QQ&A: Simulating Stupidity
I’ve talked a bit about how to inject personality into fights.
You can get creative here. It can be as simple as having an enemy mock the party or motivate their allies - talking is a free action, after all. On the other side, a group of foes could develop their own tactics, custom weapons and favourite traps.
This is on the quick and simple end of that spectrum.
Here’s a dirt simple way to add some variety into your combat tactics. This can be the foundation - meaning you do this before you add more customisation. Or you could just do this, since it adds a decent amount of variety on its own.
All you do is classify each NPC as Unthinking, Untrained or Professional.
Unthinking are like shambling undead or Indiana Jones-style traps. They attack but they don’t strategise. For enemies like this, I roll a 1dN, where N is the number of PCs and friendly NPCs. Whoever’s number shows up is who I target with these enemies.
Leave it up to chance.
This tends to make fights against the Unthinking easier. If the skeleton archers chose their targets at random, then they’re likely to spread the damage out.
Untrained creatures are like wild animals, reluctant conscripts or angry ghosts. They’re intelligent enough to choose an enemy, but they’re not smart enough to choose the best one.
They’ll make the easy choice - either attacking their closest enemy or, more often, going after the biggest, scariest person on the battlefield.
That’ll usually be the mortal with the heaviest armour and the biggest sword - unless the sorcerer leans into the lightning and fire spells.
This is a better strategy than splitting the damage, but it often means attacking the tank. The paladin or barbarian gets to feel smug as these amateurs nibble and poke at them.
Professionals know how to win fights. They see the skinny, cloth-laden archer hanging out in the back and target them down. They ignore the tank in favour of leaning on the party’s weak points.
These experienced enemies can be tough to fight. Even mooks pose a challenge when they focus their fire on your squishy healer or spellcaster.
I doubt this is blowing anyone’s mind, but I like what you can do with a simple algorithm like this. Let’s say a bandit clan have taken over a fortress. You could have the perimeter guards be Untrained, where the elite soldiers inside are Professionals. Similar encounter compositions could offer radically different challenges.
That’s a nice one to play on overconfident parties. “Another group of these losers? Save your spell slots, everyone, we’ve got - eep!”
You could also have mixed compositions in a single encounter. The necromancer’s skeletons are Unthinking, their cultists are Untrained and their bodyguards are Professionals. That sounds like a fun fight, with damage going everywhere.
Caveat, which I need to bring up because someone else will if I don’t - you’re not a computer, so you don’t blindly follow simple algorithms like this in all your fights. If it makes sense to drop it, drop it. If your players start metagaming and using it against you, be smart.
This is supposed to add some variety to your tactics, not outsource your brain.
In that regard, it’s a lot like Footprints. Used wisely, it elegantly adds life and spice to your world. Followed blindly, it’s just more stuff to memorise.
Which will you choose?