Long ago, my gaming group came up with a list of tactics for the Blackrazor Guild, our notoriously chaotic adventuring company in the World of Greyhawk setting.
- Full frontal assault
- Spring the ambush, fight your way out.
- Party member as bait.
- Stake out a cow.
- Don’t Split up the party; you’ll just have to chase them down later.
- Capture and breed monsters (trolls, rust monsters, wyvren, etc.) then release them against your enemies.
- Call in air support: flying, improved invisible, size-reduced mages
- Fireball at your feet. We can take it, they can’t.
- Lightning bolt in a short corridor. We can take it, they can’t.
- Kill ’em all, then cast Speak with Dead.
- There is no problem that FIRE can’t solve! If you think there is, you can’t used enough FIRE.
If all else fails, hit hard, hit fast. If that doesn’t work, run away.
Many of these tactics were inspired by Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, which is when much of the Blackrazor Guild’s adventures took place. “Flying, improved invisible, size-reduced mages” probably won’t work in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition (or at least, it would require three mages to pull off since there are overlapping concentration-based spells). Lightning bolts no longer bounce off of walls, so casting them in a short corridor to super-fry your enemies won’t work. Much of the rest still holds true, even if we’ve moved on to playing somewhat less chaotic characters.
This post is part of RPG a Day 2021, a month-long celebration of role-playing games. Join the Facebook community to learn more or read other Nuketown posts in this series.
Other RPG a Day: Tactics posts
- Beer with Teeth: Shouting at people as a tactic
- The Watchhouse: A look at non-combat tactics
- NUELOW Games: Feats inspired by the Day 3 keywords
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The t-shirt version of the Blackrazor battle tactics. Credit: Ken Newquist.