Author Topic: Teaching teamwork  (Read 2293 times)

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ImperatorK

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Teaching teamwork
« on: July 09, 2011, 09:29:24 PM »
We have a group of strong characters who are quite capable of taking care of themselves. As a group they are strong thanks to their individual power.
 Now, how would you approach those characters (not players, just characters) to teach them to better work as a team?
 Simply saying "Work as a team guys, it is more practical" won't work, because those characters are strongly individual and don't want to accept that they could need help of someone else.
 The purpose of this is that I want them to be even more effective against more powerful opponents and overwhelming odds, in case that their own power (even with them all together) isn't enough.
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Kormoran

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Re: Teaching teamwork
« Reply #1 on: July 09, 2011, 09:59:14 PM »
A fast example:
An encounter where the "bad guy" will disable (stun - CC - etc...) a portion of the party (50%?).
This 50% comprises someone necessary (for ability. skill, spell etc...) to kill the bad guy.
The not stunned 50%  has so need to first free mates to be able to win.
The stunned will learn that without help they'd die.
The not stunned will learn that they, sometimes, need abilities not available to them but available to their mates.

archangel.arcanis

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Re: Teaching teamwork
« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2011, 01:12:42 PM »
Think like a prismatic wall. Look at the individual abilities each has that the others don't. They must use that ability to get through the obstacle and the next person must use their unique ability to get through that obstacle and so on. The trick is not being heavy handed about saying "NO your alternate plan doesn't work", you must have a reason why nothing else works.
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dither

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Re: Teaching teamwork
« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2011, 05:04:08 PM »
(I'm running a paragon-tier Fourth Edition game, but these same concepts can be applied to other systems.)

Endurance tests can sometimes force the party to work together. I ran several "triathlon" and "decathlon" encounters (monsters - skill challenges - monsters - skill challenges) until the party ran out of daily resources. They were unable to rest between encounters, and so they started to realize they needed to conserve resources between fights.

I then hit them with a series of ambushes of varying complexities to train their ability to gauge individual encounters and how to manage resources when the circumstances of encounters were unpredictable. They've become much more conservative with daily resources, relying first on encounter resources and falling back on daily resources only when necessary, or as an expedient.

Currently, we're working on developing the team's ability to identify threats and focus fire to take out a particularly troublesome creatures (read: leader, healer, support, or otherwise tough character).

In our last session, the party had to take out three enemies with enormous amounts of hit points and high damage output, plus teamwork-heavy abilities. The party had to focus fire on a single enemy for several rounds to take one of them out, while they ignored others (even while taking damage from them) to make sure they could take each one out properly before they could heal.

If the monsters focused fire for a single round, they could take out any one party member, which they nearly did a couple times. Of course, the party I have already has a "protective" sense, that they will try and keep everyone conscious and fighting as much as possible. We've had a few character deaths, and they don't delay in making sure to get everyone on their feet ASAP.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2011, 05:07:05 PM by dither »
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Lycanthromancer

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Re: Teaching teamwork
« Reply #4 on: August 08, 2011, 05:19:56 AM »
Force them to take low-tiered classes, because at mid and higher levels, optimized high-tiered characters can solo a game several CRs higher than they are.
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