Tactics Skill

[PPoS]

Can anyone give some examples of abstract uses of the Tactics skill (others than those given in the Basic Set and Martial Arts).

[vicky_molokh]

Ending up with a good flank? Noticing a Feint your warlord warned you about?

[copeab]

Originally Posted by PPoS

Can anyone give some examples of abstract uses of the Tactics skill (others than those given in the Basic Set and Martial Arts).

I don't know what 4e says about it, but I've normally used Tactics rolls as follows:

(1) Let the player come up with a plan of action, then roll against the PC's skill. If the roll succeeds, I'll point out flaws in the plan (the better the roll, the more subtle the flaw I'll point out). If the roll fails, the plan will go wrong (the worse the roll, the worse the failure).

(2) A roll against modified Tactics allows the PC some idea what the enemy is up to.

[Kaldrin]

I usually use it for insight on the enemy's chosen plan of attack, setting up defenses, and dealing with weaknesses in their own plans. It's also used to smaller force sizes. For armies you'd have to use Strategy.

[jason taylor]

Analysing terrain.

Speaking of that, sometimes when driving through broken terrain, I habitually try to analyse a given hill's defensive advantages.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by copeab

I don't know what 4e says about it, but I've normally used Tactics rolls as follows:

(1) Let the player come up with a plan of action, then roll against the PC's skill. If the roll succeeds, I'll point out flaws in the plan (the better the roll, the more subtle the flaw I'll point out). If the roll fails, the plan will go wrong (the worse the roll, the worse the failure).

(2) A roll against modified Tactics allows the PC some idea what the enemy is up to.

I've gone through this a bit differently in some of my games. The players come up with a plan, and roll Tactics contest with the Bad Guys. If they win by a lot, their plan works, no matter how silly it was. If they lose, the plan suffers complications.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

If they win by a lot, their plan works, no matter how silly it was.

You're a brave man, Doug.


***

I use Tactics as the general "Good at the mental aspects of combat" kind of thing. I have people roll Tactics as a form of Combat Common Sense when they make a mistake...or if they want to get advice from other players on the best move possible...or to coordinate with someone else in a clever fasion...whatever. Basically, whenever I need to judge some PC's intellectual understanding of tactical combat. Sort of like a Combat IQ score. I prefer to play a little fast and loose, so this makes sense for my game. It also allows for the Big Dumb Guy (IQ 9) with a solid Tactics score (I forget, somewhere in the mid teens) to plausibly do all the clever combat stuff the player thinks of.

[Classic Uncle Sam]

::Piggy-backs a question onto the thread::

Would tactics be appropriate for some type of Special Operations Mission where your character has a loose command over a team via radio or some other form of telecommunications? For a better understanding of what I am thinking of I imagine Willem Dafoe's character John Clark in the movie Clear and Present Danger. Clark leads the covert mission at times by radio link up in a hotel room. Would it be okay for a character, with enough info (perhaps by completed related skill rolls or the simple fiat of enough equipment) to roll tactics to help that squad.

Game Play as Follows:

GM: Your squad tells their position and related intel on the enemy. Uh oh they're under attack suddenly, your squaddie sounds paniced enough that its almost like he's breaking up.

PC: I want to help them by saying "Cool command and control lingo" at them.

GM okays that but with a roll to tactics behind the GM screen to see if that special lingo gives any pluses to the squad's over all skill levels. The roll doesn't give them an ultimate yes or no win, but it adds to their favor in the great game of chance. Almost thought about being nice and stipulating that like Diplomacy it doesn't harm if failed, but bad advice more than likely would slit the team's collective throat a lot quicker in practice.

Your thoughts everyone?

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by copeab

I don't know what 4e says about it, but I've normally used Tactics rolls as follows:

(1) Let the player come up with a plan of action, then roll against the PC's skill. If the roll succeeds, I'll point out flaws in the plan (the better the roll, the more subtle the flaw I'll point out). If the roll fails, the plan will go wrong (the worse the roll, the worse the failure).

(2) A roll against modified Tactics allows the PC some idea what the enemy is up to.

I use this approach, as well, and I like it a lot. It gives the players more information to work with, but it still forces them to actually do the work.

In a more general sense, tactics is the "methodology" of the fight itself, whereas strategy focuses on a general framework that guides the military effort. For instance, during the Civil War in the United States, Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and James Longstreet adopted an offensive strategy, combined with a tactical defensive.

The offensive strategy meant that the Confederacy would do everything it could to carry the fight into Union territory. This had a number of benefits.

Firstly, the constant threat of violence in Union Territory, especially if they could capture Washington, D.C., put increasing political pressure on the Union, in general, and Lincoln's administration, in particular.

Secondly, it allowed the Confederate Army to maintain itself by taking away the supplies meant for the Union (a double benefit). This was particularly important, since the Union had nearly five times the industrial capacity (including eight times the railroad mileage, and 2.5 times the population) of the Confederacy. Anything Lee and Longstreet could take from the Union helped relieve the pressure on the south's limited industry.

Thirdly, it gave the Confederacy the initiative, which forced the Union to constantly react to what Lee and his sub-commanders did, rather than allow them the time to think and plan. Lee and Longstreet could take the time to breathe because they chose when and where to attack; their opponents could not.

This combination of factors made it more likely the war would end quickly by breaking the Union will to fight. The Confederates knew that, because of the disparities in industrial capacity, population and command-and-control assets (railroads and telegraph lines), any prolonged conflict would most likely result in a Union victory.

That's strategy -- what general approach offers the greatest chance to achieve the political objectives? End the war quickly by carrying the fight to Union territory, in an effort to undermine Lincoln's political support and breaking the Northern will.

However, Lee and Longstreet (at Longstreet's insistence) combined that with the desire to gain the "tactical defensive" when it came to the battles, themselves. That meant they maneuvered around until they successfully threatened a Union asset so valuable that it forced the Union military to try to attack them. At that point, the Confederates would carefully pick ground that offered them the greatest defensive assets.

So, for instance, Lee constantly did everything he could to threaten Washington, D.C., because he knew the loss of that city would create terrific political problems for Lincoln, and devastate the will of the Union citizens to support the war. He'd also try to attack other northern cities (Philadelphia was a favorite goal, because of its symbolism as the home of the Declaration of Independence, and the first capitol of the United States). The Union also knew this, and felt compelled to try to prevent this from occurring.

So, if the Confederates had a chance to get between the Union Army andand Washington, or if the Confederates threatened any large northern city, the Union commanders felt compelled to attack. Knowing this, Lee would always make those threats, and then try to pick ground that gave his army the best defensive advantages. Lee then deployed his divisions in ways that allowed them to use the topography (hills, streams, forests) and man-made artifacts (sunken roads, stone fences, bridges) best.

So, for instance, at Antietam, Maryland, Lee posted many of his men in a sunken road (which acted as a trench), across a fairly deep creek from the Union army. He also formed the entire Army into a outward-facing U-shape anchored on that sunken road, which meant his reserves inside the "U" could easily rush to the point of the line where he needed them, most. This configuration offered him the additional defensive advantage known as, "interior lines of communication."

The Union force, even though it outnumbered the Confederates, couldn't bring their numbers to bear, because Union Gen. George B. McClellan couldn't manage to get them all to attack the Confederates at the same time. He had to try to get his troops across the creek, and march them much further around the outside of Lee's lines, to get them into position. Moreover, he continuously had to attack into defensive positions Lee had carefully chosen.

As a result, McClellan suffered tremendous casualties, because Lee could run reinforcements from the inside of one part of his U-shaped line to a different part, as the pressure decreased in some places, and increased in others. Also, because Lee had chosen his position for its defensive advantages, and exploited those advantages adroitly, his troops had the protection they needed to hold the Union attackers off until reinforcements could arrive.

That's tactics -- the methodology used to fight a particular engagement. The size of the engagement doesn't matter -- in the Civil War, battles were fought by tens of thousands on each side. But the deployment of the assets on the battlefield, and adjustments in that deployment as dictated by the dynamics of the battle, was an exercise in tactics, not strategy.

So, when I GM, I have the players roll Politics to get information about an enemy's most likely goals. I have them roll Strategy to get information about the general approach that will most likely guide the opponent's military efforts to achieve those goals. I then have them roll Tactics when the weapons are about to come out, to provide them information about how the enemy commander will most likely deploy his available forces.

I also use successful rolls to help them figure out flaws in their perceptions of their own goals, military objectives, and battlefield deployments.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by copeab

I don't know what 4e says about it, but I've normally used Tactics rolls as follows:

(1) Let the player come up with a plan of action, then roll against the PC's skill. If the roll succeeds, I'll point out flaws in the plan (the better the roll, the more subtle the flaw I'll point out). If the roll fails, the plan will go wrong (the worse the roll, the worse the failure).

(2) A roll against modified Tactics allows the PC some idea what the enemy is up to.

3. A player comes up with a plan of action, on behalf of his character, and relays this to the GM[1]. The GM then decides whether the player is over-playing (i.e. cheating) relative to how good the player's Tactics skill is. If the GM decides thusly, he warns the player. After multiple such warnings to the same player, the player gets punished, e.g. by getting reduced experience points.

[1] either upfront, or else gradually via playing it out.