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Nerdarchy > Dungeons & Dragons  > RPG Character Types and the Sliding Scale of Tactical Characters vs. Heroic Characters

RPG Character Types and the Sliding Scale of Tactical Characters vs. Heroic Characters

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Salutations nerds! Today, I want to talk about RPG character types, in a way that directly lines up with playstyle. See, a lot of the players I know fall into patterns, somewhere between a couple of polls, and now that I’ve noticed I can’t help but find it kind of fascinating. I’m talking, of course, about tactical characters and heroic characters. They’re both awesome.

RPG character types heroic characters

Going one-on-one with Demogorgon (even with a magical onyx panther) leans towards the heroic character type more than tactical. [Art by Tyler Jacobson]

Now, you might be thinking, “Megan, aren’t you just talking about law and chaos? We have the alignment system for that.” But that isn’t quite it. Bear with me for a second.

RPG character types spectrum

Tactical characters are the ones who want a plan before they rush in. They assess their situation, set up their dominos, and play the control game. Tactical characters are more likely to be included in a chess metaphor, carefully choosing movements and thriving on the ‘got you’ moment when the trap they’ve been setting finally cinches shut. Their awesome moments come from careful planning and weeks of subtlety leading up to them.

Heroic characters are the ones who, when faced with the devil, stand up straight and charge right at him with a wicked smirk and no shred of fear. This kind of player is an opportunist, and their awesome moments come from that which simply exists within the game.

And it does look an awful lot like the law and chaos scale, but consider this. You can be tactical and chaotic. A terrorist who stops and thinks, carefully choosing where to strike for the most effect against the status quo is a tactical and chaotic character. The Big Bad’s lieutenant that practices blitz assaults on the good guys to devastating effect but always has a plan to withdraw can be a tactical and chaotic character.

By the same token, heroic characters can be lawful. After all, when you picture a classic paladin isn’t one of the things you see in your mind frequently a knight in shining armor charging right up to face a dragon? This rarely involves a plan — if it did you wouldn’t be wearing easily heatable metal in a fight where your foe is prone to bouts of super hot flame. And yet paladins are, classically, lawful characters.

No, this has very little to do with law and chaos, but it is an interesting polarity I’ve noticed when it comes to player characters in games and the favored playstyle at table. I’ll admit, I used to be far more partial to the tactical sort. Today, I acknowledge I was wrong about that. Oh, I still think tactical characters are amazing and I think I tend to be more prone to playing them myself, but both of them are awesome in their own right. Both of them are awesome for totally different reasons.

Heroic characters: the unstoppable force

There was a moment in our Open Legend game that stuck out to me in particular. It was the first time I ever got to play with Ty Johnston, my mentor, and I was excited to see what kind of roleplay he would engage in. Surely, I thought, he would get into some deep roleplay and make those quiet moments shine the way I was so certain they needed to.

The campaign opened on an airship being assaulted by some kind of eldritch horror that had breached the clouds beneath us. We were being slammed and overrun. It was a real horror show. He was standing there with his sword as tentacles came from all over and then Nerdarchist Dave asked, “What do you do?”

Ty straightened, calm as can be, and said “Oh, I jump.”

And he did. He vaulted right over the edge of the ship and right onto this sky leviathan thing and almost died during the first session. It was crazy. It was the opposite of what I thought someone should do at the time. It was intense and nigh-suicidal (there was, it turns out, a reason for this, but this was all the context we had at the time). And it was badass.

In that singular moment, he marked himself as the equal of this massive unfathomable creature that was kicking all our butts. Suffice it to say, he ended up having to be rescued and pulled out of there, but for just a second between turns, his character, Israel, was larger than life and appeared unstoppable.

It wasn’t the smart thing to do, but it was the heroic thing to do. A character like that, who goes charging in despite of the odds? It’s stupid. We know it’s stupid. It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s dangerous, and it can get your character killed, and yet when one of them shows up, shows no fear, plants their feet as the abyss is staring into them and roars back like they aren’t afraid, we want them to succeed.

Sometimes, you want one crazy person riding into a sea of enemies and coming out the other side unscathed. It doesn’t always end that way. Moments like this can end up with a lot of famous last words moments, but sometimes they do survive. Sometimes, a character rushes in to do something absolutely insane, and they come out breathing. Those are worthy stories to tell.

Characters with a will of iron, who will not be denied, are outstanding. Characters who will take real risks to create opportunities for themselves shine like fire in the dark. We as readers (and as players!) are prone to loving proactive characters who know what they want and go after it mercilessly. Sometimes that thing is charging down a dragon all by your onesy.

Bare minimum, it will be glorious to witness and leave you with a story to tell afterward.

It sometimes pays to do the brave and foolish thing. After all, fortune favors.

Tactical characters: the unmovable object

RPG character types tactical characters

The House Harlaw Tactician from Fantasy Flight Games’ Game of Thrones CCG certainly looks to be the planning type. [Art by Nicole Cardiff]

My newfound love of the heroic character, however, has not at all undercut my love of a good tactician.

Some characters spend entire campaigns weaving plots and waiting for the perfect moment to execute them. Those RPG character types are likely to take their time assessing a situation and them come at it from an oblique angle. They do not take unnecessary risks. Every move is calculated to maximum efficiency.

Tactical characters are more likely to keep their head in a crisis. Tactical characters are more likely to surrender now in order to have a better chance at success later. Tactical characters pay attention to every piece on the field and how they move and prepares themselves to handle it if it comes up again in the future.

If you have a character who pays careful attention to what everyone around them wants and uses that as leverage at every available opportunity, they are probably a tactical type. If you have a character who sees a silver goblet in an unrelated dungeon that was meant to be art treasure to be sold for coins, but takes it and slips it into their bag without selling it, because they remember the werewolf from two towns back that the party left with every reason to seek revenge, the same thing applies. They are planning and thinking ahead and often will have many schemes in the works at once to see what sticks.

The major pitfall to being this type of character is of course that some of your plans are not going to bear fruit. That is fine. That is why you keep dozens in motion at a time, so you have a better chance of properly building to something later. Another option is to see if your Game Master will work with you on something like this. These moments can be pure magic, for you and for others at the table who have seen you doing these small things to build to the moment the rope cinches around the neck of your enemy.

That moment can be euphoric. You are subtle and cautious, and you learn. Knowledge is power, after all.

The moment of exhilaration

I have seen both of these RPG character types stress out GMs who aren’t used to running for them and by the same token I have often seen people get frustrated about one type or the other at the gaming table. Personally, I love them both and I love them equally.

When you are playing a character like either of these types, you are building toward a certain kind of moment. When the rope begins to cinch and you catch someone in a well-prepared snare, there is a euphoria that comes with that, a rushing of the blood. The same can be said of charging down a foe three times your size even though the odds are stacked against you. They are both just so satisfying to see pulled off!

GMs, this is my suggestion: do not be frustrated when your players are engaging in characters like this. Your tactician wants to work with you, so give them rivals to plot against and openings with which to make their plans. Your hero wants something big and impossible to fight, so give them that and if you have a character you’d prefer they not charge up and kill immediately often a larger and more presently dangerous foe is exactly the cure for it.

Try to get excited with them. If you’re blessed enough to have either type of character in your party, it can only enrich the story you are telling together.

Players, if you’re playing either of these RPG character types try to remember the other players at the table. One audacious charge per game, please! Doing it every single time without giving anyone else a say is going to make the game very much streamlined for you but that might not be what they want. Those moments, few and far between, will make your character look fearless, and believe you me, once a game will do it. It only takes one reckless charge to set that trope up, and once every other game is enough to keep it up.

If you are playing a tactician, try to invite the other players into your schemes! Four pairs of eyes are better than one and they will have so much more fun getting into your plots and tricks with you than they will trying to make heads or tails while they watch you do it. Be the chessmaster, yes, but share the wealth. Listen to what your fellow party members have to say. They might have surprisingly good advice.

There is no one perfect way to play a character. Caution and valor both have their places. Can you imagine a party with both a tactician and a heroic type in it? How they might play off of one another? How the hero might charge in and the tactician could use it as a distraction to place some vital piece while no one is looking or how the tactician might pull strings for the perfect moment of heroic charge? These characters can coexist together. They can be great together.

And that is, no question, awesome.

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Robin Miller

Speculative fiction writer and part-time Dungeon Master Robin Miller lives in southern Ohio where they keep mostly nocturnal hours and enjoys life’s quiet moments. They have a deep love for occult things, antiques, herbalism, big floppy hats and the wonders of the small world (such as insects and arachnids), and they are happy to be owned by the beloved ghost of a black cat. Their fiction, such as The Chronicles of Drasule and the Nimbus Mysteries, can be found on Amazon.

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