D&D 5E How do you handle the issue of initiative versus tactical enemy responses?

[MechaPilot]

If I, as a DM, wanted to kill the PC's, this would be a trifling issue. If I want to hand-hold them, then again, this is of no significant challenge. But if I want to challenge the players and their PC's, then all of a sudden it becomes incredibly difficult to judge appropriate tactical responses of enemies due to the nature of initiative.

What I mean by this is that, if I was being purely tactical, then smart enemies would focus-fire the primary threat from the PC's. Usually healers, spell-casters and then the rest in that order. Even with a moderately challenging encounter with about 7+ enemies (against a standard 4-5 PC party) will make mince-meat out of a single target in short order. I could use individual initiatives for every single monster, but that gets incredibly tiresome and complicated at the table, and only slightly alleviates the issue since although they wouldn't be going on group initiative, they'd still have enough turns in enough rounds to obliterate a single PC.

I've found that because of this I can't really be very smart or tactical with my enemies. Even just one round of focus-fire will usually drop a PC at most levels. And because of this, there's developed a problem of the players perceiving myself and the NPC's as never being very tactical or smart. This in turn has led them to being very brash and uncaring of the threat since they can usually easily beat the encounters.

What middle-ground is there to be had here using a standard initiative paradigm? Either it's too complicated or convoluted to have a more "realistic" initiative order, or I can't use intelligent tactics because it will result in a TPK. How do you handle this issue or is it even an issue you've realised or found to be true at all?

I don't pull my punches. If the party dies, then it dies. Well, not really. For me, PC death is incredibly boring because it just grinds the game to a halt (most players don't think of making back-up characters, much less bringing them to the game). So, death is not always death in my games.

A party that is TPK'd may wake up later, stripped of their gear, and in chains. They may be geased or otherwise compelled to go on a quest for their captors. Or, they may be ransomed back to their patron, who will be none to pleased about having to pay to get them back.

 

[LordEntrails]

Give up on your rule that all NPC's act on the same initiative. If you use a system or process to help you manage (mini's with numbers on them, a VTT, a initiative program, etc) then it's not a big deal to have the monsters each have their own initiative.

Then, use the advice above. Adjust, adapt, overcome.

 

[Mad_Jack]

In a large encounter, divide the monsters up into smaller groups that all act on the same initiative - all the archers go on one count, all the spearmen on another, etc...
When designing the encounter, plan out ahead of time who'll be in which groups. Or if that's not possible, you can always split them up into groups during the fight based on their location in the battle or their particular task they're trying to accomplish.
Unless you're fielding a couple dozen enemies against the party, it shouldn't be hard to keep track of four or five small groups...

Also, as mentioned above, effective battle tactics need to be taught through training or learned by experience. Even if a monster is clever enough to decide to ambush an opponent, it doesn't necessarily follow that they'll know how to (or be able to) do so in the most effective fashion.
And there's a reason that officers in all modern armies are dressed and equipped exactly like the rest of the men when in combat... Unless the party is facing intelligent battle-hardened opponents, in the heat of combat it's not always going to be possible for those opponents to figure out (particularly in a useful amount of time) which character in the party is the healer or the spellcaster, or to know to target them specifically (nevermind focus-fire on them as a group).
For example, how does one distinguish between a cleric and a paladin just by looking at them - they're both wearing platemail and a holy symbol and either could be carrying a sword or a mace or wearing a robe over their armor. Does a specific enemy know enough to even identify the holy symbol as such? If not, either one of them could be just another heavily-armored melee combatant until such time as they start chucking spells or smiting someone.
From the opposite perspective, how does one assign target priority when the target that by all visual appearances is merely another melee combatant turns out to be an eldritch knight or arcane trickster?
By the time these things are sorted out by clear evidence provided by the party's actions, chances are that at least some of the opposing force's ability to effectively utilize that knowledge has been neutralized/killed. And if the party has any tactical ability of their own, chances are good that they'll have taken steps to neutralize the enemy's ability to capitalize on that knowledge - if the bad guys are focus-firing on the squishies, they're not targeting the melee guys who will be taking that opportunity to get up in their faces.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

If I, as a DM, wanted to kill the PC's, this would be a trifling issue. If I want to hand-hold them, then again, this is of no significant challenge. But if I want to challenge the players and their PC's, then all of a sudden it becomes incredibly difficult to judge appropriate tactical responses of enemies due to the nature of initiative.

What I mean by this is that, if I was being purely tactical, then smart enemies would focus-fire the primary threat from the PC's. Usually healers, spell-casters and then the rest in that order. Even with a moderately challenging encounter with about 7+ enemies (against a standard 4-5 PC party) will make mince-meat out of a single target in short order. I could use individual initiatives for every single monster, but that gets incredibly tiresome and complicated at the table, and only slightly alleviates the issue since although they wouldn't be going on group initiative, they'd still have enough turns in enough rounds to obliterate a single PC.

I've found that because of this I can't really be very smart or tactical with my enemies. Even just one round of focus-fire will usually drop a PC at most levels. And because of this, there's developed a problem of the players perceiving myself and the NPC's as never being very tactical or smart. This in turn has led them to being very brash and uncaring of the threat since they can usually easily beat the encounters.

What middle-ground is there to be had here using a standard initiative paradigm? Either it's too complicated or convoluted to have a more "realistic" initiative order, or I can't use intelligent tactics because it will result in a TPK. How do you handle this issue or is it even an issue you've realised or found to be true at all?

I don't use initiative.
Everybody declares their actions, and are rolling their dice, and tell me what they are doing. Likewise, I'm telling them what the monsters are doing. It's chaotic, fast, and people are often determining tactics based on what others are saying. If there's a point that we need to determine what happened first, we have an opposed Initiative check. And if people can't figure out what's going on, they might lose their turn that round.

Also, identifying a "dangerous threat" from the perspectives of the monsters is dependent only upon appearances and actions. Unless the PCs are dressed in stereotypical fashion, the wizard in a pointy hat, etc., it's not that easy to determine initially. "Healers" would be way down my list as threats, too. Leaders on the other hand, are high. Most creature's morale drops considerably when their leader is incapacitated.

 

[Saeviomagy]

1. Make interesting terrain
2. Use focus fire
3. Watch anyone who can be attacked by every enemy on the field die unless they are ludicrously well protected

I don't see a problem with that. Your problem isn't that focus fire is effective, or that initiative makes it a problem: it's that open empty rooms make for killing fields, and charging across one is a terrible plan.

 

[77IM]

I don't use initiative.
Everybody declares their actions, and are rolling their dice, and tell me what they are doing. Likewise, I'm telling them what the monsters are doing. It's chaotic, fast, and people are often determining tactics based on what others are saying. If there's a point that we need to determine what happened first, we have an opposed Initiative check. And if people can't figure out what's going on, they might lose their turn that round.

Can you elaborate? This is fascinating to me, and I would love to hear more about your experiences with this method of play (maybe on its own thread).

I've been dying to try something like this, but it's a tough sell to the players, especially in a larger group (sometimes 7 PCs).

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think the initiative thing is a red herring. Like you say, individual initiative can still produce focus-fire and good tactics, and group initiative can still produce chaos and ineffectiveness. So don't worry about initiative; worry only about tactics.

It's not really a red herring. Using a non-standard (WEGO) initiative system, my PCs respond to focus fire by Dodging or ducking behind cover when I say "they're all shooting at Jim", which keeps Jim alive and "wastes" enemy actions. But that doesn't work under standard PHB initiative because standard initiative doesn't give Jim a chance to respond after the enemies start firing at him.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Okay, first of all, focus fire is usually not such a good idea because then you just drop one character dead and that won't be very fun for that character's player.

But then again, players have a few ways to prevent that: They can melee engage the enemy in melee, block pathways and make their squishy PCs end their turn around the corner, etc.

So... if the rogue stands in the middle of the room, completely unprotected, surrounded by smart enemies. Yeah, I'd totally focus him until he drops unconscious, but this usually doesn't happen because I'm not the only one playing smart.
Once the rogue is unconscious I won't attack him anymore, conscious enemies are a bigger threat so it makes more sense focusing on them even for smart enemies.

My players do feel challenged because:
- I always push them to their limits until they can take the next long rest
- I occasionally have someone drop unconscious
- Various battles are close calls
- Players that play longer with me know that I'll definitely go for TPK if they do a mistake so they are always careful

The biggest factor to make damage balanced is the decision between:
Do I risk an opportunity attack to focus fire on someone on the back line or try to get rid of the one next to me first? Both actions are completely reasonable for smart enemies, so you can go either way to keep damage balanced and still feel the enemy isn't acting dumb.

 

[Harzel]

It's not really a red herring. Using a non-standard (WEGO) initiative system, my PCs respond to focus fire by Dodging or ducking behind cover when I say "they're all shooting at Jim", which keeps Jim alive and "wastes" enemy actions. But that doesn't work under standard PHB initiative because standard initiative doesn't give Jim a chance to respond after the enemies start firing at him.

Interesting. Does this depend on Jim winning an initiative contest or do the PCs get to know what their opponents will do before they do it? And (in either case) do intelligent members of Team Monster respond similarly to PC focus fire?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Interesting. Does this depend on Jim winning an initiative contest or do the PCs get to know what their opponents will do before they do it? And (in either case) do intelligent members of Team Monster respond similarly to PC focus fire?

Actions get declared in order from least to most intelligent, and I use a lot of non-intelligent enemies, so it's fairly common for all the monsters to have to declare all their actions before the players do. The order of action resolution is resolved by initiative contests when necessary, although about half of the combats that happen don't require any initiative rolls at all.

And yes, intelligent monsters can declare after at least some of the PCs (although PCs with Int 16+ usually beat all the monsters), and pull similar tricks on the PCs, and the players hate it when I say, "The githzerai is smarter than you--you have to declare first." Which might be one reason why Int is a popular stat to boost. I saw a Shadow Monk/Druid boost his Int from 9 to 12 by the time he was level 14, despite Int having no other mechanical benefit for either class.

There's a whole thread on this here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?513971-Simultaneous-initiative