Tactics (CGH)

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A good gladiator always has strategies in mind when attacking a foe. Trained gladiators almost never go into combat simply to bash away at the opponent until one or the other drops dead. The best gladiators plan in advance, using the first few moments of combat to draw the opponent out and appraise him for weaknesses. When the gladiator has judged his opponent well enough, he formulates a strategy to force his antagonist to make a mistake. And when his opponent slips up, the gladiator is always there to take advantage of it.
If, after the assessment, the gladiator determines his foe to be weaker, he has no problem wading in to finish off his opponent. However, few gladiators take this option, as more experienced gladiators have been known to feign weakness or inexperience to draw in the bold and brash. This, in turn, has caused the newer gladiators to fear those who seem to be weak, and they therefore do not attack the weak-seeming ones outright. This serves the dual purpose of teaching new gladiators to assess a foe, and luring the less intelligent to their deaths. The mind games in the arenas can be nearly as subtle as those the templars use on one another, and often as entertaining as the sheer brutality of the sport.
Despite their great size and physical prowess, it is only the fool who mistakes all gladiators as lumbering, stupid behemoths capable only of swinging a trikal. Many gladiators, although they do not have the trained minds of nobles, are as cunning and devious as a bard intent on poisoning his host. Those with formal educations seem intent on confusing ignorance with stupidity, forgetting that lack of knowledge of facts does not necessarily make the mind of the gladiator inferior to the mind of a noble. It is only the difference in formal training that makes some nobles more intelligent than some gladiators.
A well-trained and experienced gladiator can predict what his opponent will do with some accuracy, sometimes up to half the time. Nonetheless, an opponent, even one who has been faced before, should always be faced with caution. Gladiators are always learning new tricks, and nonplayer characters are no exception to this rule. The DM should play them to be every bit as tricky as the PCs, sometimes even more so.
One way gladiators measure their foes is to goad them. A fairly unintelligent opponent is likely to take goads poorly, rushing in to fight immediately. If the goads work instantly, a well-trained gladiator knows that he can keep his foe angry and thus off-balance by continuing to irritate him until the enemy makes a fatal mistake.
If the goads don't work immediately, or if the enemy pauses to collect himself, the gladiator might predict that the enemy is aware that the gladiator is trying to goad him into making a mistake. Thinking himself far more clever than the gladiator, the foe advances more cautiously, trying to leave few openings. Unfortunately, few realize that this, too, has been anticipated, and that there is a new set of truths dealing with opponents like these; feigning a weakness to lure in the overconfident enemy, stumbling just a bit, and seeming distracted for just a moment are all classic ways to lure an enemy closer for the fatal strike.
Once again, every gladiator, PC, or NPC, is aware of tactics to provoke and goad his opponent. Most of the time in the arena, these taunts are part of a well-rehearsed routine. Few gladiators allow the goads to affect them, though they may act differently to lure the opponent to a position of vulnerability. The acting penetrates many levels in the arena, and many in both the stands and the arena are hard-pressed to pierce the many layers of illusion, with all the subtlety surrounding the attacks, sometimes the most subtle way to attack is directly. It is a complicated game, to be sure.
Of course, all these tactics may well prove to be useless against a similarly trained foe. The two are reduced to initial feints and counterfeints, seeing how far they can draw the enemy out of line. It is for precisely this reason that many gladiatorial combats include at least a minute of tense preparation for the battle while the two combatants circle one another warily, despite the catcalls of the crowd. However, since this also serves to heighten the tension in the arena, and thus to excite the crowd further, the fans come to expect the facing-off of the gladiators, so that the crowd can build itself to a fever-pitch of excitement.