D&D General Fixing the Offense Tunnel Vision problem

[Zardnaar]

Good luck trying to change human nature! A preference for big damage numbers and hitting the enemy until they stop moving holds true across every class based game I've ever played. Not just D&D or even TTRPGs, but everything.

In every MMORPG I've ever played, direct damage classes are far and away the most popular, and many of those players live down to the stereotype of fixating on damage meters while ignoring tactical considerations or group buffs. In the modern hero shooter genre, direct damage heroes are again the overwhelming favorite, while tanks and healers are harder to come by.

Far be it from me to speculate too deeply into the psychology of why. But the visceral satisfaction of taking direct offensive action and getting an immediate result has a broad appeal. Even when the optimizers spell out why it isn't the most objectively effective, most players still favor it.

So I don't think design incentives will move the needle very much on this one. The playstyle isn't favored because it's the best, it's favored because that's what a lot of people enjoy most. Simple, direct, and immediate.

Large numbers are fun.
Offense>defense.
Death is best debuff.
HP bloat requires more damage

In D&D I rate control and support highly as well.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Another problem is that you normally lack the information needed for this. Like you do not know exactly how many more attacks the enemy gets when you play defensively or how much less damage you take. But you do know that a dead enemy cant do damage, always.

I still think the problem is that PC resources recover too quickly. If you only recovered your CON bonus every long rest instead of full HP, you can bet players would look more towards defense, because now your HP have to last a lot longer. Killing an enemy quicker but still taking some amount of damage is going to be worse than taking longer to beat the enemy, but reducing damage to negligible.* You can reduce that damage by increasing defense, taking out enemies through other means (charming, incapacitating, etc.), or other reasons. Not saying damage isn't an option, but saying the other options become more relevant and legitimate choices.

*Taking 5 damage in a shorter combat round, but having 10 combats between recovery is gonna be worse than taking 4 damage even if those combat rounds are longer. It's only with fast recovery does it make it totally ok to take that damage and get the battle over fast.

 

[jmartkdr2]

One other dnd design element that makes high-damage builds more effective is the way resources recharge between battles. That means you have the most resources at the start of the fight, so you can do your strongest attacks in round 1, which is also the round where doing the most damage is most effective (more targets, less chance of overkill, better for gaining an action economy edge, etc.)

13th Age and other games flip the script on this by giving you reasons to hold back in the start of a fight, meaning it makes more sense to use buffs or defensive actions early and make your big attacks later. 13th Age does this with the Escalation Die, but I can think of a few other ways to do it offhand.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Based on many of the responses, I guess today is that day

Here's why I disagree that doing HP damage is always the best option. There are two examples that immediately jump to my mind, although I'm sure there are more.

1. The math doesn't always support that unless you recharge all resources after every battle. If you've got a PC with 15 HP and does 8 damage each round, and an opponent with 15 hp and does 5 damage each round, assuming PC wins initiative, the PC takes 5 damage by the time the opponent dies in the 2nd round before it gets to act. However, if instead the PC has defense that reduces incoming damage by 3 and their own damage by 3 each round, the combat takes an extra round, but the PC only takes 4 damage by the end of the combat. So why offense is often better, it's not always better. The issue here is allowing PCs to recover all of their HP after every battle. There is no carry-over risk.

The issue is that D&D (most editions) doesn't generally allow that level of tradeoff. If the maths that you suggest worked, then defence would indeed be a viable alternative to nova.
However, particularly for martial-type characters, there aren't any options that let them reduce incoming damage by more than half, while still dealing more than half their base damage. Recharging after each battle doesn't come into it: Trying to be defensive will often result in more damage taken over that fight, not less, requiring more resources.

What are the options for the average sword-swinger? Shields are not effectively or realistically implemented in D&D and do not generally provide a defensive improvement commensurate with the loss of damage dealt, particularly given boss attacks and tactics. Rather than your suggested maths, building into defensive shield use rather than offensive two-weapon or two-handed use will often actually reduce damage dealt by half, but will not reduce incoming damage by as much as half.
Likewise with the dodge action: you are generally reducing your damage dealt severely - often to nothing, but you are not reducing your incoming damage by the same fraction.

So unless you can provide options to the party that allow them to change the maths to the example you are giving, the maths is almost always going to support damage.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

A bit of a definition. By "problem" I mean how many tables focus on doing as much damage as possible as choice #1, 2 and 3 when planning combat. And I understand that this isn't a problem for some people because a) they might like to play that way, or b) they have players that aren't focused on DPR so they use other options anyway.

That out of the way, let's go on to the actual problem as I define it: Players looking at DPR as the primary options when doing combat as opposed to other alternatives (like crowd control, debuffing, etc.). I've heard several folks in the past say that offense is always better than defense. Always. I disagree with that unless you recharge all resources after every battle, but that's a discussion for another day. Let's assume this is true. We also know that there have been many complaints about D&D

• lasting only a couple rounds of combat, even boss battles.
• HP bloat to make enemies last longer isn't really all that fun.

Assuming that 90% of the time, players will always choose to do more DPR than anything else, how do we fix that? How do we make the combat encounter more well-rounded with choices other than just damage? For example, if a boss battle lasts 6-7 (ha!) rounds instead of only 3-4, then choices like DoT or debuffing look a lot more attractive. But we don't want to just give more HP because that's boring. Some options include:

• having a way to mitigate or debuff the players
• using mooks to soak up PC spells and resources
• mechanics like legendary resistance (which I don't like btw)
• expanding the battlefield so terrain and movement are more of a factor
• prepared battle spaces, sort of like lair actions but more robust
• multi-stage encounter (video game boss fights are well known for this)

If you're encountering this problem, what are some of your solutions?

From my experience pretty much nothing you listed will work.

• Any debuff to the player character just works the same way as damage resistance or giving boss more hit points - makes the fight into a slog.
• In my experience PCs will literally ignore mooks fireballing them to beeline it to the boss
• Legendary Resistance is a mechanic that helps to shut down instant win button spells liek Hypnotic Pattern or Hold Person and should never be used on a save vs damage unless it comes with strong debuff like Synaptic Static, so I find it irrelevant to the discussion
• Expanding the battlefield will just make it harder for meleel builds to beeline it to the boss and prioritize ranged builds like all "Eldritch Blast Goes Brr" builds

The only thing that works is to give PCs multiple objectives and incentivise them to prioritize that, most fun boss encounters I had when I had something for every PC to do, tied to character motivations and goals. And Also set an obiective that would literally explode if boss was killed before it was resolved.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I haven’t played like this so I don’t really know, but I think if my hp was capped I’d be even more incentivized to crush opponents as quickly as possible, ideally before they even get to go. Although maybe at times it makes healing in combat an optimal choice I suspect not overall.

I agree with one of the above comments that the issue is fundamentally that no one’s effectiveness as an opponent is impeded until they hit 0 hp. This is why healing isn’t a great strategy in combat, or buffs.

That argumentation does not track. I'd even say that you can make a case that if your offense is not strong enough to reduce someone to 0hp, having a strong defense is better. If it prevents you from going down.

So it just make sense to focus one enemy at a time until they drop. Unless you have some other objective in an encounter such as save this person in 3 rounds or less or they die and you lose.

If enemy’s lost actions, damage potential, movement…. Anything some where between 1 and 100% hp then it might make sense to split damage or something else but the action economy is king so the best way to win is to eliminate enemy action potential as quickly as possible.

Ah ok. Focus vs divide. Yes, I agree. If it os possible, focussong one down is good. But if you can clear the minions faster than focussing the boss down, go for the minions first. Preferably with aoe. In this way you can take away a lot of actions.

Go first, hit hard.

Although I could see having low hit points motivate me to ensure combat is weighted as much in my favour as possible before it starts, once you roll I think it’s kill the enemy as quickly as possible.

Sometimes that just dows not work. Going first is not guaranteed anymore vs bosses, and usually it is not THE enemy but enemIES.