D&D General Fixing the Offense Tunnel Vision problem

[Zardnaar]

Each one provides 1 Unstoppable charge every round.

Ah gotcha. We just usually chew through unstoppable 12 and parlyze her.

 

[Sorinth]

Ah gotcha. We just usually chew through unstoppable 12 and parlyze her.

It's BG3 so yeah you can just power through, magic missile especially is powerful for this. But if everyone has focused on DPR and you can't chew through all the charges easily it can be either very hard or even impossible task to just go for the boss. It's the principle, minions who are relative weak but make the boss much tougher will make it tactically smarter to take out the minions first.

For example, if a minion has 20 HP and has cast Stoneskin on the boss who has 100 HP and the party mostly is doing BPS. You will take more of the bosses effective HP by killing that minion first, deal 20 damage to the minion and effectively remove 100 HP from the boss.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Totally. When I did B&B 2e a few months back, I gave BBEG's special powers and traits that also helps address the issue. Particulary the traits that impact its minions and alllies.

View attachment 426845

Another trait/limited ability idea:
A Sacrifice I am willing to make
When the BBEG is attacked, as a reaction, the attack is instead directed against a minion adjacent to the BBEG or the attacker.
Optional (Recharge 5-6): Treat any hits as critical hits, but until the end of the attacker's turn, all of the attacker's attacks on the BBEG are directed against that minion, even if the minion is defeated by one of these attacks.

Inspire Sacrifice
When the BBEG is targeted by an area effect, one adjacent minion can spend their reaction to reduce the damage to the BBEG by half. In turn, the minion takes half that damage, even if they were target of the attack already. If the area effect has additional effects other than damage, and the minion was not originally target of the effect, any additional effects are also applied to the minion instead of the BBEG.

 

[Sorinth]

Another trait/limited ability idea:
A Sacrifice I am willing to make
When the BBEG is attacked, as a reaction, the attack is instead directed against a minion adjacent to the BBEG or the attacker.
Optional (Recharge 5-6): Treat any hits as critical hits, but until the end of the attacker's turn, all of the attacker's attacks on the BBEG are directed against that minion, even if the minion is defeated by one of these attacks.

Inspire Sacrifice
When the BBEG is targeted by an area effect, one adjacent minion can spend their reaction to reduce the damage to the BBEG by half. In turn, the minion takes half that damage, even if they were target of the attack already. If the area effect has additional effects other than damage, and the minion was not originally target of the effect, any additional effects are also applied to the minion instead of the BBEG.

Krenko from the Ravinica book had a redirect attacks to a minion ability, though I think his was flavoured as grabbing a minions and shoving them into harms way to save himself.

A few guards with the Protection or Interception fighting styles could similarly help protect the boss.

 

[Zardnaar]

Krenko from the Ravinica book had a redirect attacks to a minion ability, though I think his was flavoured as grabbing a minions and shoving them into harms way to save himself.

A few guards with the Protection or Interception fighting styles could similarly help protect the boss.

Some low level critter has a ignore damage as a reaction ability on Sunday. I forget what one it was. Negated a smiting crit with it.

 

[GrimCo]

People focus on offense in d&d because focusing on defense is usually just prolonging the fight and stalling. For martials, there are no real benefits in going defensive. Sure, you can buff AC (which is passive) but sooner or later, that nat 20 is gonna hit you. And that's autocrit which usually hurts. And in most combats, you still need to switch to offense at some point to actually win the fight. There are no really good active defensive mechanics that give you edge in combat. For instance, CoS bard and defensive flourish, but in reverse, you roll bardic dice, this round you get bonus to ac, next round bonus to damage. Only it's not tied to finite resource but regular "at will" mechanic for martial characters.

Unfortunatley, best course of action, for martials, is straight up just attack for as much damage as you can. Grapple is useless, disarming works sometimes but uses superiority dice and effect isn't that great, pushing is terrain dependent (cool option if you can push someone over the ledge).

I'll contrast D&D with nWoD (WW one). In WoD, health is low, wounds heal slow (or not at all sometimes), you get penalties when wounded. In that game, if it comes to combat, alpha strike is also best option. Hit first, hit hard, focus fire and try to end opponent before it gets his turn. Why? Because- health is low, wounds heal slow. Best defense is overwhelming offence. Can't hurt you if it's dead.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

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").

Which is just not universally true.

There are always situations where one person sacrificing damage for defense or control is a net positive for the action economy.

Granting disadvantage to an enemy is quite often more reliable than giving advantage.
If they attack you with +7 against AC 19, their chance to hit goes from 40% down to 16%. Which more than doubles your effective HP and reduces crits from 1 in 20 to 1 in 400.

So even if your statement was true, that an enemy gets two turns for one turn of yours, you still receive less damage than you would in a single normal enemy turn.

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).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

People focus on offense in d&d because focusing on defense is usually just prolonging the fight and stalling. For martials, there are no real benefits in going defensive. Sure, you can buff AC (which is passive) but sooner or later, that nat 20 is gonna hit you. And that's autocrit which usually hurts. And in most combats, you still need to switch to offense at some point to actually win the fight. There are no really good active defensive mechanics that give you edge in combat. For instance, CoS bard and defensive flourish, but in reverse, you roll bardic dice, this round you get bonus to ac, next round bonus to damage. Only it's not tied to finite resource but regular "at will" mechanic for martial characters.

You can spend a feat on defensive duellist and use a rapier (which is active) Or use a shield which is a bit more passive. Or you can use rapier and shield so you are really hard to be hit.

You can spend another feat on sentinel. But if you are a strength based guy, you can just use unarmed strikes and grab or push.

Unfortunatley, best course of action, for martials, is straight up just attack for as much damage as you can. Grapple is useless, disarming works sometimes but uses superiority dice and effect isn't that great, pushing is terrain dependent (cool option if you can push someone over the ledge).

You can use push to topple someone (as opportunjty). Up tonlarge creatures can be grabbed. Which is not useless. If you are hard to hit and strong, you can keep the enemy away from your damage dealers.
You also have the option of using a sapping weapon which is quite annoying for the enemy. Especially those who don't have multi attack.

I'll contrast D&D with nWoD (WW one). In WoD, health is low, wounds heal slow (or not at all sometimes), you get penalties when wounded. In that game, if it comes to combat, alpha strike is also best option. Hit first, hit hard, focus fire and try to end opponent before it gets his turn. Why? Because- health is low, wounds heal slow. Best defense is overwhelming offence. Can't hurt you if it's dead.

Yes. That is correct. In games where you find a death spiral, just do enough damage. D&D only has alive or dead. So if your damage is not enough to make the enemy die this turn, just use a defensive action an win a round for your damage dealers which probably do more harm to the enemy with their next actions than you could deal yourself.

In our game we have a follower that has protection fighting style. And 18 AC. Damage is only 1d8+3 or so. Against trolls the best course of action was just dodging and protecting. And only dealing damage on opportunity attacks of the enemy tried to find a better target not next to him.

 

[HatWearingFool]

Another issue in D&D is a lack of "stickiness" for melee classes means it's usually pretty easy for enemies to just bypass and go for the soft targets, especially at lower levels. Let not forget it's just as import for the enemies to eliminate action takers as quickly as possible. Any moderately intelligent enemy is also going to focus fire on the softest targets and/or damage dealers.

It's great to say you can tie up an opponent but how many levels do you need before you can reliably do that? For monsters just like players it's usually easier to just absorb an attack and move on.

I'm actually running into this issue in a game I'm currently playing in. We only have 3 front line people and it most of time it's just better for opponents to bypass them as quickly as possible and smash the sorcerers. We are only level 4, so the front-line people have limited options for pinning down an opponent. Often the opponent(s) are able to break free and hammer down the sorcerers. So for us it's best to just kill opponents as quickly as possible, since if we fail at a non-attack, it's just a free round for the enemies to attack the soft targets.

My character is a cleric, so I split the difference (but the party considers me a front liner), but I haven't landed one command or blindness\deafness yet in 4l levels of play. I usually try once a combat because it would often be coup if one worked. But last session after a failed blindness attempt the other players have asked me to stop trying those types of spells and to just focus on damage . Which I get at least with attack even if you fail at least, you feel like you were in control rather than just, nope.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Another issue in D&D is a lack of "stickiness" for melee classes means it's usually pretty easy for enemies to just bypass and go for the soft targets, especially at lower levels. Let not forget it's just as import for the enemies to eliminate action takers as quickly as possible. Any moderately intelligent enemy is also going to focus fire on the softest targets and/or damage dealers.

It's great to say you can tie up an opponent but how many levels do you need before you can reliably do that? For monsters just like players it's usually easier to just absorb an attack and move on.

Level 1. Strength based character or monk.
A monk is especially good at that, sonce they can dodge as an action and then use unarmed strike to initate a grapple.
But a heavy armor user is not bad either. A fighter can easily have 16 AC and a long sword in one hand and nithing in the other. And if they have interception or a defense fighting style, they can do great work. If the have unarmed fighting style, they can even go shield + no hand. But long sword + defense fighting style is comparable. Maybe even better because of sap.

I'm actually running into this issue in a game I'm currently playing in. We only have 3 front line people and it most of time it's just better for opponents to bypass them as quickly as possible and smash the sorcerers. We are only level 4, so the front-line people have limited options for pinning down an opponent. Often the opponent(s) are able to break free and hammer down the sorcerers. So for us it's best to just kill opponents as quickly as possible, since if we fail at a non-attack, it's just a free round for the enemies to attack the soft targets.

That is some anecdotical evidence. But yeah, sometimes good tactics are cursed. We have a sorcerer that always misses with true strike.
And our frighter that is build for grapple was just unlucky more often than not.

I think one point is that the grapple feat (going by the wording) was designed with the playtest grapple rules in mind:
You hit and then chose the option.

You hit, you use both options: auto hit and auto grapple. The switch to saving throw came afterwards and to be honest, the literal reading of the grappler feat makes no sense:

If you hit you use both damage and grab option, but the official rules have you chose before you hit.

My character is a cleric, so I split the difference (but the party considers me a front liner), but I haven't landed one command or blindness\deafness yet in 4l levels of play. I usually try once a combat because it would often be coup if one worked. But last session after a failed blindness attempt the other players have asked me to stop trying those types of spells and to just focus on damage .

Yeh that happens. Damage spells are underrated by optimizers. I say a good old fireball always does half damage. Against 3 targets that is great. A level 3 command might just completely miss at a crucial moment. And 12 damage on a failed save are still about as much as an average fighter attack.

Which I get at least with attack even if you fail at least, you feel like you were in control rather than just, nope.

Exactly.

I think the trick is being a bit flexible. Against a full hp tough target, trying to command or disable is a good idea, because you have several tries to make it stick. Against a half dead squishier target, just deal damage and hope the single target damage dealers clean up the rest.