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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5902086" data-attributes="member: 54877">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 &quot;just roleplay it&quot; 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. &nbsp;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.&nbsp;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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5902086, member: 54877"] 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 [B]blindly[/B] 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. [/QUOTE]

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