[Basic] Skill of the week: Strategy and Tactics

[Eric Funk]

Originally Posted by tbone

Sticking with that focus on planning, I'm trying out a way to make Strategy more useful in DFRPG: Let it be the skill for mission planning & prep. That is, make a Strategy roll at the prep stage; on a success, the GM offers suggestions on gear, hirelings, etc. Again, this isn't so great for experienced players who know what they need. But for newer players, it can be a huge help. ("You're all weighed down; who's going to carry any treasure? Do you even have bags or containers for loot? Does everyone have a backup weapon?")

IMO Strategy (Land) in a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy (GDF?) would be part of Supply and partly combining topographical and zoological information on the area (A new Flying broom is only 4000$ (GDF8:Treasures p.39) to fly over). Given what is known about the obstacles you an predict roads in, what kinds of terrain/monsters/units/weather*...

Hmm, now I am really torn between definitions of Strategy and Intelligence Analysis:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=139946

Both IQ/Hard,
IA: Deduce enemy plans and capabilities, rate reliability of sources
Strategy: "Deduce, in advance, enemy plans" and "plan military actions"

Perhaps the comparison of Ecology and Naturalist where IA Is the theory and Strategy is the practical?

*and shop for ammo for. (Or a boat, Chain relay to pull treasure up out of a crevace, or winter gear, extra poison remedy, or most recently our wizard had a hard sell convincing the party to purchase a selfpowered Create Water item when the party was heading into a desert... but it meant they literally did not need to bring 10,000 lbs of water for their four mounts... B426)

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Eric Funk

A night's sleep reminded me that in 3e Bestiary they assign a number of templates "pack tactics" pp.76 & 94, Tactics under Naturally-learned Skills p. 118, and explicitly in the fleshed-out full "guard dog" template on p.104 with the skill Tactics-12.

This begs the question of how a leader gives orders (normally this takes a Concentrate maneuver) when you lack a common language.

Like would you use a Body Language roll for a guard dog alpha leader to give commands to it's pack? Not sure if maybe substituting a "Ready" for a "Concentrate" in that case might make sense.