Group vs. group fights in television shows, movies, etc...

Group vs. group fights in television shows, movies, etc. almost always have the heroes split up and deal with their own enemies/enemies. This is because it is easier to choreograph, and it looks better on the screen.

However, I have never, ever encountered an RPG with group vs. group combat wherein the best tactic was not to focus fire on one enemy at a time.

A rare few RPGs, like Mythender, get around this by having the group of PCs always face a single abstracted "enemy unit" regardless of whether that unit is a single powerful foe or a horde of mooks. That is not quite the same as group vs. group combat, however.

Are there any RPGs with group vs. group combat that reward spreading out attacks across multiple enemies, instead of focusing fire?

The Riddle of Steel does a good job of this.
Not because it doesn't reward focusing attacks, but because focused attacks are so extremely deadly that not splitting up is basically a sure-fire way to have PC fatalities.

That still means that focusing fire is the optimal combat tactic.

Either way, the Riddle of Steel has a virtually unplayable group vs. group combat system. It was built for one-on-one duels and only one-on-one duels. Trying to resolve the rules for splitting up opponents in a group vs. group battle is totally nightmarish.

I am trying to tackle this problem with a home brew I am working on. I want combat to feel more cinematic like you mentioned. Doing away with initiative and having arbitrary turn orders might help. Taking things in an a,b,a,b order might reduce dog piles.

Honestly though, part of the problem is players fight like villains. They will do whatever it takes to win and want to crush their enemies in the most opportunistic way they can come up with. That's a hard mentality to counter with rules.

>That still means that focusing fire is the optimal combat tactic.
Most sane enemies won't go for "half of us and all of them die".

>sane
I don't know about your players, but that isn't a word I would use to describe anyone I've played with in the last decade.

Better than 50/50 you and them dying.

No, see, you don't fucking fight if you have a choice and think you're going to lose. And knowing that people will fuck your shit up if you have them cornered on an equal footing, you don't fucking fight unless you've got a clear advantage. And you don't fucking fight at ALL if you can strongarm the other guy.
TRoS isn't Murderers&Hoboes.

>you don't fucking fight unless you've got a clear advantage
Like focusing fire.

Is not a fucking advantage since both sides can do that, retard.

Focusing fire still the best.

It's an advantage the moment you have exactly one more person than the enemy, or range on them.

You don't understand how TRoS works.

Defense is active in that system, and attacks and defense are done with dice drawn from the same pool that refreshes between rounds, which is made up of two attack/defense exchanges.

If a group of PCs focus fire on one enemy if a group of enemies, they will kill that one enemy, then all immediately die to the rest of the enemy group who don't have to worry about allocating any of their dice to defense.

>If a group of PCs focus fire on one enemy if a group of enemies, they will kill that one enemy
They won't have to spend that many dice to do it so they can save the rest for defense.

That just makes it easier for the target to defend, the PCs will gain no ground at all against him while his allies pound on them, and the enemy still has a better chance of hurting the PC group in this scenario because their dice are wholly focused on attack while the PCs still have to split their dice.

The only ways for the PCs to not die in this scenario is to spread out their focus, vastly outnumber the enemy, or have a huge proficiency advantage. It's a very situational tactic that in this system is fucking suicide outside specific conditions.

Also note that terrain tolls are a thing in TRoS, it has mechanics for forcing a group to not be able to attack you all at once.

all you need is to give enemies a significant attack buff that goes away when they have an attack directed at them.

Well, it depends. In most campaigns run by my group of friends, it's better to spread your attacks out than focus-fire, because if you do focus fire, we will have the enemy do the same thing back.

Since focus-firing enemies means that half the PCs will have to sit out on half the fight, and since we all pretty much play by movie logic anyway, that's how it usually turns out.

But as for systems, no, I don't know anything like that.

Uh, no, the PCs aren't better off getting into individual duels because then it's just 50/50.

You shouldn't insist a game you don't know works a certain way. It makes you look very, very stupid.

>Either way, the Riddle of Steel has a virtually unplayable group vs. group combat system. It was built for one-on-one duels and only one-on-one duels. Trying to resolve the rules for splitting up opponents in a group vs. group battle is totally nightmarish.

Like I said, don't try to make assertations about a game you don't know.

It's true though.

Everyone in a group jumping on one enemy leaves all the other enemies free to jump onto one of the group.

I play first edition dungeons and dragons and the star wars rpg by Fantasy Flight.

Whenever I try to get my players in either of these games to fight their own enemies instead of focusing their attacks on one enemy, I make sure to tell each player when an enemy is specifically engaging them in a fight. If a PC chooses to attack an enemy other than one that is engaging them, then the one that is engaging them will get a bonus of some kind when it comes time for them to attack. Thematically, it is like the PC is letting their guard down. This encourages the players to fight their own enemies, but it does limit their options at all.

I think games with damage tracks instead of HP have the best chance of encouraging this, since damage also applies a debuff/condition.

So instead of debuffing 1 guy to -3, debuffing 3 guys to -2 (assuming AoE attacks total damage is more than single target) would be a good strategy.

So basically harsh flanking and attack of opportunity rules?

Optimal? Who cares.

Then again, I guess I'm lucky. I play with groups where, if it seems appropriate for everyone to split off into duels, they'll all happily agree to it. It helps that the system we play with is arguably at its best with duels.

It might not be the most efficient way for them to engage, but it's the most enjoyable and it's thematically appropriate for the setting, so we just go with it anyway.

This. Focus fire is a two way tactic, and the imstant a PC complains about it being used on them i give a warning of what goes arround comes around. If you cant step away from you super optimal tactics in place of dynamic fights and fun, you can step away from the table.

But that doesn't change focus firing from being the way to go.

If focus fire suddenly becomes unfun on recieving end and thus "unusable" at the table, yes, yes it does stop from being the best.

But wouldn't it be better to find a way to stop focusing fire being a dominant tactic?

There are already reasons why focus firing may not always be a dominant tactic, namely when you're focusing your attack on one dude while everyone else is busy hammering away at you since you clumped together into one unit to beat up one target.

If you DON'T focus fire, what's stopping the other guys from focusing fire?

The fact that they're focusing their attention on one guy while leaving themselves open to the same strategy being employed against you.

I know that if I was fighting in a world where chain lightning, fireball, sleep, web, and other AoE shit existed, I wouldn't want to stand to close to my comrades just because it'd make ourselves a more alluring target for the enemy caster.

To use an example applicable to any number of D&D editions or D&D-alikes, be the game 3.X, Pathfinder, 4e, 5e, 13th Age, Strike!, or what-have-you, here are what some typical examples of focusing fire looks like:

• Two melee characters gang up on a single enemy, and then two ranged characters fire away at that enemy.
• One ranged buffer buffs the party. A ranged character fires at the enemy, and two melee characters engage the enemy.
• One ranged buffer buffs the party, and a ranged debuffer debuffs the enemy. Two melee characters engage the enemy.

If you are playing Fate, you do not want to spread out your attacks either. You want to lay down those free invocations and chip away at the stress track of a single enemy to send them into a death spiral.

A PbtA game? I would not know of any PbtA games wherein focusing fire does not work.

An nWoD/CofD game? Wound penalties still means an enemy is up and active; you want to put them down and take them out of the action.

A Cypher system game? You really should be focusing fire; there is no incentive at all to spread out attacks.

One of those Japanese SRS games like Kamigakari or whatnot? All the same: focus fire to take enemies out of the fight.

It is not as though focusing fire leaves the party suddenly more vulnerable.

Why do you have to stand close together to focus fire? A firing team can be spaced apart quite far and still be effective. Just two or three yards between shootists really tones down the effectiveness of spraying/suppressive fire and grenades, although of course you still need to worry about fragmentation.

That's how the Romans and Vikings fought though. You, and two or three other people would all attack the same person and they'd die. Then you'd move onto someone else. It's a cunty way to fight, but the most sensible way of doing it.

If one enemy is obviously being gang up on and they're relatively the same level, they can always just do something like going full defense (D&D), Dodge (nWoD) or whatever so that even if they're being fucked by the action economy, they're still at least draining the enemy's resources while their buddies can make potshots at you.

It's actually how a group of mine won against an adult dragon, he focused most of his attacks against one dude while he was busy trying to hack through his high AC/HP, we just kept attacking and debuffing him until he could no longer continue battling.

>Why do you have to stand close together to focus fire?
Admittedly, that was on the assumption that you and your buddies were attacking in melee together.

Picking targets is important when focusing fire. If you observe that one target is throwing up heavy defenses, perhaps you should switch targets and focus fire on them instead. And if *that* new target is just as well-off defensively, you might as well commit to that target, since you are not much worse-off.

>he focused most of his attacks against one dude while he was busy trying to hack through his high AC/HP
The dragon should have picked a better target. And even then, focusing attacks on a still target can reduce the enemies' action economy more aptly in your favor; it sure beats attempting to feebly spread out attacks across a whole party.

Sounds cinematic rules, only applying when he gives the heads up.

>Picking targets is important when focusing fire. If you observe that one target is throwing up heavy defenses, perhaps you should switch targets and focus fire on them instead.
That only works if the target's companions are standing around gawking instead of jumping behind the closest piece of cover that they can find.
>And even then, focusing attacks on a still target can reduce the enemies' action economy more aptly in your favor; it sure beats attempting to feebly spread out attacks across a whole party.
But one of the most effective means of winning encounters is having the mage cast something like web or black tentacles or entangle on the field and disabling the enemy group and/or rendering a piece of the environment impassable without taking a penalty of some sort. If you can afford to spread yourself out a bit, there's no reason why you shouldn't.

>That only works if the target's companions are standing around gawking instead of jumping behind the closest piece of cover that they can find.

Generally, some sort of meaningful mechanic to defend allies is necessary to prevent focusing-fire. Something like 4e or Strike!'s marking mechanics can go a long way towards this, and it is why defender PCs and defender monsters can mold the flow of a battle: they can break up focused fire.

>one of the most effective means of winning encounters is having the mage cast something like web or black tentacles or entangle on the field and disabling the enemy group
This only really applies in D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, and possibly 5e with certain spells. Even then, there will inevitably be people who escape the save-or-lose, and it is best to focus fire on them.

>Generally, some sort of meaningful mechanic to defend allies is necessary to prevent focusing-fire.
True, it's just a shame that most tabletop games lack anything meanin
>Even then, there will inevitably be people who escape the save-or-lose, and it is best to focus fire on them.
At the same time though, even if one dude out of group of six succeeded on their SoL check, that's still five less bodies to worry about for the rest of combat so they might as well not have any HP for the purposes of making meaningful actions while the effect is up. Hell, even if you only take out one dude out of six people, it's the same principle.

"I cast a spell and then like most of the fight is gone" is totally just a 3.X/PF thing.

Not necessarily, an AoE that renders an area impassable is not a 3.PF only thing, even older editions of D&D had these spells and they were just as useful then as they are now.

Hell, even ShadowRun has shit like mass agony to fuck with a group of people in order to take them out of the fight.

Eh, 5e has Hypnotic Pattern, and editions before 3e were like "I cast sleep/fireball/etc and the fight is officially over, but I'm literally useless for anything else and die from getting looked at hard"

Not him but how is hypnotic pattern good again?

It won't be dominant if via houserule/unspoken agreement it isnt used by either side.

If the people you play with cannot for the life of them put that shit aside in an effort to make combat more dynamic, stop the "action economy arms race" with the GM, and overall allow combats to stop being a "eliminate variables until we force X situation and auto win like all the other times", you need a different group.

Yes, in ~99% of rpgs this is probably the best general tactic. No, its not ok to, by repeated use of this tactic, force the GM to either A) play by standards you set and start focus firing and haveing people constantly sit out on combat because "you got focused" or B) scale up what youre facing until you cant win be it HP bloat out the ass or stuff your party have 0 chance against.

Its no different that massive amounts of minmaxing. When you basically bring combat down to "who is highest on initiative"/who combos first, your not likely to keep that game going for long.

It's AoE, and you only get one save. And save DCs now scale by character level (while bad save DCs don't), so despite being only a lvl 3 spell, it keeps being amazing/getting better as you level without a higher slot.

>It won't be dominant if via houserule/unspoken agreement it isnt used by either side.

>it won't be dominant if you agree it's dominant and don't use it

why gee, why have I not thought of that?

Nukes are the best weapon for wiping out a large area, and arguably the most deadly/best weapons in history. Via geopolitical BS, they arn't used.

Not so dissimilar.

Focus firing is the best tactic.

If focus firing is available, your players will use it.

Set your fights up so focus firing is unavailable, or reduced in effectiveness to the point where it does not yield immediate results.

If you are in a fight, and you stand in an open field with your dick hanging out while multiple enemies are able to attack you without retribution, you die.

It's basically XCOM rules. You don't focus fire, because you can't, not because you don't want to.