Idle Musings: Inverted Interrupts, Focus Fire, and Combat Flow

[Ridley's Cohort]

If "free" creatures had a big bonus on their first attack against previously "engaged" creatures, that would be a pretty good incentive to lock them down and get your strikers "disengage".

It could be a simple Advantage (say, +2 to hit) against "engaged" targets while you are "free", with strikers getting bonus damage when they have Advantage and Defenders getting free attacks(or bonuses on their next attack against them, or whatever) against enemies trying to "disengage".

I like your idea here.

I would define a creature as "free" if it is not threatened and has not been attacked in the last 1 round.

Keep it simple.

I do not feel the need to add many rules to fix the problem. I think adding just enough incentive to make the optimal tactics not obvious is good enough.

It happens to add value to mooks in a brawl, without their presence being overwhelming.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Honestly I don't get the objection to focus fire...it's a logical and easy tactic.

The objection is that it is too easy, and thus there is no tactics to it. You learn it from someone on a message board, and then blindly apply it. That feels unrealistic by any standard but gaming. Various "just roleplay it" arguments are there because people want the opponents to fight more like they would if focus fire gave an advantage, but not always one that is worth pursuing. That's fine if all you want is to simulate the battle flavor. If, however, you want to give more tactical choices mechanically, then who to focus fire on, how much, etc. becomes interesting.

Some of the techniques being discussed here might not work as well. The ones that will make focus fire less of an issue will do so partly by not giving an advantage to ranged and magical classes. When a wizard gets engaged, he will need to stay on one of the foes that has him engaged--or suffer extra damage, attacks, etc. from that foe. If a friend can help the wizard out, that makes the foe engaged by the friend, and gives the wizard some options.

It's also a way to make raw numbers have meaning without artificially inflating the stats of lower-powered numbers. A tribe of goblins is a threat because the party can't engage them all at the same time. A lot of goblins are getting an extra boost. But if the party can constrain the approach of the goblins, they remove this ability. That dynamic has always been there, of course, but some kind of engagement rules heightens it considerably.

 

[Shadeydm]

There are currently lots of incentives to focused fire. For example if you run into a pack humanoids in the current edition barring minions the sheer amount of hitpoints each one has is motivation to focus fire and get them off the battlefield asap reducing their total damage output each round in the process for each one you kill. Adding further incentive to focus fire are mechanics such as the bonus to hit for flanking and setting up a rogues sneak attack. And that is assuming they're all the same if you turn one into a leader or controller and you've just prioritized focused fire even more. Kill that one before he heals them again!

 

[keterys]

The problem applies in reverse, too - as a DM, my only logical recourse is to focus fire on one PC at a time and kill them.

But it's a _lot_ more fun to damage many PCs, make them all worried.

 

[pemerton]

I don't get the objection to focus fire...it's a logical and easy tactic.

I think it's boring.

Like I said the first time round in this thread, focused fire is not a big issue in my game in part due to party composition and in part due to habits of play for the players, and techniques that I use as a GM to reinforce those habits. But I've got no in principle objection to mechanical changes that will reinforce the way I'm playing anyway!

My main concern about removing OAs, interrupts etc isn't that this makes focused fire even easier, but that it makes the game take on too much of a stop-motion vibe (assuming turn-based initiative).

 

[Crazy Jerome]

My main concern about removing OAs, interrupts etc isn't that this makes focused fire even easier, but that it makes the game take on too much of a stop-motion vibe (assuming turn-based initiative).

Using something like this threads' approach in a system that is D&D, turn-based problems become a real issue, without any other changes. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is possible that the compromises necessary to make it work while remaining "D&D" leave the whole thing less than optimum. I suspect that such a system would work better in D&D using the early D&D side by side initiative, instead of the 3E and later cyclic initiative. Magic 8 ball says "Maybe" when asked if it could work.

The trick, both for weal or woe, in this kind of change, is that you really want the implications to spread throughout the system--so that the whole things works together, somewhat naturally.

For those of you that recall my earlier thread about actions, the way I am currently leaning in my homebrew, (quasi-D&D BECMI and 4E mix, with odd influences from Burning Wheel, Dragon Quest, RuneQuest, and a few other things), is:

• Every character gets 3 actions per round, none of which can be the same action (i.e. no multiple attacks).
• Using Frostmarrow's idea above, one of these "actions" is nominally the defense action, either used or unused, but applying to all defense needs if used.
• If unused, the defense action can be used to "super charge" an attack (which still requires one of the other actions, as standard).
• I'm still leaning towards side by side initiative--though this is not as readily useful in this system as in others--so I'm only leaning.
• "Minion" types--or those temporarily pushed into that state by conditions, don't have a special "defense action," and thus must use one of their remaining 2 actions for active defense, and never get to super charge attacks.

I think that has the potential to get rid of the "stop-motion vibe" altogether, while also handling the persnickety problem of how to track "engaged" status. If you've still got your "defense action" available when you act, you are "free"--and can lay down the hurt. (It's a bit of design judo. If something has to be done to track, put more information on that something to make it worth the handling time. An "Active Defense + Engaged/Disengaged state" trumps a mechanic that handles only one of those.)

So now there is a built-in tension between two competing desires:

• Focus fire, to take down an opponents hit points to zero, so that they no longer contribute actions against you, versus,
• Each round, force use of as many opponents' defense actions as possible, to keep them from super charging their attacks.

With a good design, this could turn into one of those "simple but not easy" deals, where what you want to do is fairly obvious, but how to go about it from round to round is not.

 

[sheadunne]

The simplest way to avoid Focus-Fire, if that's the goal, is to take away the PC's knowledge of their current HP total. Decisions are often based on whether the PC believes that can take a few points of damage without any major consequence. "If we ignore the baddies that will do only minimum damage, then we can focus fire on the big bad. We can take the 10-20 HP damage." Take away that knowledge, limited to "you're bloodied" or similar and you now have PCs unsure if taking a few hits is going to be deadly or just a speed bump. Tactics will change.

It's a draw back to having stats. If you know how much punishment you can take, you can usually do the math and make what seems an unrealistic decision (ignoring the guys with swords and taking the guy with the spells because he'll do more damage to you).

That said, I'm not a fan of it simply because I think the DM has too much on their plate already. I accept that PCs are going to make crazy decisions that are unrealistic. And that's okay. They're having fun.

 

[Sunseeker]

I think it's boring.

Like I said the first time round in this thread, focused fire is not a big issue in my game in part due to party composition and in part due to habits of play for the players, and techniques that I use as a GM to reinforce those habits. But I've got no in principle objection to mechanical changes that will reinforce the way I'm playing anyway!

My main concern about removing OAs, interrupts etc isn't that this makes focused fire even easier, but that it makes the game take on too much of a stop-motion vibe (assuming turn-based initiative).

Yeah, making non-focus fire mandatory through whatever means IMO just makes the game feel clunky, ending up with ridiculous rules that force players to spread damage out over multiple targets. I think attempting to make players hit multiple targets would really just end up mucking things up.

I mean, I can't really even think up how the rules would look to encourage multi-targetting. You'd either need some sort of reactive defenses that increase as creatures are attacked to discourage focus fire, or well..something weird.

Personally I just solve the problem by lowering enemy HP and incresing their damage, that way multi-targetting esp at low levels is worthwhile as it doesn't take much to kill them, but also that letting them live is too dangerous.

 

[pemerton]

I can't really even think up how the rules would look to encourage multi-targetting.

Well, I'll let Crazy Jerome talk it about it from the tacical incentives angle. But there are other angles as well.

Why do superhero fights tend towards one-on-one rather than focus fire? Because each hero takes on his/her nemesis, or tackles that part of the problem that s/he is well suited to dealing with (Colossus sucks up the gun fire, Kitty Pride phases through the robot, Jean tries to mind control the leader, etc).

D&D is probably never going to have strong mechanical incentives based on relationships, but even with relationships just going to story content I find that it can be enough to incentivise non-focus fire in my 4e game. As well as the nemesis aspect, there is also the "I don't want to look like a loser"/"I want to show off my PC's schtick" aspect.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Well, I'll let Crazy Jerome talk it about it from the tacical incentives angle. But there are other angles as well.

Most of the topic has been about that. I didn't see any objection that wasn't already answered, as I understood the objection. Perhaps I'm not understanding why my first reply to the objection doesn't cover it.