Combi Actions incentivise quarterbacking because the PC with the Combi Action feature is encouraged to tell the other PCs what to do so they can bring their feature online. This is exacerbated if multiple PCs have competing Combi Actions—say the fighter has one where they want the paladin to form a shield line with them, but the wizard wants the paladin to charge in with a spell-boosted charge attack.
My basic suggestion has been that shield and thrusting weapon fighters could share a space. It honestly doesn't need to be complicated. If one of them no longer wanted to share the space then that could also be fine so as to take advantage of other opportunities.
was the major tactic of Sumerian, Macedonian, Hellenistic, and Roman military forces.
D&D has done a great job of presenting the greatness of two-handed and large weapons like the Glaive and the longsword, among many others.
One thing it has failed to do is to emulate the strengths of the most successful battle tactics in history so as to facilitate their inclusion in the game.
Given the mechanics, it is understandable that sword and board tactics might have become "edge case"s, and I think that this is down to failings in the system that don't facilitate their use.
I do agree though with the view that a rule like this might influence character build choices and an option like this might work well if a single player used a pair of PCs. As others have said it may otherwise work well in another game with less diversity of character options, and in which physical mobility is more of a central factor.
D&D isn't played at the military battle scale though? Shield walls don't work with two people. Battle tactics fall apart at the skirmish level. You're applying the wrong scale of combat logic. D&D hasn't failed at emulating "the strengths of the most successful battle tactics in history", it has actively chosen not to do so because you're not fighting battles in D&D
it is understandable that sword and board tactics might have become "edge case"s,
I'm not referring to "sword and board tactics", I'm referring to what you're discussing—large scale military battle tactics applied in a skirmish level game.
You do seem to be very selectively acknowledging what people say, quote mining, and generally not engaging in a very intellectually honest way, which is disappointing to say the least given the effort people have put in replying to you.
One thing it has failed to do is to emulate the strengths of the most successful battle tactics in history so as to facilitate their inclusion in the game.
Actually the issue for emulating those battle tactics is how a current person runs the "figure". DnD is about the individual and how they interact. In wargames, you can either have individuals act under a single leader or have large formation that contain a lot of individuals but are acting as one.
Armor and ship and even plane combat can be represented by individual figures. A tank platoon with 3-5 individual tanks, a small naval squadron with 6 individual ship figures, 2 individual fighters per side.
But when you increase the size a figure represents, the individual becomes a cog inside a figure. infantry, even a modern fire team is 2-5 individuals are acting as a single figure. So a platoon of infantry is represented by 2-3 figures. A company or a battalion or a phalanx might be just a single figure isf you go larger. A WWII bomber is better represented due to tactics as part of a group that combine into a single figure on the table.
So those tactics of a group do not translate well into the figure of an individual and those of an individual can be lacking when it is for a group.
As DND is not set up for formations and teh combining of individuals into a group, it will never accurately represent that close fighting that the Sumerian, Macedonian, Hellenistic, and Roman military forces employed. You really need a different system.
While you can employ those group tactics and close fighting, you need the entire party to agree to reenact that military and give up their individual thinking. For example in a PBP I am playing right now, we are in small groups exploring a building, going room by room systematically, floor by floor. One PC was a bit bored waiting for the DM to sign on, and just stated, I am going by myself to check out room X.
That is great because no one has checked out room x, it is bad because he went the individual route and therefore left his "partners" alone and unprotected. How is that type of mentality going to assist the close formation fighting this entire thread is about?
Of course they do. This is how ancient militaries cleared out towns. They went down streets and alleys with their most successful tactics in full and applied action.
You do seem to be very selectively acknowledging what people say, quote mining, and generally not engaging in a very intellectually honest way, which is disappointing to say the least given the effort people have put in replying to you.
You seem to be ignoring the majority of the history of combat. What have I said that hasn't been intellectually honest?
I agree a shield wall works with 2 people if they are acting as one. But how well can that work on a tabletop? How confident can you be that your fellow PC will listen to you and/or you listen to them?
Are the individuals you play with hive minded enough to blindly follow that shield wall no matter the results?
But when you increase the size a figure represents, the individual becomes a cog inside a figure. infantry, even a modern fire team is 2-5 individuals are acting as a single figure. So a platoon of infantry is represented by 2-3 figures. A company or a battalion or a phalanx might be just a single figure isf you go larger. A WWII bomber is better represented due to tactics as part of a group that combine into a single figure on the table.
I was thinking that this might work best with tokens...
I agree a shield wall works with 2 people if they are acting as one. But how well can that work on a tabletop? How confident can you be that your fellow PC will listen to you and/or you listen to them?
Are the individuals you play with hive minded enough to blindly follow that shield wall no matter the results?
Thank you
I was thinking that it would just be an option in play. A downside is that characters might need to equip with suboptimal short swords, and maybe the suspension of disbelief thing might jump in with d&d characters hauling around multiple weapon options. Gnome characters in my 1e game carry 10' poles.
Perhaps a rule could be that any other character not with a swingy weapon could share a space with a character making use of a shield and a short sword or perhaps a spear.
D&D tried to do rules for massed combat in 3.5 Editions Heroes of Battle.
General consensus was that it was a good attempt at a bad idea, because it was rules for massed infantry formations that were awkwardly jury-rigged into 3.5's combat rules, which really failed the moment someone said "I cast Fireball." The book ended up being little more than a curiosity because people who actually wanted to play wargames were already playing existing wargames that were purpose-built for the job instead and consequently had much more steamlined rules.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Throughout this thread, you have lumped classical fighters together, regularly mentioning Macedonia and Rome. Both used very, very different tactics, even if both are referred to as a phalanx. The Macedonian phalanx is what you seem to be thinking of - lines of troops who use shield and sword to protect one another as they advance in tight formation. This type of combat is terrible in the kinds of situations D&D parties find themselves in - it tends to be inflexible and slow to react, falling apart in tight quarters where reactions are more important than discipline.
The Romans did not do that in the same way - they held battle lines and used spear and shield, but they stood further apart, at distances that were probably closer to the couple feet between D&D players. This put more focus on the individual, and allowed Roman Phalanxes to react and move much faster than their Macedonian counterparts. It also allowed them to switch tactics for things like close quarters fighting - be it inside the range of pikes or inside buildings.
But, in the end? It is not confusing wildly different tactics that is the real error here. The real “intellectual dishonesty” (again, your words, not what I would use) is that you continue to insist on trying to apply these classical tactics to D&D, despite many pointing out they are intentionally not applicable.
If D&D has a classical analogue, it is Homer, not Alexander or Caesar. Great heroes doing great feats on the battlefield, separate and apart from the average foot soldier. D&D is about repeatedly giving players their aristeia moment. Less “nameless soldiers in formation” and more Big Ajax and Teucer working together to be effective while employing drastically different styles.
D&D tried to do rules for massed combat in 3.5 Editions Heroes of Battle.
Two aren't a crowd/
No but they're a very tempting target for an AoE, I'd even argue that a shield wall would require a penalty to DEX saves so really not what you need in the face of a Fireball, and as others have pointed out would also require two players to basically give up their own independence in a way most players don't want to
And besides everything else why do you care? This thread has been full of people explaining why D&D doesn't work like this, ranging from actual mechanics to human nature, and you've consistently ingnored any point you don't like. If you're that set on it as an idea then introduce it as a house rule at your table and no one can stop you but I don't think it adds anything that's fundamentally missing because D&D isn't a real world battle simulator and isn't trying to be
The Romans did not do that in the same way - they held battle lines and used spear and sword, but they stood further apart, at distances that were probably closer to the couple feet between D&D players. This put more focus on the individual, and allowed Roman Phalanxes to react and move much faster than their Macedonian counterparts. It also allowed them to switch tactics for things like close quarters fighting - be it inside the range of pikes or inside buildings.
But, in the end? It is not confusing wildly different tactics that is the real error here. The real “intellectual dishonesty” (again, your words, not what I would use) is that you continue to insist on trying to apply these classical tactics to D&D, despite many pointing out they are intentionally not applicable.
Thank you, and I appreciate your knowledge and input. What soldier weaponry do you think would be appropriate for clearing out towns and running through confined spaces?
Even away from history and going back to fantasy, Tolkien even has elf-trained Aragorn taking up a shield (to accompany his both slashy and stabby sword) when facing the choke points etc, of Helm's Deep. I wonder how a group of Gimlis would have progressed here.
No but they're a very tempting target for an AoE, I'd even argue that a shield wall would require a penalty to DEX saves so really not what you need in the face of a Fireball, and as others have pointed out would also require two players to basically give up their own independence in a way most players don't want to
And besides everything else why do you care? This thread has been full of people explaining why D&D doesn't work like this, ranging from actual mechanics to human nature, and you've consistently ingnored any point you don't like....
Those would be fair rulings. Shield walls may also prove less useful in the context that even moderately advanced casters might just misty step behind them.
I've heard what people have said about how d&d works, and have continued with my point of view on why I think house or optional rules might work differently. There would be no grout forcing a wall to stay together, and as far as I'm concerned, humans et al can be as they like.
I saw a discussion recently about realism versus verisimilitude in dialog writing that seems relevant here. The initially presented argument was that nobody wants realism in written dialog, what they really want is verisimilitude in written dialog, which is the appearance of or similarity to realism without actual realism. The kneejerk reaction was "no, people want realism!" But realism in dialog would be writing in every "um," "like," and "so," and other affectations people have when they talk to each other which would be distracting and even grating to read on the page. Satisfying dialog - like Buffy speak and the fast-paced back-and-forth patter of Gilmore Girls - feels like real people talking to each other, but that feeling is achieved with the illusion of cleaner, clearer dialog than actual people use in actual conversations.
We have a similar situation here in that realism - dogged insistence on battlefield-tested, historic battle tactics - would drag down gameplay, make combat clunky, and hamper enjoyment for players. With all the various weapon and armor types, D&D has the trappings of medieval combat, but mechanically it plays out more like a chaotic street fight than an organized clash between opposing military forces. The presence of fantasy elements like elves, goblins, dragons, and magic spells only amplifies this. Suspension of disbelief was mentioned earlier, which is interesting because the suspension of disbelief required to accept the fantastical elements also requires accepting that ancient human-versus-human military tactics aren't cromulent or even appropriate for the mechanics of D&D.
No one said anything about threatening D&D. It's very weird that you jumped to that completely unprompted.
At any rate, you seem to have your heart set on homebrewing extremely crunchy house rules for tactical combat. Great. Feel free. But you don't seem to have an audience here for that.
If you want semi-realistic space handling, you can just reduce all distances by 40%, so you go from a 10' corridor that 2 people can fit in to a 6' wide corridor that 2 people can fit in. Yes, people in combat typically don't need a full 5' area, but most maps are at an equally ridiculous scale so it mostly comes out even (and if you want easy math, just say the map scale is 1 yard).
It's a relatively minor thing that may or may not be used, but would provide some balance between space-efficient weaponry and hard-hitting weapons.
Yes, crunchy. You want mechanics for shield walls, to allow multiple combatants in the same space, for how weapons are used affecting how combatants can space themselves, etc.
All that is crunch. The fact that you often retreat to "it could be optional" doesn't change that you're advocating for more crunch.
And you can have it. Make up your house rules. Use them in your own game. If you want, you could polish them up and publish them. Go wild. Have fun.
But don't get your hopes up about ever seeing wide adoption, because it's not something that most people will find improves their D&D game. (If you've been around long enough, you may remember the modifiers for weapons vs specific armor classes. But you may not, because nobody used them.)
If you want semi-realistic space handling, you can just reduce all distances by 40%, so you go from a 10' corridor that 2 people can fit in to a 6' wide corridor that 2 people can fit in. Yes, people in combat typically don't need a full 5' area, but most maps are at an equally ridiculous scale so it mostly comes out even (and if you want easy math, just say the map scale is 1 yard).
That was pretty much my original suggestion but leaving characters with swinging weapons taking position in the centre of four squares so as to require the extra space. While potentially workdable it would have a major effect on game maths.
Yes, crunchy. You want mechanics for shield walls, to allow multiple combatants in the same space, for how weapons are used affecting how combatants can space themselves, etc.
All that is crunch. The fact that you often retreat to "it could be optional" doesn't change that you're advocating for more crunch.
And you can have it. Make up your house rules. Use them in your own game. If you want, you could polish them up and publish them. Go wild. Have fun.
Thank you, My objection was just to the "extremely" claim. I'm now not primarily thinking about anything that would involve extra number crunching or anything like that.
But don't get your hopes up about ever seeing wide adoption, because it's not something that most people will find improves their D&D game. (If you've been around long enough, you may remember the modifiers for weapons vs specific armor classes. But you may not, because nobody used them.)
We didn't either. Mythras, HârnMaster, and GURPS have core mechanics that are better suited for certain weapons having increased effects on armour.
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My basic suggestion has been that shield and thrusting weapon fighters could share a space. It honestly doesn't need to be complicated. If one of them no longer wanted to share the space then that could also be fine so as to take advantage of other opportunities.
What you dismiss as:
was the major tactic of Sumerian, Macedonian, Hellenistic, and Roman military forces.
D&D has done a great job of presenting the greatness of two-handed and large weapons like the Glaive and the longsword, among many others.
One thing it has failed to do is to emulate the strengths of the most successful battle tactics in history so as to facilitate their inclusion in the game.
Given the mechanics, it is understandable that sword and board tactics might have become "edge case"s, and I think that this is down to failings in the system that don't facilitate their use.
I do agree though with the view that a rule like this might influence character build choices and an option like this might work well if a single player used a pair of PCs. As others have said it may otherwise work well in another game with less diversity of character options, and in which physical mobility is more of a central factor.
D&D isn't played at the military battle scale though? Shield walls don't work with two people. Battle tactics fall apart at the skirmish level. You're applying the wrong scale of combat logic. D&D hasn't failed at emulating "the strengths of the most successful battle tactics in history", it has actively chosen not to do so because you're not fighting battles in D&D
I'm not referring to "sword and board tactics", I'm referring to what you're discussing—large scale military battle tactics applied in a skirmish level game.
You do seem to be very selectively acknowledging what people say, quote mining, and generally not engaging in a very intellectually honest way, which is disappointing to say the least given the effort people have put in replying to you.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Actually the issue for emulating those battle tactics is how a current person runs the "figure". DnD is about the individual and how they interact. In wargames, you can either have individuals act under a single leader or have large formation that contain a lot of individuals but are acting as one.
Armor and ship and even plane combat can be represented by individual figures. A tank platoon with 3-5 individual tanks, a small naval squadron with 6 individual ship figures, 2 individual fighters per side.
But when you increase the size a figure represents, the individual becomes a cog inside a figure. infantry, even a modern fire team is 2-5 individuals are acting as a single figure. So a platoon of infantry is represented by 2-3 figures. A company or a battalion or a phalanx might be just a single figure isf you go larger. A WWII bomber is better represented due to tactics as part of a group that combine into a single figure on the table.
So those tactics of a group do not translate well into the figure of an individual and those of an individual can be lacking when it is for a group.
As DND is not set up for formations and teh combining of individuals into a group, it will never accurately represent that close fighting that the Sumerian, Macedonian, Hellenistic, and Roman military forces employed. You really need a different system.
While you can employ those group tactics and close fighting, you need the entire party to agree to reenact that military and give up their individual thinking. For example in a PBP I am playing right now, we are in small groups exploring a building, going room by room systematically, floor by floor. One PC was a bit bored waiting for the DM to sign on, and just stated, I am going by myself to check out room X.
That is great because no one has checked out room x, it is bad because he went the individual route and therefore left his "partners" alone and unprotected. How is that type of mentality going to assist the close formation fighting this entire thread is about?
I agree a shield wall works with 2 people if they are acting as one. But how well can that work on a tabletop? How confident can you be that your fellow PC will listen to you and/or you listen to them?
Are the individuals you play with hive minded enough to blindly follow that shield wall no matter the results?
I was thinking that this might work best with tokens...
Thank you
I was thinking that it would just be an option in play. A downside is that characters might need to equip with suboptimal short swords, and maybe the suspension of disbelief thing might jump in with d&d characters hauling around multiple weapon options. Gnome characters in my 1e game carry 10' poles.
Perhaps a rule could be that any other character not with a swingy weapon could share a space with a character making use of a shield and a short sword or perhaps a spear.
D&D tried to do rules for massed combat in 3.5 Editions Heroes of Battle.
General consensus was that it was a good attempt at a bad idea, because it was rules for massed infantry formations that were awkwardly jury-rigged into 3.5's combat rules, which really failed the moment someone said "I cast Fireball." The book ended up being little more than a curiosity because people who actually wanted to play wargames were already playing existing wargames that were purpose-built for the job instead and consequently had much more steamlined rules.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Two aren't a crowd/
How do you guys apply rules in relation to small characters like gnomes or halflings riding on centaur player characters or on a wildshaped druid?
Throughout this thread, you have lumped classical fighters together, regularly mentioning Macedonia and Rome. Both used very, very different tactics, even if both are referred to as a phalanx. The Macedonian phalanx is what you seem to be thinking of - lines of troops who use shield and sword to protect one another as they advance in tight formation. This type of combat is terrible in the kinds of situations D&D parties find themselves in - it tends to be inflexible and slow to react, falling apart in tight quarters where reactions are more important than discipline.
The Romans did not do that in the same way - they held battle lines and used spear and shield, but they stood further apart, at distances that were probably closer to the couple feet between D&D players. This put more focus on the individual, and allowed Roman Phalanxes to react and move much faster than their Macedonian counterparts. It also allowed them to switch tactics for things like close quarters fighting - be it inside the range of pikes or inside buildings.
But, in the end? It is not confusing wildly different tactics that is the real error here. The real “intellectual dishonesty” (again, your words, not what I would use) is that you continue to insist on trying to apply these classical tactics to D&D, despite many pointing out they are intentionally not applicable.
If D&D has a classical analogue, it is Homer, not Alexander or Caesar. Great heroes doing great feats on the battlefield, separate and apart from the average foot soldier. D&D is about repeatedly giving players their aristeia moment. Less “nameless soldiers in formation” and more Big Ajax and Teucer working together to be effective while employing drastically different styles.
No but they're a very tempting target for an AoE, I'd even argue that a shield wall would require a penalty to DEX saves so really not what you need in the face of a Fireball, and as others have pointed out would also require two players to basically give up their own independence in a way most players don't want to
And besides everything else why do you care? This thread has been full of people explaining why D&D doesn't work like this, ranging from actual mechanics to human nature, and you've consistently ingnored any point you don't like. If you're that set on it as an idea then introduce it as a house rule at your table and no one can stop you but I don't think it adds anything that's fundamentally missing because D&D isn't a real world battle simulator and isn't trying to be
Thank you, and I appreciate your knowledge and input. What soldier weaponry do you think would be appropriate for clearing out towns and running through confined spaces?
Even away from history and going back to fantasy, Tolkien even has elf-trained Aragorn taking up a shield (to accompany his both slashy and stabby sword) when facing the choke points etc, of Helm's Deep. I wonder how a group of Gimlis would have progressed here.
Those would be fair rulings. Shield walls may also prove less useful in the context that even moderately advanced casters might just misty step behind them.
I've heard what people have said about how d&d works, and have continued with my point of view on why I think house or optional rules might work differently. There would be no grout forcing a wall to stay together, and as far as I'm concerned, humans et al can be as they like.
I saw a discussion recently about realism versus verisimilitude in dialog writing that seems relevant here. The initially presented argument was that nobody wants realism in written dialog, what they really want is verisimilitude in written dialog, which is the appearance of or similarity to realism without actual realism. The kneejerk reaction was "no, people want realism!" But realism in dialog would be writing in every "um," "like," and "so," and other affectations people have when they talk to each other which would be distracting and even grating to read on the page. Satisfying dialog - like Buffy speak and the fast-paced back-and-forth patter of Gilmore Girls - feels like real people talking to each other, but that feeling is achieved with the illusion of cleaner, clearer dialog than actual people use in actual conversations.
We have a similar situation here in that realism - dogged insistence on battlefield-tested, historic battle tactics - would drag down gameplay, make combat clunky, and hamper enjoyment for players. With all the various weapon and armor types, D&D has the trappings of medieval combat, but mechanically it plays out more like a chaotic street fight than an organized clash between opposing military forces. The presence of fantasy elements like elves, goblins, dragons, and magic spells only amplifies this. Suspension of disbelief was mentioned earlier, which is interesting because the suspension of disbelief required to accept the fantastical elements also requires accepting that ancient human-versus-human military tactics aren't cromulent or even appropriate for the mechanics of D&D.
How? Why?
How does two sword and board combatants sharing a space, which all races could do, threaten d&d?
No one said anything about threatening D&D. It's very weird that you jumped to that completely unprompted.
At any rate, you seem to have your heart set on homebrewing extremely crunchy house rules for tactical combat. Great. Feel free. But you don't seem to have an audience here for that.
It's a relatively minor thing that may or may not be used, but would provide some balance between space-efficient weaponry and hard-hitting weapons.
I maintain that history is on my side, though as invited I'm prepared for that to be disputed.
Do we have gnomes on centaurs and/or wildshaped druids?
I don't see that there's much of a jump from something like this.
If you want semi-realistic space handling, you can just reduce all distances by 40%, so you go from a 10' corridor that 2 people can fit in to a 6' wide corridor that 2 people can fit in. Yes, people in combat typically don't need a full 5' area, but most maps are at an equally ridiculous scale so it mostly comes out even (and if you want easy math, just say the map scale is 1 yard).
Yes, crunchy. You want mechanics for shield walls, to allow multiple combatants in the same space, for how weapons are used affecting how combatants can space themselves, etc.
All that is crunch. The fact that you often retreat to "it could be optional" doesn't change that you're advocating for more crunch.
And you can have it. Make up your house rules. Use them in your own game. If you want, you could polish them up and publish them. Go wild. Have fun.
But don't get your hopes up about ever seeing wide adoption, because it's not something that most people will find improves their D&D game. (If you've been around long enough, you may remember the modifiers for weapons vs specific armor classes. But you may not, because nobody used them.)
That was pretty much my original suggestion but leaving characters with swinging weapons taking position in the centre of four squares so as to require the extra space. While potentially workdable it would have a major effect on game maths.
Thank you, My objection was just to the "extremely" claim. I'm now not primarily thinking about anything that would involve extra number crunching or anything like that.
We didn't either. Mythras, HârnMaster, and GURPS have core mechanics that are better suited for certain weapons having increased effects on armour.