How to foil single-target focus?

[MortalPlague]

My group works pretty well tactically. They like to, when possible, attack a single bad guy till he's dead, then move on to the next. This is all well and good, since it means they are usually quite successful in combat. I, however, would like to throw a curveball.

Is there any mechanical way to make it more effective to target multiple monsters? Terrain is the obvious choice, and one I've used from time to time, but are there other tricks? What's worked for you? I don't want to make every combat a struggle, but I do want to challenge my group to adapt their tactics once in a while.

 

[Lauberfen]

I think the central challenge as a party is to focus damage, and the challenge as a DM is to make this tricky.

Several options-
1- Powerful artillery- these need to be dangerous enough that ignoring them costs the party. It helps if their attacks have effects, as this makes them a bigger threat.
2- Skirmishers/Lurkers- these should try to get to the soft underbelly of the party.
3- Soldiers- marking makes things interesting. True fighter marking (using a template normally) should be rare, but it is a real challenge.
4- Controllers- some of these, such as the goblin hexer, as so powerful that the party really has to take them down before the others. This is a big challenge.

 

[webrunner]

My group works pretty well tactically. They like to, when possible, attack a single bad guy till he's dead, then move on to the next. This is all well and good, since it means they are usually quite successful in combat. I, however, would like to throw a curveball.

Is there any mechanical way to make it more effective to target multiple monsters? Terrain is the obvious choice, and one I've used from time to time, but are there other tricks? What's worked for you? I don't want to make every combat a struggle, but I do want to challenge my group to adapt their tactics once in a while.

1. Use artillery.. when not engaged they do a lot of damage, and make themselves very big nuisances
2. Use monsters with big shifts, so they can 'switch places' a lot, making them more difficult targets
3. Swarms take half damage from regular attacks and extra damage from area attacks, so they're not good to focus-fire on.
4. Minions
5. Find some monsters which have some sort of reaction ability to being hit which stacks temporarily.. I dont know if any such exist though, but if you can find one it'd be perfect.
6. Use monsters with marks.. essentially acting as a defender for the bad guys.

edit: Another thought: If you have the attack in 'waves'- two groups of smaller enemies, and name the second group a bigger threat, then they might focus on the second group to kill them quickly, leaving the half-dead first group.

 

[Flipguarder]

Artillery + controllers + difficult terrain + traps = confused party that will most likely split their efforts.


Ive also found that skirmishers grab attention from the pcs a lot.something about all of that quick travel and flyby attacks just seem "unsettling" to a party i suppose.

My best advice is just to have artillery placed in very different places in an encounter.

Another idea is to have a lower level lurker start the encounter then have more enemies join from other directions. Parties tend to want to down mobs in the order they are shown to them in my experience. but a much larger threat looming could divert that attention

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the OP was more talking about how to get the party NOT to focus fire, rather than how to get them to switch focus...

There is one basic type of situation where they won't focus fire, and that is when it is more advantageous to take out several targets at one time. The trivial scenario is something like minions where it simply makes no sense to hit the target multiple times. It would be even more compelling if these creatures did a good bit of damage.

Other than that I don't see too many situations where the party would WANT to disperse its fire. It is easy enough to prevent them from focusing as others have pointed out, or make them keep switching targets, but that's about it.

In theory you could probably invent a type of monster that punished focused fire. Maybe something that increased its defenses based on how many times it has been attacked since the start of its last turn for example might work. Fluffing that should be possible. Of course it would start to get a bid old if loads of different types of monsters had this sort of ability.

The main thing you will find of course is that making the party disperse fire just increases the value of conditions, AoEs, and controller type powers in general. Wizards will love it since they're the masters of hitting half the mobs on the board with every attack...

 

[Eric Finley]

Try inventing some monsters who, when bloodied, get less dangerous but tougher to kill. Maybe an undead type - embodied and deadly, at first, but when bloodied their body crumbles into dust, leaving a wraithlike form... their attacks diminish (maybe they lose their savage melee basic, resorting instead to their lower-damage gaze ranged), but they simultaneously gain intangible, bump up their AC, and gain a damaging aura.

Or give serious downsides to killing one at a time... members of a hive mind, perhaps, who grant a permanent stackable +2 to attack & damage to all remaining hive-members when they die, or else a bigger unstackable boost that lasts until-end-of-what-would-have-been-their-next-turn. A host of such, mixed minions and normals, could be pretty horrifying, clearly better to kill in bursts or clusters, preferably disabling as many as possible before killing any.

Or an enemy mage with a variant on the ol' Multiple Image spell, where the images unravel not when hit, but when they fail a save after being hit. (This uses an effect end condition I've used a few times now - "Save Continues" - which seems to work really well. I'll go into that in another post if anyone's interested.) If one hit is 90% likely to have done the trick, but they don't know yet, what to do?

Or a monster who inflicts bad things on every individual who attacks it. Hate channel (free action, at-will, when hit by an enemy) - If the triggering enemy is not already on this monster's Hate List, place them on the list. If that enemy is not marked, it is marked by this monster until this monster reaches 0HP. Each such monster maintains a separate list. When this monster reaches 0HP and attacks using Damn You All, this (rather brutal) attack targets every enemy on its list.

Any of those would definitely serve as an incentive to splitting up and taking on many targets at once.

 

[Rechan]

Another possibility is to take a page from video games.

You have an enemy who has some rather firm defenses, or is doing some nasty damage. This is because he is standing in a magic circle/protected by a forcefield/whatever.

In order to take out the protection, the players have to take out some statues/destroy some wards/spend actions eroding the circle/whatever.

Naturally, the protected guy is going to have his own soldiers protecting his weaknesses.

Thus, the party has to force themselves to attack several points, because attacking the big guy is futile due to his protective measures.

 

[keterys]

Make creatures that are much more powerful when undamaged. Either through one time damage, or something every round that resets.

This can be a static bonus to attack/damage (I think the kobold archer might work that way), an aura that turns off when damaged, a group channel, extra actions (slowed down or knocked askew by damage), or conditions.

For example, you might have very dangerous creatures that are dazed (save ends) whenever damaged. This encourages the party to damage all of them and redamage the ones that save.

 

[Saeviomagy]

You can move the focussed target to somewhere that he cannot be attacked. Into cover, out to long range or merely out of melee range.

You can boost whomever they focus - use aid another to boost his ac (or is that limited to 3.5e?), or use powers to make him tougher or harder to hit.

You can make him spiky for a time (ie - upon the first attack on the foe, he gains some sort of reflective damage shield for 1 round, after which it fades: if you all dogpile on one guy, you all get hurt).

You can use your own defenders to try to make the focus target a bad target.

You can make other targets more attractive. Once the dogpile starts, a different target starts charging a super attack for instance. Or even just starts laying in with serious hurt. Dogpiling typically only works on the front rank melee targets, so tough front-rowers with weak attacks backed up by powerful artillery can do the trick.

You can split the party up so that they cannot effectively coordinate. Drop a big damaging wall halfway across the fight, or have the fight across a big chasm.

You can bottle the party up so that they cannot effectively fight.

 

[fba827]

A round in to combat, creatures jump out from the shadows (or even the shadows themselves come to life and attack) in the back rows of the group's formation (or behind the group) - essentially sandwiching them in.

You'll notice chaos erupting quickly as the squishies start getting attacked, so the group will shift from whomever they started focusing on to these threats at the back of the group.