Have you not seen groups where one person is melee-centric, and EVERYONE else plays a ranged character who tries to stay 65 feet behind the melee character?
Sure. It generally winds up with a bunch of melee monsters that are faster than the melee character bypassing the melee character and eating the back line, because that tactic just doesn't work on most maps (and if it is a map where that works, the monsters will just pull back to somewhere else, because forcing through a choke is terrible).
Wait wait wait, pantagruel, are you saying that the way you usually play, the party is running from the monsters and trying to kite them with ranged attacks as they go? Because that's a super effective strategy most of the time, but most people don't actually play that way they like to stay in the room and have melee builds in the party.
one could just as easily flip it to "make an insight check to determine if you believe the lie" vs "now that you know the NPC was this persuasive, describe your reaction to that plea."
Uhh, only if you're trying to be a dick as a DM
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You were the one to suggest that players have "legitimate beef" if the DM ignores their character dodging because that is "bad DMing", which implies that the DM should never do that, thus that enemies should never ignore the dodging character. I honestly don't really know what we are arguing about anymore since we seem to all be in agreement on the basic points:
Enemies should have personalities & motivations.
Players can use improvised actions as an action or speech / item interactions for free during their turn.
Players can use RP via #2 to influence the actions of the enemies by exploiting their personalities / motivations, based on the DM's interpretation of the situation.
I guess our disagreement is purely whether influencing the actions of the enemies is ever a valuable thing to do?
No, it's about the feasibility of influencing the actions of the enemies by enough to make dodging worthwhile. The threshold for dodge being net valuable is somewhat situational, but on average for a party of 4 you need the expected portion of enemy attacks targeted at the dodging character to be around 50% for dodge to be net valuable (note that expectation includes chance -- so if your method has a 50% chance to work you need 100% of attacks targeting the PC, if it has less than 50% it will never pay off), and there's next to no chance that dodge and taunt will reach that 50% reliability threshold.
Wait wait wait, pantagruel, are you saying that the way you usually play, the party is running from the monsters and trying to kite them with ranged attacks as they go?
Nope, I'm saying that "stay 65' behind the front line" generally doesn't work because the DM will set up encounters so everyone winds up in melee.
Wait wait wait, pantagruel, are you saying that the way you usually play, the party is running from the monsters and trying to kite them with ranged attacks as they go?
Nope, I'm saying that "stay 65' behind the front line" generally doesn't work because the DM will set up encounters so everyone winds up in melee.
Which is kinda weird since it would be far more logical for the enemies to focus fire & kill the party members one-by-one if they were actually acting in a smart strategic way.
Wait wait wait, pantagruel, are you saying that the way you usually play, the party is running from the monsters and trying to kite them with ranged attacks as they go?
Nope, I'm saying that "stay 65' behind the front line" generally doesn't work because the DM will set up encounters so everyone winds up in melee.
Which is kinda weird since it would be far more logical for the enemies to focus fire & kill the party members one-by-one if they were actually acting in a smart strategic way.
Sometimes, other times not so much. The situation dictates the tactics. A real life example is in naval combat, where it was considered a bad idea to leave an enemy ship unengaged, because those unengaged ships generally shoot better at their opponent. So, typical doctrine was to engage opposite numbers in the enemy line, and double up on the tail end charlies. Trying to get cute caused ships to go unengaged, much to Admiral Beatty's chagrin at the battle of Jutland for example.
Similarly if you can get at the squishies in the backfield you make them react defensively rather than offensively. Say you have three wizards in the back. You focus on one, the other two cast fireball. If you split it up, you may force them to use defensives such as Misty Step and prevent those two fireballs.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Which is kinda weird since it would be far more logical for the enemies to focus fire & kill the party members one-by-one if they were actually acting in a smart strategic way.
The optimal solution for the enemy (which, of course, they may be unable to achieve) is to let the melee guy go past, not engage him at all, and jump on the rear line. However, my point was more a metagame issue -- my experience is that DMs like to damage all of the PCs, even though 'focus fire and kill one target, then repeat' is usually better tactics, and a strategy of "the only melee guys are 65' ahead" will both annoy the DM and be a difficult-to-resist temptation to have a purple worm emerge from the ground and start swallowing the rearguard.
my experience is that DMs like to damage all of the PCs
I generally find that my DMs have pretty basic and easy to figure out "rules" for determining which monsters go after which PCs. Mindless ones tend to attack whatever's nearest, while ones with brains will have specific targets for Reasons (i.e. smarter undead might try to get to the cleric waving around the hated holy symbol)
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Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Wait wait wait, pantagruel, are you saying that the way you usually play, the party is running from the monsters and trying to kite them with ranged attacks as they go?
Nope, I'm saying that "stay 65' behind the front line" generally doesn't work because the DM will set up encounters so everyone winds up in melee.
Which is kinda weird since it would be far more logical for the enemies to focus fire & kill the party members one-by-one if they were actually acting in a smart strategic way.
Sometimes, other times not so much. The situation dictates the tactics. A real life example is in naval combat, where it was considered a bad idea to leave an enemy ship unengaged, because those unengaged ships generally shoot better at their opponent. So, typical doctrine was to engage opposite numbers in the enemy line, and double up on the tail end charlies. Trying to get cute caused ships to go unengaged, much to Admiral Beatty's chagrin at the battle of Jutland for example.
Similarly if you can get at the squishies in the backfield you make them react defensively rather than offensively. Say you have three wizards in the back. You focus on one, the other two cast fireball. If you split it up, you may force them to use defensives such as Misty Step and prevent those two fireballs.
Misty Step vs Fireball is nearly identical to Dodge vs Attack, why would a Wizard ever Misty Step when they could instead cast Fireball and kill the enemies? Misty Step only gets you 30 ft so the enemy can just Dash to get right back up in the wizard's face (if the map is large enough that the wizard could get even further away). Wizards aren't particularly squishy in 5e so they really don't care if enemies attack them or not since hardly any spells are affected by an enemy being adjacent to you. Any enemy 'with two brain-cells to rub together' would know they need to focus-fire to kill their opponents if they actually want to win because healing magic is so ubiquitous, the only slight exception to this would be to focus fire on the cleric or other healer prior to the other party members. As has been repeatedly argued here, defense is almost always totally useless especially if you have to sacrifice damage to do so.
There's really only one reason for enemies to split up, and that's to get into melee with an archer that is shooting at them with SS high damage attacks, but even then only if they don't have XbowXpert. Because ranged attack rolls are the only type of attack that is penalized by an enemy being within 5ft. But even then it's a pretty big risk because most archers have a lots of ways to get out of that situations without sacrificing DPR, so 99% of the time it is pointless, which as you know means it is a waste of time that the enemies shouldn't be doing.
DMs make their enemies be stupid and spread out their damage in order to keep the action economy on the player's side and to avoid the feel-bads for the player who's character gets targeted and then is unable to act for at least 1 round. In one of my games we ended up fighting against a true mastermind villain who used focus fire and targeted healers first and it's amazing how much harder combat is when the enemies do that compared to the "share the love" style.
DMs make their enemies be stupid and spread out their damage in order to keep the action economy on the player's side and to avoid the feel-bads for the player who's character gets targeted and then is unable to act for at least 1 round. In one of my games we ended up fighting against a true mastermind villain who used focus fire and targeted healers first and it's amazing how much harder combat is when the enemies do that compared to the "share the love" style.
There is no question that DMs will encourage tactics that they consider 'fun' (and that usually means beating on everyone rather than focus fire one PC), but that doesn't really help with dodge, because by far the most significant effect of dodge is to make fights take longer, and pretty much no-one wants that.
From the perspective of the monsters, the easy way to punish 'one PC goes ahead while everyone else follows behind' is to do something to prevent the back line from getting involved at all (typically by either dropping a barrier to separate the front line from the back, or by killing them from locations that are out of sight of the back rank), but that has definite 'fun' problems.
Wait wait wait, pantagruel, are you saying that the way you usually play, the party is running from the monsters and trying to kite them with ranged attacks as they go?
Nope, I'm saying that "stay 65' behind the front line" generally doesn't work because the DM will set up encounters so everyone winds up in melee.
Which is kinda weird since it would be far more logical for the enemies to focus fire & kill the party members one-by-one if they were actually acting in a smart strategic way.
Sometimes, other times not so much. The situation dictates the tactics. A real life example is in naval combat, where it was considered a bad idea to leave an enemy ship unengaged, because those unengaged ships generally shoot better at their opponent. So, typical doctrine was to engage opposite numbers in the enemy line, and double up on the tail end charlies. Trying to get cute caused ships to go unengaged, much to Admiral Beatty's chagrin at the battle of Jutland for example.
Similarly if you can get at the squishies in the backfield you make them react defensively rather than offensively. Say you have three wizards in the back. You focus on one, the other two cast fireball. If you split it up, you may force them to use defensives such as Misty Step and prevent those two fireballs.
Misty Step vs Fireball is nearly identical to Dodge vs Attack, why would a Wizard ever Misty Step when they could instead cast Fireball and kill the enemies? Misty Step only gets you 30 ft so the enemy can just Dash to get right back up in the wizard's face (if the map is large enough that the wizard could get even further away). Wizards aren't particularly squishy in 5e so they really don't care if enemies attack them or not since hardly any spells are affected by an enemy being adjacent to you. Any enemy 'with two brain-cells to rub together' would know they need to focus-fire to kill their opponents if they actually want to win because healing magic is so ubiquitous, the only slight exception to this would be to focus fire on the cleric or other healer prior to the other party members. As has been repeatedly argued here, defense is almost always totally useless especially if you have to sacrifice damage to do so.
There's really only one reason for enemies to split up, and that's to get into melee with an archer that is shooting at them with SS high damage attacks, but even then only if they don't have XbowXpert. Because ranged attack rolls are the only type of attack that is penalized by an enemy being within 5ft. But even then it's a pretty big risk because most archers have a lots of ways to get out of that situations without sacrificing DPR, so 99% of the time it is pointless, which as you know means it is a waste of time that the enemies shouldn't be doing.
DMs make their enemies be stupid and spread out their damage in order to keep the action economy on the player's side and to avoid the feel-bads for the player who's character gets targeted and then is unable to act for at least 1 round. In one of my games we ended up fighting against a true mastermind villain who used focus fire and targeted healers first and it's amazing how much harder combat is when the enemies do that compared to the "share the love" style.
Because wizards are squishier than tanks and can get 1 shot for their troubles.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Because wizards are squishier than tanks and can get 1 shot for their troubles.
Wizards have the same AC and only 25% less HP than tanks, any enemy that can 1-shot a wizard will 2-shot a tank easily. This is why enemies using focus fire is so effective, they will drop at least one member of the party every round even a "tank". If the wizard Misty Steps away, it will just encourage the enemy to ignore them and instead drop someone else by focus fire. Whereas if they instead Fireballed they could kill that enemy and prevent anyone taking the damage. It's the same situation as with Dodge vs Attack, if the tank Attacks and fails to kill the enemy they get downed next turn b/c the enemy can easily 2-shot them, whereas if they Dodge they will cut the enemy's DPR in half (especially if they have Sentinel - which every self respecting tank should have - to prevent them moving away) and likely remain standing for 1-2 additional rounds.
Because wizards are squishier than tanks and can get 1 shot for their troubles.
Wizards have the same AC and only 25% less HP than tanks
I am very, very curious where you pulled those numbers from, because they seem absurd. Even at first level, your wizard might get one or the other depending on whether your party's tank is a barbarian or a sword and board type, but not both
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
The math is pretty close to 25% (non barb division)
Wizard 14 Con, Level 1 8hp, level 5 32hp, level 9 56 hp Fighter 14 Con, Level 1 12hp, level 5 44 hp, Level 9 76 hp That is 67%, 73%, 74% and that is going to converge at 75%, so saying they have 25% less hp is pretty close.
Now, I would expect the tankier fighters who can dump dex and mental stats to crank up constitution to much higher levels and increase that gap. The only way the Wizard keeps up on AC without multiclassing is to crank dex or improve their armor situation. Those are feats not going to improve constitution. In my view wizards have to choose between high con and high dex as their second stat (and thus high AC or higher hp).
I am very, very curious where you pulled those numbers from, because they seem absurd. Even at first level, your wizard might get one or the other depending on whether your party's tank is a barbarian or a sword and board type, but not both
Probably assuming shield in that AC. Which may or may not be a reasonable assumption, depending what else is going on in the combat.
Because wizards are squishier than tanks and can get 1 shot for their troubles.
Wizards have the same AC and only 25% less HP than tanks
I am very, very curious where you pulled those numbers from, because they seem absurd. Even at first level, your wizard might get one or the other depending on whether your party's tank is a barbarian or a sword and board type, but not both
Wizard AC = 13 (Mage Armour) +2 Dex + 5 (Shield) = 20. The average combat lasts 3-4 rounds, which means a Wizard can have Shield up every round from level 3 onwards if they need it - plus because of the mechanics of Shield the wizard can generally choose to use it only when it actually makes a difference to the outcome meaning it's even more efficient and I've very rarely seen a Wizard run out of Shield slots. Wizard never needs to get Dex higher than 14 which is generally pretty easily do able with standard array or point buy - they have tons of other options to increase their defenses using spells if they need it - Blur, Mirror Image, Blink, Greater Invisibility are all way more effective for improving their survivability than upping their DEX. Unless they are a bladesinger but that's a whole different story.
Tank AC = 18-20. If your tank goes sword & board they will pick up Dueling as their FS otherwise their DPR is pathetic and enemies can safely ignore them. More likely though, they will go two-handed and probably take the Defense FS for AC 19. At 1st level it's probably 1-2 points lower than this since half-plate & full plate are rarely available prior to 5th level.
Wizard HP = d6 hit die + 2-3 CON. Wizards are pretty likely to pick up Resilient:CON for their concentration which will usually pluck them up to +3 CON, however when they choose to do so varies a lot between players. Getting a +2 DEX, +2 CON, +3 INT is pretty typical for a 1st level Wizard.
Tank HP = d10 hit die + 2-3 CON. This covers STR-Rangers, Fighters, and Paladins. Barbarians will typically have more HP but lower AC / Reckless so are hit more as well. Paladins and STR-Rangers will want at least a +2 in there Cha/Wis so rarely manage above a +2 CON, certain Battlemaster, Echo Knight, and Rune Knight don't suggest a 2ndary stat so those characters often have +3 CON, but others e.g. Psi-Knight, EK, will want a 14 in INT, and Samurai likes a decent WIS. Martials IME almost never increase their CON using their ASIs because they are taking various martial feats and maxing out their attack stat. It's also very common for all martials/tanks to avoid dumping their Wis and trying to put a +1 or +2 there to avoid battlefield control spells by the enemy, and picking up Resilient:Wis at higher tiers of play. Really only Echo Knight and Barbarian rewards martials for upping their CON, so IME it's really not very common.
Thus the difference in HP comes down to d10 vs d6, which averages out to 25% difference.
Because wizards are squishier than tanks and can get 1 shot for their troubles.
Wizards have the same AC and only 25% less HP than tanks
I am very, very curious where you pulled those numbers from, because they seem absurd. Even at first level, your wizard might get one or the other depending on whether your party's tank is a barbarian or a sword and board type, but not both
Wizard AC = 13 (Mage Armour) +2 Dex + 5 (Shield) = 20. The average combat lasts 3-4 rounds, which means a Wizard can have Shield up every round from level 3 onwards if they need it - plus because of the mechanics of Shield the wizard can generally choose to use it only when it actually makes a difference to the outcome meaning it's even more efficient and I've very rarely seen a Wizard run out of Shield slots. Wizard never needs to get Dex higher than 14 which is generally pretty easily do able with standard array or point buy - they have tons of other options to increase their defenses using spells if they need it - Blur, Mirror Image, Blink, Greater Invisibility are all way more effective for improving their survivability than upping their DEX. Unless they are a bladesinger but that's a whole different story.
Tank AC = 18-20. If your tank goes sword & board they will pick up Dueling as their FS otherwise their DPR is pathetic and enemies can safely ignore them. More likely though, they will go two-handed and probably take the Defense FS for AC 19. At 1st level it's probably 1-2 points lower than this since half-plate & full plate are rarely available prior to 5th level.
Wizard HP = d6 hit die + 2-3 CON. Wizards are pretty likely to pick up Resilient:CON for their concentration which will usually pluck them up to +3 CON, however when they choose to do so varies a lot between players. Getting a +2 DEX, +2 CON, +3 INT is pretty typical for a 1st level Wizard.
Tank HP = d10 hit die + 2-3 CON. This covers STR-Rangers, Fighters, and Paladins. Barbarians will typically have more HP but lower AC / Reckless so are hit more as well. Paladins and STR-Rangers will want at least a +2 in there Cha/Wis so rarely manage above a +2 CON, certain Battlemaster, Echo Knight, and Rune Knight don't suggest a 2ndary stat so those characters often have +3 CON, but others e.g. Psi-Knight, EK, will want a 14 in INT, and Samurai likes a decent WIS. Martials IME almost never increase their CON using their ASIs because they are taking various martial feats and maxing out their attack stat. It's also very common for all martials/tanks to avoid dumping their Wis and trying to put a +1 or +2 there to avoid battlefield control spells by the enemy, and picking up Resilient:Wis at higher tiers of play. Really only Echo Knight and Barbarian rewards martials for upping their CON, so IME it's really not very common.
Thus the difference in HP comes down to d10 vs d6, which averages out to 25% difference.
I lost count of how many assumptions you had to make to get that math to work
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I lost count of how many assumptions you had to make to get that math to work
If you prefer the assumption-free version, I looked at all the characters in my current and former campaigns, and the average CON score for the wizards / sorcerers was 13.9, the average CON score for paladins, fighters, and rangers was 14.1, the average CON score for the barbarians was 15. Meanwhile the proportion of wizards with Mage Armour was 100%, the proportion of wizards & sorcerers with Shield was 100%. In terms of weapon type, 12% of martials were sword & board and all but one of those were paladins (only one of which didn't take Dueling), 12% were two-weapon fighters, 26% were straight two-handed weapon users, and 50% were polearm users. Of the Wizards only two had Resilient:Con there a were 3 with INT-half feats and the rest only had INT-ASIs.
See, it's totally fine to make assumptions if you have evidence supporting those assumptions are true. If you look at the characters people create, the vast majority have 14 Constitution, and an AC between 16-20.
I've never actually taken mage armor. That's not something I am willing to burn a spell slot on.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I lost count of how many assumptions you had to make to get that math to work
If you prefer the assumption-free version, I looked at all the characters in my current and former campaigns, and the average CON score for the wizards / sorcerers was 13.9, the average CON score for paladins, fighters, and rangers was 14.1, the average CON score for the barbarians was 15. Meanwhile the proportion of wizards with Mage Armour was 100%, the proportion of wizards & sorcerers with Shield was 100%. In terms of weapon type, 12% of martials were sword & board and all but one of those were paladins (only one of which didn't take Dueling), 12% were two-weapon fighters, 26% were straight two-handed weapon users, and 50% were polearm users. Of the Wizards only two had Resilient:Con there a were 3 with INT-half feats and the rest only had INT-ASIs.
See, it's totally fine to make assumptions if you have evidence supporting those assumptions are true. If you look at the characters people create, the vast majority have 14 Constitution, and an AC between 16-20.
1) You're assuming those characters are a representative sample. Given how homogenous those builds seem to be, that's a big leap
2) You've moved the goalposts from "tanks" to martials in general
3) You're still assuming shield will be cast every round, rather than the wizard needing their reaction (or spell slots) for something else
There's probably a couple others in there too, but you get the idea
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Wait wait wait, pantagruel, are you saying that the way you usually play, the party is running from the monsters and trying to kite them with ranged attacks as they go? Because that's a super effective strategy most of the time, but most people don't actually play that way they like to stay in the room and have melee builds in the party.
Uhh, only if you're trying to be a dick as a DM
Active characters:
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Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
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Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
No, it's about the feasibility of influencing the actions of the enemies by enough to make dodging worthwhile. The threshold for dodge being net valuable is somewhat situational, but on average for a party of 4 you need the expected portion of enemy attacks targeted at the dodging character to be around 50% for dodge to be net valuable (note that expectation includes chance -- so if your method has a 50% chance to work you need 100% of attacks targeting the PC, if it has less than 50% it will never pay off), and there's next to no chance that dodge and taunt will reach that 50% reliability threshold.
Nope, I'm saying that "stay 65' behind the front line" generally doesn't work because the DM will set up encounters so everyone winds up in melee.
Which is kinda weird since it would be far more logical for the enemies to focus fire & kill the party members one-by-one if they were actually acting in a smart strategic way.
Sometimes, other times not so much. The situation dictates the tactics. A real life example is in naval combat, where it was considered a bad idea to leave an enemy ship unengaged, because those unengaged ships generally shoot better at their opponent. So, typical doctrine was to engage opposite numbers in the enemy line, and double up on the tail end charlies. Trying to get cute caused ships to go unengaged, much to Admiral Beatty's chagrin at the battle of Jutland for example.
Similarly if you can get at the squishies in the backfield you make them react defensively rather than offensively. Say you have three wizards in the back. You focus on one, the other two cast fireball. If you split it up, you may force them to use defensives such as Misty Step and prevent those two fireballs.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
The optimal solution for the enemy (which, of course, they may be unable to achieve) is to let the melee guy go past, not engage him at all, and jump on the rear line. However, my point was more a metagame issue -- my experience is that DMs like to damage all of the PCs, even though 'focus fire and kill one target, then repeat' is usually better tactics, and a strategy of "the only melee guys are 65' ahead" will both annoy the DM and be a difficult-to-resist temptation to have a purple worm emerge from the ground and start swallowing the rearguard.
I generally find that my DMs have pretty basic and easy to figure out "rules" for determining which monsters go after which PCs. Mindless ones tend to attack whatever's nearest, while ones with brains will have specific targets for Reasons (i.e. smarter undead might try to get to the cleric waving around the hated holy symbol)
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Misty Step vs Fireball is nearly identical to Dodge vs Attack, why would a Wizard ever Misty Step when they could instead cast Fireball and kill the enemies? Misty Step only gets you 30 ft so the enemy can just Dash to get right back up in the wizard's face (if the map is large enough that the wizard could get even further away). Wizards aren't particularly squishy in 5e so they really don't care if enemies attack them or not since hardly any spells are affected by an enemy being adjacent to you. Any enemy 'with two brain-cells to rub together' would know they need to focus-fire to kill their opponents if they actually want to win because healing magic is so ubiquitous, the only slight exception to this would be to focus fire on the cleric or other healer prior to the other party members. As has been repeatedly argued here, defense is almost always totally useless especially if you have to sacrifice damage to do so.
There's really only one reason for enemies to split up, and that's to get into melee with an archer that is shooting at them with SS high damage attacks, but even then only if they don't have XbowXpert. Because ranged attack rolls are the only type of attack that is penalized by an enemy being within 5ft. But even then it's a pretty big risk because most archers have a lots of ways to get out of that situations without sacrificing DPR, so 99% of the time it is pointless, which as you know means it is a waste of time that the enemies shouldn't be doing.
DMs make their enemies be stupid and spread out their damage in order to keep the action economy on the player's side and to avoid the feel-bads for the player who's character gets targeted and then is unable to act for at least 1 round. In one of my games we ended up fighting against a true mastermind villain who used focus fire and targeted healers first and it's amazing how much harder combat is when the enemies do that compared to the "share the love" style.
There is no question that DMs will encourage tactics that they consider 'fun' (and that usually means beating on everyone rather than focus fire one PC), but that doesn't really help with dodge, because by far the most significant effect of dodge is to make fights take longer, and pretty much no-one wants that.
From the perspective of the monsters, the easy way to punish 'one PC goes ahead while everyone else follows behind' is to do something to prevent the back line from getting involved at all (typically by either dropping a barrier to separate the front line from the back, or by killing them from locations that are out of sight of the back rank), but that has definite 'fun' problems.
Because wizards are squishier than tanks and can get 1 shot for their troubles.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Wizards have the same AC and only 25% less HP than tanks, any enemy that can 1-shot a wizard will 2-shot a tank easily. This is why enemies using focus fire is so effective, they will drop at least one member of the party every round even a "tank". If the wizard Misty Steps away, it will just encourage the enemy to ignore them and instead drop someone else by focus fire. Whereas if they instead Fireballed they could kill that enemy and prevent anyone taking the damage. It's the same situation as with Dodge vs Attack, if the tank Attacks and fails to kill the enemy they get downed next turn b/c the enemy can easily 2-shot them, whereas if they Dodge they will cut the enemy's DPR in half (especially if they have Sentinel - which every self respecting tank should have - to prevent them moving away) and likely remain standing for 1-2 additional rounds.
I am very, very curious where you pulled those numbers from, because they seem absurd. Even at first level, your wizard might get one or the other depending on whether your party's tank is a barbarian or a sword and board type, but not both
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
The math is pretty close to 25% (non barb division)
Wizard 14 Con,
Level 1 8hp, level 5 32hp, level 9 56 hp
Fighter 14 Con,
Level 1 12hp, level 5 44 hp, Level 9 76 hp
That is 67%, 73%, 74% and that is going to converge at 75%, so saying they have 25% less hp is pretty close.
Now, I would expect the tankier fighters who can dump dex and mental stats to crank up constitution to much higher levels and increase that gap. The only way the Wizard keeps up on AC without multiclassing is to crank dex or improve their armor situation. Those are feats not going to improve constitution. In my view wizards have to choose between high con and high dex as their second stat (and thus high AC or higher hp).
Probably assuming shield in that AC. Which may or may not be a reasonable assumption, depending what else is going on in the combat.
Wizard AC = 13 (Mage Armour) +2 Dex + 5 (Shield) = 20. The average combat lasts 3-4 rounds, which means a Wizard can have Shield up every round from level 3 onwards if they need it - plus because of the mechanics of Shield the wizard can generally choose to use it only when it actually makes a difference to the outcome meaning it's even more efficient and I've very rarely seen a Wizard run out of Shield slots. Wizard never needs to get Dex higher than 14 which is generally pretty easily do able with standard array or point buy - they have tons of other options to increase their defenses using spells if they need it - Blur, Mirror Image, Blink, Greater Invisibility are all way more effective for improving their survivability than upping their DEX. Unless they are a bladesinger but that's a whole different story.
Tank AC = 18-20. If your tank goes sword & board they will pick up Dueling as their FS otherwise their DPR is pathetic and enemies can safely ignore them. More likely though, they will go two-handed and probably take the Defense FS for AC 19. At 1st level it's probably 1-2 points lower than this since half-plate & full plate are rarely available prior to 5th level.
Wizard HP = d6 hit die + 2-3 CON. Wizards are pretty likely to pick up Resilient:CON for their concentration which will usually pluck them up to +3 CON, however when they choose to do so varies a lot between players. Getting a +2 DEX, +2 CON, +3 INT is pretty typical for a 1st level Wizard.
Tank HP = d10 hit die + 2-3 CON. This covers STR-Rangers, Fighters, and Paladins. Barbarians will typically have more HP but lower AC / Reckless so are hit more as well. Paladins and STR-Rangers will want at least a +2 in there Cha/Wis so rarely manage above a +2 CON, certain Battlemaster, Echo Knight, and Rune Knight don't suggest a 2ndary stat so those characters often have +3 CON, but others e.g. Psi-Knight, EK, will want a 14 in INT, and Samurai likes a decent WIS. Martials IME almost never increase their CON using their ASIs because they are taking various martial feats and maxing out their attack stat. It's also very common for all martials/tanks to avoid dumping their Wis and trying to put a +1 or +2 there to avoid battlefield control spells by the enemy, and picking up Resilient:Wis at higher tiers of play. Really only Echo Knight and Barbarian rewards martials for upping their CON, so IME it's really not very common.
Thus the difference in HP comes down to d10 vs d6, which averages out to 25% difference.
I lost count of how many assumptions you had to make to get that math to work
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
If you prefer the assumption-free version, I looked at all the characters in my current and former campaigns, and the average CON score for the wizards / sorcerers was 13.9, the average CON score for paladins, fighters, and rangers was 14.1, the average CON score for the barbarians was 15. Meanwhile the proportion of wizards with Mage Armour was 100%, the proportion of wizards & sorcerers with Shield was 100%. In terms of weapon type, 12% of martials were sword & board and all but one of those were paladins (only one of which didn't take Dueling), 12% were two-weapon fighters, 26% were straight two-handed weapon users, and 50% were polearm users. Of the Wizards only two had Resilient:Con there a were 3 with INT-half feats and the rest only had INT-ASIs.
See, it's totally fine to make assumptions if you have evidence supporting those assumptions are true. If you look at the characters people create, the vast majority have 14 Constitution, and an AC between 16-20.
I've never actually taken mage armor. That's not something I am willing to burn a spell slot on.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
1) You're assuming those characters are a representative sample. Given how homogenous those builds seem to be, that's a big leap
2) You've moved the goalposts from "tanks" to martials in general
3) You're still assuming shield will be cast every round, rather than the wizard needing their reaction (or spell slots) for something else
There's probably a couple others in there too, but you get the idea
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)