Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 2213062" data-attributes="member: 2011">This is true. You should always try to take out foes as quickly as possible.However, there are several situations where it is definitely worth it to trade offense for defense.In any situation where you are facing one or two really powerful melee foes (both to hit and damage and presumably with high hit points), it is imperative that your focus for the one or two PCS who are holding them off change from offense to defense.It doesn't help to quarter damage the opponent if your Fighter holding it off is going to go down doing that. It is better for that Fighter to do very little damage if he takes very little damage in return. The other PCs are then responsible for doing the serious damage.Another situation is that of numbers. Numbers often win.If you have 3 melee opponents facing you, Combat Expertise is huge. +5 to your AC against 3 attackers versus -5 to hit against 1 attacker.I know that when I am DM, my NPC Villains attempt their best strategies against PCs. One of those strategies is to overwhelm a single PC (preferably one with a low looking AC such as the Wizard in no armor or the Rogue, Ranger, or Barbarian in light armor) with many opponents as opposed to sending a single opponent against each PC (then, do an area affect spell against those PCs who do not have a melee opponent <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />). It is worth it for the NPC Spellcasting Villain to throw 5 grunts against the PC Barbarian and lose 3 of them in the process if he can also take out that Barbarian (where the Barbarian does not get in his face and do 20 hits of damage per round).A third situation is that of non-combatant types. We had a Eberron Artificer in our group who took Combat Expertise. He was not a combat specialist, he was a support specialist. However, he would often in melee (especially if he was outnumbered or the opponent could do nasy things) Fight Defensively with full Combat Expertise and he would survive long enough for the other PCs to save him. His job was not to fight in melee, so it was important for him to not do so, even when the opponents forced him into that situation.People who rely solely on an offensive strategy are doomed to failure at some point, just due to not being flexible enough for what the situation warrants.</blockquote>

Verification