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I upvoted the question since it's the sort of thing that new players often wonder about; but the only possible answer is Stop what you are doing right now!. D&D (and roleplaying games in general) are very specifically not about being the winner or 'bending other characters to your will'. It is conceivable that a particular campaign may allow the ...

This is not a complete answer at the moment, but should provide some food for thought. You should use all of your encounter powers every combat if you can. Leaving encounter powers on the table is wasting resources. Most combats are several rounds, so you should have a chance to get off most of your encounters if you've chosen them well. Figure out your ...

First: Talk to your DM. Ensure that this character is right for the game they are running. Does the DM force/allow social skills to be used against other PCs? Does the general plot have a point at which you could take control of the party? Is there a reason that the other players would go along with your character? Is there a reason some higher authority ...

First of all - think very carefully about whether you want to do this and why you want to do this. As a number of people have already mentioned in the comments to your original post, if you don't handle this well then it's a one-way trip out of the game probably and a lot of annoyed friends. On the flip side - this has been done a lot in fiction and is ...

First of all, remember that the purpose of the game is for players (and, secondarily, the GM) to have fun. As such, ask yourself if your battles need to be more difficult. Do you feel the ease in which the players beat all your monsters makes them bored, or are they excited that their tactics are so successful? Remember that the game is not you versus the ...

I would suggest reading up on Sun Tzu, Alexander The Great, Hannibal, Scipio Africanus, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Napoleon, Wellington, Clausewitz, Guderian, Patton, and Petraeus... Just to name a few. And if you only have time for one, read The Art Of War by Sun Tzu. How to apply this to RPG situation? This is not tricky. As a GM you control ...

I have played in D&D groups that where not totally cooperative. I didn't like it but once I did "win". Let me share that experience with you and the outcome. This was an AD&D game, 1e, with some heavy house rules. The group was five strong. I will not use real names in order to protect the privacy of these folks. Saul, the DM. Lenny, ...

In addition to the answers already given, something to keep in mind is you are not the only one with dailies to spend. Thus, the question is not so much when should you expend resources in a fight, but rather when someone should spend them. For example, the party I play with leans heavily towards single or double target Strikers as primary or secondary ...

With Artillery and mechs, there will be no streets. With a modern force and 2000 artillery pieces, if the objective is "flatten the city" the mechs serve a defensive role only. They set up on fortified terrain and... nuke the city from orbit. For 5-6 meter tall mechs, again, with no intention of preserving the city, the mechs are used as demolition crews ...

Note: Remember that 4e has a set of rather simplified, abstract rules to cover only situations that come up often. For such rare occurences the GM needs to improvise and make up something new based on the ruleset. With that in mind you can read below. As Colin said the creature falling would certainly take the regular amount of damage. As for the other one, ...

My main recommendation is that if you are going to use them, use them right away in the combat. This requires judging a combat and deciding if this will be the one you will need your daily, but after that is done, delaying to see how it plays out is not very useful. For instance. If you use a large area attack, very often the time you can hit the most ...

There's nothing wrong with metagaming unless your roleplaying and the group's enjoyment of the game are suffering because of it. As a player, you're making choices that the character isn't aware of all the time. For a tactical RPG like 4e D&D, learning how and when to use your character's powers are part of the fun of playing the game. Adjust your use ...

In the Warhammer 40k Universe, rather. What we see in Warhammer is a lot of high-power weaponry with a ton of output. Let's not kid ourselves either-the only way any building is standing is if it's built out of really durable materials, so we'd really need to know the city in question. Forge Worlds, for instance, might have the sorts of buildings that could ...

My thoughts: The biggest challenge of urban combat is avoiding levelling the city. Attackers that have the luxury of blowing up every building as they walk by don't need to worry about guerillas. Cities are challenging not only because of the close quarters, but because they are filled with noncombatants. Modern warfare is about pinpointing enemy ...

Mechs can definitely be effective. In the standpoint of games, they are quite mechanically apt at it. Mechwarrior has a mech called the "Urban Mech", which is specifically designed for suppressing infantry in a city. Granted it's not very good at much else in the MW universe. Infantry can hide in buildings but the buildings can be toppled by the three ...

Go read Greg's answer again. But I'd like to add that if your players are extremely strategic, give them some different scenarios to test their flexibility and give them different goals to adjust to. How often do you face the enemy in a open featureless plain in a fight to the death? The tactics have to change a lot if the other guy is holed up in a ...

To learn strategy and tactics, do as real generals have done for centuries: read accounts of famous battles, study the way they've played out, and extract your own lessons from them. A visit to your local library and a chat with a research librarian is your best resource, as the sheer number of books that fall into this category is enormous. Incidentally, ...

The first thing that I would need to know to properly answer the question is what game system you are using is. Effective strategy can vary wildly depending on the mechanics. Greg has a very good group of fundamentals to start with, and some of the key to that is the party itself. Most of the characters I encounter try to stack into being able to succeed ...