D&D (2024) The Focus Fire Problem

[Laurefindel]

The problem there is that just means any time the PCs are outnumbered (which means, 90% of the time), even if the party divides up, they'll be dealing with loads of monsters getting Focus and nothing they can really do about. Also if it applies to PCs you handed yet another advantage to casters and ranged, who will get it pretty often! I guess you're envisioning an "equal numbers" scenario, but that's actually pretty rare in my experience. It would also be a ton of extra book-keeping.

Conceptually it's not a bad idea to be clear, it just applies poorly to D&D 5E as a generic rule.

I do think there is something in it, like, it would definitely make the game more about spraying around abilities to keep enemies on their toes and so on, I just think it's going to work poorly when most groups are 4-5 PCs, 2-3 of which may be melee, who are often facing 8+ monsters.

I do have a sci-fi game (that I based on The One Ring's system) where PCs can only occupy so many enemies before getting swamped. There are actions you can take to occupy multiple enemies (cover/suppression fire, overwatch and whatnot) but otherwise "unassigned" enemies are free to do as they please, including blocking the way or finding an unobstructed line-of sight to shoot you point blank.

In D&D, that would translate in unassigned enemies having advantage on attack rolls. It's easy to do there because the system has a baked in semi-theatre-of-the-mind semi-tactical-board where players and enemies are matched up, but it could work in D&D given on how this "unassigned" condition is granted.

 

[Shardstone]

No, it's true in real D&D. I've seen it happen regularly, and it's not unique to 5E, it's just 5E "drops the barriers" to doing focus fire to much lower levels than any other edition. Having a "dynamic arena" absolutely does not eliminate focus fire, and it's pretty funny to hear you claim that, when so many D&D-derived games have ultra-dynamic arenas (video games particularly) but still the goal is focus-fire. Dynamic arenas make it tougher, but they don't eliminate it.

The problem you're describing is that you essentially don't want to play D&D 5E, you want to play something more tactical and dynamic, and where players are more honestly "captain of their own ship" (where in 5E they're at the mercy of limited options and heavy RNG). 4E sounds like it would work much better for what you want, like drastically so.

And your suggestions don't account for the fact that monsters have both more HP than PCs in many cases, and often more numerous (particularly where they even have slightly less HP). On top of all the focus-fire is metagaming (as you seem to acknowledge?) and you're a DM, so you perfectly well know that when the DM metagames, it's easily 100x more obnoxious than when a player does, in D&D (less so in some other RPGs), given the vast power they hold.

(4E isn't the only game like that, I note - Lancer, Icon, possibly Gubat Banwa are also options, and even PF2E is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more tactics-y than 5E is. Interestingly despite being PF-derived it feels like it many ways it learned more from 4E than 5E did.)


This is what is telling you are playing the wrong game, btw, to be clear.

4E let you play that way and it felt good for both the players and the DM, because it was so tactical, and the PCs had so many responses, counters, and options, and the DM was essentially playing a tactical game against 3-5 opponents at once, so it worked out.

5E is based around 6-8 "medium" encounters/day. Medium == easy - literally!!! As per discussion thread on the famous "Last minute change". 5E is not about tactical combats. It's classes don't possess the abilities you need for that. The rule-set doesn't have inherent options to support that. 4E is.

This is one big thing we miss from 4E. I could play "hardball" in 4E, but in 5E if I play "hardball", I'm the DM so I'll just win, no question (just like in 2E barring something like me failing a save vs a save or die spell), because the system is designed on the assumption I'm not pushing it that hard, and doesn't provide the tools for PCs to play that way.

Nah def don't want to play 4E, I am very happy with my 5E + homebrew.

 

[MarkB]

The problem there is that just means any time the PCs are outnumbered (which means, 90% of the time), even if the party divides up, they'll be dealing with loads of monsters getting Focus and nothing they can really do about. Also if it applies to PCs you handed yet another advantage to casters and ranged, who will get it pretty often! I guess you're envisioning an "equal numbers" scenario, but that's actually pretty rare in my experience. It would also be a ton of extra book-keeping.

Conceptually it's not a bad idea to be clear, it just applies poorly to D&D 5E as a generic rule.

I do think there is something in it, like, it would definitely make the game more about spraying around abilities to keep enemies on their toes and so on, I just think it's going to work poorly when most groups are 4-5 PCs, 2-3 of which may be melee, who are often facing 8+ monsters.

Yeah, anything you try to retrofit to 5e at this point is going to be at least somewhat awkward. But if you're going to add something, it needs to be just as available to the players as the opposition, otherwise it will feel both artificial and punitive.

Ultimately, the focus-fire issue doesn't bother me. Players will play tactically, and inevitably some of those tactics will be dictated more by the rules than the fiction.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Nah def don't want to play 4E, I am very happy with my 5E + homebrew.

You're literally telling us that your players aren't happy, which is my point, and everything you're describing worked vastly better in 4E, so I mean, okay but...

Ultimately, the focus-fire issue doesn't bother me. Players will play tactically, and inevitably some of those tactics will be dictated more by the rules than the fiction.

Yeah what stops this being bad enough for me to personally consider rules solutions (though if I'd designed 5E it would have looked different) is the fact that whilst the groups I play with do focus-fire, there are enough "agent of chaos" and "serious roleplayer"-type players in them that it doesn't get obnoxious and regularly people are doing something in combat that doesn't actually make a lot of sense.

I do think monster design is most of the problem.

5E could really use more "I'm charging my lazor!!!"-type monsters (there are a handful, but they're mostly obscure-as-heck). Honestly, PC spellcasters should have a "charge my lazor" option spell-wise too. I notice Icons has a couple of classes which do this (whilst also carefully working them so they aren't doing nothing at all on that turn).

 

[Shardstone]

You're literally telling us that your players aren't happy, which is my point, and everything you're describing worked vastly better in 4E, so I mean, okay but...


Yeah what stops this being bad enough for me to personally consider rules solutions (though if I'd designed 5E it would have looked different) is the fact that whilst the groups I play with do focus-fire, there are enough "agent of chaos" and "serious roleplayer"-type players in them that it doesn't get obnoxious and regularly people are doing something in combat that doesn't actually make a lot of sense.

I do think monster design is most of the problem.

5E could really use more "I'm charging my lazor!!!"-type monsters (there are a handful, but they're mostly obscure-as-heck). Honestly, PC spellcasters should have a "charge my lazor" option spell-wise too. I notice Icons has a couple of classes which do this (whilst also carefully working them so they aren't doing nothing at all on that turn).

Oh, that was only players a couple years back, I wasn't speaking clearly hahaha.

My players now are actually pretty tactical and "serious roleplayer," so it makes for fun games. They use the battlefield, and they make use of their options in a pretty good manner. My comments were more about the general 5E playerbase, where I really think the attitude my players have should be more widespread. It is possible to have engaging tactics with 5E. Yes, I have homebrewed, but my homebrew is basically magic items or stealing the new conditions from Adventures in Rokugan, etc. But even with vanilla, I've found that with a good arena, playing theater of the mind even (which I usually run), you can still have an engaging combat. It isn't that focus fire is to be prevented, but making it harder adds tension to combat for me, because it can happen.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

D&D favors that kind of tactic- monsters operate at 100% until they drop dead, and they can usually withstand the damage output from several PCs before dropping. In a system where one hit can disable an opponent, you would see PCs picking individual targets, only focusing fire on heavily armored or difficult to hit targets.

funny thing is what makes and doesn't make such a system is weird...

Many years ago a GM sold me on deadlands on being WAY more realistic on damage... so my quick gun quick fire two gun gun slinger 1st time 5 guys jumped us made called shots to the legs (knock them down and out of the fight but maybe not kill) and spread my attacks out... 1 on each. I hit each did minimal damage to most of them (but enough to apply penalties) and then said "So now surrender" and they just kept fireing... 3 of them from prone 1 that now missing a right leg... so from that point forward I would put all my shots into 1 target takinng them down... and he HATED that. he wanted to know why I didn't spread my damage more... I had to explain "You taught me that wasn't worth it"
in a related note they have a mechanic to negate damage by spending fate pts (called fate chips cause poker analogy is strong) and the GM got 1 big pile to use on any NPCs and then named npc could at GM wish have there own as well... so the GM used to not chip damage to minions and helpers but always would on the big named bad guys (basicly giveing them double or tripple the chips) so we would all focus fire on the big guy to use up all the chips as fast as possible... again that is what he taught us.

 

[Laurefindel]

...or stealing the new conditions from Adventures in Rokugan

I don't want to derail the thread, but I'm curious about these!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Focus fire isn't the problem, focus fire is the solution to the problem that monsters and PCs in D&D have huge pools of Hit Points that need to be whittled down to 0 before any of the attacks that hit actually matter.

yeah the HP increase in WotC D*D over TSR is pretty big... I would love to front load more HP but to overall have less over 20 levels if I could... and the same with monsters less hp more cool ways to do things

 

[tetrasodium]

This is only true in a white room scenario. Focus fire can't exist if you have a dynamic arena and actually move around, making use of the cover. I know this is outside of the main game, but no, if there is one clear bigger threat, enemies ought to try and take them out, and its on the player to find a way to survive.

That works great with a small group and totm.... Not so much with a big group & grid (chessex /online vtt/offline vtt+tvbox/etc). With a big group and grid combat statements like "use cover" and "plan bdtter/more dynamic encounters" are pretty much just empty buzzwords amounting to little more than "you're the gm, you fix it".

 

[el-remmen]

5E doesn't need specific rules for firing into melee or allies inadvertently providing cover for opponents (or vice-versa), if just makes sense that that'd be more difficult and the DM can rule it that way depending on the conditions on the field.

In my games, shooting into melee is done at disadvantage to represent trying to be careful to not hit a friend - and if an ally provides cover, there is a chance of hitting them on a miss. I never considered doing it any other way based on the rules as they exist.