D&D General Fixing the Offense Tunnel Vision problem

[billd91]

Many of the "problems" I've described here are more 5e problems than AD&D ones, largely due to how AD&D's rules are. But even I have to admit, many of these problems can be resolved by borrowing from 4e. Specifically having abilities or maneuvers that help allies, buff defense, or debuff enemies. As mentioned earlier, 5e is built around hit points and as much DPR to end the encounter as early as possible. I understand why. I enjoy 5e as a game. But this nagging thing in my OP? I think borrowing a bit more from 4e would have been a good thing. IMO anyway.

4e is substantially built on hit points as well, even if it does have some additional features to focus on defense - either individually or within the group. But one thing to keep in mind is that if you increase defenses (for PCs or monsters), suddenly you're making less progress against hit points and the final resolution of the encounter. I found 4e to be a dull slog and it turned out to be substantially the fault of monster hit points (there they are again) being wrong. And the relative lack of encounter ending spells left you doing what? Focusing on hit points.

The problem from what I’ve witnessed in 5e is that defense is only going to delay a hit, and eventually you have to pivot to offense anyways. If you have a party, you can get away with everyone being offense focused because the rules support the idea of a “the best defense is a good offense.” The opposite just isn’t true unless the DM sets up a very particular set of circumstances such as lasting against an unbeatable horde until the cavalry arrives in 4 turns. You can up the damage output of monsters to the point that it forces someone in the party to take up controlling the battlefield, healing or defense as their purpose, but you will still need someone to dish out the damage.

I think this helps illustrate how it keeps coming down to hit points. Defense may help you withstand an enemy until someone else defeats them or, what, they get tired and go home?
How do you defeat an enemy? Take out all their hit points or at least enough of them enough that they give up the fight (morale breaks and they run in order to survive). The alternative? Lean on encounter ending spells and other effects that bypass hit points.

 

[GrimCo]

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.

Yes, yo can. But, rapier and shield with defensive duelist is dex build. So best you can do is what, ac 19 (dex 5, armor 2, shield 2) with defensive duelist bringing it to 21-25 and burning reaction (so no AoO that turn). Sure, it's good defense and you won't get hit as much. On the other hand, if you wanna go that route, full plate, defense fs, and you have AC 19 plus, you can also use 2h weapon to dish out punishment. Or just go sword and board, so you have nice base AC 21.

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.

Sentinel feat is very rare ability for martial to be real sticky. And it works on 1 target per round (since you have 1 reaction). Also, by raw, feats are optional in 2014 version, so if you play without feats, you lose even that. IMHO, sentinel should have been basic fighter ability.

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.

It's mostly useless. Grappled condition is a joke. Grappled creature can - cast spells, use abilities, use 2h weapons, use reach weapons. Only thing it can't do is move. Also, big damage martial creatures have usually good str athletics, so if you wanna grapple, you need to invest in those to negate their bonuses and it's more or less pure contested roll. Even if you manage to grapple, cool, grappled creature can still attack you. If you are hard to hit and strong, ditch shield and defense, take 2h weapon, GWM (if you play with feats) and do go for that sweet +10 damage. Push is situational, as i said, makes sense if you can push someone over the ledge, same with shove. But all those have same problem as grapple, they work great on low str and low dex opponents. High str and high dex opponents can easily negate those (and buggers also usually have solid to hit bonus on top of that).

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.

In our games, we go by "overkill is underrated" and go full nova. Our defense is wizard or bard with hypnotic pattern or sleep.

 

[HatWearingFool]

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.

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.

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.

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.

I agree this is just one campagin and anecdotal at best. The problem with grapple is you only tie up one enemy if you succeed at the enemy is probably pretty good at resisting a grapple

Edit: also I was wondering if I was getting a bit screwed on my save or suck spells but I don’t think I was. I think my save dc was 8+2+3=13 so ~50/50 for most things?

But trying for damage I’m +5 to hit and I can get advantage to hit so odds definitely feel better for damage.

Edit 2: and a to hit roll means potentials for crits which are both fun and mean more damage over time.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

While that is no doubt true some of the time, it doesn't have to be true all the time. A boss will of course always be individually be doing more damage, but as a total the mooks could be doing more damage then the boss. Additionally if the boss is doing AoE damage, and the mooks are focus firing even if they are doing less total damage, they might be doing more damage to a single enemy which makes them a bigger threat.

And then of course you can have the mooks buffing the boss, think of the Orin the Red fight in BG3, the mooks in that fight make Orin much more powerful so tactically you are better off dealing with them first.


If you make the mooks a nuisance because they are just mooks, then of course just blasting the boss is the most effective tactic. So if you don't like/want that, don't self inflict that problem, make your mooks be more then just a nuisance.

Then it really isn't a boss battle anymore, it's just a group encounter where the boss is not the main threat, just one of many. Your solution to disappointing boss battles is to remove the boss.

 

[Sorinth]

Then it really isn't a boss battle anymore, it's just a group encounter where the boss is not the main threat, just one of many. Your solution to disappointing boss battles is to remove the boss.

So you don't think the Orin the Red fight in BG3 is a boss battle? That seems to me like an absurd take.

 

[jmartkdr2]

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.

Exactly: it's not really tunnel vision so much as figuring out that the best strategy in 5e DnD is to focus on offense.

If you play a different game or use substantial houserules you might be able to change that, but you win more to-the-death fights by focusing on damage.

 

[Kurotowa]

Exactly: it's not really tunnel vision so much as figuring out that the best strategy in 5e DnD is to focus on offense.

If action economy is king, then unless you're trading a low value action for a high value one via a powerful stun or the like, you want to focus on damage so you can thin the enemy ranks and reduce their number of actions. If wound penalties exist, then it's all about the death spiral where taking hits makes you less effective in combat which makes you take more hits, and getting in the first big hit is crucial. Again and again, the mechanical incentives of the game engine are for aggressive offense.

When is defense better than offense? In sports or fighting games, you might want to play defensive if you have the lead and you're trying to run out the clock. But that assumes a hard time limit on the contest, and it's disputed if playing not to lose is actually better than playing to win. With MMORPG raid bosses, there might be different phases, some of which are especially dangerous and require a focus on survival and some of which intentionally give the players a window to focus on doing as much damage as possible. But that's a very different fight dynamic, and requires fights with a constant threat of a TPK whose only penalty is 30 seconds to reset and try again.

From a game theory standpoint, playing defensively doesn't win most fights. It can let you run out the clock, if that's to your advantage, or it can let you win via resource attrition, if that's in your favor. Passive defenses are fine and dandy, because they give you more sustain. But usually, the way to win is to try and take your opponent out of the fight as quickly as possible, limiting their opportunities to inflict damage or get a lucky break. And it's very hard to design a game system that break from that model.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

So you don't think the Orin the Red fight in BG3 is a boss battle? That seems to me like an absurd take.

I never got that far, but from what you and others described it is a fight where mooks are niuisance that just heal the boss AND can be easily trivialized with I Win Button spells and focusing fire on the boss.

 

[GrimCo]

If action economy is king, then unless you're trading a low value action for a high value one via a powerful stun or the like, you want to focus on damage so you can thin the enemy ranks and reduce their number of actions. If wound penalties exist, then it's all about the death spiral where taking hits makes you less effective in combat which makes you take more hits, and getting in the first big hit is crucial. Again and again, the mechanical incentives of the game engine are for aggressive offense.

Action economy is king in D&D. That's why high level fights against single boss monsters sucks. 4-5 PCs with multiple attacks have way more actions and can do much more per turn than boss. On the flip side, if you use 3:1 or 4:1 ratio of lower leveled monsters vs PCs, they won't have good time. Like you said, damage is best unless you can use save or suck spell with high probability chance of sticking.

When is defense better than offense? In sports or fighting games, you might want to play defensive if you have the lead and you're trying to run out the clock. But that assumes a hard time limit on the contest, and it's disputed if playing not to lose is actually better than playing to win. With MMORPG raid bosses, there might be different phases, some of which are especially dangerous and require a focus on survival and some of which intentionally give the players a window to focus on doing as much damage as possible. But that's a very different fight dynamic, and requires fights with a constant threat of a TPK whose only penalty is 30 seconds to reset and try again.

Defense can work in a game with time limit and where draw is also positive outcome. First thing that comes to mind is Inter Milan in seasons 2004/5. They had 18 draws,18 wins, 2 losses. That's Serie A record for draws and they finished 3rd. Not bad. Defense was Italy's main tactics in 80s and 90s, specially in tournaments where it's more important not to lose, than to win, specially in early phases. In football, there were and still are two main schools of tought. One is defend first, then try to score if you can. Other one is "goal more" philosophy, where it doesn't matter if opponent scores, so long as you score more. Both have their merits, but second one is way more enjoyable to watch.

From a game theory standpoint, playing defensively doesn't win most fights. It can let you run out the clock, if that's to your advantage, or it can let you win via resource attrition, if that's in your favor. Passive defenses are fine and dandy, because they give you more sustain. But usually, the way to win is to try and take your opponent out of the fight as quickly as possible, limiting their opportunities to inflict damage or get a lucky break. And it's very hard to design a game system that break from that model.

Unlike sports game, d&d fights usually don't have clock. Also, most of the times, there is no resource attrition since basic attacks are limitless. What's even worse is when 2 defensive specialists clash. Then you get slogfest, where round after round nothing happens (both side mostly miss, or they use abilities to negate hits/damage). That's how you get 1-2h fights. Low damage defense specialist vs high damage offense specialist is interesting. One chips away slowly, other misses a lot, but when it connects, it hurts bad. Then it's just matter of lasting long enough to land those 2-3 strong attacks needed to take down enemy.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Yes, yo can. But, rapier and shield with defensive duelist is dex build. So best you can do is what, ac 19 (dex 5, armor 2, shield 2) with defensive duelist bringing it to 21-25 and burning reaction (so no AoO that turn). Sure, it's good defense and you won't get hit as much. On the other hand, if you wanna go that route, full plate, defense fs, and you have AC 19 plus, you can also use 2h weapon to dish out punishment. Or just go sword and board, so you have nice base AC 21.

You can use a rapier with strength.

Sentinel feat is very rare ability for martial to be real sticky. And it works on 1 target per round (since you have 1 reaction). Also, by raw, feats are optional in 2014 version, so if you play without feats, you lose even that. IMHO, sentinel should have been basic fighter ability.

In 2024 they are not.

It's mostly useless. Grappled condition is a joke. Grappled creature can - cast spells, use abilities, use 2h weapons, use reach weapons. Only thing it can't do is move. Also, big damage martial creatures have usually good str athletics, so if you wanna grapple, you need to invest in those to negate their bonuses and it's more or less pure contested roll. Even if you manage to grapple, cool, grappled creature can still attack you. If you are hard to hit and strong, ditch shield and defense, take 2h weapon, GWM (if you play with feats) and do go for that sweet +10 damage. Push is situational, as i said, makes sense if you can push someone over the ledge, same with shove. But all those have same problem as grapple, they work great on low str and low dex opponents. High str and high dex opponents can easily negate those (and buggers also usually have solid to hit bonus on top of that).

Grapple is not a joke.
Why are we speaking about 2014 anyway?

In our games, we go by "overkill is underrated" and go full nova. Our defense is wizard or bard with hypnotic pattern or sleep.

Play as you like. Overkill is not bad. Damage dealong is not bad.
But a surprising amount of creatures are immune to charm and sleep btw.