superior tactics should allow you to defeat a Vampire more easily. The metagaming issue only affects whether the PCs use those tactics the first time they fight a Vampire or in a subsequent encounter (possibly after in-game research).

(Edited to add)
Either way, once the players know the basics of their weaknesses, making sure the party has a source of radiant damage would be basic tactics, while the Moon Druid wild shaping into a giant constrictor snake to restrain the Vampire and force disadvantage against the Cleric’s Sacred Flame saves or using Protection from Evil and Good on the Barbarian before the fight would be more advanced tactics.

[Sorinth]

Seems like a lot of work for no purpose. My attitude is more like this: Players can choose to make their OOC knowledge their in-character knowledge, with the caveat that this information is prone to error and might be wrong. If they want accurate information, they need to roll for it. Perhaps because I run a custom setting and storyline, and frequently reskin enemies (this isn't a hobgoblin, its a guard!) I rarely have a problem with players who gloat about knowing some detail about the statblock.

And if they do, hey, fine for them.

The only thing I ban is looking up monster statblocks mid-combat, and that's more just because it slows the game down.

Having the DM customize/reskin all the monsters just so players don't automatically know things their character shouldn't seems like a bad solution to the problem. Beyond just putting even more work on the DM it's also bound to lead to situations where a player gets upset. If the player did the whole Banishment to end a charm thing and it doesn't work because the DM has customized this vampire to exclude that workaround, the player is probably going to be upset and feel like the DM is being unfair.

[KorvinStarmast]

Having the DM customize/reskin all the monsters just so players don't automatically know things their character shouldn't seems like a bad solution to the problem.

That's not what he's asserting, as I read strangebloke's post.

Players know a character for a few hundred hours of play.

Characters have been in their world all of their lives. There are a large number of things that they'd learn growing up (stories, lore, experience, teaching, learning on the job, hearing from the local shaman) that allow for a great many things a character knows 'in universe' such that the "how do you know that?" question is as often as not a case of DM asshattery.
(Mind you, I have had to ask two of my players "Stop Opening the MM during combat!" (we play over roll20) because they've taken things a bit too far in that regard. They have agreed in good faith that once initiative is rolled, no look ups, which is good enough for me).

In a supernatural world every character will know some of the things that are supernatural, know of them, and know 'something' about them. But how much something will they know about how many things?

Here is where nature checks, and history checks, and arcana checks can help both a DM and a player arrive at "just how much do you know about werewolves and how much of the lore that you know is mistaken?" for the level of in world knowledge that one has.

"You can't know that since you haven't fought/killed that" is too extreme of a response, just as the stupid rules in Xanathar's about druids and wild shape are stupid. OK, rest of rant excised other than ... FFS, druids are all about wildlife and beasts. It's their whole Thing, man!

[strangebloke]

Having the DM customize/reskin all the monsters just so players don't automatically know things their character shouldn't seems like a bad solution to the problem. Beyond just putting even more work on the DM it's also bound to lead to situations where a player gets upset. If the player did the whole Banishment to end a charm thing and it doesn't work because the DM has customized this vampire to exclude that workaround, the player is probably going to be upset and feel like the DM is being unfair.

It's not a solution to the 'problem' of metagaming, its something I do for the sake of variety that has a side effect of making knowledge checks more useful.

For example, there's a subset of vampires in my setting who have managed to alter the nature of their curse to allow them to (seem to be) more human than they otherwise would. This group of vampires is small and relatively unknown, and (because they're a custom type of monster) unknown to my players. There was a moment during a mystery section where it became clear that an NPC might have been turned to a vampire, but they had also seen the vampire during the day, so it seemed impossible. This was where one of the players' high religion modifier came in clutch.

My players end up fighting guards a lot. They're rabbl-rousers. But I don't want every guard in every city to be the same. Stromshet has a storied alchemical tradition, so the guards there have improved arms and armor relative to their peers in say Alchor or Gruenhapt. Though as far as that goes, the Gruenhapt guards are trained to fight with better teamwork, and the Alchor guards are going to have higher HP and higher attack modifiers. In practice this means that the Stromshet guards have higher AC, the Gruenhapt guards are hobgoblins in scale, and the Alchor guards are (humorously) just reskinned orcs. The players know I do this, and so they don't make assumptions based off stat blocks. This doesn't 'solve' the 'problem,' it highlights how depending on your style, metagaming in this way may not even be useful to players.

But with all that said, I don't view this sort of metagaming as a problem at all, for all the reasons mentioned above. It's only metagaming if its OOC knowledge, and its only OOC knowledge if you (the DM) say it has to be OOC knowledge, or force them to make a check.

Metagaming is a problem when players use it to cheat at an adventure module, or use it to game social interactions with another player. Stuff like "I go check the rogue's satchel while he's sleeping to see if I can borrow some snacks. Oh, what's this??? My missing family heirloom???" is a problem, but its usually downstream of OOC problems rather than being the cause of it.

"You can't know that since you haven't fought/killed that" is too extreme of a response, just as the stupid rules in Xanathar's about druids and wild shape are stupid. OK, rest of rant excised other than ... FFS, druids are all about wildlife and beasts. It's their whole Thing, man!

Precisely. I think of the moment in the Two Towers with the Oliphant. Sam hasn't made a dedicated study of beasts, certainly not exotic ones from thousands of miles from the shire. He wasn't literate until he was an adult and he was a poor gardener. But Oliphants are big and cool and so someone in his childhood told him a poem about one once. Frodo's heard of them too. The only one who hadn't heard of them was Gollum, who's ironically the best travelled of them and the oldest, but someone who's been an absolute recluse from all kinds of decent society.

Even isolated farmers will share spooky campfire stories about the vampire king that was known to have existed a hundred miles away in the mystical lands of Albania Zaro, or of the dread Githyanki corsairs who laid waste to the city of Mathlin two centuries prior, or of the Illithid slavers who are said to lurk in the depths of the astral sea. And most PCs are not originally simple farmers, they're folk heroes and merchants and scholars and soldiers. Well-travelled or well-read people, generally. And even if your PC was a total recluse once, the premise of the game is that our heroes are travelling and chatting and sharing stories, both with each other and with random strangers.

Such knowledge is commonplace, and might be incorrect, but then as I said, players don't really have perfect memories either and a lot of what they're remembering might be old lore that no longer applies (like the nature of the HElf/Drow schism) The first time I threw a bunch of Slaad at my players they had no idea what to make of it!

[RSP]

Here is where nature checks, and history checks, and arcana checks can help both a DM and a player arrive at "just how much do you know about werewolves and how much of the lore that you know is mistaken?" for the level of in world knowledge that one has.

Except metagame knowledge takes this out of the DMs hands and allows the player to just decide the character autosucceeded, so it’s a moot point. And remember: checks are only used when something is in question. If the DM already decided the characters have no chance of knowing something, then

So it sounds like your argument with using these checks is “players shouldn’t use metagame knowledge when the DM doesn’t think their characters should have that knowledge.”

Which is my argument, too, by the way.

My original question was essentially “regarding player tactics, what do you consider basic/minimally competent, proficient, and advanced”…

So not really tactics as in utilizing in-game terrain and situation-based circumstances to either the party’s advantage, or the enemy’s disadvantage (note: I’m not using those terms as the game terms “Advantage” or “Disadvantage”).

You seem to be referring to attacking mechanical soft-spots in abilities or enemies, which, yeah, doesn’t care about any meta gaming issue, as it already assumes it.

That is, it’s “advanced tactics” to use Radiant damage against a vampire, because they have Vulnerability to it and so every instance of damage will be twice as effective as any non-Radiant damage of equal strength.

However, there’s really nothing advanced about this (in my opinion at least). Once you know the mechanical weakness, exploiting it is just common sense.

I think this is what Frogreaver was getting at in his response to your Vampire’s Charm situation: if you know the mechanics of the ability, and what causes it to fail, then using that mechanical weakness to end the effect isn’t really “advanced”, it’s a simple A beats B type thing.

A more well known version of this is “damage breaks Concentration”, which leads to the common: if an enemy is using a powerful Concentration effect, do damage to them to stop it.” I mean, it’s not really advanced tactics to attack the Shaman who just successfully Fear-ed the rest of the PCs; it’s just using the basic knowledge of what counters that specific ability.

I was referring to “advanced tactics” in the sense of small unit tactics to set an ambush to defeat a more powerful force; but you seem to be asking about how often Players are using “advanced knowledge” of the mechanics of the game to exploit known weaknesses of the enemies or their abilities.

Does that seem accurate as you were referring to things?

[stoutstien]

Low level tactics:
Positioning
Understand advantage/disadvantage

Minimal planning with turn order

Target prioritizing

Mid level tactics:

Resource management

Understanding Action economy

Using actions to do something other than damage. Dodge, help and ready action are amazing once you figure them out.

Implement adv/dis

Understand damage types

Understand saves vs attacks and when to use them.

Battlefield control

Counterspell/ dispel magic mini game

Prebuffing

High level tactics:

Information control via scouting, divination, and misdirection. Also counter tactics to prevent the same against the party via non detection and so on.

Understand how and when unavoidable damage sources can be used to blender tough targets

Action(s) denial as the best form of mitigation

Know when and how overcoming challenges cheaply is better than quickly

Expert level tactics:

Understand diminishing returns on hyper focusing on one aspect of the game.

Damage is probably the least effective technique to address challenges with

Assume your plan A will never work

Redundancy in resources isn't a waste of opportunity costs.

If your not hosting bring snacks

[Kvess]

I consistently hear that damage is not the most effective thing a caster could do, but as a DM I’ve seen multiple encounters where the module’s designers clearly assumed the party would have access to fireball (three massive hordes of mummies in a Candlekeep adventure) and nearly every other tactic would be painfully slow to deal with it.

[stoutstien]

I consistently hear that damage is not the most effective thing a caster could do, but as a DM I’ve seen multiple encounters where the module’s designers clearly assumed the party would have access to fireball (three massive hordes of mummies in a Candlekeep adventure) and nearly every other tactic would be painfully slow to deal with it.

Mummies are slow, have bad AC, and dex saves. Depending on how DM plays how they react to fire you could easily just herd them into a death funnel without even using a spell slot. They are just slightly different zombies.

[Zuras]

I consistently hear that damage is not the most effective thing a caster could do, but as a DM I’ve seen multiple encounters where the module’s designers clearly assumed the party would have access to fireball (three massive hordes of mummies in a Candlekeep adventure) and nearly every other tactic would be painfully slow to deal with it.

Saying “raw damage is usually the least efficient use of your spell slots” is entirely accurate. That doesn’t mean you don’t want at least one high damage single target spell and a couple of AoEs in your repertoire. Level for level, battlefield control spells usually give you the most advantage for the resources spent, they’re just more niche in usefulness. Spells like Wall of Stone and Plant Growth are amazing action denial if the geometry of the encounter allows it, they just require significantly more work to get the most out of them than fireball.

Even if you’re primarily a control caster, you should have some way of doing damage. Among the more tactical tables I’ve played & DMed at, it’s not uncommon for the poor Knowledge or Grave Cleric who wanted to sit back and support to be forced to wade into a horde or hold a choke point while dodging with Spirit Guardians, hoping their 18 or 19 AC will hold up.

[False God]

Basic tactics are about knowing yourself and what you're capable of, and how you can use that to your allies benefit.

Moderate tactics are about knowing your party's strengths and weaknesses and how you can work together to maximize your strengths and cover each others weaknesses.

Advanced tactics are about understanding the enemy's strength's and weaknesses and exploiting them.

And I don't mean this from a numbers standpoint like with whiteroom experiments. I mean this from an actual play experience. How often do you really land hits? How often do you really fail saves? How often do your allies? How much damage can you actually take? How much can your allies?

There are specific examples that could go along with this but I generally see people having a mix of all 3 in any given game. They know what one or two party members can do, they know about half their own abilities, and they know a few enemies are weak to fire or easily frightened. I structure them this way because it's a "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" sort of situation. The first is going to change slowly over time, as you level up. The second will change in the same degree, but there's more to keep track of, and some of it isn't relevant to you. You'll need to understand what you need to know, and what you don't. The latter will change often and you may never know the full details, nor will the enemy tell you what they're capable of (sometimes sure, but it's not reliable in the way that speaking with your fellow players/party members can inform you of their capabilities).

I find this quote to be applicable:

... as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.

Your character should be a known known. Your party members are known unknowns. The enemy is an unknown unknown. Hence the way I structured it above.

Knowing what the enemy is capable of doesn't help you much if you don't know what you can do, and I've seen this in play from people who can "clearly see" how powerful or weak an enemy is, but still can't figure out how to defeat them because they don't know what their character and party are capable of.

Knowing what you are good at is great, but not terribly helpful in group gameplay on it's own. You're an area-of-control wizard but you keep dropping AOEs on your party members who don't have good saves in that area. Knowing you can take a lot of hits but not knowing the party has very little healing to support you.

[Zuras]

Basic tactics are about knowing yourself and what you're capable of, and how you can use that to your allies benefit.

Moderate tactics are about knowing your party's strengths and weaknesses and how you can work together to maximize your strengths and cover each others weaknesses.

Advanced tactics are about understanding the enemy's strength's and weaknesses and exploiting them.

And I don't mean this from a numbers standpoint like with whiteroom experiments. I mean this from an actual play experience. How often do you really land hits? How often do you really fail saves? How often do your allies? How much damage can you actually take? How much can your allies?

This is a tidy division of different types of tactical knowledge, but does it really encapsulate the distinctions between a player who has a basic grasp of tactics versus a superior tactician? At least in my experience, superior tactics is about situational awareness and a deep understanding of how to use action economy to your advantage. That always requires you understand something of everyone’s available actions, but that’s not all or often even most of the puzzle.

I can partially agree, insofar as the most egregiously bad tactics I have seen in 5e were from players who understood neither their character nor the basic team concept doing things like rushing their 15 AC Bard into melee to maximize the targets for their Thunderwave.

The more advanced tacticians, on the other hand, are familiar with the whole party’s abilities, but the key element they understand is denying the opponent effective actions and using a divide and conquer approach to defeat them in detail, whether the method is kiting them, pinning half of them to the ceiling with Reverse Gravity, or simply shutting a door.

Obviously knowledge of the team and your enemies is important, but I think good situational and environmental awareness are the key aspects to proficient tactics. My personal examples of worst 5e tactics, for example, is a full caster who goes an entire Tier 3 fight against the final module boss without casting a leveled spell and a party that couldn’t manage to kill an enemy wizard (with less than 50 hp) till after three turns of AoEs.

Great tactics is killing the enemy wizard before they can get a spell off, but the party really needs a remedial tactics course if they can’t manage to focus fire on someone after the first fireball.

[SociopathFriend]

Well I have two DMs- one that understands the game quite well and is willing to fudge things to help the story along- and one that is extremely book-bound and rarely, if ever, improvises or changes combat or stat blocks.

For the former you really don't need a given level of tactics to succeed. He'll work around the level of tactics you demonstrate but anything can function fine- he'll punish you if you do something blatantly stupid like a Rogue sneaking off on his own and being caught but he'll generally try decently hard to keep you alive.

The latter likes grids and requires a bit more thought. The issue is that he often believes 'tactics' enables you to do the impossible as he bases his belief on what players can do on 3.5 and 2e where one super-build could basically solo entire encounters. The DM was never someone who made such things and so to him "optimized" means "magically wins for some reason". For example our first session involved 21 max hp Barbarians with Pack Tactics vs only four adventurers at Level 4 with average/rolled hp. He assumed we'd win that- that's not the full list of enemies either. Later on when everyone was Level 5 he indicated he would throw half a dozen Frost Giants at us and I, who he broached the idea to prior to the session, advised him not to throw all of them in at once- because that would be death.

The latter DM's current campaign sits somewhere between Advanced and Proficient I think. We have a Twin-Hasting Sorcerer that's happy to buff party members because he wants the Ranger to be pumping out his "I hit the same guy and do extra damage and I have Sharpshooter" ranged attacks as often as possible. There's a Life Cleric that took the Healer feat and supplies a fairly ludicrous amount of healing too. I myself am an Eldritch Knight with the Blindfighting Style and a penchant for creating Darkness to gather enemies around and whup on them.

Several players have spent quite a bit of time talking about 'builds' and whether they need a feat or an ASI at a given level. I personally don't want to min/max like that which is why I don't have GWM despite using a Halberd. Another player seems relatively unable to grasp the game (he still needs to ask what to do over a year into the campaign) and another player actually IS a newbie at D&D. So I say on average we're between Advanced and Proficient.

Our strategies are pretty generalized- not customized for a given encounter or creature. Albeit the last several sessions have been purely Giants so there's not a general need for customization:
Hit him first
Hit him hard
Hit him a lot
Heal whoever the Giant hit

[False God]

This is a tidy division of different types of tactical knowledge, but does it really encapsulate the distinctions between a player who has a basic grasp of tactics versus a superior tactician? At least in my experience, superior tactics is about situational awareness and a deep understanding of how to use action economy to your advantage. That always requires you understand something of everyone’s available actions, but that’s not all or often even most of the puzzle.

I can partially agree, insofar as the most egregiously bad tactics I have seen in 5e were from players who understood neither their character nor the basic team concept doing things like rushing their 15 AC Bard into melee to maximize the targets for their Thunderwave.

The more advanced tacticians, on the other hand, are familiar with the whole party’s abilities, but the key element they understand is denying the opponent effective actions and using a divide and conquer approach to defeat them in detail, whether the method is kiting them, pinning half of them to the ceiling with Reverse Gravity, or simply shutting a door.

Obviously knowledge of the team and your enemies isn’t important, but I think good situational and environmental awareness are the key aspects to proficient tactics. My personal examples of worst 5e tactics, for example, is a full caster who goes an entire Tier 3 fight against the final module boss without casting a leveled spell and a party that couldn’t manage to kill an enemy wizard (with less than 50 hp) till after three turns of AoEs.

Great tactics is killing the enemy wizard before they can get a spell off, but the party really needs a remedial tactics course if they can’t manage to focus fire on someone after the first fireball.

I would argue that Situational Awareness flows under the same sort of pyramid. To reference MMOs:
Are you in the fire? What should you do to get it out of it?
Are your friends in the fire? How can you help them get out of it?
Is the enemy in the fire? How can you get them into it?

Knowing what you can do, and knowing how you can do it implies a level of "knowing what is appropriate to do in this situation" based on what level of knowledge you/your character possesses. If you are in a tight hallway and have a large shield, perhaps blocking the door is a good approach, but the second level then accounts for "are you blocking LOS for your allies by doing so?". The third level then accounts for "what is the enemy going to be able to do in response to your action."

[Kvess]

Mummies are slow, have bad AC, and dex saves. Depending on how DM plays how they react to fire you could easily just herd them into a death funnel without even using a spell slot. They are just slightly different zombies.

That’s all well and good, but if you’re picking off one mummy at a time and there are about three waves of 40 mummies clustered tightly together, it’s pretty clear that the designers expected the party to have access to AOE damage spells. And if the horde of mummies is a screen for a target instead of the main event, as was the case in the particular Candlekeep adventure, that somewhat reduces your options for bypassing them.

Could you use battlefield control spells to make this an easy but tedious fight, sure. But that’s not a fight anyone wants to play, when you could just incinerate the lot of them in a round.

When you see a party where every character exclusively takes battlefield control spells, it’s hard to avoid thinking that the players outsmarted themselves.

[stoutstien]

That’s all well and good, but if you’re picking off one mummy at a time and there are about three waves of 40 mummies clustered tightly together, it’s pretty clear that the designers expected the party to have access to AOE damage spells. And if the horde of mummies is a screen for a target instead of the main event, as was the case in the particular Candlekeep adventure, that somewhat reduces your options for bypassing them.

Could you use battlefield control spells to make this an easy but tedious fight, sure. But that’s not a fight anyone wants to play, when you could just incinerate the lot of them in a round.

When you see a party where every character exclusively takes battlefield control spells, it’s hard to avoid thinking that the players outsmarted themselves.

I said damage is rarely the best option not damage is never the best option. Some blasting is advised but it's has diminishing returns.

No idea what the writer had planned for that particular challenge. Seems more like an attempt to drain resources than anything else so its a question of what the party has available at the time. Depending on how close the waves are to each other you could take them out with a wall of fire which IMO is a better trade than 3 different 3+ spell slots. Could also form a corridor to get to the main target with the same spell.

Maybe it was a chance to let turn undead shine?

I don't own candlelight my self. I remember flipping through it and wasn't impressed.