Looking in more depth at the specific case of fighter and goblin... I'm with
@Charlaquin and
@Umbran, I don't see the problem. The fighter is stopping and bracing to receive the goblin's charge, timing his strike to take advantage of the enemy's recklessness. That's a perfectly coherent narrative. Timing your attack based on the enemy's movement is a real thing that real combatants do.
Are you just objecting to the fighter's precise knowledge of exactly how far away he needs to stop for this to work?
If the goblin were to advance cautiously, stopping and readying, and the fighter responded by doing the same, then you'd have different mechanical events which would produce a different narrative: The two combatants inch up to each other, each waiting for the other to make the fatal rush that will expose them to a strike. A tumbleweed blows past.