Mike, Chris, and Oren discuss extended conflict rules in roleplaying games. They describe the differences between simulated combat systems and mini games, before they’re drawn into a debate about their weaknesses and strengths. Finally, they cover what encounter mechanics in general can add to a game, versus what risks they pose.
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Focus fire is something that is not hard to counter or discourage in my experience. To stop it if it is not something you want to is to make sure that ignoring other enemies for even couple of rounds would be a serious mistake. Then sure you can focus fire on the orc chieftain and take him out, but ignoring the orc warriors for the round or two it takes means they would be taking unanswered attacks… which could actually cost them the encounter, possibly fatally. Ignoring the drow bodyguards for the rounds of focus fire to kill the drow matron is probably going to get one of your party killed.
In several games I have regularly had my character playing “maul the minion” to keep them off another PC or pair of PCS. I have even built a couple of M&M characters who that was really their role… they didn’t have the damage to seriously hurt the Big Bad, but they could occupy a squad of minions.
That’s certainly a good dynamic if you can make it work. My problem with D&D type systems has always come down to math.
Example: I have two orc opponents with 20hp. My ally and I can both do 10 damage. Doing 10 damage to both orcs does us little good, as there are no wound penalties or anything else to decrease their combat effectiveness. If we do 20 damage to one orc, then it’s out of the fight and we’ll take less damage in response.
What if we add a housrule that any NPC that hasn’t taken any damage since the beginning of its last turn gets +5 on attack rolls and damage? That way, attacking multiple opponents is better mathematically speaking
that would introduce a mechanical incentive to spread your damage out for sure. However, you’d run into two problems:
1, it’ll be difficult to justify in universe why these NPCs are getting stronger. Not impossible, but it’s fairly counter-intuitive.
2, its another factor to keep track of when D&D combat is already a big mental load.
1. You could buff every NPC with +5 as a default, then say they took a penalty when they’re hit because they’re distracted/hurt
2. fair point
Just listening to this debate. What do you guys think about Mouse Guard if you just hack it and give defend a bonus against attack (such as attackers cannot attack if defended against, or bonus dice)?
Oh wait you house ruled it, sorry.
Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly how I fix the Mouse Guard combat system.
Just another thought: How about something like wound penalties to rolls in D&D, disadvantage from 5e when they are almost dead, or losing limbs but not hit points?
In general I support wound penalties, like what Legend of the Five Rings has. I’ve found them difficult to houserule onto a system though, on account of it being hard to get the values right. A system like D&D is balanced around the idea that a PC can keep fighting right up until the end, and it can mess things up if you start handing out penalties.
That said, if you can make it work numerically, than all the power to you.
Pathfinder SRD had optional wound thresholds.