Focus fire - how to get rid of it?

[Easy e]

This can be answered well if you know three things about the encounter:

1. Why is the bad guy fighting
2. How do they plan on fighting
3. When will they decide fighting is not going to work

If you can answer these three questions, you will know how to avoid Focused Fire.

Let's look at a band of goblins vs some 5th level PCs.

1. The Goblins want to scare the PCs away from their lair.
2. First, they will hide and watch the PCs, then their shaman will cast an illusion to lure the scouts away to an area the Goblins have trapped. Once the trap is sprung, they will use missile power on the remaining PCs from hiding. The Shaman will then bellow for the PCs to leave into a large horn to loudly project their voice.
3. If they lose a goblin, they will decide to flee through the underbrush.

I think you can see how "Focused Fire" looks a lot different in this scenario than in a stand-up fight at the goblin lair entrance. Where do you even focus? The trapped area? Hiding missile troops? The bellowing voice?

The more you force the PCs to fragment their attention in order to "win" the less chance they have to focus fire on a single target.

[JNAProductions]

One of the least intuitive things about 5e's CR is that monster CRs are not directly composable--there's no real formula for combining a set of individual monster CRs and ending up with an "encounter CR". You have to go through XP and the multiplier tables.

Effectively, CR is a property of individual monsters, not encounters at all. No, not even for a single monster, not really.

<personal take on CR>
CR would be more useful if it was broken up into its two components (offensive and defensive CR). The first tells you whether it has the significant potential to take down a "weak" character of level X from 100 to 0 in one round (if it gets lucky); the second tells you roughly how likely it is to last more than about a round under focus fire from a low-optimization party of 4. And there are huge variations between the two.

The Archmage NPC is a key example: average CR 12. Defensive CR (after adjusting for everything) 4. By the book, its offensive CR is 10 (meaning it's had play-test-driven adjustments to CR after doing the calculations). Adjust its spells to have more offensive high level spells and its defensive CR basically doesn't change and its offensive CR can go...really really high. If it gets caught in the open, it's toast, against a party of even level 6 characters (at low op). But it can easily, even in its weaker forms, nuke that party into the ground if it gets a clear round.

If you change the spell-list, you're changing the monster and so should recalc the CR.

Obviously a tiny tweak (say, swapping Teleport for Project Image) doesn't need much adjustment, if any... But changing them to do lots more damage SHOULD have you recalc the CR.

[PhoenixPhyre]

If you change the spell-list, you're changing the monster and so should recalc the CR.

Obviously a tiny tweak (say, swapping Teleport for Project Image) doesn't need much adjustment, if any... But changing them to do lots more damage SHOULD have you recalc the CR.

Oh absolutely. No question there. Just pointing out that defensive CR and offensive CR can be very different even stock, and get even worse if you tweak one thing without tweaking the other. Increasing the offensive CR of the archmage from 10 (stock) to 14 only increases the (calculated) CR by 2...but increases the damage output tremendously without helping it live longer. So tweaking can be deceptive if you only look at the average.

[Hytheter]

<personal take on CR>
CR would be more useful if it was broken up into its two components (offensive and defensive CR). The first tells you whether it has the significant potential to take down a "weak" character of level X from 100 to 0 in one round (if it gets lucky); the second tells you roughly how likely it is to last more than about a round under focus fire from a low-optimization party of 4. And there are huge variations between the two.

Yeah, I've been thinking this for a while. Sure, you can study the block to work out whether it's a glass cannon or an immovable object, but it'd be a whole lot easier if they just put the numbers there for you.

[Snails]

The more you force the PCs to fragment their attention in order to "win" the less chance they have to focus fire on a single target.

The idea of adding complexity to the terrain so the monsters can avoid straight up fights is a reasonable tactic to consider. However, there is only so long that the DM can avoid the issue with ambushes and hit & run tactics, without making the campaign a boring slog. It is nigh inevitable that the PCs will eventually push to the point where there is a big encounter where the enemy is effectively forced to come out and fight. The Big Battle. The DM probably wants that big battle to be interesting tactically, rather than mindlessly applied focus fire tactics bringing inevitable victory.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Not sure that I agree with the idea that DMs and players want the fight where the players finally corner the hit and running monster to be a tactic filled battle rather than a focus fire and gone thing.

4e was wrong about many many things but one thing it got right was that fighting a lurker or skirmisher was supposed to feel different from fighting a brute. Lurkers and skirmishers are supposed to be hard to catch but vulnerable to focused fire. The expected outcome was that when PCs were able to corner the monster and force a standup fight, they would focus fire and it would go down hard. And as a player, that was always a satisfying moment. It didn't need to be a tactically rich moment because all the tactics had already gone into forcing the moment to happen in the first place. In 3rd edition, we had a similar experience with an assassin in return to the temple of elemental Evil. He temporarily joined the party, betrayed us in the moathouse, death attacked the party cleric (who made her save) and escaped. Later, he showed up when we were attacking the entrance to the mines. We hit him with a bunch of stuff but he drank a potion of invisibility and escaped AGAIN. A couple sessions later, we were again attacking and the cleric didn't have anything better to do one round so she cast invisibility purge--just in case. Lo and behold, the suddenly not invisible assassin was sneaking up on them. One glitterdust spell and a round of focus fire later, he was a pile of bloodstained loot on the floor... and it was one of the most satisfying things in the history of gaming. Not because it was a fun stand-up fight, but because we had finally caught the bastard and smashed him into a pulp. The fun was in the catching him and forcing the standup fight. If he had actually performed and made it a boss-level knock down drag-out fight when we had him to rights, it would have been less satisfying.

[Witty Username]

I don't tend to focus fire as a DM, I tend to divide attacks between the party unless someone is exposed in some way.

Part of the reason for this is at least my group tries to keep bad guy focus on the toughest member. Split focus keeps the entire party to be focused on how to defend themselves.
But you can also use target adjustment variant focus fire, switch in response to defensive tactics. That wizard uses shield, pivot to the rogue, swap to the barbarian if their rage goes down. That way you are benefiting from focus fire but getting the rest of the party involved, and your monsters come off as smarter too.

[ciopo]

Player side experience here, in all the campaigns I've played us players like.... never focus fired, not once that I can remember it happened if there was more than one creature were they focus fired. The only exception to that was when one player was missing and I had control of his character amd so those few times two out of five character were focus firing :p.

Coordination!? From players!? A dream come true!

Joking aside, maybe it's just a matter that we don't "meta talk" about the encounter while the encounter happen, and so everybody has a different idea about what needs diying first? Something like that.

A hydra fights itself! :D

[Hytheter]

I don't tend to focus fire as a DM, I tend to divide attacks between the party unless someone is exposed in some way.

DM focus fire is a whole other kettle of fish! The factors that make it effective as a player strategy can also make it devastating as an anti-player strategy. I won't get into the whole 'tactical monsters' debate but suffice to say turning up the heat with some focus fire can lead to intense gameplay but also to hurt feelings.

In my gladiatorial combat sessions I use it as an opt-in difficulty modifier. Compete on weekdays or Saturdays and the monsters will generally split their fire and leave dying players alone. Compete on Bloody Sunday and you can earn double the cash - but the monsters will go for the kill!

[Goobahfish]

So if the issue is focus fire (and we make the assumption it is undesirable - skipping counter arguments on that issue), what are potential fixes.

Well, there are really a few mechanisms at play.

#1: Damaging a unit creates a penalty for that unit disproportionate to the efforts to kill that unit instead.
#2: Damaging an already damaged unit in the same turn is penalized
#3: Overkill
#4: Railroad the player's decisions via terrain, encounter design etc.

I think #1 has been already suggested. My 2c would be that it is a bit of a hassle to track.

#2: This already has some precedence. Units which 'survive beyond death' (i.e. via healing) can be a counter to focus fire. If taking down a unit only for it to be back on 100% effectiveness because of a Healing Word etc kind of negates FF to an extend. Another similar mechanic is that there is an ability which disadvantages a second attacker in some way (i.e. the second attacker either has a lower chance to hit or damage reduction etc). This could be fun for a few niche monsters but as a general mechanic but otherwise stinks as it is almost like 'anti-flanking' which is pretty silly.

#3: This is a very simple, cute way of dealing with it. Monsters do not fall down until their own turn. So, if you have five people FF one unit, it won't 'die' until the monster's turn which means that a lot of those attacks will go to waste as the archer peppers the already dead orc with arrows. From a storytelling perspective this isn't that bad, because 6 seconds isn't a huge amount of time and you can imagine in many cases a monster might be 'dying or staggered' only to keep fighting or collapse to the ground. This will dramatically change the player's psychology when it comes to damaging enemies. This is especially risky for multi-attack characters when surrounded by weak foes as judging whether to 'move on' or whether to 'get the kill' is the higher priority.

#4: Already mentioned. There are a few ways you can do this legitimately such as limit avenues for attack against some monsters (narrow corridors) or have multi-objective encounters where players are effectively split up and deal with different challenges. Varied vulnerabilities/resistances is also a pretty soft way of splitting attacks.

[PhoenixPhyre]

So if the issue is focus fire (and we make the assumption it is undesirable - skipping counter arguments on that issue), what are potential fixes.

Well, there are really a few mechanisms at play.

#1: Damaging a unit creates a penalty for that unit disproportionate to the efforts to kill that unit instead.
#2: Damaging an already damaged unit in the same turn is penalized
#3: Overkill
#4: Railroad the player's decisions via terrain, encounter design etc.

I think #1 has been already suggested. My 2c would be that it is a bit of a hassle to track.

#2: This already has some precedence. Units which 'survive beyond death' (i.e. via healing) can be a counter to focus fire. If taking down a unit only for it to be back on 100% effectiveness because of a Healing Word etc kind of negates FF to an extend. Another similar mechanic is that there is an ability which disadvantages a second attacker in some way (i.e. the second attacker either has a lower chance to hit or damage reduction etc). This could be fun for a few niche monsters but as a general mechanic but otherwise stinks as it is almost like 'anti-flanking' which is pretty silly.

#3: This is a very simple, cute way of dealing with it. Monsters do not fall down until their own turn. So, if you have five people FF one unit, it won't 'die' until the monster's turn which means that a lot of those attacks will go to waste as the archer peppers the already dead orc with arrows. From a storytelling perspective this isn't that bad, because 6 seconds isn't a huge amount of time and you can imagine in many cases a monster might be 'dying or staggered' only to keep fighting or collapse to the ground. This will dramatically change the player's psychology when it comes to damaging enemies. This is especially risky for multi-attack characters when surrounded by weak foes as judging whether to 'move on' or whether to 'get the kill' is the higher priority.

#4: Already mentioned. There are a few ways you can do this legitimately such as limit avenues for attack against some monsters (narrow corridors) or have multi-objective encounters where players are effectively split up and deal with different challenges. Varied vulnerabilities/resistances is also a pretty soft way of splitting attacks.

There's also (as has been suggested)
#5 Units that haven't been attacked gain a bonus.

This is the flip-side to #2--instead of penalizing the attack, it makes focusing more dangerous.

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That said, I prefer #4 (minus the term "railroading", because that's so deeply poisoned at this point) when possible. There are already tons of incentives not to as long as you're not playing on a featureless plain with everyone present at first and no "surprises" or alternate objectives. I've found that even including more enemies in the fight who are willing to go after the back-line means that people tend to spread out a bit more just to keep them at bay.

#3 is an interesting idea. I might say that the creature gains the incapacitated condition (so they can't act or move) but that's not stated as such. So they still don't take any actions, but the players are uncertain whether their dead or not.

[Goobahfish]

There's also (as has been suggested)
#5 Units that haven't been attacked gain a bonus.

This is the flip-side to #2--instead of penalizing the attack, it makes focusing more dangerous.

Yeah, this is kind of like a defacto #1 as well (i.e. remove the bonus).

minus the term "railroading"

Haha, yes perhaps a bit blunt in wording. It's more like... rail-switching :).
It is indeed the 'better DM' solution to the problem. Make the scenarios interesting.

As for #3. I would certainly deny the monsters reactions and so forth if their HP = zero and if they died to crits etc then yeah they are definitely and obviously dead, but otherwise the just 'look alive'. Incapacitated is probably a pretty good term for it, though one you keep hidden from the players :)

[Easy e]

As for #3. I would certainly deny the monsters reactions and so forth if their HP = zero and if they died to crits etc then yeah they are definitely and obviously dead, but otherwise the just 'look alive'. Incapacitated is probably a pretty good term for it, though one you keep hidden from the players :)

I use the generic term Unconscious and possible dead a lot...... :) Not this exact situation, but you get the idea.