D&D (2024) The Focus Fire Problem

[Micah Sweet]

One of the problems you're facing is that combat is fairly abstract. In the real world, if I'm concentrating my efforts on stabbing Baron Zemo through his black, black liver, then one of his underlings will have an easier time flanking me and stabbing me through my righteous gallbladder. But in D&D, little things like facing, or even the number of opponents attacking you, don't really matter (except when they do because of special circumstances). And let's face it, hit points are part of the problem. Combat is designed to be settled by the attrition of hit points and if you spread your attacks around it takes longer to defeat enemies and results in PCs getting attacked more often. As the rules are written, it just makes more sense to concentrate attacks, except for maybe some situations where your goal is to control movement or other aspects of the board.

I don't know of a good solutation that wouldn't require a lot of house rules and making combat overly complicated.

Yeah, there are a lot of things D&D just doesn't model very well, that would be better served by playing a different game. Too bad the current edition of D&D is all the vast majority of gamers want to play.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I haven't really thought of focus fire as a problem, but just to make things fun you could invent some cool abilities.

Ideas:
- Increased AC (or other numbers) per foe within reach
- When taking damage, resistance to that damage type until start of next turn
- Shared hit point pool between multiple creatures

 

[beancounter]

I agree with the idea someone mentioned above, but a slightly different solution. Any monster ignored by the players while they focus fire on one monster, gains advantage on their next attack.

 

[James Gasik]

Watching some action movies, I noticed today that in a fight with real enemies (not ones that you can one shot like minions), you beat up one guy until they are temporarily rendered unconscious or out of it for a few seconds, then switch to someone standing, giving the first guy time to maybe recover. So maybe what's needed is a stamina/hit point system. You can temporarily wind a guy, at which point you could keep beating on him, but it would be more beneficial to switch to someone with more stamina who is still acting.

 

[rmcoen]

If my hit points are behind the (PC) curtain, it's too easy for me to conveniently forget that I've gone down to the next wound level. Until I "catch my mistake." But it's good to see someone using progressive wounding/death trees.

Pemerton was restating my idea - that PCs will change their behavior if defenses are limited like offenses. But Total Attack (not one that I remember from 3e) might accomplish the same goal. Anything to change the PC mindset of "I can focus my attention on one opponent and worry about his three allies later."

So far, thanks to COVID and adulting, we've been exclusively playing 5e on Roll20 (minus one glorious in-person session). So I mark the figure/icon's damage as they inflict it right in icon, and then add a colored dot as it passes a threshold. Blue for Bruised, Red for Bloodied, Purple for Battered, and Pink-ish for Crippled. We do the same for the PC's icons (they are supposed to, but I help/remind them occasionally). It also serves a nice piece of information to the PCs without me describing every cringe or wince to convey rough injury status. (There are even some little house rules for concealing or exaggerating your actual injury status that rarely get used.)

Sorry for misallocating the idea credit... I admit I started to skim the pages after Page 3!

 

[rmcoen]

One of the problems you're facing is that combat is fairly abstract. In the real world, if I'm concentrating my efforts on stabbing Baron Zemo through his black, black liver, then one of his underlings will have an easier time flanking me and stabbing me through my righteous gallbladder. But in D&D, little things like facing, or even the number of opponents attacking you, don't really matter (except when they do because of special circumstances). And let's face it, hit points are part of the problem. Combat is designed to be settled by the attrition of hit points and if you spread your attacks around it takes longer to defeat enemies and results in PCs getting attacked more often. As the rules are written, it just makes more sense to concentrate attacks, except for maybe some situations where your goal is to control movement or other aspects of the board.

I don't know of a good solutation that wouldn't require a lot of house rules and making combat overly complicated.

So that sounds like the "solution" is "facing". Bonus to hit the guy in front, flanking from (non-shield, if you have one) side, wide open from rear.

Buuuuut, this line of thought encourages focus-fire. We have to strike a balance in this idea that encourages PCs to strike/engage multiple foes without accidentally writing a rule of "or else they focus fire you" that just ends us back at "everyone should focus fire".

Unless we cheat and use a "monsters only" rule. Which I'm against in principle (just like I'm against 6e's "only PCs can crit")... combat should work the same way for everyone. If 10 goblins against 4 PCs have an advantage... then 4 PCs against on goblin chief have an advantage. and that advantage is called... focus-fire. (and flanking, usually)

 

[kigmatzomat]

Someone said this earlier: players learn the lessons the GM gives them. "None of them stop hitting us until we kill them. Ergo, we need to kill faster." So...why do your foes keep fighting until dead?

Isn't that the unrealistic behavior driving all of this? Why not modify your behavior before you modify the rules?

Seriously, have monsters run away. But do it in an appropriate fashion. Different kinds of monsters can have different thresholds.

Dumb undead fight to the final-death. Vampire? Runs when they take 2 solid hits (and plans to harass you for the next week so until you are exhausted to near death. )

Wolves flee if most of the pack is injured (or if a fifth are killed). They may then stalk you for days. One of your horses may die of exhaustion from not getting sleep from the intimidating howling. They will then leave you alone because a horse is good eating.

Goblins? Any seriously injured goblin (dead if they take another round or two of damage) will flee if given an opportunity. Goblins will flee en masse when their numeric superiority goes down by a full integer (4:1 -> 3:1) without a motivator like a boss goblin. Maybe they got to a fallback position or just scatter.

Ta-da! The unrealistic aspect is fixed and players start learning to spread out damage.

Or, you know, you keep going as you are and they learn the lesson you insist on teaching.

 

[tetrasodium]

Someone said this earlier: players learn the lessons the GM gives them. "None of them stop hitting us until we kill them. Ergo, we need to kill faster." So...why do your foes keep fighting until dead?

Isn't that the unrealistic behavior driving all of this? Why not modify your behavior before you modify the rules?

Seriously, have monsters run away. But do it in an appropriate fashion. Different kinds of monsters can have different thresholds.

Dumb undead fight to the final-death. Vampire? Runs when they take 2 solid hits (and plans to harass you for the next week so until you are exhausted to near death. )

Wolves flee if most of the pack is injured (or if a fifth are killed). They may then stalk you for days. One of your horses may die of exhaustion from not getting sleep from the intimidating howling. They will then leave you alone because a horse is good eating.

Goblins? Any seriously injured goblin (dead if they take another round or two of damage) will flee if given an opportunity. Goblins will flee en masse when their numeric superiority goes down by a full integer (4:1 -> 3:1) without a motivator like a boss goblin. Maybe they got to a fallback position or just scatter.

Ta-da! The unrealistic aspect is fixed and players start learning to spread out damage.

Or, you know, you keep going as you are and they learn the lesson you insist on teaching.

The trouble is that wotc borked the math that allowed that to result in anything but a useless waste of time. PCs are too insulated from risk of attrition(both resource & hp) on top of excessively trivialized recovery & a budget that assumes an extreme 6-8 encounters. Having monsters get in a couple wacks & run had a big impact in the past, but in 5e that impact is effectively zero.

 

[rmcoen]

Someone said this earlier: players learn the lessons the GM gives them. "None of them stop hitting us until we kill them. Ergo, we need to kill faster." So...why do your foes keep fighting until dead?

Isn't that the unrealistic behavior driving all of this? Why not modify your behavior before you modify the rules?

Seriously, have monsters run away. But do it in an appropriate fashion. Different kinds of monsters can have different thresholds.

Dumb undead fight to the final-death. Vampire? Runs when they take 2 solid hits (and plans to harass you for the next week so until you are exhausted to near death. )

Wolves flee if most of the pack is injured (or if a fifth are killed). They may then stalk you for days. One of your horses may die of exhaustion from not getting sleep from the intimidating howling. They will then leave you alone because a horse is good eating.

Goblins? Any seriously injured goblin (dead if they take another round or two of damage) will flee if given an opportunity. Goblins will flee en masse when their numeric superiority goes down by a full integer (4:1 -> 3:1) without a motivator like a boss goblin. Maybe they got to a fallback position or just scatter.

Ta-da! The unrealistic aspect is fixed and players start learning to spread out damage.

Or, you know, you keep going as you are and they learn the lesson you insist on teaching.

I do have monsters run, but that has been an exceptionally long thread here on EnWorld before too - most players refuse to let foes run, for many reasons. In my case, most foes think about running at bloodied, based on how the combat overall is going; any "damage" up to that point has been "close calls" and "stamina" and whatever rationalization works at your table for sack-o-hit-points. At bloodied, per the name, you have taken your first real, impairing body blow. [our Lingering Damage rule aside] You realize this is a fight that could really kill you or inflict [Story] long-lasting injury. How are your friends doing? how does the enemy look? Is it time for "the better part of valor", or a "strategic relocation"? And then, yeah, different creatures have different reactions to that. 90% of my BBEG-type foes actually start running here, for example, because they are very aware that FOCUS FIRE could drop them from "just under half" to "dead" in the next round!

 

[kigmatzomat]

The trouble is that wotc borked the math that allowed that to result in anything but a useless waste of time.

Depends.

From a "train the player to behave different" standpoint, it can have a big impact.

On a random encounter? No, but you don't expect those to be super impactful. They are flavor, to establish the risk in the world (and to let the barbarian roll some dice).

In a larger, planned encounter? It should be part of the overall encounter design. "Goblins running away from the main entrance" should be the trigger for "Trogdor the Oblivious" to see what is going on. A bandit clan may use the wolf howls to track groups of travelers small enough to risk attacking.

And sometimes, the foes just run away, never to be seen again with no impact on the game. Other than to train the players that "defeat an encounter" doesn't require "slaughter the encounter".