D&D (2024) The Focus Fire Problem

[Celebrim]

If you watch any Superhero or fantasy movie nowadays, there's a consistent trend. In most fights, the second the combat starts....the heroes go their own ways. Legolas isn't back to back with Aragon and Gimli, they are off killing their own monsters. When the Justice League (both in movies and the cartoons) goes to take on the badguys, most of the time the heroes all split up into 1 on 1 type fights. Only when they are facing the "big boss" they all start attacking the same creature as a single unit. If we go more modern, Harry Potter often had the wizards split up into 2 on 2s or 1 on 1s, rather than have 1 pile of wizards go after the other.

The appropriate response to this is that movies are terrible at displaying realistic combat. Movie combat is based entirely on narrative concerns and is often heavily divorced from reality such that if you analyze it, there are usually a lot of ways one side or both could have more easily won the fight. For example, in fights between a hero and a group, the group almost always stands back and takes turns fighting the hero. They don't really team up and attack together. Realistic fight combats rarely happen.

That said, part of this a feature of D&D in that D&D unlike some other systems doesn't make you pay any price for ignoring a potential attacker. In say D6 Star Wars, if an NPC has reason to believe they won't get attacked, they can decide not to spend a dice on defenses and therefore become a more effective attacker. Covering fire to force NPCs to reserve defensive actions is important in a way that it isn't in D&D.

In my 3.X game, I deal with this by having fighting stances - offensive, balanced, and defensive. If an NPC feels like they aren't going to be attacked, they can adopt an offensive fighting stance and trade AC for an attack bonus. This can be used to punish PC's for focusing entirely on the obvious target, which of course can also adopt a defensive fighting stance to resist the PC's attacks. It doesn't negate focusing fire as a strategy, but does make the decision more complicated (at the cost of making the game more complicated since PC's can declare stances as well).

That being said, lots of things that occur in fiction are difficult to model in RPGs because PCs aren't protected by power of plot and rule of cool at all times, so the PCs generally have to adopt more "boring" realistic strategies most of the time. You could give the PCs plot protection and access to rule of cool at all times, but that turns to not work out either without a lot of work as things that are cool once are less cool the second time.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay, but that's totally not what the rules say, and if you go watch other people play D&D, you'll see that's not even a slightly common take.

I mean, that's fine, it's your home game, run it how you like, but that's not even hinted at by the rules, I'd suggest.

That is a great house rule though. That's what we did before 4e.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That is a great house rule though. That's what we did before 4e.

I feel like it would be solid if the game was designed around it - i.e. certain classes/specs got ways to get around Disadvantage for firing into melee, or people counting as cover (and using both is hilarious overkill for 5E rules lol) without taking a single specific Feat (which might not even be available). But because that's not integrated this is just one of those classic house rules that like screws over one whole bunch of people in the game (usually melees, so it's refreshing that it's ranged this time!). I will say this is relatively fair in a PCs vs Monster sense at least because it will impact both sides pretty seriously. In fact it might impact monsters slightly more.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yes, it is. You take out the gun emplacement first. Or the tank.

I was very specific for a reason.

"real person-level combat".

I didn't type those words idly. In real melee/arrow combat, you simply cannot behave like this. Casters standing at a distance might sometimes have the luxury to target specific people who they thought were threats, but they'd often be mistaken or operating on extremely limited information, or make very serious errors because they underestimated or overestimated people (this is down to the DM RP'ing them right of course - some DMs are clinically incapable of it).

A tank or pillbox can be "taken out" because it's not that capable of movement (we're assuming the tank isn't in an open field, because you're just stuffed). That's obviously not an equivalent situation. IRL, if you're armed with a sword, you can't just ignore another guy with a sword and go chase whoever you want. 5E doesn't have mechanics for that, though. No flanking, no firing into melee penalty, at most one AoO/turn, etc.

In reality, if you ignored a bunch of men with swords to try and chase down a wizard, you'd die with a bunch of swords in your back (or even just one). And indeed, anyone who has played a videogame that leans a bit more realistic absolutely knows this.

It's an absolutely unrealistic thing D&D does, that 5E makes far more extreme and obvious by removing all barriers to it and putting in "bag of HP" enemies that kind of require it. On some levels that might be smart - leaning in to a characteristic the game has - but trying to pretend it's realistic and putting in laughable 20th World War examples instead of medieval examples or fantasy examples is just unhelpful to understanding the issue, like it or loathe it.

 

[Ancalagon]

The appropriate response to this is that movies are terrible at displaying realistic combat. Movie combat is based entirely on narrative concerns and is often heavily divorced from reality such that if you analyze it, there are usually a lot of ways one side or both could have more easily won the fight. For example, in fights between a hero and a group, the group almost always stands back and takes turns fighting the hero. They don't really team up and attack together. Realistic fight combats rarely happen.

Very true, but, D&D combat has several unrealistic aspects to it as well - two weapons fighting doesn't work like it's portrayed in D&D for example.

 

[James Gasik]

When I first started playing D&D, you couldn't fire into melee without risking hitting allies. In fact, the DM was instructed to randomly determine the target of the shot before we even find out if you hit or missed!

You couldn't fire a bow at all if you were in melee range-heck, in 2e, at least, you had to be a specialist to even fire from as close as 6' away!

If you were a spellcaster, you had virtually no defenses when casting, and so much as a thrown rock doing 1 point of damage made your spells fizzle.

In these days, nobody was a dedicated archer, as you could only employ archery once a melee wall was established, and Wizards basically hid out of sight on the first turn, only popping out to cast a spell once everyone else was engaged.

Now, people got tired of this sort of play, and I saw, even games I was playing at the time, that these restrictions were relaxed. DMs stopped caring if you were shooting in melee range, and only made you hit an ally if you missed. Wizards were allowed to make checks to keep their spells when they got hit (the most common I experienced was a Wisdom check, for whatever reason).

When WotC took over, they took note of this, and peeled back some of these restrictions. Opportunity attacks from Players Option became the standard. Now you could cast or use missile fire in melee range, but you were immediately punished for doing so. Now, firing into a melee was only a -4 penalty, but hey, 2 Feats and you could ignore this penalty!

But players still seemed to chafe at this, so over the course of the next two editions, these restrictions were further peeled back until we have the case that now, you might take disadvantage to fire at someone standing next to you. But there's a Feat for that.

And allies might provide cover for enemies if you fire into a melee. But there's a Fighting Style for that. And a Feat, which turns the Fighting Style into a near permanent +2 to hit!

And yeah, you could lose a spell for being hit in combat. But it's a Constitution save, there are ways to get proficiency. A Feat that grants advantage. And it's not like your AC is any worse for casting a spell- why, with a single one level dip or a Feat, you can be a Wizard in full plate armor, maybe with a shield!

Which is why I started to notice (and made a thread for it) that ranged attacks seemed awfully good in 5e. And with Rogues being specifically designed to focus fire targets, it seems like this is the playstyle the game is built around.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

spread my attacks out... 1 on each. I hit each did minimal damage to most of them (but enough to apply penalties) and then said "So now surrender" and they just kept fireing... 3 of them from prone 1 that now missing a right leg... so from that point forward I would put all my shots into 1 target takinng them down... and he HATED that. he wanted to know why I didn't spread my damage more... I had to explain "You taught me that wasn't worth it"

Many DMs simply refuse to recognize that their choices, and the underlying design of the game they choose to play, is what directly creates the incentives for player behavior. There are rare circumstances (like that thread a long while back where players misinterpreted "DM took out a map" for "DM is forcing us into a fight") where the perverse incentives are accidental. But the vast majority of the time, DMs and the games they run teach players which behaviors are effective very quickly, and then DMs complain that their players misbehave or the like.

For example:

• Can't count the number of DMs I've seen over the years who complain bitterly about their players being ruthless murder-hobos, and then when you dig in deeper, you find out that, surprise surprise, the DM runs a "realistic" world. By which they mean a crapsack world where heroism is suicide, idealism is for losers, and mercy is a fool's errand. When the players are taught that it's a dog-eat-dog world, guess what? They'll learn to shoot dogs on sight!
• The so-called problem of "whack-a-mole" healing directly derives from the rules design of 5e. It is intentional, and as Ruin Explorer noted, it's one of the few tactics PCs can exploit if NPCs actually play tactically. Same with focus fire and the other bits. The rules people asked for, like "bounded accuracy" (which forced almost all scaling to be in HP), movement throughout one's turn, Advantage, minimal in-combat healing, etc. all combine to encourage players to play this way.
• Players disengaging. This one is less common but it still happens. Have seen more than a few DMs who clearly did not understand that when you shut down the things players get enthusiastic about, they will stop showing enthusiasm. All the gleeful talk of banning things or running so-called "realistic" racism (usually nothing of the sort, it's extreme xenophobia that was never so common even in the Medieval Period), for example: slap the players often enough for their genuine, heartfelt joy in things and they'll stop showing their joy to you. (This one is especially bad because Gygax himself advocated for it in IIRC the 1e DMG. He did not actually practice this at his own table, worth noting, but the fact it got printed at all is a travesty.)

I'm sure there are other examples too. Point being, if your players consistently use tactics or evince behaviors you don't like, you should be asking yourself how much either you as DM are teaching your players to play that way, or how much your chosen game system is rewarding people who do.

There may not be simple fixes. I don't personally think there are simple fixes for this problem in 5e. It's just too biased toward focus fire, and most fixes that will be easy to implement will just feel annoying to play against or clash badly with other aspects of the rules. Like that "focus" rule above which guarantees much more difficult combats whenever the party is outnumbered...which they usually will be. The fundamental idea isn't bad, but contextually I don't think it will perform well.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Ya but I mean, maimed just sounds so visceral. Not mechanically, just in name. WEAKENED? Cmon. That fire elemental isn't weakened its...idk...crippled? Dunno.

I guess I was taking it as supernaturally weakened, like a Fey exposed to cold iron, or a vampire to sunlight, or a ghost to exorcism/turning, etc.

In fact hell, if I ever make a D&D-style game, that's what turning will do - make creatures hesitate and become vulnerable - same with holy water. This boring-ass running like hell or just being deleted can go home.

Sheesh all this talk of issues 5E has is really making me want to come up with a questionable Fantasy Heartbreaker, now I know how all those guys in the '80s and '90s felt.

 

[Micah Sweet]

When I first started playing D&D, you couldn't fire into melee without risking hitting allies. In fact, the DM was instructed to randomly determine the target of the shot before we even find out if you hit or missed!

You couldn't fire a bow at all if you were in melee range-heck, in 2e, at least, you had to be a specialist to even fire from as close as 6' away!

If you were a spellcaster, you had virtually no defenses when casting, and so much as a thrown rock doing 1 point of damage made your spells fizzle.

In these days, nobody was a dedicated archer, as you could only employ archery once a melee wall was established, and Wizards basically hid out of sight on the first turn, only popping out to cast a spell once everyone else was engaged.

Now, people got tired of this sort of play, and I saw, even games I was playing at the time, that these restrictions were relaxed. DMs stopped caring if you were shooting in melee range, and only made you hit an ally if you missed. Wizards were allowed to make checks to keep their spells when they got hit (the most common I experienced was a Wisdom check, for whatever reason).

When WotC took over, they took note of this, and peeled back some of these restrictions. Opportunity attacks from Players Option became the standard. Now you could cast or use missile fire in melee range, but you were immediately punished for doing so. Now, firing into a melee was only a -4 penalty, but hey, 2 Feats and you could ignore this penalty!

But players still seemed to chafe at this, so over the course of the next two editions, these restrictions were further peeled back until we have the case that now, you might take disadvantage to fire at someone standing next to you. But there's a Feat for that.

And allies might provide cover for enemies if you fire into a melee. But there's a Fighting Style for that. And a Feat, which turns the Fighting Style into a near permanent +2 to hit!

And yeah, you could lose a spell for being hit in combat. But it's a Constitution save, there are ways to get proficiency. A Feat that grants advantage. And it's not like your AC is any worse for casting a spell- why, with a single one level dip or a Feat, you can be a Wizard in full plate armor, maybe with a shield!

Which is why I started to notice (and made a thread for it) that ranged attacks seemed awfully good in 5e. And with Rogues being specifically designed to focus fire targets, it seems like this is the playstyle the game is built around.

The real problem is that WotC is afraid to penalize players for any action they want to take, either in character creation or in play. This just a symptom.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The real problem is that WotC is afraid to penalize players for any action they want to take, either in character creation or in play. This just a symptom.

I think it's more a symptom of pushing so hard for simplicity/accessibility that they are outright opposed to intentional rules complexity, even though the game has plenty of unintentional rules complexity.

The reason I say that is that the same attitude you're describing applies to monsters/NPCs just as much to PCs. If it was just about "penalizing players" (or rather not wanting to), we wouldn't see that. We'd see monsters able to totally mess up - but they also cannot.