You read every class option before session one, and you came for the fight. You play your character like a piece on a board and know every ability on your sheet. A round where you set up the cleric's spell and the boss drops as planned is your favorite part of the night.
Your best-fit GMs: The Tactical Arbiter. Both want open numbers, firm rules, and fights where good tactics decide who wins.
Tactical Neo-Trad runs on packaged abilities, per-fight resources and a rules-fluent GM, and story still matters. Good players know their abilities cold and plan their turn while others act.
What you do well
- You plan your turn while others act, so combat keeps moving.
- You see the combo, and you'll delay your turn to set up a friend's big hit.
- You know the rules cold, and you raise a correction as a question.
Where your style trips
Leading with the build. You hunt for the optimal move while the table waits, and the whole fight stalls on your turn.
The fix: Plan during other people's turns, and take the first good move when yours comes up. Good enough on time beats perfect at minute forty.
Things to practice
- Give your character one want that has nothing to do with fighting.
- Once per fight, spend your turn setting up someone else's big moment.
- Narrate one hit per fight: what the blow looks like and what your character feels.
Who you play like
You'll probably recognize yourself in Tactician, Power Gamer, from Robin D. Laws's player types. Most players span several.
GMs who'll love you at their table
- Best match
- The Tactical Arbiter
- Also works
- The Systemic Architect
- Talk it through first
- The Auteur Director. Decide how often a fight can be won through clever play, and how often the plot settles it.
How to prep
Intent plus approach: say what you want the move to do, then how you'll do it, then roll.
Pitch your table with these
- On screen
- 300, Pacific Rim, Edge of Tomorrow, Aliens, Ender's Game, Seven Samurai
- Actual play
- The Glass Cannon Podcast's Pathfinder campaigns, and tactical streams with the grid on screen, where every turn is a real decision.
- Games
- Pathfinder, Draw Steel, Lancer, D&D 4th Edition, 13th Age
A culture of play describes a table, so one 5e group could sit in two cultures on two Tuesdays. From John Bell's "Six Cultures of Play". World simulation isn't on his list, and sits beside it here.
Terms on this page: Neo-Trad