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The Focus Fire Problem
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8722606" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>No, it's true in real D&D. I've seen it happen regularly, and it's not unique to 5E, it's just 5E "drops the barriers" to doing focus fire to much lower levels than any other edition. Having a "dynamic arena" absolutely does not eliminate focus fire, and it's pretty funny to hear you claim that, when so many D&D-derived games have ultra-dynamic arenas (video games particularly) but still the goal is focus-fire. Dynamic arenas make it tougher, but they don't eliminate it.</p><p></p><p>The problem you're describing is that you essentially don't want to play D&D 5E, you want to play something more tactical and dynamic, and where players are more honestly "captain of their own ship" (where in 5E they're at the mercy of limited options and heavy RNG). 4E sounds like it would work much better for what you want, like drastically so.</p><p></p><p>And your suggestions don't account for the fact that monsters have both more HP than PCs in many cases, and often more numerous (particularly where they even have slightly less HP). On top of all the focus-fire is metagaming (as you seem to acknowledge?) and you're a DM, so you perfectly well know that when the DM metagames, it's easily 100x more obnoxious than when a player does, in D&D (less so in some other RPGs), given the vast power they hold.</p><p></p><p>(4E isn't the only game like that, I note - Lancer, Icon, possibly Gubat Banwa are also options, and even PF2E is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more tactics-y than 5E is. Interestingly despite being PF-derived it feels like it many ways it learned more from 4E than 5E did.)</p><p></p><p></p><p>This is what is telling you are playing the wrong game, btw, to be clear.</p><p></p><p>4E let you play that way and it felt good for both the players and the DM, because it was so tactical, and the PCs had so many responses, counters, and options, and the DM was essentially playing a tactical game against 3-5 opponents at once, so it worked out.</p><p></p><p>5E is based around 6-8 "medium" encounters/day. Medium == easy - literally!!! As per discussion thread on the famous "Last minute change". 5E is not about tactical combats. It's classes don't possess the abilities you need for that. The rule-set doesn't have inherent options to support that. 4E is.</p><p></p><p>This is one big thing we miss from 4E. I could play "hardball" in 4E, but in 5E if I play "hardball", I'm the DM so I'll just win, no question (just like in 2E barring something like me failing a save vs a save or die spell), because the system is designed on the assumption I'm not pushing it that hard, and doesn't provide the tools for PCs to play that way.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8722606, member: 18"] No, it's true in real D&D. I've seen it happen regularly, and it's not unique to 5E, it's just 5E "drops the barriers" to doing focus fire to much lower levels than any other edition. Having a "dynamic arena" absolutely does not eliminate focus fire, and it's pretty funny to hear you claim that, when so many D&D-derived games have ultra-dynamic arenas (video games particularly) but still the goal is focus-fire. Dynamic arenas make it tougher, but they don't eliminate it. The problem you're describing is that you essentially don't want to play D&D 5E, you want to play something more tactical and dynamic, and where players are more honestly "captain of their own ship" (where in 5E they're at the mercy of limited options and heavy RNG). 4E sounds like it would work much better for what you want, like drastically so. And your suggestions don't account for the fact that monsters have both more HP than PCs in many cases, and often more numerous (particularly where they even have slightly less HP). On top of all the focus-fire is metagaming (as you seem to acknowledge?) and you're a DM, so you perfectly well know that when the DM metagames, it's easily 100x more obnoxious than when a player does, in D&D (less so in some other RPGs), given the vast power they hold. (4E isn't the only game like that, I note - Lancer, Icon, possibly Gubat Banwa are also options, and even PF2E is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more tactics-y than 5E is. Interestingly despite being PF-derived it feels like it many ways it learned more from 4E than 5E did.) This is what is telling you are playing the wrong game, btw, to be clear. 4E let you play that way and it felt good for both the players and the DM, because it was so tactical, and the PCs had so many responses, counters, and options, and the DM was essentially playing a tactical game against 3-5 opponents at once, so it worked out. 5E is based around 6-8 "medium" encounters/day. Medium == easy - literally!!! As per discussion thread on the famous "Last minute change". 5E is not about tactical combats. It's classes don't possess the abilities you need for that. The rule-set doesn't have inherent options to support that. 4E is. This is one big thing we miss from 4E. I could play "hardball" in 4E, but in 5E if I play "hardball", I'm the DM so I'll just win, no question (just like in 2E barring something like me failing a save vs a save or die spell), because the system is designed on the assumption I'm not pushing it that hard, and doesn't provide the tools for PCs to play that way. [/QUOTE]
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