OK, that's how they cope when someone's dropped.
Have you seen their tactics change ahead of that - do they use more damage mitigation, or heal an injured ally to keep him from dropping in the first place, or is it otherwise a minor variation on the 'no healing' outcome?
I would love to answer yes to that question.
But to be honest I have had trouble challenging the party lately to the extent the rule is invoked.
There was probably a small window of evaluation from where I instituted the change, to where they levelled up sufficiently to leave that problem behind. By that I mean - at higher levels you don't drop just because one unlucky swing, and you don't drop as often period. So even if you could still use whackamole tactic it would arguably be less of an issue, since it would be deployed much less often.
I
have managed to down a character. Once the monk stepped a little too close to four berserk Barlguras. Two crits later and all his hp were poof, gone. I *think* the Cleric laid down some serious healing that time, probably because that happened at the very start of the fight when the overall difficulty was still unknown to them.
But generally, the ability to change my rolls after the fact (bard ability, battlemaster AC boosts, Lucky feat) together with very solid AC makes for a nigh-impregnable defense. And since few hits penetrate the regular AC, the relatively few charges of the super abilities mentioned go a long way. A feat like Lucky is not particularly strong if you get hit all the time. It is
very strong when you only hit on a 20. Since by that time you're only vulnerable to criticals, it essentially negates all your criticals, and I seldom roll more of those than the number of luck points awarded by the feat. The end result is that you become practically invulnerable to attacks
So all I can honestly say is that when I made the change, whackamole tactic evaporated (or at least decreased in frequence to a point where it no longer was a nuisance).
Feel free to report back with your findings!: ) I'm afraid we're slowly reaching the end of OotA; it might be a while before we play at low level again.