Solution to wolfpack tactics aka Ganking?

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

I hope we're all familiar with the standard tactic in D&D of all the player characters attacking the same monster until its dead and then moving on to the next enemy.

While this is not a stupid tactic (just the opposite), it can create an environment where going first is king and determines who wins the fight.

For example, say we have 4 combatants on 2 sides of a fight, each person does 1 damage, and has 4 hp.

If Side 1 goes first, each person attacks Player A on Side 2, killing Player A. Now, Side 2 has only 3 characters and even if all their attacks succeed, they cannot hope to get rid of a character on Side 1. Side 1 then focuses all of its attacks again and gets rid of another of Side 2s characters.

So to answer this dilemma, I want you all's input on a few questions

1. Is this a problem? Or would game design decisions such as positioning and range, and lack of stunlock powers, mitigate this tactic such that one shouldn't be concerned about it?

2. If it is a problem, then what's the best solution to deal with it?
a. nWOD puts an arbitrary limit of 4 attacks that a character can be targeted by. Any attacks after that point automatically fail
b. I could see a system which implemented cumulative attack penalties for every attack after the first attack that a character receives.

What do you all think?

[Murtak]

Both a limit of attacks and cumulative attack penalties can lead to retarded situations where you are safer off with extra people shooting at you.

If you do not want people to gang up on a single enemies you don't want to penalize them for doing so. Instead encourage them to go after more opponents. Unengaged opponents doing more damage, getting more actions or the likes should work much better.

You still have the option of ganging up if you really want to see a specific character dead, while gaining the additional option of spreading attacks if your goal is instead to win the fight.

[Thymos]

The reason this is a problem is that it's far too easy to attack one guy. It's trivial to move next to the guy if your a fighter, and besides that the strongest classes in the games all have strong ranged attacks.

If I were to try to fix something, that would be it.

[Caedrus]

Plenty of ways you can do this.

Here's one less artificial, less "forced" route:
-Tanks make it difficult NOT to engage them, interposing themselves between allies and threats and getting in people's faces. If they get hoarded at close range, they have ready access to small area AoOs. If ignored, they can lock people down.

-Rogues and similar skirmishers fade away into the shadows after attacks, tumble about, debuff and cripple people, or misdirect enemy attacks into each other like a swashbuckler, etc. Also, if ignored at critical moments (which require setups), they can dish out a lot of hurt with things like Full Sneak Attack.

-Casters cast more powerful spells with long casting times if left unengaged, because no one's bothering to interrupt them.

So: Skirmishers are harder to pin down and can possibly turn group tactics against their foes, and need to be kept from doing things like Full Sneak Attack. Tanks can pull enemies off of allies, and if hoarded have ready access to defensive and small AoO offensive actions. Casters are much more dangerous when not engaged. This setup can serve to spread the attacks around.

[Orion]

Gaijin Activities' solution is that 3 people don't kill a target any faster than one. Having more is still an advantage, cause you can use maneuvers to hamper the enemy's offense, but it's better to work on killing a different enemy if there are multiple.

[shau]

You could do something like combat expertise. Let's say for example people are allowed to add a large number to their defense but get an even larger number subtracted from their offense next round. That would be a pretty bad deal normally, but it would be a great deal if you in a position in which you had five guys stomping on you.

[Roy]

You could do something like combat expertise. Let's say for example people are allowed to add a large number to their defense but get an even larger number subtracted from their offense next round. That would be a pretty bad deal normally, but it would be a great deal if you in a position in which you had five guys stomping on you.

Except that the Turtle Fail doesn't kick in until your turn, when you are already dead.

[Anguirus]

Plenty of ways you can do this.

Here's one less "forced" route:
-Tanks make it difficult NOT to engage them, interposing themselves between allies and threats and getting in people's faces. If they get hoarded at close range, they have ready access to small area AoOs. If ignored, they can lock people down.

-Rogues and similar skirmishers fade away into the shadows after attacks, tumble about, debuff and cripple people, or misdirect enemy attacks into each other like a swashbuckler, etc. Also, if ignored at critical moments (which require setups), they can dish out a lot of hurt.

-Casters cast more powerful spells with long casting times if left unengaged.

So: Skirmishers are harder to pin down and can possibly turn group tactics against their foes, and need to be kept from doing things like Full Sneak Attack. Tanks can pull enemies off of allies, and if hoarded have ready access to defensive and small AoO offensive actions. Casters are much more dangerous when not engaged. This setup can serve to spread the attacks around.

Everyone is more effective un-engaged (or less effective when engaged) seems to be the basic gist of your solution. I like it except that the effectiveness of an army of chumps just went way up. On second thought, that's probably a good thing because in a lot of systems the army of chumps is not nearly good enough.

[Orion]

Anquirus -- to the extent that this is undesirable,there are easy ways to limit the dangerousness of the chumps. One would be to make the advantage of being unengaged be specific abilities that exploit it, which chumps just don't have--another would be to make it a level-based bonus.

Or, give heroic characters abilities which allow them to engage whole crowds at once.

[Anguirus]

I actually like that it would make swarms more effective. Right now you don't ever really get overwhelmed by large numbers, you pretty much just slaughter everyone. You shouldn't be able to fight thousands of anything at the same time and right now in 3.x D&D you defiantly can.

[MartinHarper]

While this is not a stupid tactic (just the opposite), it can create an environment where going first is king and determines who wins the fight.

In your example, the team that goes first will also win the fight if everyone pairs up and exchanges blows.

[shau]

Except that the Turtle Fail doesn't kick in until your turn, when you are already dead.

I was thinking it should be like an immediate interrupt to prevent that. It would also have to raise saves and do something to actually stop a wizard's offense.

[Josh_Kablack]

I'm gonna answer before I read anyone else's input - forgive me if this ends up being redundant.

1. Is this a problem? Or would game design decisions such as positioning and range, and lack of stunlock powers, mitigate this tactic such that one shouldn't be concerned about it?

Maybe.

It really boils down to what style of game a given group prefers.

Or in the larger scope, it boils down to whether such tactics are appropriate to the genre and setting of the game *system*.

Given that you are asking, though I'm going to assume that it is a problem for your games and go on to give some suggestions for:

2. If it is a problem, then what's the best solution to deal with it?

The *best* I dunno, but some possibilities include

• Cumulative dogpile reactive defenses:In this kind of setup each time Edward the evil henchmen gets hit, he gets a free "counterattack". Furthermore each additional time he gets hit within "one round", he gets a bonus to those counterattacks. You could replace "counterattack" with "defensive bonus", "regeneration", or any other power up and you could replace "one round" with any arbitrary time period and it would have the same effect. The bad news is that it adds a lot of confusion and real potential for bag-of-rats abuses
• Unengaged bonuses / Engaged Penalties:In this kind of setup characters get an offensive bonus if an enemy isn't targeting them or suffer an offensive penalty if one is. Thus leaving targets unengaged is risky. The downside is that this setup massively favors ambushes and stealthy/sniper types.
• Down among the dancing quanta, everything exists at once:Turn order is only an arbitrary construct to make the game comprehensible - it's a simulation of simultaneous events, so you do not count wounds or casualties until the end of each round. Loosely, this is how Axis and Allies works. Going first still gives you a positioning advantage, and there's still some advantage to dogpiling, but the delay in it completely resolves your 4 on 4 example fight. This only adds a small amount of extra bookkeeping and a slight strain on credulity
• There is no damage, there is only Zuul.In this setup, attacks do not do damage immediately, instead they put the enemy into a state of Zuul. If a character is Zuul on their turn, they take damage and maybe stop being Zuul. Zuul is binary, you either are or aren't (much like the answer to when someone asks if you're a god) Thus the best tactic is to get as many different enemies Zuuling away as possible - by spreading your attacks around, but since enemies may unZuul, you can't just ignore enemies you have previously Zuuled. This would be a bit complicated to implement, but is probably workable. (basically everything is 4e continuing damage in this setup)
• Desperation super moves:In this setup, when one side is losing bad enough, they get access to special super moves that more than equalize things. This is fairly easy to implement within fantasy games, but tends to strain credulity in tabletop, as combat/non combat time are not absolutely distinct and creative players can find ways to trigger such super moves without meeting the intended "must be losing badly" condition.
• Number of actions not equal to number of characters:This is probably the most elegant tactical solution, as it is very simple and it has worked fine in over a century's worth of wargames from Little Wars to Heroscape. However it's a tatical wargame solution that does not mesh very well with the 1-player::1-character assumptions of Role Playing Game, it would take some serious effort to integrate into the group dynamics of a game.

[Bigode]

[*]Down among the dancing quanta, everything exists at once:Turn order is only an arbitrary construct to make the game comprehensible - it's a simulation of simultaneous events, so you do not count wounds or casualties until the end of each round. Loosely, this is how Axis and Allies works. Going first still gives you a positioning advantage, and there's still some advantage to dogpiling, but the delay in it completely resolves your 4 on 4 example fight. This only adds a small amount of extra bookkeeping and a slight strain on credulity

Doesn't really solve it - only delays it making difference by 1 round.

[*]Desperation super moves:In this setup, when one side is losing bad enough, they get access to special super moves that more than equalize things. This is fairly easy to implement within fantasy games, but tends to strain credulity in tabletop, as combat/non combat time are not absolutely distinct and creative players can find ways to trigger such super moves without meeting the intended "must be losing badly" condition.

Key said moves to whoever dealt the defeat in question.

[IGTN]

An idea I was toying with. I haven't tried to do the math for it yet, especially to make it simple:

Everyone has Mobility and Coordination scores, which change as a result of abilities used on them in melee. You compare your Mobility against your opponents' Mobility + Coordination, and that sets the maximum number of attacks against you, minimum one. Mobility is weakened by people putting status attacks on you, terrain, and so on; Coordination might also be weakened by terrain (A narrow hallway imposes a penalty to Mobility, and also eliminates the possibility of flanking).

Maybe also impose size penalties, maybe big things just have low mobility. Also, attacking while unengaged might give a Mobility bonus, or, alternately, while engaged people usually use stuff on you so that you just have a lower-than-default Mobility as a feature of the system.

Coordination also depends on who's focusing fire; everyone in a focus fire group probably has the same Coordination.

It might produce an output like:
One enemy with Mobility + Coord less than your Mobility can attack you
One more enemy with Mobility + Coord less than your Mobility + 3 can attack you
One more enemy with Mobility + Coord less than your Mobility + 6 can attack you
and so on in increments of three. Maybe Coordination also provides other bonuses.

When a group attacks, everyone rolls to hit, even those in excess of the available number of attacks. Those that hit roll damage, and the highest damage gets assigned into attacker slots (probably using either simultaneous resolution or Zuul), maybe also with a bonus for those hits that couldn't press through the crowd (although less than you could normally get by attacking on your own).

Maybe also apply the best status effect of all hits, even those that couldn't press through, maybe only certain kinds of status effects, like Mobility penalties (just because you can't press through the crowd to hit doesn't mean that you can't move behind your enemy).

Certain moves also work off your Mobility or Coordination instead of anything else, so a gang of cutthroats would be circling and fighting like a wolf pack from all directions at once, while a squad of soldiers might be shielding eachother as they advance on you. Setting up a shield wall might let you add Coordination to your defense for this, or use it in place of Mobility; regardless, it should give a bonus to Coordination, until the wall gets broken.

For ranged combat, just make most ranged attacks highly inferior to melee (skirmish and harassment weapons, not killers), or use Zuul for them. Magic can have its own Zuul mechanic, where each person can only recieve a limited number of offensive spells per round (like, say, one), or it could have an alternate mechanic where you have to Gaijin Activities-style build up CAN against their magic resistance.

[Josh_Kablack]

Doesn't really solve it - only delays it making difference by 1 round.

It's nowhere near a total solution, but the delay effectively reduces granularity enough to mitigate the most obvious cases.

If Side 1 goes first, each person attacks Player A on Side 2, killing Player A. Now, Side 2 has only 3 characters and even if all their attacks succeed, they cannot hope to get rid of a character on Side 1. Side 1 then focuses all of its attacks again and gets rid of another of Side 2s characters.

Side 1 goes first, each person attacks Player A on Side 2, killing Player A. But as he's going down, 2A still gets an attack, so everybody on Side 2 attacks Player A on Side 1. Now both 1A and 2A are down

And the second round is a 3 on 3 instead of the 3 on 4 it would have been before.

Side 1 deals 3 to 2B; Side 2 deals 3 to 1B
nobody goes down.

Third Round:
Side 1 deals 1 to 2B and 2 to 2C; Side 2 deals 1 to 1B and 2 to 1C
2B and 1B fall

etc, etc with the end result being that a fair fight results in mutual annihiliation at the end of Round Eight

In the original setup, Side 1 has 2 unhurt members left when they finish wiping out Side 2 in the top of Round Five.

[Bigode]

Doesn't really solve it - only delays it making difference by 1 round.

It's nowhere near a total solution, but the delay effectively reduces granularity enough to mitigate the most obvious cases.

Actually, I take it back: it does wholly solve the single problem presented (initiative being key to asymmetric numbers), despite not solving the other problems (IMO) with focused fire dominating.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

I think the "Only 2 people can attack an =size monster (and flank, usually), more than that must assist. Only 1 person may attack a monster 2 sizes smaller than themselves. More than this number may assist, provided they are in a square near to the combatant" rule of thumb. Apply this rule to Melee/Ranger mixes as well. However, I don't like that it stops 9 archers from shooting the same guy.

[Judging__Eagle]

Number of actions not equal to number of characters:This is probably the most elegant tactical solution, as it is very simple and it has worked fine in over a century's worth of wargames from Little Wars to Heroscape. However it's a tatical wargame solution that does not mesh very well with the 1-player::1-character assumptions of Role Playing Game, it would take some serious effort to integrate into the group dynamics of a game.

So, characters having more than one round? I've done that before with single monsters and large groups. It turned out okay, it was a bit of an off-the-cuff thing, but basically I had a yuan-ti abomination casting some spells, then moving, and then attacking, all in the same round.

[Murtak]

I think the "Only 2 people can attack an =size monster (and flank, usually), more than that must assist. Only 1 person may attack a monster 2 sizes smaller than themselves. More than this number may assist, provided they are in a square near to the combatant" rule of thumb. Apply this rule to Melee/Ranger mixes as well. However, I don't like that it stops 9 archers from shooting the same guy.

It also means that quite often you will be safer with more people attacking you, provided some of those extra people are of lower level.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Gaijin Activities' solution is that 3 people don't kill a target any faster than one. Having more is still an advantage, cause you can use maneuvers to hamper the enemy's offense, but it's better to work on killing a different enemy if there are multiple.

Boolean or someone else, could you point this mechanic out to me from Gaijin Activities? It looks interesting.

[IGTN]

If I remember right, it works like this:
Your enemy has a shield value
Your enemies have a CAN against that opponent that you don't really share with anyone else
Killing moves can only be done with CAN > Shield value

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Okay, I didn't know Gaijin was using the CAN system. So in that system, the mooks are better off trying to fight the hero off one at a time, so that they don't suffer area attacks (kinda like Kill Bill and most Martial Arts Movies?)

[IGTN]

I think it also has attacks that work regardless of CAN, that do things like disrupt your ability to ready attacks, and so on, so three against one does have that defensive advantage.

If I remember right, most mooks don't have shields; you can use your lethal strikes straightway on them, which might change the dynamic (you want to press with a crowd, since maybe you won't die. Alternately, a bunch of mooks going in two at a time has a single CAN score against each target). Lesser shielded enemies would want to fight a few at a time, to avoid multiple-target disruptions/positionings.

[zeruslord]

IRC, the GA combat is specifically based off Dune. Some attacks weaken shields, some just get you into a better position for your attack. In a boss fight, most of the characters were supposed to defend themselves and the main attacker, while one person actually tries to get his CAN boosted and take down the boss.