Combat Strategems by Intelligence
Combat Stragegems by Intelligence is a list of combat design parameters that determine which weapons, formations, coordinated actions, fortifications, siege engines and forms of magical support a group of combatants can employ. These parameters establish the sophistication of the group's preparations and fighting methods, giving the dungeon master a repertoire appropriate to the minds directing the fight. This page discusses only battle tactics involving employed weapons, excluding tactics that relate to a creature's natural bodily weapons.
It is presumed that tactical methods and the availability of weapons are limited by a creature's intelligence. Making a weapon requires an understanding of its construction, while employing it effectively requires an understanding of its use. Coordinating groups with different weapons demands an understanding of how their actions support one another. More demanding stratagems require combatants to anticipate an enemy's response and organise their own actions accordingly. Intelligence also limits the construction of defences, devices and vehicles, each of which makes further strategies and tactics possible. Higher intelligence creatures possessed of skill in Instruction can enable creatures of less intelligence to use a better weapon, as will be explained; but it would still require sufficient knowledge, skill and ability to make that weapon at all.
It often happens in play that a DM's ability to conceive of a weapon's use is treated as sufficient reason to place it in a creature's hands. Goblins, designated as having an intelligence of 5 to 7 in the original Monster Manual, may consequently be equipped and organised according to the DM's understanding, without regard for their own. The intelligence assigned to the creature then ceases to impose any meaningful limit upon its military capabilities. The structure below establishes those limits, requiring the choice of weapons and stratagems to reflect the intelligence of the creatures employing them. This further requires the DM to understand intelligence itself and portray the capabilities associated with each score, from the limited understanding of a creature with an intelligence of 5 to the exceptional understanding of one with an intelligence of 18. These differences must govern how capably creatures prepare for and conduct combat, with creatures below intelligence 5 unable to use weapons at all.
