D&D General Fixing the Offense Tunnel Vision problem

[Kurotowa]

But this is in most games just not possible. 5E has no stickiness.

There's some stickiness, it's just not in the PHB beyond the Sentinel feat and Protection Fighting Style. But if we look at post-PHB material, especially what's in the UA pipeline, we've got several offerings of the "Targets you hit have Disadvantage when attacking anyone but you until your next turn" feature. It shows up on the Armorer Artificer, Spiritual Guardian Barbarian, and Cavalier Fighter. And both the Guardian Barbarian and Cavalier Fighter get additional features of the "protect your teammates" variety.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But you cant just "spend ressources on defense" suddenly, if the game does not give you the options.

I have seen:

• Dodge action
• Disengage action
• Using actions to use potions (2014 rules)
• Using actions to cast healing spells
• PC's investing in heavier armor

Which I'm pretty happy with. I don't necessarily need dedicated "defensive powers" a la 4e's utility powers. There's room for a more thoughtful, option-rich defense, probably, but I don't want the game to bog down with decision points a la Daggerheart.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

But you cant just "spend ressources on defense" suddenly, if the game does not give you the options.

In 5E your builds are pretty static, you cant suddenly go defensive in a fight, if you are built for offense. Some martials literally cant do anything besides basic attacks.


Sure you can make the build more defensive, but this mostly means passive stats. Its not like characters now do anything besides trying to optimize DPR, they just have higher defense. They still dont do anything else in combat besides bursting down.






But this is in most games just not possible. 5E has no stickiness. And burst is more effective if everything bursts.

You can grab and push on opportunity attacks, take sentinel as a feat. You can put yourself before a squishier target.
Protection fighting style also works. Blademaster has some options.
There are barbarian subclasses that are sticky.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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?

The problem you have encountered is, simply put, bad incentive design. Defending simply delays the inevitable--which means it gives the enemy two turns while you only take one. Defending has to advance your interests in some way, or it will never be a preferable pick outside of bespoke need (e.g. "if I don't reduce my incoming damage this turn, I'll almost surely die").

There needs to be proactive value in the other decisions. Without that, you have...well, I already said it. Defense and the weaker forms of crowd control do not solve problems, they simply delay or slow down the final result. Sufficiently strong crowd control will out-compete damage, but only because it's functionally ending the conflict sooner, not later.

You can address this by changing the goals (e.g. "winning" the fight isn't always the most important thing), by giving resources which are only generated by the passage of time (e.g. 13th Age's Escalation Die, Eberron/4e's Action Points), by providing additional rewards for choosing these oft-ignored options (e.g. "if you take the Full Defense action, you get a number of Opportunity Attacks equal to the ability modifier you're using to make those attacks"), or by altering the calculation so that you dampen the value of pumping out as much damage as fast as possible (e.g. a damage cap, where a creature cannot take more than N damage from any single source, or a threat which can only be defeated after certain objectives have been met).

 

[Distracted DM]

Sounds like part of the problem is that the players will win their fights no matter how good/bad their tactics are. If taking a dumb approach to a fight still leads to a win with no long term consequences, then is it really a surprise that players will stick to the "dumb" approach?

True- but to be fair, I don't know that they said that those parties that ignored the fireball-throwing mooks won their fights- so you think that if they're getting whooped, or if they lose, they'll learn and use better tactics in the future.. this might be the case, but it might not- because they might not be playing to get better at tactics and strategy, they might be playing to be cool heroes, roll dice, and at the end of the day come out scratched up but victorious.

But that's now encroaching on what may be a misalignment of expectations: the DM may want tactically challenging and rewarding fights; the players may want to be able to win without too much thought (possibly subconsciously). And that's just something the table should discuss and be on the same page.

 

[Sorinth]

True- but to be fair, I don't know that they said that those parties that ignored the fireball-throwing mooks won their fights- so you think that if they're getting whooped, or if they lose, they'll learn and use better tactics in the future.. this might be the case, but it might not- because they might not be playing to get better at tactics and strategy, they might be playing to be cool heroes, roll dice, and at the end of the day come out scratched up but victorious.

But that's now encroaching on what may be a misalignment of expectations: the DM may want tactically challenging and rewarding fights; the players may want to be able to win without too much thought (possibly subconsciously). And that's just something the table should discuss and be on the same page.

Agreed, if everybody is on board with a tactical game, and the players can focus on DPR and constantly win, then that's a different problem to the players wanting something straightforward where they can look/feel cool with big numbers.

 

[Kurotowa]

Agreed, if everybody is on board with a tactical game, and the players can focus on DPR and constantly win, then that's a different problem to the players wanting something straightforward where they can look/feel cool with big numbers.

Some people do play with that no holds barred tactical focus. But the thing is, if you want brutally hard tactical or action combat where complete failure is always one wrong move away, I honestly believe that video games do it better. It just plays to the strengths of that medium more. Quick respawns or reloads on failure, procedurally generated dungeons, hordes of simultaneously acting enemies, lots of very fine tuned modifiers all calculated instantly, video games offer all of it.

That's why D&D has been trending towards more story and character focus, IMO. Those are what TTRPGs do excellently and video games struggle with, because those are what having a live person as a DM can handle better. That and outside the box thinking in combat, rather than just mashing your "do damage" button. But not everyone is well acclimated to that.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Sounds like part of the problem is that the players will win their fights no matter how good/bad their tactics are. If taking a dumb approach to a fight still leads to a win with no long term consequences, then is it really a surprise that players will stick to the "dumb" approach?

The thing is, that no matter what mooks do, the boss is either going to do more damage, having more negative impact, or the mooks will likely run away or disperse or disintegrate with boss' fall, so it is obiectively superior strategy to take out the boss first.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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?

Boss fight mechanics. Pointy Hat on youtube did a video on it a while back that is quite good, but basically things like the boss does a thing at init 20 that changes the battlefield for a couple rounds and makes some damage types less favorable etc.

Creating zones that have to be dealt with encourags movement and movement encourages locking down movement, which means control effects.