I think I know why this happens, and it's really annoying. Minecraft has an invincibility cool down when enteties are attacked, This can easily be fixed, as servers do it all the time. This would help fix a lot of other problems, like that one time I should have died from fall damage but got hit by a fireball last half second before collision with the ground
Environment
going up close to an enemy and shooting them with multishot doesn't deal full damage. For example, it takes crossbow shots to kill a creeper. going up close to it and hitting it with all 3, like a shotgun, does the damage of 1.
thats not a bug, its intended to only hit 1 arror when shotting at 1 mob, otherwise it would be to op