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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 5860586" data-attributes="member: 957">This happens some times.  But I'd say that claiming this fits my experience as a rule would be hugely mistaken.The massive flaw in this claim is that it presumes all targets are equal in merit so attacking the guy right in front of you is equally valid as attacking the guy over there.  Even from a purely gamist pov that is frequently far from true.  The guy over there may be a much more important threat and need to be dealt with *right now*.But if you put story in the game then the need for movement becomes the far more common situation.  The need to go after a specific target, protect something, acquire something, interrupt something, etc...  makes motion a nearly constant obligation.You and I have recently had some "AHA!" moments regarding the radical differences in what we want from our game experience.  I think this comes back down to that.  If I were to play 3E with a mindset that combat happened in a vacuum and the goal was simply to kill everything in the way and then high five all around, then this would probably be a much bigger issue in my games.This is actually just point #1 repeated and the same responses apply.I think this is already been addressed.  But it is amusing to note that in claiming how ineffective moving is your example requires accepting how easy and valuable the "baddy" finds moving.There is a lot wrong with this example.First, set pieces against a single foe are classic iconic elements of the game.  So that will skew the numbers for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with mechanics.  I can't speak for 4E adventures, but I'd certainly HOPE they kept that classic element as a common theme.But also, even if you were completely right, the choices that WotC and/or Paizo make in adventure design do not limit the capacity of the system.And even then the presumption that you just stand there and smash the monster is going to be true some of the time, but calling it a truth goes back to smacking of the pure gamism "kill the monster, high 5" that may work for you but has no representative value for me.Also, while 1 foe should get a pass for story reasons, as soon as you got to 2 your point about not moving starts to drop off fast.  Even including three as a reason not to move requires a charitable view.But, you are not right anyway.I went and randomly grabbed three sequential Dungeon issues from my of 3E days stack.  I hit on 148-150.Total encounters = 92 (I counted random encounter tables as 1 encounter with the avg # of foes).Number of single foe fights 34.Avg # of foes 3.8Maximum # 26.  (an outlier no doubt, several were 10 -14)Portion with less than 4 foes: 55%.  (Not exactly "overwhelming", just barely even majority)Portion of non-set piece single monster fights that also had less then 4 (i.e. 2 or 3 foes) 29%.If you had been right, it wouldn't matter.But you were also wrong.This may be valid.  But it says nothing whatsoever about game mechanics and speaks simply to Military school 101 level tactics.  I'd presume this is just as true for 4E.  And for any game that this isn't true, I'd see that as a strike against the merits of that game.Edit: this also contradicts your item #1 which claims you should just attack whoever is in your face.It may describe your game.But beyond that...    shrug</blockquote>

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