Against Focus Fire in D&D

Hey, I know this Blog is about my one-day-to-be-finished game, Post Human, but today, I have thoughts about D&D:

Maybe the first time I DMed a game of D&D, I was playing with my friend Todd. We were 11. He was a first level fighter and ventured in a room full of kobolds, got some bad rolls, and kept getting stuck for 1 or 2 points of damage until his fighter died. I asked Todd why he hadn't run away, and he told me that he didn't know that he could. 

At some point, monsters in modern D&D became like my friend Todd: They forgot that they could run away, and, as a consequence, in every modern edition of D&D (see note 1 below), monsters fight to the death (unless the DM decides otherwise, of course), and thus focus fire--directing all available attacks against a single opponent until that opponent drops--is the optimal combat strategy (see note 2 below).

 It's a matter of the action economy mixed with the consequences of opponents that have bags of hit points: Take out an opponent, and your enemies have one less suite of attacks to use against you. This typically requires several attacks to accomplish because enemies have lots of hit points compared to the damage that PCs can do.

The problems with focus fire as the optimal strategy are several:

1. It's so optimal that doing anything else makes the rest of the players hate you. Try it in a game one time. The Ogre Warlord has taken 120 HP of damage from the rest of the party. The DM describes him as on his last legs. You, a fighter, engaged in combat with an Ogre Soldier, decide to continue fighting the soldier. Bonus points if you are the last to go for your side. Now the Warlord gets one more turn, and he blows his horn to summon reinforcements and run away. What is wrong with you that you would do that to your party? Just disengage from the soldier, take a hit if you have to, and charge that damned Warlord!

2. The monsters never do it. That is, the DM never does it to the PCs. Try it one time, and see how much they hate you for it. Then tell them it was a dream or something, because it is really mean. 

3. It is meta-gaming. players -- not PCs --  know about HP and how they work, so they focus fire. DMs typically play monsters as ignorant of how HP work,so they don't focus fire. Also, the DM has to keep a group together, and constantly murdering the spellcasters is not a good way to do that. 

4. It's boring. It's the same strategy over and over again. 

However, you can't just outlaw focus fire. Instead, you have to change the rules or lack of rules that led to focus fire in the first place. And you can't change the rules greatly, or the game changes. Finally, you can't make focus fire impossible or never an optimal strategy. It makes sense sometimes, but it shouldn't be easy or always the right play. I think the solutions below strike the right balance. 

Three Fixes for Focus Fire

1. Use Some Kind of Morale Rules -- There are many good morale rules in D&D and D&D adjacent systems. Here's mine for D&D 5E: If an opponent takes 25% damage or more HP damage from a single attacker in a single round, they must make a Charisma Saving Throw equal to 10+Attack Bonus of Attacker, or retreat/run away. They must make also make this save when their side is reduced to 75%, 50%, and 25% (if they are not engaged with someone at the moment, their save DC is 10). Some monsters just fight to the death, such as the mindless undead and golems, so watch out for those. Other events can also trigger morale checks, such as a clever illusion, overwhelming force, etc...

2. Penalties for Being Rude -- How rude it is to be in a fight to the death with someone in front of you and then break off in order to attack someone else. If you are engaged in combat with someone (or worse, with a group) -- face to face with them or within reach -- and you provoke an opportunity attack because you take away your attention from that opponent(s) in order to attack someone else -- that is, you move away to engage another opponent OR you aim a ranged attack at someone besides the opponent right in front of you -- that opportunity attack is made at advantage. Of course, using the Disengage action is the polite way to handle this since you avoid these penalties.  

3. Fog of War -- You must make a Perception roll (DC = Distance in Feet from Opponent) to determine how wounded a particular opponent is unless you are engaged with that particular opponent. This roll is an action. You can shout out how your opponent is doing, but hearing your pal's update on the health of their opponent also requires a Perception roll (DC = Distance in Feet from Ally / 2). Both shouting out this information and hearing it are free actions. 

Notes

1. D&D 5E mentions "morale" in the DM's Workshop section of the DMG, which is where they put optional rules. It is not mentioned in the PHB. I looked up the d20 SRD, based on D&D 3E, and found no mention of morale in the sense I am discussing. D&D 4E was difficult for me to research, and if it has morale in it, good! 

2. Focus fire is often the optimal strategy even with morale rules, but it gets more complicated, and that's a good thing.