D&D 5E Fighting Style Balance: Offense vs. Defense

[Garthanos]

So umm, I'm not seeing the reasoning behind this - care to elaborate?

each individual you take out oblates the offensive ability of your adversaries I brought up the hydra example as a way to do a single enemy with multi enemy functioning ie it brings it back. It also provides sub goals in a fight.

 

[FrogReaver]

each individual you take out oblates the offensive ability of your adversaries

How does this relate to this comment though?

The defensive benefits of an attack do go down if you do not have a group of adversaries

 

[Garthanos]

Reducing the number of attacks the enemy can do is THE defensive benefit of attacking? right? with a bunch of enemies you take out an individual its no longer attacking for the remainder of the fight.
You take out another now 2 are not attacking for the remainder of the fight.

If you have one enemy you can do the same damage that took out one of those multiple enemies and not get any offense impairment of the adversary.

 

[FrogReaver]

Reducing the number of attacks the enemy can do is THE defensive benefit of attacking? right? with a bunch of enemies you take out an individual its no longer attacking for the remainder of the fight.
You take out another now 2 are not attacking for the remainder of the fight.

If you have one enemy you can do the same damage that took out one of those multiple enemies and not get any offense impairment of the adversary.

Right, I think I misread what you were saying. Sounded like you were disagreeing with me instead of agreeing.

 

[Garthanos]

Right, I think I misread what you were saying. Sounded like you were disagreeing with me instead of agreeing.

I need to work on that something about text not carrying tone very well.

Defense benefits offense a similar way if you have allies going down regularly in your encounters.

It's why I mentioned the 50:50 mark point earlier though.

 

[FrogReaver]

Reducing the number of attacks the enemy can do is THE defensive benefit of attacking? right? with a bunch of enemies you take out an individual its no longer attacking for the remainder of the fight.
You take out another now 2 are not attacking for the remainder of the fight.

The point I was making was that this is still impacted by party damage not individual damage. If the party is focusing and taking out 1 enemy per round then adding a little more damage to your attacks is a very limited benefit.

The bigger benefits to your individual damage contribution is when there are multiple enemies and you are the only PC attacking the enemy you engaged. Then you have a decent change to kill that a enemy a round or 2 faster - and then maybe by the end of the fight you've helped kill 1 other enemy a round faster. So 1-3 rounds of enemy turns being lost seems the most likely case. Solos you'll have less impact. Huge hordes you will have more impact.

 

[Garthanos]

The point I was making was that this is still impacted by party damage not individual damage. If the party is focusing and taking out 1 enemy per round then adding a little more damage to your attacks is a very limited benefit.

If they are already going down that fast yes... if they are on the edge you just pushed it over and instead of a second round with that enemy having some impact.

The overall model works focus fire fast enough and no faster. If you have 3 and that is what it takes to take one down attack another.

 

[Garthanos]

Everyone is having less impact on the Solo and IF that solo also has a big damage dice to take out a teammate faster that will up the offensive value of a Defense move.

 

[FrogReaver]

If they are already going down that fast yes... if they are on the edge you just pushed it over and instead of a second round with that enemy having some impact.

Sure. But if they are on the edge then you must consider whether the defensive ability would more than cover that enemies damage output on their turn on average. If so it potentially makes sense to use the defensive ability in lieu of the damage one (especially something like temp hp that can be carried over to the next enemy/fight if not completely removed).

 

[Garthanos]

The whole thing depends on the solo design so much this is probably bad.
5 4 3 2 1 - offense of multiple attack sources with a ablative offense
3 3 3 3 3 - offense of singular attack source with non-ablative offense.

Both deliver a theoretic 15 points of damage to the party if an attack 3 all at once can deliver the goods because its easier for a single enemy to focus fire can take out an ally then defending that ally will gain an offense bonus for the defensive action.