Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The Focus Fire Problem
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8722880" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8722880, member: 4937"] 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. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
The Focus Fire Problem
Top