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D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 17:23:54


Post by: Easy E


There, I said it.

There is very little or no player agency or meaningful choices for D&D combat. You roll a d20 and try to get some number by Mod stacking and trying to use your "Special Abilities" to crank up the end result as high as possible. No where is there a decision. All you do is move and then try to hit something as hard as you can and hope you roll well enough. You can wait several minutes for your turn to come up only to roll a single dice and blow it. Boring.

Defending is even worse. When people attack you, you don't do anything but pray your AC is high enough and they roll bad. Magic and other "non-attacks" are simply a roll to avoid and pray. There is no difference between an armored tank and a highly nimble character. A miss is a miss.

This is particularly annoying since D&D is designed to be a "tactical" game where combat is primary and all other interactions are secondary! In other systems I have seen options to try to straight up dodge, parry, roll with it, or try to deflect with armor. These would require some opposed rolling or/and use of dice pools. You know, decision making. Here there is nothing.

Your thoughts?





D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 17:38:16


Post by: Togusa


I disagree.

As always, having a good DM can make all the difference.

For example, in a recent game I managed to land three critical hits in a row, with the same action. I ended up confirming one of the hits, and asked the DM if I could take a bonus action to use intimidate on three other creatures that were within 5 feet of me.

He said yes, and I manged to force all three of them to retreat in fear, having just seen their comrade beheaded in one fell swoop.

Dodge, Hold action, etc are all useful as well. When I play my rouge, I often hold action so that I can get a good shot off on my opponents turn.

What I like most about combat in 5e is how simple and fluid it is, more than any other edition of the game, I have spent less time arguing with my dm or the players over what can and cannot happen. Our combats take a lot less time and do not bog down the game like they used to in 3rd and 4th.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 17:47:36


Post by: ikeulhu


Using the Greyhawk initiative system (https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UAGreyhawkInitiative.pdf) can make the decision making part of combat more interesting, as you have a trade-off between the different actions and how much initiative you have to roll for each. Another thing I have done to spice up D&D combat in the past is to pull from Exalted and implement a "stunt" system. Giving players +1-3 on the roll depending on the awesomeness of their stunt can incentivize them to give more interesting descriptions of the actions they are taking at least, and you can turn around and use it with the enemies and allow the players to award the stunt based on how cool they thought it was (obviously this requires players that will not take advantage of giving low stunts to save themselves). This can also be used with defense, allowing stunts to add 1-3 to a target's AC if they stunt how they defend.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 18:28:20


Post by: Da Boss


I think the problem needs to be tackled from two directions. First, you need to provide a dynamic environment for a fight. A fight taking place in a small room is not gonna be that interesting, but put a pit in there and it is suddenly a lot more interesting and different choices can be made. An ambush in a corridor is a lot more exciting than just meeting foes head on in the same corridor.
If you just add one terrain element or dynamic element to each encounter you will find players will be much more engaged with the environment. If you use minis, putting some small props like barrels and random clutter in rooms often sparks imaginations.

The second problem is the monster design. The monsters have been drastically simplified to make them easier to run. Demons for example are mostly just big bags of hit points with strong attacks. For each Demon type therefore I give them an extra ability that keys off the theme of corruption or contagion that happens automatically without the need for an action. With a lot of big monsters you need to give them extra legendary actions to compete with the PC action economy.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 18:33:03


Post by: ikeulhu


Da Boss's points are very valid. Interesting environments and adding interesting quirks to existing monsters can go a long way towards making combat less bland.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 18:33:17


Post by: Elemental


 Easy E wrote:
There, I said it.

There is very little or no player agency or meaningful choices for D&D combat. You roll a d20 and try to get some number by Mod stacking and trying to use your "Special Abilities" to crank up the end result as high as possible. No where is there a decision. All you do is move and then try to hit something as hard as you can and hope you roll well enough. You can wait several minutes for your turn to come up only to roll a single dice and blow it. Boring.

Defending is even worse. When people attack you, you don't do anything but pray your AC is high enough and they roll bad. Magic and other "non-attacks" are simply a roll to avoid and pray. There is no difference between an armored tank and a highly nimble character. A miss is a miss.

This is particularly annoying since D&D is designed to be a "tactical" game where combat is primary and all other interactions are secondary! In other systems I have seen options to try to straight up dodge, parry, roll with it, or try to deflect with armor. These would require some opposed rolling or/and use of dice pools. You know, decision making. Here there is nothing.

Your thoughts?


It kind of depends on if you're the player or GM in this scenario, but here's what I suggest:

--Throw in a bit of description. Yes, the attack might be functionally the same, but describing a miss as scraping off armour or being narrowly dodged can add a bit of engagement to a battle.

--Speed up actions. Make sure players know their abilities and aren't umming and ahhhing for five minutes each for every attack trying to remember the attack bonus that they last used five minutes ago. Bringing in an actual eggtimer might be a bit mean, but it is an option.

--Mix up the battlefield. A narrow bridge, a burning building, a sinking ship, etc. NPC's who need protecting, a thief running off with something important, etc. Give the PC's objectives beyond "make all the HP bars zero".

--Have monsters use tactics or figure out how they can best use their abilities and then engineer the battlefield to favour them (even unintelligent predators will seek hunting grounds where they have an edge). For example, goblins aren't very scary. Goblin archers that shoot at enemies tangled up with their ogre ally and then relocate out of sight with their Cunning Action are. Have an enemy wizard or druid throw up a magic barrier to split up the PC's. Have enemies use actions like Dodge or Assist to stall for time or help out their boss. D&D tends to be very cautious with how tough monsters are for their CR, it's okay to make them a bit scarier.

I disagree on dice pools or opposed rolling being more tactical--they don't change the likelihood of whiffing, but do usually cause it to take longer to get there. And even more complex systems often don't offer more actual depth--3e D&D had a lot of combat options other than "I hit him", but most of them were wastes of time unless you were highly specced in a particular option and even then were probably worse than just hitting them.

In the end, you might simply want a different system, and that might be a better option than trying to add too many house rules. If your group is reluctant to change from D&D, offer to run a short-term game with an option to continue if everyone likes the idea.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 18:35:04


Post by: Lance845


 Togusa wrote:
I disagree.

As always, having a good DM can make all the difference.

For example, in a recent game I managed to land three critical hits in a row, with the same action. I ended up confirming one of the hits, and asked the DM if I could take a bonus action to use intimidate on three other creatures that were within 5 feet of me.

He said yes, and I manged to force all three of them to retreat in fear, having just seen their comrade beheaded in one fell swoop.

Dodge, Hold action, etc are all useful as well. When I play my rouge, I often hold action so that I can get a good shot off on my opponents turn.

What I like most about combat in 5e is how simple and fluid it is, more than any other edition of the game, I have spent less time arguing with my dm or the players over what can and cannot happen. Our combats take a lot less time and do not bog down the game like they used to in 3rd and 4th.


I disagree with the idea that the work load of making combat fun rests in the hands of the DM to add flavor text to make the dull as dirt actions wear the mask of being interesting.

The fact that DnD combat relies on a specialized DC (AC or whatever) is the core reason this whole thing is dull.

You make no decision in how your character reacts to an attack. The enemy rolls and they hit or they don't. Maybe they have a reaction? And if they do they use it. You shouldn't need a DM to spice it up. It should be engaging on it's own.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 19:24:45


Post by: Easy E


It is not about how I describe my actions, the mechanics themselves are boring and provide no interesting mechanisms for me to explore as a player. A swing of a sword is a swing of a sword.

There are always some combat gimmicks for DMs like the location, terrain, enemy approaches, etc. but ultimately combat comes down to do I roll good or not on a d20. Does the DM roll good or not on a D20? I think an RPG should have more depth for a player than a Frostgrave battle.

I can talk about how I side step the blow, adjust my footing to the tiger strike stance, recognize that the Orc is using a variaent of the Orkhan sword technique and thus slightly adjust my grip to the Iyaka school of fencing technique, and counter with a precise thrust towards where they have lowered their guard to attack.... but ultimately it is all just personal flair. I still roll a single d20 and hope I score a high number.

There are no rules that I recall for called shots to particular targets, no disarming, no parrying, no side stepping/dodging, no riposte, no feinting, no shield smashing, no grappling, nothing much at all. I can try to do all those things, but it is usually a less efficient form of fighting than a normal attack and I am normally handicapping myself for a sense of drama or combat flair. There is no reason to do much rather than say "I attack" and roll to hit.

B.O.R.I.N.G.

Now, as a GM, I agree I have more options to make combats more exciting. Some simple tricks like interesting terrain, alternate objectives than just killing, varying attack vectors, descriptive flair, striking at the parties weaknesses, monster selection, etc. As a player, it is a bit harder in D&D to make things interesting and not just default to the standard every battle.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 19:37:00


Post by: ikeulhu


Yeah, player options tend to be underwhelming in D&D without some house-ruling, and I can definitely see where you are coming from. I have found ways to make it better by adding in things like stunt bonuses, called shot rules, and even hit location mechanics inspired by Deadlands, but house rules are not always an option if you are just a player. Also, not everyone likes or wants to house rule a system (I actually enjoy it, and have a player that will not play any system other than D&D so have some incentive to stick with the system) so the best option in that case is usually to look for another system that does provide more of what you are looking for.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 19:38:17


Post by: Da Boss


Hmmm. I don't really agree with what you are saying from the Player POV. Let's look at the classes:
Barbarian - probably the most similar to what you are describing, but I still have choices like do I frenzy or not, do I rage or not, do I reckless attack or not that involve resource management.
Bard - I can swing my sword or shoot my bow, but I also have access to a wide variety of cantrips and spells that can be used in creative ways, and I can add to others rolls.
Cleric - Again, I can attack but I also have spells and special domain abilities.
Druid - I can attack, shapeshift and cast spells. The range of dynamic actions a circle of the moon druid can take is huge.
Fighter - Initially seems like it is going to be the swing the sword and hit stuff guy. And can be, if you play a Champion. But both Eldritch Knight and Battlemaster give you either spells or special moves that let you do a lot more in battle than just swing your sword.
Monk - A variety of special actions and abilities make this class the most dynamic fighting class
Paladin - You have Smites, spells and auras as well as special class abilities keyed from your aura, some allowing you to react to attacks. Paladin also gets fighting styles like a Fighter, so can react to attacks on nearby allies with certain styles etc.
Ranger - Probably the worst core class, beastmaster does not work as written and the "slayer" archetype is pretty boring. I will give you this one, though you still have access to spells for battlefield control and so on.
Rogue - extra actions for moving, interacting with objects or hiding make this a really fun and dynamic class, and if you specialise in Arcane Trickster you also get spells.
Sorceror - A spellcaster who can alter their spells on the fly from a pool of points. This class gives you a wealth of options more than attack in battle. Reactive defensive spells like Shield also exist for this class.
Warlock - A bit of a swing and a miss class, this is the closest to a "I hit it with my sword" class in the magic users. Eldritch blast as the core of the class is a weird choice. Still, invocations and access (though weirdly limited) to spells does make this class more interesting than "I blast it" in theory, but in practice, it does often boil down to that.
Wizard - Access to the biggest selection of spells in the game gives this class a wide variety of options.

I dunno what party you are playing with or what level you are playing at if you are saying there are no interesting mechanisms for players to expore. For swordfighting I would broadly agree, but no class is limited to just sword fighting outside of Barbarian, which is basically the class you play if you want to switch off your brain and smash stuff.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 19:45:10


Post by: Togusa


 Lance845 wrote:
 Togusa wrote:
I disagree.

As always, having a good DM can make all the difference.

For example, in a recent game I managed to land three critical hits in a row, with the same action. I ended up confirming one of the hits, and asked the DM if I could take a bonus action to use intimidate on three other creatures that were within 5 feet of me.

He said yes, and I manged to force all three of them to retreat in fear, having just seen their comrade beheaded in one fell swoop.

Dodge, Hold action, etc are all useful as well. When I play my rouge, I often hold action so that I can get a good shot off on my opponents turn.

What I like most about combat in 5e is how simple and fluid it is, more than any other edition of the game, I have spent less time arguing with my dm or the players over what can and cannot happen. Our combats take a lot less time and do not bog down the game like they used to in 3rd and 4th.


I disagree with the idea that the work load of making combat fun rests in the hands of the DM to add flavor text to make the dull as dirt actions wear the mask of being interesting.

The fact that DnD combat relies on a specialized DC (AC or whatever) is the core reason this whole thing is dull.

You make no decision in how your character reacts to an attack. The enemy rolls and they hit or they don't. Maybe they have a reaction? And if they do they use it. You shouldn't need a DM to spice it up. It should be engaging on it's own.


In the past, combat has often been little more than a time waster. 5e simplifies it enough so that combat encounters rarely go beyond 10 rounds, unless you really jam up the field with bodies. I prefer this, as it allows for a lot more time to be spent role playing, rather than worrying about which one of 2 dozen different actions or reactions I should take at the specific time in order to "boost" the epicness of the encounter. The DM is there to run the game and tell you a story, in my opinion, not to just sit back and play referee. Having a good DM who can role with the punches and tell an engaging encounter or tale, in my experience, usually negates the problem.

I suppose if one isn't happy with 5e, they could always try one of the other systems out there. Pathfinder 2 and Exalted come to mind.

But another one that I recently got to try out is called "Dungeon World" and it has an incredibly fun and simple to use system.

https://dungeon-world.com/

Check it out here, especially if you like to have more control over your own actions in combat.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Easy E wrote:
It is not about how I describe my actions, the mechanics themselves are boring and provide no interesting mechanisms for me to explore as a player. A swing of a sword is a swing of a sword.

There are always some combat gimmicks for DMs like the location, terrain, enemy approaches, etc. but ultimately combat comes down to do I roll good or not on a d20. Does the DM roll good or not on a D20? I think an RPG should have more depth for a player than a Frostgrave battle.

I can talk about how I side step the blow, adjust my footing to the tiger strike stance, recognize that the Orc is using a variaent of the Orkhan sword technique and thus slightly adjust my grip to the Iyaka school of fencing technique, and counter with a precise thrust towards where they have lowered their guard to attack.... but ultimately it is all just personal flair. I still roll a single d20 and hope I score a high number.

There are no rules that I recall for called shots to particular targets, no disarming, no parrying, no side stepping/dodging, no riposte, no feinting, no shield smashing, no grappling, nothing much at all. I can try to do all those things, but it is usually a less efficient form of fighting than a normal attack and I am normally handicapping myself for a sense of drama or combat flair. There is no reason to do much rather than say "I attack" and roll to hit.

B.O.R.I.N.G.

Now, as a GM, I agree I have more options to make combats more exciting. Some simple tricks like interesting terrain, alternate objectives than just killing, varying attack vectors, descriptive flair, striking at the parties weaknesses, monster selection, etc. As a player, it is a bit harder in D&D to make things interesting and not just default to the standard every battle.


Fighters have access to most of those that you list, especially shield smashes, riposte, and parrying. Disarming the opponent is also something you can easily do, by telling your DM you want to do so and having him decide the DC for such an action. Grappling is something everyone can do in D&D regardless of the class. It sounds to me like you've had an awful experience with a pretty gakky DM. All of these things are able to be done, and I say this as someone who is currently playing in 5 5e campaigns across 5 different classes at varying character levels. I never just "roll" to hit and move on.

I have a great story about our party making a fuel air bomb that nearly killed us all in the middle of the combat, which resulted into 144 points of damage onto a very tough hydra! It's all in how you describe your interactions to the DM.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 20:19:49


Post by: Elemental


 Easy E wrote:

There are no rules that I recall for called shots to particular targets, no disarming, no parrying, no side stepping/dodging, no riposte, no feinting, no shield smashing, no grappling, nothing much at all. I can try to do all those things, but it is usually a less efficient form of fighting than a normal attack and I am normally handicapping myself for a sense of drama or combat flair. There is no reason to do much rather than say "I attack" and roll to hit.


You may want to check pages 192 to 198 because a lot of the things you're saying don't have rules....do. Like, they're right there on the page, and a bunch more of them are there in the form of feats or class features. If you personally are unhappy with those rules, that's fine, but let's not be telling untruths, okay?

And I'll repeat what I said--there are games that have the complexity you seem to want (Pathfinder 2e seems to be one of them). Try floating one of them to your group--"hey, want to try something different for a few sessions?" and see what they think of it.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 20:33:46


Post by: Togusa


 Elemental wrote:
 Easy E wrote:

There are no rules that I recall for called shots to particular targets, no disarming, no parrying, no side stepping/dodging, no riposte, no feinting, no shield smashing, no grappling, nothing much at all. I can try to do all those things, but it is usually a less efficient form of fighting than a normal attack and I am normally handicapping myself for a sense of drama or combat flair. There is no reason to do much rather than say "I attack" and roll to hit.


You may want to check pages 192 to 198 because a lot of the things you're saying don't have rules....do. Like, they're right there on the page, and a bunch more of them are there in the form of feats or class features. If you personally are unhappy with those rules, that's fine, but let's not be telling untruths, okay?

And I'll repeat what I said--there are games that have the complexity you seem to want (Pathfinder 2e seems to be one of them). Try floating one of them to your group--"hey, want to try something different for a few sessions?" and see what they think of it.


I really think he might like Dungeon World. It seems to provide the depth he's looking for.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 20:51:18


Post by: Easy E


 Elemental wrote:
 Easy E wrote:

There are no rules that I recall for called shots to particular targets, no disarming, no parrying, no side stepping/dodging, no riposte, no feinting, no shield smashing, no grappling, nothing much at all. I can try to do all those things, but it is usually a less efficient form of fighting than a normal attack and I am normally handicapping myself for a sense of drama or combat flair. There is no reason to do much rather than say "I attack" and roll to hit.


You may want to check pages 192 to 198 because a lot of the things you're saying don't have rules....do. Like, they're right there on the page, and a bunch more of them are there in the form of feats or class features. If you personally are unhappy with those rules, that's fine, but let's not be telling untruths, okay?

And I'll repeat what I said--there are games that have the complexity you seem to want (Pathfinder 2e seems to be one of them). Try floating one of them to your group--"hey, want to try something different for a few sessions?" and see what they think of it.


Except for the part where I said they tend to be sub-optimal and less effective than just.... I attack. Class features..... so.... only a certain class can do it..... However, I will grant that I may need to explore these closer. Normally, when I try to use them, it makes things harder and not easier in the combat.

Perhaps as I play more I will be able to get more out of it. As many of you say, it maybe partly my group, my current DM, ME, or some combination. I have experience with a few different systems beyond good old 5E D&D (AD&D 2nd, D&D 3 and 3.5, Marvel Super Heroes, Red Box D&D, Star Wars 2nd, Legend of the 5 Rings 3rd and 4th, Shadowrun 2nd and 3rd, Rifts, Robotech, etc.) and I just found combat uninteresting. Last time we played we were 5th level and I was a Samurai build, archetype, class, whatever you want to call it. My decisions revolved around using fighting spirit or not to gain advantage and where to move. Previously, I played a Goblin Barbarian in a goblin themed campaign starting at level 2. As a poster said my decisions revolved around raging or not raging. I typically like to play fighter types but I am starting to re-think this in D&D as being too boring.

[Edit] I recall a game (the system escapes me) where when I got attacked I was asked if I was going to try to dodge it, parry, or just absorb it on my armor. Then, I had to use choose how much dice from a defense pool I was going to use to help avoid the attack. Then, when it was my turn to attack, the dice I used to defend I did not have access to anymore until the end of the combat turn and I got to choose what to do with those dice such as called shot to a specific part of the target, hold for later, take a defensive stance to refill my pools, or just a general attack. Not a ton of fighting options but a lot of defensive options. Plus, the system was relatively decent lethality and as I took damaged stuff got harder to do. I had to think if it made sense to run, hold my dice pools to defend, put them all into an attack, etc. [/Edit]

Mostly, I raised this point for discussion purposes.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 20:55:59


Post by: LordofHats


I find my enjoyment of 5e combat comes down to group and DM a lot. Some encounters are dull slogs because its just hitting things till they die. Some are exiting because you really might die, so its a desperate bid not to and you start thinking creatively (especially for spellcasters). Sometimes the area has cool things going on for a player looking to spice things up to take advantage of.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 22:26:53


Post by: Togusa


 LordofHats wrote:
I find my enjoyment of 5e combat comes down to group and DM a lot. Some encounters are dull slogs because its just hitting things till they die. Some are exiting because you really might die, so its a desperate bid not to and you start thinking creatively (especially for spellcasters). Sometimes the area has cool things going on for a player looking to spice things up to take advantage of.


My DM loves to answer us with "You can certainly try" and I love it when that phrase is uttered. It typically leads to a good night to be had by all.

A fun story to relate.

Recently my group acquired a mid-sized airship. We weren't quite sure what to do with it, other than the basic transportation of goods and so on. But two weeks ago we visited the Capitol city and discovered that the Dwarves there use the Huge stone constructs to haul ore from the mines to fuel the forges of the Baron's armies. After quite a bit of negotiation, our Bard managed to buy two of them for us.

Both of our Dwarves set out with the task of attaching cannons and repeating crossbows to them and now....

We have TitanFall robots we can air drop into battle for support against the nastiest and most dangerous monsters. We've been getting a lot of monster hunting contracts lately, and while there are a lot of behind the scenes things going on with the game, it's nice to know we can finally take on younger dragons and not just insta die!


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/10/31 23:10:52


Post by: Elemental


 Easy E wrote:
Except for the part where I said they tend to be sub-optimal and less effective than just.... I attack.


And in the sentence before that, you said they didn't exist. Words mean things.

Here's my stance--I've very much moved away from complex combat systems, for two reasons.

First, half the time something breaks and there's a clear Best option and a lost of wasted wordcount on stuff you could use but won't if you understand the system. If anyone remembers second edition Exalted, there was a complex and layered combat system with precise timing steps and keywords....that was then made irrelevant because of the way "perfect defence" powers and stunts interacted, meaning you could be indefinitely immune to 99% of the setting straight out of character creation (and you kind of had to be, because lethality was also broken).

Second...I played 3rd edition D&D. I was in, and ran, arena games and I've seen most of the "builds" under the sun. And learning and mastering the system to break the game was quite fun. But it was also a heck of a lot of work spent grappling with the mechanics, and that became less fun as a pursuit in itself. I think the tipping point was a couple of years ago when I was in a Pathfinder game, and saw how bad the gap was between optimised and non-optimised characters, and how that affected how much fun the players could have as my Summoner and another player's Fighter / Monk / Duelist / Fist of the North Star / Sailor Senshi / Mecha Pilot multiclass just rolled over everything.

For me, the charm of having loads of mechanical choices has very much worn off and that's why I appreciate the approach of the current edition of D&D where it feels like the system gets out of the way and lets me play. And I'm okay with that being at the expense of choice on the micro level, because I can be more engaged with my character when I don't have to put an optimisation filter over my build and actions.

That's just my take on it.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/01 00:04:43


Post by: Lance845


Simple and engaging are not mutually exclusive.

You can have simple mechanics with engaging outcomes.

Dnd has been more or less complex over the editions but always less engaging because of the limits of its mechanics. The core mechanic that DnD runs on, The Difficulty Check, is a binary pass/fail mechanic with only a single action taken by any one person to decide any given situation. It wasn't until 4th that the idea of needing multiple successes to pass a situation came into play (but even then its just multiple checks). This is your target number, you hit it or you don't and the more bonuses you get to hit it more often the better.

Which sounds all good and fine when you are like "I want to pick this lock", but sucks when the troll is trying to eat you and you stand there and wait to be told what your character does depending on if the troll hit your target number or not.

The simplification of secondary and tertiary effects from 3rd to 5th that impact that singular simple roll does make the combat quicker but it doesn't make it any more engaging. And arguably the complexity of before wasn't any more engaging, it was just a list of boxes to check before you rolled the die. (am I flanking? Is this my favored enemy? Am I holding my favored weapon?).

In the RP aspects of DnD you are constantly asked, directly or indirectly, "What do you do?" "The Pirate king has welcomed you into his court to parley, what do you do?" But in combat you are told what happens. "The troll swings his massive arm like a club, coming at you with the mass of a tree! ... He misses, you dodged the blow hitting the ground just in time!"

YOU don't have agency there. YOU don't get to make a choice or exercise any mechanics. DnD never asks what the DC has to say about anything and it also never cares about degrees of success (except for critical successes and failures).

Mechanically DnD sucks. And it doesn't have to get complicated to make it good. It just needs to get engaging.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/01 14:02:45


Post by: Easy E


Oddly, I agree with both Elemental and Lance.

I have also played complex systems that were just broken and optimized players were so good that no one else had to bother coming to the table. B.O.R.I.N.G.

Lance, sums up exactly why the mechanics in D&D are so boring to me. No choices. What do I want to do about the fact someone is attacking me? Fight back? Parry? Dodge?

Honestly, I think their are a lot of ways to do this.

1. Dice pools
2. Opposed rolls
3. Target numbers based on difficulty

So, here is how D&D could work differently. Ditch Armor Class (or whatever it is now) completely. Instead, armor could be target number modifiers for certain actions.

In an attack, the attacker rolls a d20 and adds mods to get a final number. What do you want to do character?

I will just take the hit on my armor and roll with it:
- Roll a d20 and add armor bonus looking to get above what the attacker rolled.

I will dodge out of the way:
- Roll a d20 and add Dex bonus. Did you beat the attacker?

I will parry it:
- Roll a d20 and add your strength bonus. Did you beat the attacker's roll?

If failed, and you are hit then armor could also serve to reduce damage to a minimum of 1 HP or something.

You can only dodge or roll with missile attacks. If you are surprised, you can only roll with it. Now surprise and type of attack matters a bit too. Large and long reach weapons would provide attack bonus modifiers. Armor that is heavy makes dodging harder, lighter weapons could make parry easier, Etc, etc, etc to add whatever Mod stacking you wish.

Simple, easy, and gives the player some choice when they are attacked. Now there is a difference between an armored tank, a skilled swordsman, or a dodgy character too.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Elemental wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
Except for the part where I said they tend to be sub-optimal and less effective than just.... I attack.


And in the sentence before that, you said they didn't exist. Words mean things.



Fair enough. You got me!

However, I think my overall point about boring combat still stands.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/01 15:17:22


Post by: Togusa


 Easy E wrote:
Oddly, I agree with both Elemental and Lance.

I have also played complex systems that were just broken and optimized players were so good that no one else had to bother coming to the table. B.O.R.I.N.G.

Lance, sums up exactly why the mechanics in D&D are so boring to me. No choices. What do I want to do about the fact someone is attacking me? Fight back? Parry? Dodge?

Honestly, I think their are a lot of ways to do this.

1. Dice pools
2. Opposed rolls
3. Target numbers based on difficulty

So, here is how D&D could work differently. Ditch Armor Class (or whatever it is now) completely. Instead, armor could be target number modifiers for certain actions.

In an attack, the attacker rolls a d20 and adds mods to get a final number. What do you want to do character?

I will just take the hit on my armor and roll with it:
- Roll a d20 and add armor bonus looking to get above what the attacker rolled.

I will dodge out of the way:
- Roll a d20 and add Dex bonus. Did you beat the attacker?

I will parry it:
- Roll a d20 and add your strength bonus. Did you beat the attacker's roll?

If failed, and you are hit then armor could also serve to reduce damage to a minimum of 1 HP or something.

You can only dodge or roll with missile attacks. If you are surprised, you can only roll with it. Now surprise and type of attack matters a bit too. Large and long reach weapons would provide attack bonus modifiers. Armor that is heavy makes dodging harder, lighter weapons could make parry easier, Etc, etc, etc to add whatever Mod stacking you wish.

Simple, easy, and gives the player some choice when they are attacked. Now there is a difference between an armored tank, a skilled swordsman, or a dodgy character too.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Elemental wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
Except for the part where I said they tend to be sub-optimal and less effective than just.... I attack.


And in the sentence before that, you said they didn't exist. Words mean things.



Fair enough. You got me!

However, I think my overall point about boring combat still stands.


The problem with that system though, is that you've now introduced a minimum of four choices players will need to make after each successful attack. Which will significantly slow down the game and extend the time it takes for combat to complete. Especially new players, who already have enough trouble getting used to the system as it is will struggle with this, as they try to decided which option is most "optimal." One thing I've noticed is that when players ask for and receive more choices in most games, they still only gravitate to the one or two optimal choices and ignore the other two out of a sense to try and fudge the best result. This is one of the reasons I significantly backed down my playing time in 40K.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/01 17:06:39


Post by: Easy E


Yes, no doubt it will "slow" things down BUT also make combat worth something. D&D combat all ready takes forever AND is boring! At least we can make it take forever and NOT be boring.

Players spend 2 hours in combat and make about 5 dice rolls (10 if they have advantage!). The player actually needs to do something every time they are attacked as opposed to now. Current D&D all they do is remove hit points from their sheet.

Look at 40K's cumbersome hit, wound, save mechanic. The save mechanic is designed to give the other player something to do instead of leave the room. If you just sat there for the opponents entire turn 40K would also be pretty boring. D&D asks you to do that, to just sit there the entire time the DM is rolling like crazy and dishing out damage. You do nothing.

If speed is the primary concern, we could make combat really fast by just having the DM say that combat is over and the players won, or the DM rolls a dice and the player's roll a dice and pool their mods and the winner is declared and the combat resolved. The DM could narrate the battle. Very fast.... and very unengaging.

D&D combat is boring because there are very few choices, and a lot of downtime before you get to make any choices. Think about your last session, how much was combat where you sat around and waited for your turn? Last time for me it was about 50 minutes of a 1 hour combat.




Edit: Again, I am mostly talking to simply have a discussion. I understand the best course of action is probably a different system, but most of my current group has only ever played D&D 3, 3.5 and 5. They honestly do not want to get away from what they are used to, it is far too comfortable.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/01 21:30:27


Post by: Elemental


 Easy E wrote:

In an attack, the attacker rolls a d20 and adds mods to get a final number. What do you want to do character?

I will just take the hit on my armor and roll with it:
- Roll a d20 and add armor bonus looking to get above what the attacker rolled.

I will dodge out of the way:
- Roll a d20 and add Dex bonus. Did you beat the attacker?

I will parry it:
- Roll a d20 and add your strength bonus. Did you beat the attacker's roll?


This looks good on paper, but in practice....I check my character sheet and see which of those three numbers is highest after modifications. Then I default to that action every single time I get attacked because why wouldn't I? Adding options is half of the story, you also need to give players reasons to alternate between those options or it's just extra mechanical cruft.

 Easy E wrote:

D&D combat is boring because there are very few choices, and a lot of downtime before you get to make any choices. Think about your last session, how much was combat where you sat around and waited for your turn? Last time for me it was about 50 minutes of a 1 hour combat.


Hmm, how big is your gaming group? Because 50 minutes between actions is extreme and suggests to me that either you've got a very big group, some inexperienced players who need walking through the basic mechanics, or players are umming and aahing a lot about getting their turns tactically perfect.

My last session was a game of Savage Worlds, and each round with a 3-player group was 10-15 minutes. And if anything, that's a slightly more complex system than D&D.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/01 21:42:43


Post by: Easy E


6 people with a variety of skills/knowledge and plenty of distracting chatter. The distracting chatter is half the fun.


Good point about situations where people need to choose other options and reasons why otherwise they will always choose the best and hence remove the purpose of having options in the first place. For example, missile weapons can only be dodged or rolled with. Surprise limits you to rolling with it only. etc.


Hence why I also like dice pools, so if one runs out you are forced to use the sub-optimal That is way outside the scope of D&D though.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/01 21:55:05


Post by: Togusa


 Easy E wrote:
Yes, no doubt it will "slow" things down BUT also make combat worth something. D&D combat all ready takes forever AND is boring! At least we can make it take forever and NOT be boring.

Players spend 2 hours in combat and make about 5 dice rolls (10 if they have advantage!). The player actually needs to do something every time they are attacked as opposed to now. Current D&D all they do is remove hit points from their sheet.

Look at 40K's cumbersome hit, wound, save mechanic. The save mechanic is designed to give the other player something to do instead of leave the room. If you just sat there for the opponents entire turn 40K would also be pretty boring. D&D asks you to do that, to just sit there the entire time the DM is rolling like crazy and dishing out damage. You do nothing.

If speed is the primary concern, we could make combat really fast by just having the DM say that combat is over and the players won, or the DM rolls a dice and the player's roll a dice and pool their mods and the winner is declared and the combat resolved. The DM could narrate the battle. Very fast.... and very unengaging.

D&D combat is boring because there are very few choices, and a lot of downtime before you get to make any choices. Think about your last session, how much was combat where you sat around and waited for your turn? Last time for me it was about 50 minutes of a 1 hour combat.




Edit: Again, I am mostly talking to simply have a discussion. I understand the best course of action is probably a different system, but most of my current group has only ever played D&D 3, 3.5 and 5. They honestly do not want to get away from what they are used to, it is far too comfortable.


I get it, but man, most of my combats take 30 Min tops. 2 Hours??


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/01 22:31:50


Post by: LordofHats


This looks good on paper, but in practice....I check my character sheet and see which of those three numbers is highest after modifications. Then I default to that action every single time I get attacked because why wouldn't I? Adding options is half of the story, you also need to give players reasons to alternate between those options or it's just extra mechanical cruft.


It's also worth pointing out that the Players aren't the only ones making these extra rolls. The GM is too, and that's going to turn larger engagements into a slog.

It's more fitting for a wargame than an RPG. I think DnD already has plenty of choice... if you're a caster. I don't think combat mechanics are really an issue in DnD so much as combat options and that's less mechanical and more implementation. Barbarians rage. Monks Ki. Fighters surge. Rogues sneak. And that's all any of them do. All the fun and creative combat (and non combat) mechanical choices are loaded in the spellcasting classes such that I look at the dirth of interesting options in the melee classes and find them dull. Fireball might be OP, but at least a Sorcerer has the option of getting gaks and/or giggles out of invisibility shenanigans, or mass confusion, or even suggestion if your super creative. Barbarians, Monks, Fighters, and Rogues are mostly just one trick ponies with subclasses that give them an new one trick to abuse.

I also second the "2 hours?!!!" confusion. How big are your combats that they're taking 2 hours? I've run combats with upwards of 20 characters taking turns and I've never seen combat go that long.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/02 14:14:43


Post by: Da Boss


I disagree with that characterisation of D&D 5e. That was true in 3e, but being a Fighter or a Rogue or a Monk is a lot more varied than that these days. Barbarian is a very simple class, and I think that is fine, because sometimes players wanna smash stuff.

Battlemaster, Way of Shadows Monk or Arcane Trickster all have a lot more going for them than just sneaking or stabbing.
Champion, Thief and Way of the Fisty Fist (forget what it is called) are more vanilla, but sometimes people want to play the vanilla version. Way of the Elements and Eldritch Knight are pretty full of options, though they do it by becoming casters like Arcane Trickster, and Assassn is a pretty straightforward type of class but there is a bit more to playing one than "sneak, stab".

Edit: As to long turns, I have this problem with my group as well. I am going to institute a timer for turns because a couple of players really take the piss with how long they take. Mostly it is indecision and being bad at learning the rules, but a lot of it is that they do not think about their turn until it rolls around.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/03 23:34:56


Post by: Elemental


 Easy E wrote:
6 people with a variety of skills/knowledge and plenty of distracting chatter. The distracting chatter is half the fun.


OK, but you can't turn around and say "Combat in the game is really long, because people spend so much time not playing the game."


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/04 20:55:37


Post by: Easy E


 Elemental wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
6 people with a variety of skills/knowledge and plenty of distracting chatter. The distracting chatter is half the fun.


OK, but you can't turn around and say "Combat in the game is really long, because people spend so much time not playing the game."


I said it was boring because there were not enough choices for players and engagement when it was not there turn. Hence downtime. If I was engaged to do something more often, then it would be better and I wouldn't feel like it was two hours to fight. However, a person could also argue that D&D has a big lethality issue too.

40K would be much faster if we just got rid of the save roll, but you have it so your opponent has some agency in his model's dying. D&D doesn't do that. When you are attacked you have no agency, you just scratch hit points off. Then, when it is your turn you do not have many good options other than "I hit him with a my stick." IF combat were more interesting and engaging I wouldn't care if it took two hours. IF I got to do some things that were fun or had some agency when I was being attacked combat wouldn't feel like two hours.

Other people seem to feel other ways and prefer speed over agency or choices. Hence the discussion.



As a side note: I think a lot of the side conversation and other slowness in my group may be because the combat is not that engaging so that we all get distracted making bad jokes, telling stories, etc. We don't seem to do that when we are doing story and character driven stuff?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/08 17:10:57


Post by: krodarklorr


I can sort of see the point you're trying to make, OP. I've played numerous 5e games, DMing most of them, and have found that out of the box the ruleset is super easy and straightforward (which is a good thing!). However, it does get dull over time when it's the same type of fighting.

It does fall on the DM to make things interesting, for sure. It's his job for the game, not just putting some tokens on the map and saying "These are zombies, go".

That being said, it's also up to the players to be creative, as some others have mentioned. In my current weekly game, I am a Wisdom based "shamanistic" barbarian, but because of magical items and my choice of battleaxe and shield and to wear armor, I'm the tank of the party. I can zip through enemies (spirit of the Eagle) and position myself to protect my teammates or to distract bad guys. I also frequently ask the DM if I can intimidate or goad the baddie into attacking me. Meanwhile, the ranged fighter picks off the easy targets or AoEs with his magical bow abilities. The Cleric/Monk is both a decent ranged DPS, but also maintains various different spells for certain situations while also trying to keep everyone alive. The Druid has a wealth of magical options and is also a healer. The combat has never once been boring.

At the end of the day, maybe it's not even the system though. Maybe you would just prefer a more in-depth game to play with more strategy or something. I can relate. I tried turning 5e into a "Critical mode" level game and it got silly, so maybe try branching out.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/08 19:13:27


Post by: Voss


 Easy E wrote:


So, here is how D&D could work differently. Ditch Armor Class (or whatever it is now) completely. Instead, armor could be target number modifiers for certain actions.

In an attack, the attacker rolls a d20 and adds mods to get a final number. What do you want to do character?

I will just take the hit on my armor and roll with it:
- Roll a d20 and add armor bonus looking to get above what the attacker rolled.

I will dodge out of the way:
- Roll a d20 and add Dex bonus. Did you beat the attacker?

I will parry it:
- Roll a d20 and add your strength bonus. Did you beat the attacker's roll?

If failed, and you are hit then armor could also serve to reduce damage to a minimum of 1 HP or something.

You can only dodge or roll with missile attacks. If you are surprised, you can only roll with it. Now surprise and type of attack matters a bit too. Large and long reach weapons would provide attack bonus modifiers. Armor that is heavy makes dodging harder, lighter weapons could make parry easier, Etc, etc, etc to add whatever Mod stacking you wish.

Simple, easy, and gives the player some choice when they are attacked. Now there is a difference between an armored tank, a skilled swordsman, or a dodgy character too.


Yeah, that isn't any more interesting. That's just rolling more dice for the same result. You're basically wasting double the time for each attack just rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice.
A random target number isn't more interesting than a static one... its been tried (Palladium in general and Rifts in particular, and in D&D in various alternate rules in Unearth Arcana for 3e, and elsewhere), and armor as DR is awful. (especially in D&D like games, as damage, HP and DR don't scale together in a sane manner)


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/08 21:37:37


Post by: Easy E


So, Target Number (DR) for armor sucks, but opposed dice rolls isn't any better?

So, what is better trying to staying within the basic parameters of D&D?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/08 22:08:59


Post by: Voss


 Easy E wrote:
So, Target Number (DR) for armor sucks, but opposed dice rolls isn't any better?

So, what is better trying to staying within the basic parameters of D&D?


Well opposed rolls certainly don't stay in the parameters of D&D, and don't work well in a d20 system (for a lot of reasons, as people tend to learn when they do arm wrestling competitions and the weaker character wins).

The odds change when you go from level based target numbers to random rolls on both sides, and the actual play experience gets a bit bitter. Missing because the player rolled low tends to go over better than the DM getting a streak on defensive rolls. Predictability as to what to expect when they attack makes for a better player experience than an extra layer of random.

The basic problem is these are solutions that have been tried at various times over the last thirty years, and don't stick because they're really unsatisfying, take up more table time, and don't produce better (or even consistent) results.


What's better is have an array of tactical options within the current ruleset that actually accomplishes things. Don't lock them behind feats, skills or whatever, and don't make them stupidly complicated (see 1st and 2nd edition grappling rules). Basically fighters and rogues need to not be punished for wanting to do something other than HP damage. (Or both damage and control)


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/08 23:28:08


Post by: Dark Apostle 666


We're about 40 sessions into my campaign, and I have to agree with the general point of the OP, that 5e combat does tend to be rather bland and repetitive.

To counter that, I started to try and introduce other elements into the combat - trying to get the players to move around to avoid getting flanked, forcing them to react to environmental hazards/conditions and so on, but I do have to agree that the default slugfests can be very dull.

Playing around with giving enemies interesting abilities can help change things up, but it's not easy to change that if all your players do is "I walk up. I attack it with my sword", so there's some collaboration needed there, I think.

I also think part of the problem can be down to a lack of goals in the fight beyond "Kill em all", so changing that can help too - maybe they need to fight a running battle, or defend an area, or something like that. Again though, that's more work for the DM, and frankly sometimes I don't have the prep time to come up with gimmicks for each and every encounter.

Personally, as a Player, this is part of why I always want to play a spellcaster - I find (for example) the basic fighter and barbarian very dull, and always prefer the versatility of a caster class.



D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/09 16:09:44


Post by: Paradigm


 Easy E wrote:
Yes, no doubt it will "slow" things down BUT also make combat worth something. D&D combat all ready takes forever AND is boring! At least we can make it take forever and NOT be boring.
...
D&D combat is boring because there are very few choices, and a lot of downtime before you get to make any choices. Think about your last session, how much was combat where you sat around and waited for your turn? Last time for me it was about 50 minutes of a 1 hour combat.


The part of this I find odd is the idea that just because you're not rolling dice during that downtime (and for me at least, with 4-5 players at a high-ish level it's more like 30mins a round at the very most, not 50) you're somehow not engaged with the game. But really, you are. You're watching what your allies are doing, investing in their failures and successes. You're watching the enemy, reacting to them potentially, and you're taking in that information to have your next turn ready. Now, sure, you could instead spend those 30 minutes talking amongst yourselves and falling out of the game until it's back round to you, but I'd argue that's a player investment issue rather than a system one.

Speed is not the ultimate concern, but for me at least simplicity is definitely up there as a major draw of 5e I by and large want just enough depth that my decisions matter (rather than just the tabletop equivalent of setting an MMO character to auto-attack) but ultimately I want the mechanics to be very small and very quiet, so that they help us tell the story but don't distract from it. I don't want to have to break out of a character's headspace every turn to figure out the optimal move, or on the DM side, having the dramatic reveal of a villain's power bogged down in 5 minutes of dice rolling ('Power Word Kill is the ultimate example here, you cast the spell and something dies, and that's about as shocking and dramatic as it gets). If I wanted a tactical wargame, I'd play one, and if I wanted an RPG with deeper combat, I'd play one, but 5e is built on an ethos of simplicity and accessibility and its combat is a big part of this.



More broadly though, the key ingredients to any combat scenario being interesting and engaging, regardless of system or edition or anything, are context and stakes. Rolling more dice isn't going to make stomping some goblins you find at random by the roadside any more dramatic, and likewise, it's not going to make a desperate battle against an ascending god any less epic. In practical terms, this is why I never bother with combat scenarios that don't serve a narrative purpose; any battle should move the story along, offer information or illustrate something to the players, or be structured in such a way that it represents a culmination of dramatic tension.

Action sequences in books or movies or TV are exciting because of their place in a narrative; the Battle of Helm's Deep isn't exciting because it's a Big Fight, it's exciting because of what it represents; the release of a tension that has been building for the last two hours, the culmination of many characters' arcs and journeys over the course of the story, the thematic parallel of the death of the Elves and the victory of Men, the return of Gandalf at his most powerful and important. What's more, there are stakes. Rohan could fall and Saruman would then be free to take vast swathes of Middle Earth, but more immediately, you have Eowyn, a character we've grown attached to, sheltering behind the citadel; if the heroes lose their battle, she and all of Rohan's women and children are put to the sword with no escape. An hour of men hitting Uruks with swords is visually impressive, but it's all just sound and fury without that narrative behind it.

Which isn't to say that every battle in your game needs to be epic or grandiose in that way, but they should all have a purpose (this is why I despite random encounters). Someone or something beyond the PCs should be at threat if they fail, or they should have the chance to achieve something more than the victory itself if they win the battle. It should demonstrate how a new area they've entered is full of dangers, or grant space for an antagonist to reveal their power or enact their plot. The post-battle looting should reveal information that prompts further adventure, or changes the context of what just went down. It should be about more than 'kill monsters before they kill you', because as part of a narrative that simply doesn't work. It's a fine setup for a competitive game, but RPGs ain't that, or at least, they shouldn't be.

Ultimately, it's about making people 'feel'. Those are the fights that stick with you. The one where a heroic companion stayed behind to hold off the enemy in a sacrifice that will haunt the PCs for days and weeks to come. The one where a tactical slip-up spurred on by overconfidence and panic gave the enemy a chance to complete their plan and move their plot one step closer to completion. The one where your the hero finally slays the enemy that bested him before, achieving a vengeance long denied. The one where a campaign's worth of tension, betrayal and rivalry concludes in 24 seconds of unbridled violence. (all real examples from recent sessions, incidentally, and all things I'll remember long after I've forgotten 'that time I did an Action Surge and scored 2 Crits against That Troll We Fought')

And that, I'd argue, is something that's achieved through design by the DM rather than any changes in mechanics. Rolling opposed dice or having a dynamic initiative tracker or handing out 3 different ways to respond to an attack doesn't help there, whereas considering encounter design as an extension of drama is something that the rules fully equip you to do (or at least, definitely don't hinder you in doing). A great combat encounter, I reckon, can be played out with 5e, 3e, Pathfinder, One-page Dungeon or whatever system you want and still be exciting, engaging and dramatic. Sure, it's a lot of work for DMs over just picking some monsters and throwing a few terrain pieces out, but it's also part of their role and frankly, part of the fun.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/10 01:28:06


Post by: Lance845


@Paradigm

Yes, the DM can turn encounters into memorable engaging conflicts with story and stakes.

But is it not ALSO possible to have engaging mechanics?

The 2 are not mutually exclusive. The one (the dm) can help cover for the failings of the mechanics. Or it can be enhanced by the mechanics themselves being good and engaging.

Arguing that crap mechanics can be overcome by well crafted story telling doesn't actually address the underlying point that the mechanics fail to be engaging. You can have both! Why would you not want to have both?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/10 10:59:03


Post by: Paradigm


I'm just not sure what 'engaging' mechanics means or how 5e is somehow unengaging? Is it just making more choices or rolling more frequently that would make things more interesting? Is it having a less rigid turn structure?

I might be missing the point here, but I just don't think there's any form of mechanic that could excite or engage me without context. Being able to choose how I deal with a hit or exactly how I swing a sword doesn't appeal to me as inherently more interesting, and the more complex things get, the more I have to divert part of my attention away from the storytelling to handle the mechanics, which personally I'd rather not do as I'm not here for the tactical exercise.

I just can't think of a time in my experience with 5e where I've felt bored or restricted on account of the rules. There have been some encounters on both sides of the screen that have become slogs, but due to bad design rather than anything stemming from the actual rules. I've been in fights that were really dull to get through, but almost always due to bad design rather than a lack of engagement, and I don't think 'better' mechanics would have helped.

I'm not saying that 5e is perfect by any means, but it is specifically designed to be lighter on mechanics than, say, Pathfinder. Of course. that's not for everyone, but I don't really think that changing the way the dice work or adding more options on how to attack or defend is going to help it be any more engaging if you're looking for a more thorough or tactical game. If you find 5e shallow or uninteresting, I'm not sure that's something that can be patched over because ultimately, that simplicity is built into the very bones of the system.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/10 16:19:33


Post by: Lance845


 Paradigm wrote:
I'm just not sure what 'engaging' mechanics means or how 5e is somehow unengaging? Is it just making more choices or rolling more frequently that would make things more interesting? Is it having a less rigid turn structure?


It's having agency and choices with consequence first and foremost.

For instance, In the Unisystem turn order is not determined by initiative set at the beginning of the combat. Turn order is determined by the players and DM with a few guidelines. Each round the DM asks "What are your intentions?" And you go around the table with each person saying what they plan to do this round of combat (first, this clears up any waiting for someone to decide what to do nonsense which makes combat faster, second it's your first interesting choice).

Generally speaking magic that can be cast as an action goes first since spells happen at the speed of spoken syllables or words or thoughts. Then ranged combat. Then people in melee now (lighter faster weapons before bigger slower ones, but a pole arm keeping a guy at range would probably act first since hes already in range while a greatsword in the polearm dudes face will go first because the poleguy is now out of his element. DM discretion here.) then people moving to engage in melee. A dude with a bow might declare, I will use this round to aim at BLANK. Well that means he makes a aim roll on his turn and the number of successes becomes a bonus to his single shoot action at the end of the turn. He looses his initiative place for a bonus to his roll. Just an example.

See how the actions you choose could have consequences? Not just pure mechanical benefits?

Then when someone does attack you, you have choices in how you deal with it. You can do nothing, hoping your armor eats the hit, or dodge or parry or take cover. You have a set amount of actions each turn you can take for free (generally 2) each additional action is a cumulative -2 penalty. So attack and dodge, but there are more enemies, so dodge again -2 parry -4 etc etc...

Again, the actions you choose up top may have consequences that bite you in the ass in the long run. Maybe you should have gone full defensive while surrounded and gotten no offensive actions but a +3 bonus to all defensive actions.


Just one example of a system that is more engaging. The system itself helps tell the story and offers constant choice and consequence for the players instead of it just being left up to the DM to make a 14 on a dice roll into some kind of story.

I might be missing the point here, but I just don't think there's any form of mechanic that could excite or engage me without context. Being able to choose how I deal with a hit or exactly how I swing a sword doesn't appeal to me as inherently more interesting, and the more complex things get, the more I have to divert part of my attention away from the storytelling to handle the mechanics, which personally I'd rather not do as I'm not here for the tactical exercise.


The mechanics are arguably MORE complex in DnD because they are trying to factor in all these elements into a target number on a page. The systems can be simple. It's as easy as presenting the players with a single choice for any action. All the combat maneuvers fit in a single column on a landscape page on my GM screen. Someone says, I want to tackle him onto, and try to smash through, that table.

In dnd 5e how would you do that?

And after you figure that out, tell me why anyone ever would?


In the Unisystem I would have him make a trip combat manuever using Strength + Brawling or Athletics instead of the normal Dex + (whichever fighting skill they want) a trip normally is. The opponent would oppose with a simple strength test (str x 2) or their own Str + brawl depending on which is better) or may choose to try to get out of the way doing a dex + dodge or acrobatics. If he succeeds he will deal 2 base damage x strength. There is a brief table on my GM screen for objects/materials armor/HP per inch of thickness. I determine a table in this bar has blah armor (soak of damage - the table will take the same damage as the person being slammed into it) and blah HP. If the damage meets or exceeds the HP of the table the guy goes straight through it and I will add in a bonus damage per success on his initial attack roll.

In summary, "Intentions!"

"I want to tackle that guy and slam him through the table behind him"

"Okay, make a str + brawl or athletics roll"

"3 successes"

::rolls opponents::

"You succeed. The table buckles under him being slammed into it and splits down the middle. You deal a bonus 3 damage."

The system is versatile, reactive, quick, and leaves a ton of options for the players both in what they want to do and how they react to what happens to them. If he failed that trip maneuver the other guy now has him directly in front of him and could get a bonus to punching him in the back of the head (normally a penalty to hit for a multiplier to damage and a chance to knock him unconscious, but the now bonus might negate that penalty all together). On the other hand, the guy who gets put through the table is now suffering penalties to all manuevers for being on the ground and instead of just being able to use an action to get back up would probably need to make a simple roll to get himself out of the rubble of the table and get to his feet. Easy enough to pass but with the chance of failure.

I just can't think of a time in my experience with 5e where I've felt bored or restricted on account of the rules. There have been some encounters on both sides of the screen that have become slogs, but due to bad design rather than anything stemming from the actual rules. I've been in fights that were really dull to get through, but almost always due to bad design rather than a lack of engagement, and I don't think 'better' mechanics would have helped.

I'm not saying that 5e is perfect by any means, but it is specifically designed to be lighter on mechanics than, say, Pathfinder. Of course. that's not for everyone, but I don't really think that changing the way the dice work or adding more options on how to attack or defend is going to help it be any more engaging if you're looking for a more thorough or tactical game. If you find 5e shallow or uninteresting, I'm not sure that's something that can be patched over because ultimately, that simplicity is built into the very bones of the system.


I agree with you here. The problems are built into the bones of 5e. You can't patch over it. The DC mechanic at the core of the D20 system is the problem. DnD can't get better until it gets over it's 50 year old mechanics and starts doing newer gak


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/10 16:55:16


Post by: Paradigm


 Lance845 wrote:


The mechanics are arguably MORE complex in DnD because they are trying to factor in all these elements into a target number on a page. The systems can be simple. It's as easy as presenting the players with a single choice for any action. All the combat maneuvers fit in a single column on a landscape page on my GM screen. Someone says, I want to tackle him onto, and try to smash through, that table.

In dnd 5e how would you do that?

"Make an opposed Athletics roll." Done. Treat it as an Improvised Weapon for a d4 plus Strength, and maybe have the enemy knocked prone if the roll is good. One step, moves fast. the player gets to do what they want, the DM only has to make a couple of small decisions on how it plays out, and then we move on. Yes, you're not following a specific rule, but the whole design of 5e is that you don't need those when you can have simple resolution mechanics plus DM adjudicating. And the actual play process is basically identical to the one you describe, just with a different dice roll.

And yes, you could say that requires the DM to decide on the spot where other systems will have specific rules for that, but again, that's what 5e is built on. If there doesn't need to be a rule, there isn't, and for me at least, that trumps the 400 word block of text for grappling, ans another 400 for escaping a grapple and another 400 for exceptions to those of older editions.

And after you figure that out, tell me why anyone ever would?

Because it's cool and in character? Because it might offer an ally a big advantage to knock the enemy prone? Because that enemy might be trying to escape or reach a location and your attack might stop and pin them? All derived from context. Otherwise, we'd all just work out the best weapon and the most damage we can do and do that for eternity or until we find a better one.


I just can't think of a time in my experience with 5e where I've felt bored or restricted on account of the rules. There have been some encounters on both sides of the screen that have become slogs, but due to bad design rather than anything stemming from the actual rules. I've been in fights that were really dull to get through, but almost always due to bad design rather than a lack of engagement, and I don't think 'better' mechanics would have helped.

I'm not saying that 5e is perfect by any means, but it is specifically designed to be lighter on mechanics than, say, Pathfinder. Of course. that's not for everyone, but I don't really think that changing the way the dice work or adding more options on how to attack or defend is going to help it be any more engaging if you're looking for a more thorough or tactical game. If you find 5e shallow or uninteresting, I'm not sure that's something that can be patched over because ultimately, that simplicity is built into the very bones of the system.


I agree with you here. The problems are built into the bones of 5e. You can't patch over it. The DC mechanic at the core of the D20 system is the problem. DnD can't get better until it gets over it's 50 year old mechanics and starts doing newer gak


If DnD dropped the D20 DC system, would it even be DnD any more? I'm not sure it would, everything else has changed over its history but that has been the core of the game since its inception and if a hypothetical future edition ditched it for dice pools or success vs failures, I think it'd be met with a huge backlash. I think the system (or any system) has no inherent merit or demerit beyond its ease of use, you think it's outdated and flawed, but I'd be willing to bet that it'd be the last thing Wizards would ever consider abandoning. Regardless of the fact that vast amounts of people enjoy it and find it perfectly adequate, it's integral to the identity of the brand and the game.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/10 17:04:50


Post by: Lance845


 Paradigm wrote:
 Lance845 wrote:


The mechanics are arguably MORE complex in DnD because they are trying to factor in all these elements into a target number on a page. The systems can be simple. It's as easy as presenting the players with a single choice for any action. All the combat maneuvers fit in a single column on a landscape page on my GM screen. Someone says, I want to tackle him onto, and try to smash through, that table.

In dnd 5e how would you do that?

"Make an opposed Athletics roll." Done. Treat it as an Improvised Weapon for a d4 plus Strength, and maybe have the enemy knocked prone if the roll is good. One step, moves fast. the player gets to do what they want, the DM only has to make a couple of small decisions on how it plays out, and then we move on. Yes, you're not following a specific rule, but the whole design of 5e is that you don't need those when you can have simple resolution mechanics plus DM adjudicating. And the actual play process is basically identical to the one you describe, just with a different dice roll.

And yes, you could say that requires the DM to decide on the spot where other systems will have specific rules for that, but again, that's what 5e is built on. If there doesn't need to be a rule, there isn't, and for me at least, that trumps the 400 word block of text for grappling, ans another 400 for escaping a grapple and another 400 for exceptions to those of older editions.


Why would ANYONE do this instead of throwing a fireball or swinging a sword? Which goes back to why it's boring in the OPs first post. There is a optimal thing to do and no consequences for doing it. So they will. The opposed athletics roll does not allow for the gnome/halfling/rogue to simply try to get out of the way either.


I just can't think of a time in my experience with 5e where I've felt bored or restricted on account of the rules. There have been some encounters on both sides of the screen that have become slogs, but due to bad design rather than anything stemming from the actual rules. I've been in fights that were really dull to get through, but almost always due to bad design rather than a lack of engagement, and I don't think 'better' mechanics would have helped.

I'm not saying that 5e is perfect by any means, but it is specifically designed to be lighter on mechanics than, say, Pathfinder. Of course. that's not for everyone, but I don't really think that changing the way the dice work or adding more options on how to attack or defend is going to help it be any more engaging if you're looking for a more thorough or tactical game. If you find 5e shallow or uninteresting, I'm not sure that's something that can be patched over because ultimately, that simplicity is built into the very bones of the system.


I agree with you here. The problems are built into the bones of 5e. You can't patch over it. The DC mechanic at the core of the D20 system is the problem. DnD can't get better until it gets over it's 50 year old mechanics and starts doing newer gak


If DnD dropped the D20 DC system, would it even be DnD any more? I'm not sure it would, everything else has changed over its history but that has been the core of the game since its inception and if a hypothetical future edition ditched it for dice pools or success vs failures, I think it'd be met with a huge backlash. I think the system (or any system) has no inherent merit or demerit beyond its ease of use, you think it's outdated and flawed, but I'd be willing to bet that it'd be the last thing Wizards would ever consider abandoning. Regardless of the fact that vast amounts of people enjoy it and find it perfectly adequate, it's integral to the identity of the brand and the game.


If dnd is only it's mechanics then DnD is already dying. Final Fantasy games took forever to adapt to new mechanics but they have because 3-4 people standing in a line waiting to click the fight button is boring as feth and a series of mechanics invented not too long after DnD. Many other games in many other genres have survived adapting to new systems to get with modern game design conventions and better game play. DnD is a hold out. Pathfinder is the same.

DnD is a series of settings. A general tone. A type of adventure at it's core that is also supposed to be versatile enough to run other kinds of adventures. I use the unisystem to play DnD. It's a dnd world with DnD things going on. I just don't bother with any of DnDs crap mechanics.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/10 17:24:47


Post by: Paradigm


There will always be an optimal choice whenever there are choices, but if you're only playing an RPG to always do the best possible thing then you're missing the point. Whatever system you're playing, there will at any given moment be the ideal thing to do, and yet that may only rarely line up with what is appropriate from a narrative or contextual standpoint.

I am currently playing a character that literally uses a wooden sword until she has completed her training to use a real one. In the same campaign we have a Cleric who spent several turns refusing to battle an Owlbear and instead tried unsuccessfully to tame it for several rounds while another party member tried to jump on its back and knocked themselves out after a fluffed Acrobatics roll. If they had wanted to kill it they could have done so in a matter of seconds, but it was more characterful and more fun to try this alternative approach. We'll remember that failed attempt to tame and ride an owlbear far longer than we would if we had just fought it for a couple of rounds and 'won'.

The point being that the existence of an optimal solution should not be taken as an imperative to use it, and any game (under any system) where that wasn't true would be as boring as watching paint dry.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/11 03:58:03


Post by: Lance845


There is not always an optimal choice when every choice has risk along with it's reward. DnD does not. Optimal choices come about primarily when you suffer no risk no matter what you do. It costs you nothing to swing your sword so you should.

It is very easy to go to "Well my group does X because story trumps mechanics" type arguments. I have just been avoiding them because the discussion is not about how at the DnD table you can actually do anything the DM allows and the DM could allow anything. Any discussion on the pros and cons of the d20 system is made pointless by those kinds of statements. Argue the system.

d20 5th has no mechanic for handling throwing someone through a table. Or feints. Or disarms. Or targeting specific body parts. Or tripping people.

And a DM could choose to do an opposed skill roll of athletics + str mod for handling 2 people grappling about it but again, what skill are you using for the small fast guy getting out of the way? Is this eating up their action for the turn? How do you handle the table?

And those questions don't need to be handled with pages and pages of rules like D20 3.x did with each instance of a thing having it's own bespoke rules that are slight variations of other rules and incredibly complex. They can be handled easily with systems that have more robust and adaptable core rules to begin with.

Again, engagement in the mechanics is an issue. From the way initiative is handled to actions being taken dnd is mostly a dull slog with the hard work of the over worked DM propping it up into being any kind of interesting. It's nice that the DM and players can make a boring dull thing interesting. But again, they could get support from the systems they are using to do that also. It doesn't have to be one or the other.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/11 08:28:47


Post by: Strg Alt


@ OP:

D&D combat was never exciting and this comes from a person who started playing during the AD&D era and was a Ravenloft DM for ten years. If you want meaningful options in melee grab the Martial Arts book and play GURPS. There you have different fighting styles and a ton of maneuvers which let your alter ego snap the neck, knee the groin, head butt, judo throw, jump kick, etc.

D&D is good for kicking in the dungeon door and grabbing the loot while the stuff in the middle, actual combat, is a rather bland affair.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/11 16:52:45


Post by: Paradigm


 Lance845 wrote:
There is not always an optimal choice when every choice has risk along with it's reward. DnD does not. Optimal choices come about primarily when you suffer no risk no matter what you do. It costs you nothing to swing your sword so you should.

It is very easy to go to "Well my group does X because story trumps mechanics" type arguments. I have just been avoiding them because the discussion is not about how at the DnD table you can actually do anything the DM allows and the DM could allow anything. Any discussion on the pros and cons of the d20 system is made pointless by those kinds of statements. Argue the system.


I admit, all the 'evidence' I'm putting forward is anecdotal, and just by the nature of RPGs the game I play will be observably different from any other game. However, I do think I am still arguing the system to some extent, because relying on the DM to make judgement calls in the absence of specific rules is the system, for better or worse. I love that, you don't but it is core to the way 5e works compared to its previous editions or Pathfinder.

Though to dig further into that, I will come out to bat for that way of doing things for one very important reason which is, by my reckoning, the greatest achievement of 5e: You can explain three rules(D20+Mod vs DC, Advantage and Disadvantage, Abilties and Proficiency) to people who have never touched a tabletop game before and be playing inside 5 minutes. It might seem overly simplistic to a long-time player, but the fact that that simple process can govern any action a player might want to take is a huge boon to the inexperienced, and I think that's borne out in how many people are picking up 5e in recent years compared to 4th or other contemporary games.

Of course, there are other factors (loss of the social stigma, rise of streaming/online content ect) and I'm sure there will be plenty who play 5e for a bit then move on to something more complex, but equally there are hundreds of people to whom this accessibility has been crucial into them stepping into the hobby at all.

Frankly, I'm one of them; I honestly don't think I'd have ever bothered to start out as DM has I had much more to juggle than 5e has at its core, and it's a big part of why I have no real interest in expanding into other systems as my main game (at least for fantasy gaming). I take the simplicity as freedom, and ultimately I see it that the less effort I have to spend learning expansive rules for called shots or grappling or chases or whatever is more effort I can put into worldbuilding, character concepts, encounter design ect, and I can trust that whatever comes up on either of the DM screen, a single mechanic+ a little improvisation can cover it. You say it's a crippling flaw, I think it's a wonderful safety net for creativity.

So again, I'm not saying 5e is perfect or the right game for everyone, but I do think the areas you perceive as shortcomings are a) very deliberately a part of the design and b) a genuinely good thing for a specific type of game. To torture a simile a bit, I'd say it's like drybrushing. It's very easy to pick up and at a bare minimum, means you'll see people painting who otherwise wouldn't, while at the same time it can be refined to be used at the highest levels of painting as an art form. There are those who eschew drybrushing once they learn layering, but there are just as many who keep using it, either as another tool in an expanded skillset to achieve advanced results or because they just like the simple, basic level of quality it offers.

I can't say with any crediblity whatsoever that 5e is the best RPG in the world, but at the minute it's by far the most popular, and I think the reasons I've outlined above are a big part of the reason for that.




d20 5th has no mechanic for handling throwing someone through a table. Or feints. Or disarms. Or targeting specific body parts. Or tripping people.

And a DM could choose to do an opposed skill roll of athletics + str mod for handling 2 people grappling about it but again, what skill are you using for the small fast guy getting out of the way? Is this eating up their action for the turn? How do you handle the table?

And those questions don't need to be handled with pages and pages of rules like D20 3.x did with each instance of a thing having it's own bespoke rules that are slight variations of other rules and incredibly complex. They can be handled easily with systems that have more robust and adaptable core rules to begin with.


Honestly, the tools for most of those things are there in the rules. Grappling explicitly allows Acrobatics as a defence instead of Athletics if that's better. Feints, disarming strikes and trip attacks are there as part of the Battlemaster subclass, and anyone can Shove as an attack to knock an enemy prone or attempt to disarm a target (DMG p.271, yes, it's an optional rule but it's there, and handles exactly how you'd guess it would anyway, with Athletics vs Athletics or Acrobatics, so the chances are even if your DM isn't using that rule explicitly, that's how it's going to be handled if you try it).


Again, engagement in the mechanics is an issue. From the way initiative is handled to actions being taken dnd is mostly a dull slog with the hard work of the over worked DM propping it up into being any kind of interesting. It's nice that the DM and players can make a boring dull thing interesting. But again, they could get support from the systems they are using to do that also. It doesn't have to be one or the other.


Yes, you can have a system that covers all this in more detail without slowing things down or getting more complicated, but the point I'm trying to make is that it's a feature, not a bug. The lack of detail and variety isn't something you have to fight, it's something that you can embrace to take in whatever direction you want. It's not inherently a dull slog; it can feel that way if you're wanting more depth or active participation but for just as many, it's every bit as exciting and engaging as they need it to be.

Not all games can be for all players, and it's not trying to be, but it seems to be that basically, you want a different game altogether rather than any possible better version of 5e. Which is great, because there are tons of them out there, we're in the golden age of variety for RPGs (and by the sound of it, you've already got a system you find does the job). All I'm trying to say is that 5e is not inadequate or flawed, simply different.



D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/11 17:08:04


Post by: Lance845


You are covering 3 core mechanics for dnd.

To go back to the unisystem as a comparison the core mechanic is task: stat + skill + 1d10. Or test: simple: stat doubled +d10 difficult: stat alone +d10. Ties go to the defender. The character sheet has a big box for you to write out and add up all your most common stat + skills so its 1d10+total.


Its basically one resolution method for everything and it covers more ground than what the d20 system is capable of with greater simplicity.


Explaining it to a new player is easy.

You wanna swing a sword? Dex + sword. Your chasing someone? Dex + athletics for a sprint, con + athletics for long distance endurance. Trying to lift some rubble off a friend simple str test. Pinned under some rubble and trying to lift it off your own leg? Difficult strength.


I do think d20 is flawed. If for no other reason then it has waste from its outdated mechanics. Modifiers are over co.plication. why do you have 2 numbers to express how strong you are if you only ever use one of them? Why isnt your strength just a 3 instead of a 16 with a modifier of +3? The 16 does nothing. And explaining THAT to a new player is unnecessarily confusing.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/11 18:29:17


Post by: Paradigm


I'm honestly not seeing how that's any different? You're using a D10 instead of a D20, but otherwise, isn't stat plus skill functionally identical to ability plus proficiency? And then you remove those bonuses where 5e would raise the DC? It's a different way of generating numbers, and maybe less swingy due to the smaller range of a D10, but unless I'm missing something, I'm not seeing how it's any more engaging or deep?

Ok, you've got the freedom to mix and match stats and skills, but 5e also specifically allows you to do that if it's appropriate (such as Strength for Intimidation instead of Charisma if you've just torn someone in half and want to terrify his mates). And you seem to have opposed rolls, though again, 5e has that where appropriate (such as two individuals directly competing in the same task, or performing opposing activities). It's possible I'm misunderstanding how it works, but it seems like the same process of actual gameplay with different numbers. Best I can tell from what you're saying is that it boasts more specific uses for a larger number of skills, whereas 5e assumes you can make a judgement for the appropriate skill for a given situation? Apologies if I've got that wrong.

Derived modifiers from ability scores are admittedly baggage that could happily be ditched, but ultimately the system itself would remain unchanged (as presumably stats would still be derived the same way, it'd just be hidden behind a table which tells you what your 4d6 roll total corresponds to). Dropping them would make the character sheet neater, but not do much else to allay your criticisms of the system..


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/11 19:48:00


Post by: Lance845


 Paradigm wrote:
I'm honestly not seeing how that's any different? You're using a D10 instead of a D20, but otherwise, isn't stat plus skill functionally identical to ability plus proficiency? And then you remove those bonuses where 5e would raise the DC? It's a different way of generating numbers, and maybe less swingy due to the smaller range of a D10, but unless I'm missing something, I'm not seeing how it's any more engaging or deep?

Ok, you've got the freedom to mix and match stats and skills, but 5e also specifically allows you to do that if it's appropriate (such as Strength for Intimidation instead of Charisma if you've just torn someone in half and want to terrify his mates). And you seem to have opposed rolls, though again, 5e has that where appropriate (such as two individuals directly competing in the same task, or performing opposing activities). It's possible I'm misunderstanding how it works, but it seems like the same process of actual gameplay with different numbers. Best I can tell from what you're saying is that it boasts more specific uses for a larger number of skills, whereas 5e assumes you can make a judgement for the appropriate skill for a given situation? Apologies if I've got that wrong.

Derived modifiers from ability scores are admittedly baggage that could happily be ditched, but ultimately the system itself would remain unchanged (as presumably stats would still be derived the same way, it'd just be hidden behind a table which tells you what your 4d6 roll total corresponds to). Dropping them would make the character sheet neater, but not do much else to allay your criticisms of the system..


Dnd isn't stat plus skill. Its a bonus from level plus a modifier derived from attribute plus modifiers from class abilities, "feats" if your dm chooses to use them and other variables. And then, unless the dm is telling everyone the dcs/acs, the player rolls his die and doesnt even know what the number they rolled means. They have to wait for the dm to translate. With the uni system you know immidiately how well you did. X number of siccesses or not. You might not know how well the enemy did yet. But you can at least gauge your own success.

Your ability to use a given weapon or a cast magic isnt derived from a list of skills you buy into. They are class features granted to you be prebuilt boxes of features you gain in fits and starts as you level up. (Uni system is point buy, not level/class). Your every action in the unisystem has degrees of success. Picking a lock often just requires 1 vs no opposing roll. While in d20 the MOST competitive thing should be combat and its very specifically NOT a opposed roll. Its a specialized DC that takes at minimum 3 numbers to calculate. (Dex mod, armor bonus, proficiency) unless the armor caps or subtracts from dex mod at which point start adjusting that calculation.

A dnd character sheet reads like a series of simple math problems. Other simpler systems dont. Because they dont have to be. Its not simpler or easier to explain to new players to get through dnds archaic math. And yes, 5th is miles better and easier then it was in the past. But better doesnt mean those problems are gone. They have just been made so much more tolerable that you feel like their burden has been lifted because they dont weigh as much.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/11 21:47:52


Post by: Easy E


Voss wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
So, Target Number (DR) for armor sucks, but opposed dice rolls isn't any better?

So, what is better trying to staying within the basic parameters of D&D?


Well opposed rolls certainly don't stay in the parameters of D&D, and don't work well in a d20 system (for a lot of reasons, as people tend to learn when they do arm wrestling competitions and the weaker character wins).

The odds change when you go from level based target numbers to random rolls on both sides, and the actual play experience gets a bit bitter. Missing because the player rolled low tends to go over better than the DM getting a streak on defensive rolls. Predictability as to what to expect when they attack makes for a better player experience than an extra layer of random.

The basic problem is these are solutions that have been tried at various times over the last thirty years, and don't stick because they're really unsatisfying, take up more table time, and don't produce better (or even consistent) results.


What's better is have an array of tactical options within the current ruleset that actually accomplishes things. Don't lock them behind feats, skills or whatever, and don't make them stupidly complicated (see 1st and 2nd edition grappling rules). Basically fighters and rogues need to not be punished for wanting to do something other than HP damage. (Or both damage and control)


I do not disagree, which is usually why I use a different system completely. However, when one is a player and not the GM you do not always get your system choice.

Therefore, that is the challenge in my mind. The opportunities have to come from opposed rolls, modifiers, situational modifiers, bonuses to HP reduction, or saving throw effects in a D&D style system.

Not ideal at all, but sometimes as a designer you have to work within the parameters assigned to you.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/15 14:49:37


Post by: streamdragon


 Lance845 wrote:
. why do you have 2 numbers to express how strong you are if you only ever use one of them? Why isnt your strength just a 3 instead of a 16 with a modifier of +3? The 16 does nothing. And explaining THAT to a new player is unnecessarily confusing.


1. The 16 actually does something: it determines carrying capacity.
2. There are other systems that interact with the 16; see strength drain from Shadows, which can make a 16 vs a 17 a meaningful difference. If both were simply "+3", that difference vanishes.

As to "why would you bash someone's head into a table instead of casting a fireball or stabbing them"? Maybe because I don't want to kill the target? Why would you do it in any other system where there is a similar damage disparity? And if there is no damage difference between attack types (or everything is made up by the DM to begin with), why not use the versions that always go first (yay another system with caster superiority! :vomit: )? You seem to be equating "more complex" with "more exciting". Looking up HP/thickness of a table just takes me back to 3.5, which is not a place I'm keen to go back to.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/15 22:10:12


Post by: Lance845


 streamdragon wrote:
 Lance845 wrote:
. why do you have 2 numbers to express how strong you are if you only ever use one of them? Why isnt your strength just a 3 instead of a 16 with a modifier of +3? The 16 does nothing. And explaining THAT to a new player is unnecessarily confusing.


1. The 16 actually does something: it determines carrying capacity.
2. There are other systems that interact with the 16; see strength drain from Shadows, which can make a 16 vs a 17 a meaningful difference. If both were simply "+3", that difference vanishes.

As to "why would you bash someone's head into a table instead of casting a fireball or stabbing them"? Maybe because I don't want to kill the target? Why would you do it in any other system where there is a similar damage disparity? And if there is no damage difference between attack types (or everything is made up by the DM to begin with), why not use the versions that always go first (yay another system with caster superiority! :vomit: )? You seem to be equating "more complex" with "more exciting". Looking up HP/thickness of a table just takes me back to 3.5, which is not a place I'm keen to go back to.


The stat drain and carry capacity 1) comes up Extremely rarely 2) can be calculated off the 3. Instead of a thing drains your str from 17 to 16 to no il effect what so ever it would take you from a 3 to a 2 for an imidiate effect every time which is far more interesting. No. There is no reason to have your attributes be 2 numbers.

In 5th you just say "i want to use my sword non lethally" and then you just do.

The unisystem is less complex then dnd 5th. Its also more robust. And its not even my favorite system at this point. Its just a good comparison for how engaging mechanics dont need to be complex.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/17 22:49:02


Post by: streamdragon


The actual stat numbers allow for variance in the effect. If a shadow drains d4 STR (or a poison or spell or whatever) there's a chance for a player invested in Str to partially resist. Just because you don't like it or think it's important enough doesn't mean it's not there.

And there is no actual mechanism in 5e to "swing a sword nonlethally". Even if there was, then you're circling back to the earlier "there's always a best way" issue, which you seem to think is magically an issue for one rule system but not for your favored rule system. Sometimes I just don't want to hit things with my longsword. Sometimes I want to slam a dudes head into a table.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also carry capacity only comes up rarely if your group ignores it, which in that case is on your group, not the rules?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2019/11/18 04:21:50


Post by: Lance845


 streamdragon wrote:
The actual stat numbers allow for variance in the effect. If a shadow drains d4 STR (or a poison or spell or whatever) there's a chance for a player invested in Str to partially resist. Just because you don't like it or think it's important enough doesn't mean it's not there.


It's not a variance in effect. The variance in effect is that you drain d4 strength. Which could just as easily be d2 strength and have the whole thing have an actual impact. It would also mean the 5 times you gain attribute points you can be sure those attribute points are actually doing something.

And there is no actual mechanism in 5e to "swing a sword nonlethally". Even if there was, then you're circling back to the earlier "there's always a best way" issue, which you seem to think is magically an issue for one rule system but not for your favored rule system. Sometimes I just don't want to hit things with my longsword. Sometimes I want to slam a dudes head into a table.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also carry capacity only comes up rarely if your group ignores it, which in that case is on your group, not the rules?


Carry capacity only comes up rarely because when people are using it they carry what they need to and invest in carts and horses for the rest.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/10 20:28:22


Post by: Easy E


I was thinking a bit more about this.... just for fun really.

When your turn comes, you can choose to do one of the following:

Martial characters only (No Casters)-
1. Offensive- Enemies and You roll Advantage on attacks
2. Defensive- You and Enemies roll dis-advantage on attacks
3. Opportunity- Normal D&D rolling system

Pretty simple, risk vs. reward, no additional time, fits into the D&D paradigm/mechanics, and gives some choices other than "I hit him with my stick!"


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/14 18:11:41


Post by: streamdragon


Bullet point 1 is the Reckless Attack ability of a Barbarian, isn't it?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/14 20:04:10


Post by: Voss


 streamdragon wrote:
Bullet point 1 is the Reckless Attack ability of a Barbarian, isn't it?

Yes.

It also interacts poorly with the number of things that also grant advantage/disadvantage, since they don't stack and even a single instance of one cancels out any amount of the other. So the obvious thing to do is activate one and find an easy way to counteract the effect on yourself. Blur (a second level spell) does it for the first one, and there are fair few ways to gain advantage on attacks built into the system.

It also gets weird just by interacting with itself and the turn order. Someone who chooses to attack defensively takes disadvantage, but if the enemy attacks offensively, it becomes a normal roll for them, because the two states cancel. Or they can just go attack someone else. So being defensive is largely only a penalty for the activator.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/15 02:19:00


Post by: LordofHats


Voss wrote:
It also interacts poorly with the number of things that also grant advantage/disadvantage, since they don't stack and even a single instance of one cancels out any amount of the other.


I don't think I've ever seen anyone play advantage/disadvantage that way, honestly, regardless of the SRD. Not that it comes up often.

So the obvious thing to do is activate one and find an easy way to counteract the effect on yourself. Blur (a second level spell) does it for the first one, and there are fair few ways to gain advantage on attacks built into the system.


To be fair to Reckless Attack, Barbarians have no way to natively do this without defeating their own purpose. You can't concentrate while raging, and if you're not raging why are you a Barbarian? There are some items that could do it, but most are armor, and Barbarian.

Of course, throw a bard or a sorcerer or something into the mix and things get wacky. I didn't realize how much barbs benefit from team support until I played one. They're really damn capable on their own. Get someone casting haste on them or maintaining silence and it becomes ridiculous.

It also gets weird just by interacting with itself and the turn order. Someone who chooses to attack defensively takes disadvantage, but if the enemy attacks offensively, it becomes a normal roll for them, because the two states cancel. Or they can just go attack someone else. So being defensive is largely only a penalty for the activator.


A lot of RPG's I've looked at do stuff like this, and it seems like a common problem. Games that shoot for a rock-paper-scissors combat have an issue where one of the three is always the better choice, and it's almost always the one that lets you deal more damage. In the system given, there's also zero incentive to ever take Opportunity. It provides no benefits, while the other two induce them on you and the enemy. Defensive and Offensive just cancel each other out, so why would you ever not pick offensive?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/15 21:10:48


Post by: Easy E


In Offensive, you get advantage, but so do your enemies. Hence, they will hit you harder more often too. That is why you do not always take Offensive.

The key part is your enemies also gain advantage/disadvantage based on YOUR choice. Enemies do not get to choose their style.



D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/15 21:39:32


Post by: Aelyn


I have to admit, I can't remember the last time I played a D&D combat and one of our players had their turn just be "I roll to hit... 18, that's... 9 damage" unless the fight was basically already over, turns were running at about 20 seconds each tops, and people were actually enjoying just wailing on the enemy. Even the noncasters - our Rogue, Fighter, and Monk, across two campaigns - almost always have more stuff to do than just "move up and hit".

Couple of questions:
- What level are you playing at? 1 and 2 can be pretty low on options and tactics, but they're intended as introductory levels and you should hit 3 in only a couple of sessions.
- Do you use feats, and what sort of classes and sub classes are you using? If you're selecting a Champion Fighter in a fearless game - literally and explicitly designed to be the simplest, most point-and-click character in the game - then yeah, you'll have relatively few options beyond hitting stuff and using the various core manoeuvres.
- How white-room are your combats? Specifically, how close are your combats to just being "You and the enemy start in range to melee turn 1" with no cover or other terrain considerations and no goals other than "kill them all"?

Because to be frank, this is sounding to me more like a DMing issue than a system issue.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/15 21:46:11


Post by: LordofHats


 Easy E wrote:
In Offensive, you get advantage, but so do your enemies. Hence, they will hit you harder more often too. That is why you do not always take Offensive.


That's Voss' point.

There are so many ways to issue disadvantage to the enemy and cancel that out. It's basically just a naked boost to Fighters (free Adv. all the time, and never being at Dis.), who are already one of the highest damage classes in the game.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/15 22:47:16


Post by: Voss


 LordofHats wrote:
Voss wrote:
It also interacts poorly with the number of things that also grant advantage/disadvantage, since they don't stack and even a single instance of one cancels out any amount of the other.


I don't think I've ever seen anyone play advantage/disadvantage that way, honestly, regardless of the SRD. Not that it comes up often.


I see it a lot, since that's how it works. It becomes something of a game in itself to be honest, well two games. The reasonable one, where you start look for counters to cancel it out (which there are a lot, and friendly spellcasters definitely help), and the unreasonable one:
If you get hit with blindness or some other lingering disadvantage effect that you can't counteract, you might as well start piling stuff on, because it can't get any worse. Better weapons you aren't proficient in, upside down with one hand tied behind your back, it doesn't matter. That gets a bit silly and pointless, but it does work.

Personally, I think the more interesting fighter already exists in 5e- the battlemaster with the maneuvers and superiority dice. That's where all the feints, trips and parries went.


On the other hand, personally I want something between 5e and Pathfinder (either 1 or 2, doesn't matter, they're both bizarrely unwieldy piles of petty bonuses). I want to make more meaningful choices when leveling than 5e allows (basically you make decisions at level 1 and probably 3), but not get bogged down at each level to worry over [+1 to <emotion> saves and success becomes crit success] is somehow a meaningful ability, and your math has to add up to the highest value all the time or you simply fail to hit often enough to contribute.

Its time for someone else to step in and alter the market with a sword and sorcery game that better balances fun and engagement, rather than a slider that is pushed all the way to 'Trivial Accounting' or 'Streamlined'


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/16 02:36:09


Post by: LordofHats


Personally, I think the more interesting fighter already exists in 5e- the battlemaster with the maneuvers and superiority dice. That's where all the feints, trips and parries went.


I think the fighter suffers a lot in game from a certain genericness, and the Battlemaster is really the only subclass out right now that gives great flavor.

There are some cheesy things you can do with cavalier, but you need another player to ride on and you have to be one of the tiny races.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 16:07:06


Post by: streamdragon


IMO, Battlemaster is not just the best designed Fighter archetype, it's one of the best designed archetypes in 5e period. It gives you plenty of meaningful choices, and the ability to really do more than just "I swing, hit, x damage, rinse repeat". The Unearthed Arcana with expanded class features even allowed you to utilize your maneuver dice outside of combat for certain skill checks.

Although as usual none of that matters once you start getting to certain (5th somewhat, 7th definitely) levels where the magic curve just goes completely out of the atmosphere.



D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 16:22:47


Post by: Da Boss


5e tames mages somewhat, but they are still a lot more powerful than fighters. Personally, I think they should have dropped all the full casters down a hit dice category to make them more fragile and therefore a bit more on par with fighters etc.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 16:30:07


Post by: LordofHats


I don't think fighters are really any weaker than magic users. Magic users have more flexibility, but Fighters absolutely beast the damage charts unless they're built really badly.

Just last week one of my party fighters dished out 280 damage in one turn and we're only level nine (basically killed a hydra all by himself). Not one of the party magic users is capable of that kind of output, and they definitely don't get the ability to do it again with just a short rest. No other class except Paladin/Warlock/Sorc combos can pump out damage like Fighters can.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 16:30:09


Post by: Lance845


 Da Boss wrote:
5e tames mages somewhat, but they are still a lot more powerful than fighters. Personally, I think they should have dropped all the full casters down a hit dice category to make them more fragile and therefore a bit more on par with fighters etc.


Unfortunately, durability does not equal offensive output 1 for 1. Consider 3rd ed fighters who with the best armor, a good sheild, and lots of HP (and the right feats) was the tankiest you could get, and completely incapable of contributing meaningfully to end a fight. The rogue, the barbarian, the wizard... doing damage is/was always more important.

Taking away 2 potential HP per level won't negate the difference in damage potential or the diversity of tools available to them vs a guy with a sword.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 16:49:23


Post by: Da Boss


True, but it would go some way to addressing it. It seems to me that the trend has been to boost HP on casters without any conmeasurate boost for the fighters.

Durability does not matter 1v1, but since Dungeons and Dragons is a team game, the durable fighter has a role to play in protecting the spellcasters from enemies. I agree it is perhaps not the glorious role the fighter might prefer.

5e is better than many versions of the game I have played in putting reasonable limits on spellcasters in terms of available spell slots and limiting spells with durations through the concentration mechanic. But I can see that mages are still the most popular archetype, and spells the most interesting system to interact with in the game.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 16:53:59


Post by: Lance845


 Da Boss wrote:
True, but it would go some way to addressing it. It seems to me that the trend has been to boost HP on casters without any conmeasurate boost for the fighters.

Durability does not matter 1v1, but since Dungeons and Dragons is a team game, the durable fighter has a role to play in protecting the spellcasters from enemies. I agree it is perhaps not the glorious role the fighter might prefer.


In order for that to be true they have to actually be capable of protecting everyone. Very few versions of the melee classes have any capability of doing that besides getting in somethings face and taking hits. And then they are reliant on others keeping them alive in the middle of that. VS a breath weapon or other AOEs the fighter can do nothing and the only thing that saves the team is to kill it asap so it stops causing damage.

5e is better than many versions of the game I have played in putting reasonable limits on spellcasters in terms of available spell slots and limiting spells with durations through the concentration mechanic. But I can see that mages are still the most popular archetype, and spells the most interesting system to interact with in the game.


I agree 5th is better than previous versions of DnD. Being better hasn't quite made it good yet.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 17:02:48


Post by: Da Boss


That is a fair cop, yeah.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 18:13:11


Post by: streamdragon


 Lance845 wrote:
 Da Boss wrote:
True, but it would go some way to addressing it. It seems to me that the trend has been to boost HP on casters without any conmeasurate boost for the fighters.

Durability does not matter 1v1, but since Dungeons and Dragons is a team game, the durable fighter has a role to play in protecting the spellcasters from enemies. I agree it is perhaps not the glorious role the fighter might prefer.


In order for that to be true they have to actually be capable of protecting everyone. Very few versions of the melee classes have any capability of doing that besides getting in somethings face and taking hits. And then they are reliant on others keeping them alive in the middle of that. VS a breath weapon or other AOEs the fighter can do nothing and the only thing that saves the team is to kill it asap so it stops causing damage.

5e is better than many versions of the game I have played in putting reasonable limits on spellcasters in terms of available spell slots and limiting spells with durations through the concentration mechanic. But I can see that mages are still the most popular archetype, and spells the most interesting system to interact with in the game.


I agree 5th is better than previous versions of DnD. Being better hasn't quite made it good yet.


Both of these issues (tank/melee types being able to protect against more than weapon swings and melee/caster option balance) were addressed pretty well in the edition everyone loves to poop on.

Edit: I also disagree 100% with dropping caster HP as a balancing effort. It didn't work well in 3.pf and it wouldn't work now.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 18:22:36


Post by: Lance845


Yeah, they did balance out everyone pretty well with 4th. The game itself wasn't super balanced in terms of monsters vs players but class to class the balance was tighter then it has ever been.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 18:24:27


Post by: Da Boss


As a game, 4e is alright, especially if you use the later monster design rather than the first few monster manuals. As a simulation, it is pretty poor, and that can be immersion breaking for people. It is arguable that it was not THAT much more immersion breaking than any other version of the game though.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 18:24:57


Post by: streamdragon


 Lance845 wrote:
Yeah, they did balance out everyone pretty well with 4th. The game itself wasn't super balanced in terms of monsters vs players but class to class the balance was tighter then it has ever been.

I kinda agree. By MM3 the monster vs player balance was back on, but I never really had an issue with the early MMs either. It encouraged flanking and team work, as well as really feeling those power bonuses a lot of At-Will power gave out. I think the main issue was their encounter design notes not really pushing minions as much as I think they should have. The HP bloat issue a lot of combat encounters ran into melts away when you have a bunch of 1HP mooks in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Da Boss wrote:
As a game, 4e is alright, especially if you use the later monster design rather than the first few monster manuals. As a simulation, it is pretty poor, and that can be immersion breaking for people. It is arguable that it was not THAT much more immersion breaking than any other version of the game though.


Yeah, I didn't have any more or less issues with immersion than I did in 3.pf. Like a lot of groups, we played on a grid already in 3.5 and even though everything was officially "feet", we counted everything in squares anyway. ("You can move 30 feet, 6 squares") I don't really get the simulation argument, if I'm being honest. Or how 3.pf was a better 'simulation' than 4e was.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 18:33:06


Post by: Lance845


I think 4th, as a TTRPG, still fails as Da Boss points out. The fluff and story of it was paper thin and the game sat front and center which is why it felt like a TT video game. But arguably the only difference between 4th and the other editions is that the others hid it better. None of the DnD editions are anything more than TT video games. Levels, Classes, the way HP and Healing is handled etc... all builds more towards a massive beat um up more then it does an actual RPG.

I still think the hate for 4th comes more from the immersion breaking then the mechanics. Some of 4ths better ideas are in 5th and some of 3rds worse ideas are in 5th too just to replace the parts of 4th people didn't like because it felt too gamey.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 18:49:37


Post by: Da Boss


steamdragon: Honestly I think it comes down to some fairly superficial stuff overall. But sometimes that is enough to put people off. I ran several campaigns in 4e and don't mind it at all.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 19:04:35


Post by: Voss


 Da Boss wrote:
True, but it would go some way to addressing it. It seems to me that the trend has been to boost HP on casters without any conmeasurate boost for the fighters.

Durability does not matter 1v1, but since Dungeons and Dragons is a team game, the durable fighter has a role to play in protecting the spellcasters from enemies. I agree it is perhaps not the glorious role the fighter might prefer.


The problem is there isn't any capability to do it.* It always comes down to a gentlemen's agreement that that the monsters won't attack the casters while the fighters are on the field.
Which is literally the opposite of what intelligent monsters would do.


*no, not even in 4e. There were theoretical mechanics for it, but the penalties and damage weren't high enough for monsters to actually care. It was still mathematically better to ignore the tanks and kill the squishies.
Like most 4e mechanics, the designers' math was simply incorrect.

From a party point of view, is was better to go without tanks. (or 'controllers'). DPS and leaders were the way to go, especially multiple warlords, so everyone is handing out extra actions all the time. It was one of the few effective ways to plow through the HP bloat that 4e doubled down on from 3rd edition.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/19 21:32:33


Post by: LordofHats


The only class with tanking mechanics I actually like is the Barbarian, bonus points if you go for the Spirits subclass that gives you lots of tools for tanking. Barbs can actually make attacking them directly enticing.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/20 16:59:55


Post by: Melissia


You guys know that the phb and the dmg both have a rule saying "if your players want to attempt something cool, find the best skill check/difficulty to see if they succeed, and come up with a reasonable outcome for it", right? I mean, the actual combat options seem limited, but ability/skill checks to do out-of-the-box things are still completely valid and in the rules.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/21 22:26:01


Post by: Easy E


Which I frequently try to do.....

Throwing torches at things, entangling, flat of the blade hits, called shots, knock downs, disarming, body slams, shield bashing, trips, martial arts/wrestling throws, Pommel slams, head butts, clotheslines, cross guard parry, quick draw strikes, thumbs to the eyes, throwing sand, glare off the blade, etc.

I am sure my DM hates me!


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/24 13:54:50


Post by: Bran Dawri


 Lance845 wrote:
I think 4th, as a TTRPG, still fails as Da Boss points out. The fluff and story of it was paper thin and the game sat front and center which is why it felt like a TT video game. But arguably the only difference between 4th and the other editions is that the others hid it better. None of the DnD editions are anything more than TT video games. Levels, Classes, the way HP and Healing is handled etc... all builds more towards a massive beat um up more then it does an actual RPG.

I still think the hate for 4th comes more from the immersion breaking then the mechanics. Some of 4ths better ideas are in 5th and some of 3rds worse ideas are in 5th too just to replace the parts of 4th people didn't like because it felt too gamey.


Pretty sure that's a weird chicken/egg thing, as D&D predates RPG videogames by quite a bit, and in fact the genre was built on it and its ilk's bones.
Then 4th emulated its cousins for some reason


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/24 17:18:44


Post by: Lance845


Bran Dawri wrote:
 Lance845 wrote:
I think 4th, as a TTRPG, still fails as Da Boss points out. The fluff and story of it was paper thin and the game sat front and center which is why it felt like a TT video game. But arguably the only difference between 4th and the other editions is that the others hid it better. None of the DnD editions are anything more than TT video games. Levels, Classes, the way HP and Healing is handled etc... all builds more towards a massive beat um up more then it does an actual RPG.

I still think the hate for 4th comes more from the immersion breaking then the mechanics. Some of 4ths better ideas are in 5th and some of 3rds worse ideas are in 5th too just to replace the parts of 4th people didn't like because it felt too gamey.


Pretty sure that's a weird chicken/egg thing, as D&D predates RPG videogames by quite a bit, and in fact the genre was built on it and its ilk's bones.
Then 4th emulated its cousins for some reason


The point is that 3rd and 5th ALSO do that. They just hide it better. What are cantrips if not at will abilities? Look at all the class abilities in 5th that only refresh after a long rest. 4th hasnt emulated its cousins any more than the others already did.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/01/24 22:07:07


Post by: Da Boss


That is why I think some of it was aesthetic rather than substantive. The art style was quite different, and a bit more computer gamey. The layout style was significantly different, much more colourful and not this faux parchment style.

And the vocabulary made the mechanics and game elements more obvious. At Will abilities and Encounter Powers are named in a way that acknowledges they are options in a game, whereas calling them Cantrips and Warlock Powers is slightly more "in world" language, which as you say hides it better.

The thing is, for a game like Dungeons and Dragons, how it 'feels' to play is pretty important for a lot of peoples enjoyment. Small things like that can be enough to break peoples immersion, and sour them on the game especially in comparison with what they were used to. It is not that common for people to look at it with a critical eye for game design (and even then, there were some mechanical changes to 4e that were not very well thought out in the first pass).

I enjoyed it, and I think it has something going for it as a tactical game, but I can see why people did not like it.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/02/06 14:57:15


Post by: Albertorius


Personally my favorite edition is still 4E, for many reasons. Not obscuring the actual mechanics is just one of them.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/03/29 22:05:48


Post by: Veteran Sergeant


/shrug

Everything about D&D 5E is boring. Why call out the combat system?

But yeah, it feels like playing Gauntlet. Every time I run low on hit points, I feel like saying "Red Warrior needs food, badly."

But that's just RPGs today.

But I disagree that D&D was ever, aside from 4th Abortion, supposed to be "tactical." Combat in D&D has always been really simple and abstracted.

4th and 5th have just turned it into a hybrid of video game and really simple grid based board game.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/03/30 15:20:48


Post by: Easy E


The things is, I find rules-lite games better at combat than the D&D version. Abstraction isn't the issue. It is the wrong level of detail... or something....


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/05 07:15:24


Post by: Albertorius


 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
/shrug

Everything about D&D 5E is boring. Why call out the combat system?

But yeah, it feels like playing Gauntlet. Every time I run low on hit points, I feel like saying "Red Warrior needs food, badly."

But that's just RPGs today.

But I disagree that D&D was ever, aside from 4th Abortion, supposed to be "tactical." Combat in D&D has always been really simple and abstracted.

4th and 5th have just turned it into a hybrid of video game and really simple grid based board game.

You might say that about OD&D, maybe. At some tables. 3.x? Ohohohoh nope.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Easy E wrote:
The things is, I find rules-lite games better at combat than the D&D version. Abstraction isn't the issue. It is the wrong level of detail... or something....
Agreed. A good game is good, no matter if it's rules-light or rules-heavy regarding combat.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/05 21:39:28


Post by: squidhills


I'm going to say that my own experiences with D&D 5th edition combat have been boring as well.

I played out party's cleric, I went healing/life domain (or whatever they call them this time) but had decent enough stats to fight on the front line. Unfortunately, because of how critical hits are handled in game, combat is far more swingy than before. Any natural 20 is a critical hit. Due to the action economy, PC's get swung at more often than PCs get to swing back at the monsters, so PCs suffer more crits than they inflict, statistically. This means any combat can suddenly turn against the party when a key PC takes a crit they weren't anticipating. With this in mind, I kept all of my spells in reserve to cast as healing spells. I would not and did not cast any spell that didn't restore hitpoints. Doing otherwise would be a waste of my time and would endanger the party. The one fight that I tried casting what few offensive spells I had nearly ended in a TPK (with over half the party down and making death saves by the skin of their teeth) because we ran out of healing and took too many crits.

This meant that for any combat that popped up during the campaign, I would ask if anyone needed healing. If they didn't, I would swing my axe at something. Rinse, repeat, for every round of combat. Every combat. For a whole campaign.

"Anyone need healing? No? Then I swing my axe at the goblin."
"Anyone need healing? No? Then I swing my axe at the orc."
"Anyone need healing? Yes? Then I cast a level 2 cure spell on the wizard."

It's easy to say that my problem was my choice of class, since as a healing cleric, I was pigeon-holing myself into being the healer and nothing else.

OK, that's fine. Except, everyone should be able to do something fun in combat, even if they are the healer. I'm playing a cleric in a Pathfinder game, and I'm the healer, and I have a lot more fun during combat, because I have a lot more options. I can hit things with my scythe. I can make trip attacks with my scythe. I can (thru a domain power) throw my scythe as a ranged attack. Because of channeling positive energy, I can heal the party without using spells, so I can use spells to affect the combat by casting buffs, debuffs, and damage inflicting attacks. I don't have to save everything for casting some variation of Cure.

In comparison, 5th Edition combat is a snooze fest.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/05 22:37:01


Post by: MegaDombro


5th edition is the most boring edition I've played, having started in AD&D. Very little options in character building, very little tactical decisions in combat either. Rules wise. I still have fun playing DnD 5th ed, as most games the rules facilitate the game, and a good group/story trumps poor rules.

4th edition fixed so many issues of previous editions, with all classes being relatively balanced to each other, reigning in the constant rift in options between spell casters and mundane characters. Its a shame the edition was so unpopular, it had many great ideas (like minions/elite/solo monsters, every class getting similarly powered abilities, rules for balanced magic item distribution).

5th edition is a lazy edition that reintroduced many faults of older editions, but its also insanely popular so I'm sure will be around for ever now.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/10 14:24:34


Post by: Easy E


Okay, perhaps my boredom with combat was more of a lack of gelling with the group. Now, they understand me and my style a bit better. In the last few sessions I have been able to.....

1. Pull a carpet out from under an attacker, causing them to go prone- Gave everyone else advantage to attack him, and spend half their turn getting up.

2. Use a whip to entangle the legs of a golem, Battle of Hoth style. Again, it ended up going prone similar to above.

3. Flying tackle a guy and restrain them via grappling

4. Slide down a zip line and land on a flying creature and grapple with it

I do think my style of play and approach to "solving" combat encounters is different from what my group is used to. They are more accustomed to using mechanics to handle combat, while I am more accustomed to using narrative (gimmicky movie tropes) first, and then mechanics to back it up. I think it was a big style change for my DM and fellow players when I started melee. Now, they are starting to get use to it, and have even gotten a bit more creative in their own combat styles.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/12 13:39:53


Post by: some bloke


I'm quite new to D&D - I started playing in November, having never done more than say "I really want to try D&D".

My experience is that combat is what you make it.

I have mostly played the Barbarian Thoruk, Duck Slayer. I run into combat with a greatsword and a complete and unshakable disregard for my own survival.

I have played games where all the players were trying to do cool things in combat, and the combat was greatly entertaining. Things were done with a plan, and that plan was conveyed to the DM for the DM to decide if he was going to go along with it, or make the NPC's scupper it. I used a cursed sword (which flung anyone who touched it away like 40 feet) to launch myself at a water elemental and attack it. The water elemental had sucked up another players weapon, and I asked if I could attempt to snatch it instead of making any attempt to soften my landing. I demolished a market stall, and took some damage, but I got the guys hammer back!

In other games, I have found the other players losing any and all interest when you stray beyond the boundaries of the combat rules. Nothing says you can attack whilst in mid-air. nothing says you can destroy an alter and accidentally summon a dwarven goddess. those games were much less fun, and I felt like I had to stop having fun for their sake, which no-one should have to feel.

squidhills wrote:
I'm going to say that my own experiences with D&D 5th edition combat have been boring as well.

I played out party's cleric, I went healing/life domain (or whatever they call them this time) but had decent enough stats to fight on the front line. Unfortunately, because of how critical hits are handled in game, combat is far more swingy than before. Any natural 20 is a critical hit. Due to the action economy, PC's get swung at more often than PCs get to swing back at the monsters, so PCs suffer more crits than they inflict, statistically. This means any combat can suddenly turn against the party when a key PC takes a crit they weren't anticipating. With this in mind, I kept all of my spells in reserve to cast as healing spells. I would not and did not cast any spell that didn't restore hitpoints. Doing otherwise would be a waste of my time and would endanger the party. The one fight that I tried casting what few offensive spells I had nearly ended in a TPK (with over half the party down and making death saves by the skin of their teeth) because we ran out of healing and took too many crits.

This meant that for any combat that popped up during the campaign, I would ask if anyone needed healing. If they didn't, I would swing my axe at something. Rinse, repeat, for every round of combat. Every combat. For a whole campaign.

"Anyone need healing? No? Then I swing my axe at the goblin."
"Anyone need healing? No? Then I swing my axe at the orc."
"Anyone need healing? Yes? Then I cast a level 2 cure spell on the wizard."

It's easy to say that my problem was my choice of class, since as a healing cleric, I was pigeon-holing myself into being the healer and nothing else.

OK, that's fine. Except, everyone should be able to do something fun in combat, even if they are the healer. I'm playing a cleric in a Pathfinder game, and I'm the healer, and I have a lot more fun during combat, because I have a lot more options. I can hit things with my scythe. I can make trip attacks with my scythe. I can (thru a domain power) throw my scythe as a ranged attack. Because of channeling positive energy, I can heal the party without using spells, so I can use spells to affect the combat by casting buffs, debuffs, and damage inflicting attacks. I don't have to save everything for casting some variation of Cure.

In comparison, 5th Edition combat is a snooze fest.


Here's the issue:


I kept all of my spells in reserve to cast as healing spells. I would not and did not cast any spell that didn't restore hit-points. Doing otherwise would be a waste of my time


This is a choice, and one you made based solely on the cold hard maths of the game and not on having fun. Consequently, you "won" the game, but didn't have fun. Perhaps suggest that anyone who can learn some healing spells on their next level so that you can be freed up to enjoy yourself a bit. You shouldn't spend the whole time as a safety net. Also perhaps ask the DM to feature things except for combat ,so combat isn't everything.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/12 16:28:53


Post by: squidhills


Here's what you missed:

squidhills wrote:
The one fight that I tried casting what few offensive spells I had nearly ended in a TPK (with over half the party down and making death saves by the skin of their teeth) because we ran out of healing and took too many crits.


I didn't base my actions on math, I based my actions on the one time I tried it your way, half the party nearly died. I examined the math after the debacle of our first combat encounter and realized what the problem was. From that point on, the only sane thing to do was keep all spells in reserve for healing.

You also missed the part about how, in another D20 game (Pathfinder) I am playing the same class (cleric) but having much more fun, due to having more options for my character. I've been gaming since AD&D 2nd Edition. I've played every flavor of D20, as well as five editions of Shadowrun and 2 editions of D6 star Wars. Hell, I even willfully inflicted the insanity that is Palladium on myself for several years. I am familiar with a wide variety of games and combat systems. 5th Edition is the only one I find genuinely boring.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/12 16:52:37


Post by: Voss


That really sounds like the DM is throwing fights at you that the party can't handle.

If you're blowing all your spells on healing constantly, something is seriously wrong, and I've seen enough 5e combat to know that isn't a system expectation.

In fact cleric spells are good enough that they usually tilt encounters so less healing is required, not more.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/12 21:21:28


Post by: ZebioLizard2


Yeah you shouldn't be needing to blow all healing spells per fight.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/13 06:23:25


Post by: some bloke


squidhills wrote:
Here's what you missed:

squidhills wrote:
The one fight that I tried casting what few offensive spells I had nearly ended in a TPK (with over half the party down and making death saves by the skin of their teeth) because we ran out of healing and took too many crits.


I didn't base my actions on math, I based my actions on the one time I tried it your way, half the party nearly died. I examined the math after the debacle of our first combat encounter and realized what the problem was. From that point on, the only sane thing to do was keep all spells in reserve for healing.

You also missed the part about how, in another D20 game (Pathfinder) I am playing the same class (cleric) but having much more fun, due to having more options for my character. I've been gaming since AD&D 2nd Edition. I've played every flavor of D20, as well as five editions of Shadowrun and 2 editions of D6 star Wars. Hell, I even willfully inflicted the insanity that is Palladium on myself for several years. I am familiar with a wide variety of games and combat systems. 5th Edition is the only one I find genuinely boring.


I'm not going to try and take any sort of high ground - I'm a noob when it comes to these sorts of games - but there's also this issue with your "only" other option being to hit it with an axe.

I play a barbarian, and it can quite easily be boiled down to "run up, rage, and hit stuff". So far, there have been very few fights where I decided to just run up and hit stuff:

I've snuck in, gotten behind the enemy and managed to slam a cooking pot over his head to blind him for a turn
I've run out of javelins, so I threw the Dwarf in the party instead
I've been made larger by the wizard, then used an enemy as a weapon against the rest
I've destroyed every item I found in a blind rage, randomly rolling for which door to go through, and ultimately summoned a dwarf goddess by smashing her alter, then rolled a nat 20 when persuading her that the dwarves who owned the place had asked me to do it (they had, in fact, asked us to kill the kobolds in their house, but my character wasn't listening).
I've thrown a waterskin on a large area of flaming grease, causing a chip-pan explosion
I've parkour'd off a magic sword to attack a water elemental
I've lured said water elemental to fling me into the air, using a boat as a seesaw, so I could attack it
I've thrown the druid, who turned into a giant octopus in mid-air

All of these encounters I could have approached boringly, and with greater success, by boiling it down to "I will rage, then I will attack". But it would have been a lot less fun.


I still recommend that you persuade some of the rest of your group to take some healing to free you up to do some more! Or, let your character die/retire and make a new one which you can enjoy more!


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/13 18:00:39


Post by: Avatar 720


 some bloke wrote:


I'm not going to try and take any sort of high ground - I'm a noob when it comes to these sorts of games - but there's also this issue with your "only" other option being to hit it with an axe.

I play a barbarian, and it can quite easily be boiled down to "run up, rage, and hit stuff". So far, there have been very few fights where I decided to just run up and hit stuff:

I've snuck in, gotten behind the enemy and managed to slam a cooking pot over his head to blind him for a turn
I've run out of javelins, so I threw the Dwarf in the party instead
I've been made larger by the wizard, then used an enemy as a weapon against the rest
I've destroyed every item I found in a blind rage, randomly rolling for which door to go through, and ultimately summoned a dwarf goddess by smashing her alter, then rolled a nat 20 when persuading her that the dwarves who owned the place had asked me to do it (they had, in fact, asked us to kill the kobolds in their house, but my character wasn't listening).
I've thrown a waterskin on a large area of flaming grease, causing a chip-pan explosion
I've parkour'd off a magic sword to attack a water elemental
I've lured said water elemental to fling me into the air, using a boat as a seesaw, so I could attack it
I've thrown the druid, who turned into a giant octopus in mid-air

All of these encounters I could have approached boringly, and with greater success, by boiling it down to "I will rage, then I will attack". But it would have been a lot less fun.


I still recommend that you persuade some of the rest of your group to take some healing to free you up to do some more! Or, let your character die/retire and make a new one which you can enjoy more!


Basically, what you're advising right now is "play the campaign I'm in". You're projecting your idea of fun in a way that borderline shames another person for playing a different character in a different campaign, especially with that sign-off. Are you really suggesting they retire or kill off their character for their enjoyment? Or so they can make one that aligns more with your own idea of enjoyment? Even without that, it implies the issue is wholly their fault when enjoyment is the job of everyone at the table.

And what about everyone else's enjoyment? There are several other players and a DM around that table, and your post focuses entirely on you - with the exception of the part where you suggest persuading everyone else to play differently.

The harsh truth is that sometimes the only way forward is to quit the game. If people won't take up the healing mantle, or the DM won't restructure the fights, and you don't want to be forced to play a different character, then you accept the game isn't for you any more. At the end of the day, your personal enjoyment is precisely equal in weight to everyone else's, and if there can't be a mutual agreement or compromise then that's the end of it. Trying to tell someone to play differently is always going to be antagonistic, because they're already playing how they want to play.

I've got a player in my game who isn't keen on the RP aspect, and struggles on their own. I make provisions and I allow them to simply tell me what they want to do without any sort of "Good morn, innkeep! A flagon of your finest mead for every table!" because A) I'm perfectly happy with it, and B) they're more comfortable that way. If it was an issue for me, I'd be frank and tell them it doesn't sound like I'm running their kind of game. If other players objected then they're free to look for a game elsewhere. What remains is a table of people who are comfortable and happy. If I tell them "well gak, just keep trying anyway" or have players that constantly sigh and tut or roll their eyes whenever the non-RPer's not in character, then it's not an enjoyable experience. The main difference between the two is that one accepts that it's nobody's place to tell you how to play, and simply lays that down as law; the other takes a flexible "just try to have fun" approach that imposes one person's fun on everyone else, or everyone else's fun on one person.

As one final thought:
"but there's also this issue with your "only" other option being to hit it with an axe."

Why is this an issue? You're not playing their character or their campaign, or with the other people at their table, but you're treating this as if it's wrong regardless, and that's because of that aforementioned projecting. You're imagining that they're playing an identical game to your own, with the exact same rules, playstyles, DM style, combat style, mapping, the works, but there's no proof of that whatsoever.

'Why not parkour off a magic sword at a water elemental?' is a wholly moot idea if an option like that will never materialise; and no, trying to make it happen isn't the solution for every reason I've ranted about above.
'Throw a party member at-' The party member tells me 'no, that's suicide'.
'Slam a cooking pot-' What cooking pot? There's nothing to blind someone with, and if it fails then I get stabbed and die.
'I destroyed everything because my character wasn't listening-' 'You put the entire party in danger because you weren't paying attention. Some of us wanted some of the things you broke and now we can't have them. One of them was precious and part of another party member's character arc they're been working with the DM on. You acted like a mad idiot, "convinced" a deity with a lucky houserule*, and got out of it by the skin of your teeth, while everyone else just had to go along with it all.'

I'm not trying to gak on you doing it, just providing some realistic examples of why it's not that easy. It's great that you've got a campaign you can all enjoy. But remember that's your campaign, and it and all its rules and styles exists in a vacuum from everyone else's. Sometimes the only option a player does have is to hit something with their axe.

*Natural 20s are only automatic hits in combat, and count as 2 successful death saves, by the actual rules. They're not an auto-pass for everything, that's simply a bafflingly common houserule that more or less breaks the game.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/13 21:25:45


Post by: squidhills


 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Yeah you shouldn't be needing to blow all healing spells per fight.


I never said I was blowing all of my healing spells each fight. If I gave that impression, I apologize for any confusion. What I said was that, out of a real worry that the fights could, at any moment, inflict more damage on us than we could handle (and already had done so once before), I would not cast anything except a healing spell. I usually didn't have to cast more than one or two spells per encounter, but we were doing a literal dungeon crawl (Dungeon of the Mad Mage) and we'd end up having several encounters before stopping for a long rest. So any spell cast on something other than healing was a cure spell I didn't have when we would end up needing it. As the party healer, it was my job to... well, heal. 5th Ed's swingy combats made it all the more imperative that I have those heal spells available when called on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 some bloke wrote:


I still recommend that you persuade some of the rest of your group to take some healing to free you up to do some more! Or, let your character die/retire and make a new one which you can enjoy more!


I'm not about to ask other people to tank their character concepts and add class levels they don't want to add just because I think combat is boring. I'm not about to kill of the character, because a) I really like this character and b) then the party wouldn't have any healer at all. That doesn't solve my problem and it adds a new problem, because combat is still boring, and now we're all dead.

I mean it when I say that I really like the character I played in 5th edition, and plan to port her over to the next Pathfinder game I'm in. I think she's awesome, and I had a lot of fun with her anytime we weren't in combat. But in combat? I could've downloaded an app to run her and been happier doing something else. And the problem is, we were doing Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Spoiler alert: it's 85% combat. Now, I'm no stranger to ye olde-schoole dungeon crawl. I played through Against the Giants, and the two that came after it (frost giants and fire giants... the names escape me atm) and those are straight up "kick in the door, kill the monster, loot the body, rinse and repeat" modules. Had an absolute blast doing it, but we were using 2nd Edition, which I think handled combat better than 5th.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/14 06:46:33


Post by: Lance845


I think it highlights the underlying issues with dnd that we are talking about these people (read characters) and their abilities like they are a diablo class.

Its a role playing game. Your suposed to be playing a person in a world. If dnds combat or anything about it is boring/bad this highlights what that is and why. You should be playing people going on adventures. Not a instance party built to handle packs of mobs in prebuilt pulls and calculating situations and resources for boss fights.

Dnd fails most of all at being a rpg.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/14 07:26:58


Post by: some bloke


 Avatar 720 wrote:

Basically, what you're advising right now is "play the campaign I'm in". You're projecting your idea of fun in a way that borderline shames another person for playing a different character in a different campaign, especially with that sign-off. Are you really suggesting they retire or kill off their character for their enjoyment? Or so they can make one that aligns more with your own idea of enjoyment? Even without that, it implies the issue is wholly their fault when enjoyment is the job of everyone at the table.


That wasn't my intention at all, and I apologize if I came across as trying to shame anybody. I was simply trying to point out that this game will be boring if you boil everything down to "do I heal, or hit with an axe". I could do the same with the Barbarian - "do I rage, or save my rage, before I hit them". I try different and interesting things because I find it increases the enjoyment from the game, for all parties, not just myself.

And what about everyone else's enjoyment? There are several other players and a DM around that table, and your post focuses entirely on you - with the exception of the part where you suggest persuading everyone else to play differently.


As an RPG, where everyone is in control of all of their characters actions throughout, I shouldn't have to focus overmuch on what the other players are doing to enjoy themselves. If I was playing with someone who was finding it boring because they only decided between hit or heal for every turn of every encounter, then I might offer the odd suggestions, but it's ultimately up to them. Asking other players to maybe take some healing spells, if their class choices would allow it, is just a way to try and salvage your enjoyment in the campaign - otherwise you may as well tell the DM your formula, turn the character into an NPC and then make a different one. There's no point playing if you don't enjoy it!


As one final thought:
"but there's also this issue with your "only" other option being to hit it with an axe."

Why is this an issue? You're not playing their character or their campaign, or with the other people at their table, but you're treating this as if it's wrong regardless, and that's because of that aforementioned projecting. You're imagining that they're playing an identical game to your own, with the exact same rules, playstyles, DM style, combat style, mapping, the works, but there's no proof of that whatsoever.

'Why not parkour off a magic sword at a water elemental?' is a wholly moot idea if an option like that will never materialise; and no, trying to make it happen isn't the solution for every reason I've ranted about above.
'Throw a party member at-' The party member tells me 'no, that's suicide'.
'Slam a cooking pot-' What cooking pot? There's nothing to blind someone with, and if it fails then I get stabbed and die.
'I destroyed everything because my character wasn't listening-' 'You put the entire party in danger because you weren't paying attention. Some of us wanted some of the things you broke and now we can't have them. One of them was precious and part of another party member's character arc they're been working with the DM on. You acted like a mad idiot, "convinced" a deity with a lucky houserule*, and got out of it by the skin of your teeth, while everyone else just had to go along with it all.'

I'm not trying to gak on you doing it, just providing some realistic examples of why it's not that easy. It's great that you've got a campaign you can all enjoy. But remember that's your campaign, and it and all its rules and styles exists in a vacuum from everyone else's. Sometimes the only option a player does have is to hit something with their axe.

*Natural 20s are only automatic hits in combat, and count as 2 successful death saves, by the actual rules. They're not an auto-pass for everything, that's simply a bafflingly common houserule that more or less breaks the game.


I wasn't suggesting that they try to perfectly imitate the things that I have done - I was simply giving some examples of things I've done in combat instead of simply raging and rolling dice. The "rage and hit everything" game, I was killing kobolds every turn, and expected to smash a chair when I said "I'll hit whatever's closest and then go to the next room". I was playing a lot like Sir Lancelot from Monty Python & the Holy Grail, where he pauses to slash at a bunch of flowers on the wall. The DM saw an opportunity and he took it. By the end of the game, everyone was laughing so much that they couldn't breathe. I don't think it was exclusively for my own enjoyment.

At the end of the day, I stand by my original sentiment (however muddied it has become by my anecdotes) that the Combat is, by and large, what you make it. If you boil it down to 2 options, and never veer from that, then any combat will be "a period of time in which you choose between 2 options every 6 seconds" which is, we can probably all agree, going to get boring pretty quickly.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/14 17:15:17


Post by: Elbows


 Lance845 wrote:
I think it highlights the underlying issues with dnd that we are talking about these people (read characters) and their abilities like they are a diablo class.

Its a role playing game. Your suposed to be playing a person in a world. If dnds combat or anything about it is boring/bad this highlights what that is and why. You should be playing people going on adventures. Not a instance party built to handle packs of mobs in prebuilt pulls and calculating situations and resources for boss fights.

Dnd fails most of all at being a rpg.


I'm new to D&D but this is pretty much exactly what I feel. Coming from a weird RPG background (hacks of old Palladium systems in which we ignored half the rules, etc.) D&D doesn't really strike me as an RPG. It's just a dungeon crawling board game with a lot more rules/stats. At least that's how my two GM's have more or less treated it. The rules seem to heavily support that concept though...so I can't really blame them.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/14 17:17:17


Post by: Melissia


I mean, it's no 4th edition. But it's certainly better than 3rd, 2nd, or 1st edition when it came to combat.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/14 19:08:16


Post by: Easy E


 Lance845 wrote:
I think it highlights the underlying issues with dnd that we are talking about these people (read characters) and their abilities like they are a diablo class.

Its a role playing game. Your suposed to be playing a person in a world. If dnds combat or anything about it is boring/bad this highlights what that is and why. You should be playing people going on adventures. Not a instance party built to handle packs of mobs in prebuilt pulls and calculating situations and resources for boss fights.

Dnd fails most of all at being a rpg.


Are you saying..... system matters!


**** Runs and hides whiel the other thread members throw rotten fruit at me*******


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/14 23:52:45


Post by: Melissia


I don't have that problem with DnD, but I also don't ever try to pretend to roleplay a "normal" person in DnD. It's not built for that. It's built for heroic adventures by capable people as they take on epic quests to save the world, or at least some small part of it, and probably build (and spend) a treasure hoard doing it.

A lot of the problems people have with DnD are trying to do things it was never designed to do. If you want, for example, to roleplay a normal, talentless nobody thrust in to a situation they are wholly unprepared for, you're probably better off playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, a game where you can play such things as a ratcatcher, your basic merchant, or a farmer without any adjustments.

It's the same reason I wouldn't play Vampire or Shadowrun as the same kind of epic heroic character that you typically play in DnD or Exalted. Doesn't match what the game was designed to do. It's not the point of those games.

As for combat, frankly, the DnD game that handled combat the best was 4th edition, and my group is actually moving towards playing 4th lately as a break from 5th. But both are still better than the utterly unbalanced, bloated mess that was 3/3.5, or the broken wreck of earlier editions.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/22 11:35:31


Post by: the_scotsman


As a relative newcomer to Dnd 5e from mostly playing other "looser" systems like Fates and Powered by the Apocalypse games, I think combat in dnd can be quite good....if the DM is extremely good at creating good encounters. And is willing to be flexible with allowing the players to take creative actions and improvise the results. We have a couple of players who are very new to RPGs and while they're steadily figuring out the roleplaying, purposefully built extremely basic, easy to pilot characters for combat that literally just hit things - a dual-wielding fighter and a ranger with a bow and arrow. The biggest challenge of building combat encounters has been accounting for the fact that two of our party members are total damage hoses while the other two are...well, two low level casters who have a little too much fun casting the silly out of combat spells. We each have 1 damaging cantrip, 1 combat leveled spell, and 1 heal, and beyond that it's just stuff like detect magic and silent image and create or destroy water.

It took a while to find the right balance, but now I feel like combat serves the purpose it's supposed to have in a role playing game. I despised fourth the times I played it precisely because I was there to play an RPG and it felt like I'd play 30 minutes of an RPG and 4 hours of a fairly bad skirmish wargame any time someone convinced me into a session. I understand that's me, and someone might really want to have their character extremely heavily tied to the various special moves and signature tricks they have in combat. But now we've got a nice rhythm down, combat takes 3-4 rounds, everyone gets to do their cool gak, there's some drama usually, someone goes down and has to get revived or someone does a particularly cool creative thing like realize that their 500-pound tortle can have Jump cast on it and use that to Blue Shell an enemy boss monster, and then it's done and it gets out of the way and lets us get back to roleplaying.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/22 15:26:14


Post by: some bloke


the_scotsman wrote:
As a relative newcomer to Dnd 5e from mostly playing other "looser" systems like Fates and Powered by the Apocalypse games, I think combat in dnd can be quite good....if the DM is extremely good at creating good encounters. And is willing to be flexible with allowing the players to take creative actions and improvise the results. We have a couple of players who are very new to RPGs and while they're steadily figuring out the roleplaying, purposefully built extremely basic, easy to pilot characters for combat that literally just hit things - a dual-wielding fighter and a ranger with a bow and arrow. The biggest challenge of building combat encounters has been accounting for the fact that two of our party members are total damage hoses while the other two are...well, two low level casters who have a little too much fun casting the silly out of combat spells. We each have 1 damaging cantrip, 1 combat leveled spell, and 1 heal, and beyond that it's just stuff like detect magic and silent image and create or destroy water.

It took a while to find the right balance, but now I feel like combat serves the purpose it's supposed to have in a role playing game. I despised fourth the times I played it precisely because I was there to play an RPG and it felt like I'd play 30 minutes of an RPG and 4 hours of a fairly bad skirmish wargame any time someone convinced me into a session. I understand that's me, and someone might really want to have their character extremely heavily tied to the various special moves and signature tricks they have in combat. But now we've got a nice rhythm down, combat takes 3-4 rounds, everyone gets to do their cool gak, there's some drama usually, someone goes down and has to get revived or someone does a particularly cool creative thing like realize that their 500-pound tortle can have Jump cast on it and use that to Blue Shell an enemy boss monster, and then it's done and it gets out of the way and lets us get back to roleplaying.


I think that this is an important part - and one where I may have gotten wrong/missed in my earlier post. Sometimes, I've seen the roleplaying stop when combat starts, and people mechanically move through the most efficient methods of combat until the combat is done, then the roleplaying starts up again. it makes it seem like 2 separate games, really, in which you use the same characters.

It definitely comes down to:

1: having good encounters set up. I've been reading "The angry GM" (it's a website) and he explains how there shouldn't be "combat encounters", there should just be encounters and the players need to decide how to deal with them. It's something that I'm taking to heart with my designs at DM-ing, and I'm not treating any encounter I'm mocking up as a definitively combat-based experience. I want to make roleplay encounters to fit into a roleplaying game, as opposed to combat encounters to remind the roleplayers that they have weapons. Might be an entire group spend the whole campaign making friends with monsters and persuading them to stop eating villagers, with no blood spilt - and that's fine.
2: Keeping the roleplay going - this is where I fell down in my last post. If it fits your character to hit or heal then that's the right thing to do (as it fitted my character to run in screaming and find unusual ways of hitting things). I think that this is made more achievable if the DM sets up encounters which aren't there for combat's sake - if your character would rather talk it out, or stealth around them, or poison their food and wait until they eat it, that's all valid options.

but as a basic system by which to deprive your enemies of all their hit points, the combat has potential to get a little stale.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/23 16:01:56


Post by: Easy E


Good points. My group tends to do that too. There is RPG time and combat time and the two do not meet. My approach to these encounters as RPG moments too has been an eye opener to them....



D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/23 20:36:03


Post by: Melissia


I never stop roleplaying when combat starts. It's fun to do clever things like use Thaumaturgy to trick an enemy in to thinking he's being flanked, or use Acrobatics to reposition myself, and so on. When I DM, I reward creative solutions when they apply.

As for "reduce hp to zero", that's not the only way to win combat even in DnD. Rules for morale do exist, and if the players' enemies are intelligent creatures they'll know when to flee.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/25 08:22:16


Post by: Da Boss


D&D invented the roleplaying genre, and it has always been about crawling dungeons and killing monsters. It is very good at what it wants to do, people like to use it for other things.
I agree, other games are better at narrative play or giving mechanics to aid in portraying someone as a complex individual with many aspects.
But that is not what D&D is for (and is also not what RPGs HAVE to be for). It is a pulp adventure game about killing monsters and taking their treasure or killing monsters and saving the world. If you go into it looking for deep psychological explorations of character you will be disappointed because that is not what it is trying to do.

I dislike gatekeeping about what "real roleplaying is". It tends to mean "My favourite style of roleplaying" with a heavy dose of "I am looking down on people who prefer other styles".

PbtA to me is a fairly good example of a "loose" game. I like it, it has a lot of flavour and is very flexible due to it's high level of abstraction. It is elegantly designed. But for sure characters in Dungeons and Dragons and antagonists in that game have more fleshed out mechanics.

I hate FATE, it is unenjoyable to me. I am usually the DM, and I prefer to run a fairly simulationist sort of game as a DM. I prefer to let the narrative form from events at the table, and am not interested in forcing a three act structure or whatever on to my games. FATE therefore offers me nothing as a DM. As a player, it is even worse, because I want a break from being a DM but the mechanics are forcing me to break immersion and acknowledge that I am in a narrative, not a world, and influence it. Urgh. Absolutely hate it, anti-fun for me. Give me any editiion of Dungeons and Dragons over that.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/26 06:14:51


Post by: Manchu


To Eric’s original point -

You have to keep in mind that “the rules” (in this case, the rules of combat) don’t constitute the game.

The game is about taking on the perspective of a fantasy character. That’s where the play is. The roleplay.

The combat rules are just guidelines for randomizing outcomes of what the PCs attempt.

Don’t confuse D&D with a miniatures skirmish game.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/26 20:23:22


Post by: Bran Dawri


Yeah, combat stats and rules aren't the be-all, end-all of RPGs, even (or especially) D&D.
One of my favorite character could get beaten bloody by pretty much everyone else in the party - and wound up being more powerful than any of them. While the others amassed wealth and items, he accrued favours and rose up in the ranks until he was basically the power behind the throne (occupied by the party's paladin, no less), running both the legal and illegal sides of the kingdom's organisation. Nick Fury meets whatsthebaldguysnamefromgotagain style. Most of it without so much as rolling a single die.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/26 21:48:20


Post by: Lance845


I get that in a table top rpg... or really any game, you are free to just change things however you see fit.

When I played 40k I made house rules because the basic game just isn't that fun.

But here is the question... Shouldn't the basic product be fun and functional all on it's own?

I GET that dnds combat rules are there to facilitate telling that piece of the story. So then shouldn't they do that without any intervention from the DM? Shouldn't the game just work? I don't feel like that is a crazy big ask. I feel like thats what we should all just expect from the product out of the box. If dnds mechanics are too strict or inflexible or don't allow for ______ that comes up often enough that people need to invent rules for it or borrow rules from other systems then isn't the problem dnds rules? This doesn't seem like an unreasonable position to take. They know what kind of game they are making. They know what players will do. So fething make the product to do it.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/27 04:18:07


Post by: Manchu


“without any intervention from the DM

This is a telling statement. The DM doesn’t intervene in the rules. The DM makes calls — how we figure out what happens in any given instance of a player saying “my character tries XYZ.” The rules are just the guidelines for making those specific calls.

If all your character ever tries is “i swing my weapon” and then complains that it’s boring, well, that’s sort of like calling your reflection ugly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Melissia wrote:
If you want, for example, to roleplay a normal, talentless nobody thrust in to a situation they are wholly unprepared for
Then play a level-0 character.

Most editions of D&D have a “normal human” entry in the Monster Manual. Play that. After (IF!) that character survives their first adventure, pick a class to enter a level-1.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/27 18:07:06


Post by: Lance845


That is disingenuous. This whole thread is about dms stepping outside the box to accommodate players doing whacky gak.

5th has far less allowances than 3rd for the sake of simplicity. Like disarms and feints being basically non existant rules wise. How individual dms handle those situations, with luck rolls, advantage/disadvantage, and whatever is all well and good but that is dm intervention when the system itself fails to hold up its end of the bargain.

And that was my point. Of course the players and dm can just do what they want. But shouldnt the game just work allowing it to begin with?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/27 20:12:45


Post by: Spoletta


 Lance845 wrote:
That is disingenuous. This whole thread is about dms stepping outside the box to accommodate players doing whacky gak.

5th has far less allowances than 3rd for the sake of simplicity. Like disarms and feints being basically non existant rules wise. How individual dms handle those situations, with luck rolls, advantage/disadvantage, and whatever is all well and good but that is dm intervention when the system itself fails to hold up its end of the bargain.

And that was my point. Of course the players and dm can just do what they want. But shouldnt the game just work allowing it to begin with?


I find this wholly incorrect.

If anything, the 5th edition is the one which allows the most allowance to players.

I have played 3th, 4th, 5th, Sine Requie, Savage World, Exalted and many others. Probably the only one which comes near to 5th in terms of freedom of actions is Exalted.

The 5th edition is a system built around the concept that you describe an action, and the DM has a some guideline which allows him to understand how to make that action happen. It is not 4th edition where everything is hard coded and you have the illusion of being able to do a lot of stuff.

I'm currently running 4 campaings, 3 as DM (a Madmage, a standard one, and a Zendikar setting with evil party) and one as a bard. All with different players and all at low levels. I've never run into the issue of a fight being repetitive or boring, they have all been quite engaging.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/27 20:31:12


Post by: squidhills


5th Edition has rules for swinging your weapon and casting your spells. EVERYTHING else is GM's discretion. If your GM is good, he'll allow you to attempt whatever crazy idea you come up with, work out a mechanic that works, and have you roll. If your GM is bad (or very new and not comfortable straying outside of any well-defined rules), he'll prevent you from trying anything that doesn't have a hard and fast rule in the book.

You can look at that and say "any game can be made boring with a crap GM". And you'd be right. But you'd be glossing over 5th Edition combat's core issue; everything that isn't "swing weapon" or "cast spell" is dependent on whether your GM is "good" or "bad".

In 3.5/Pathfinder, position on the battlefield matters. Movement in combat matters. Flanking matters. Trip-Fighters are a viable build. Disarm-Fighters are a viable build. Sunder-Fighters (while denying everyone else valuable loot) are a viable build. Certain weapons work better for certain tasks. My GM can be a mound of pudding and it won't change whether or not I'm flanking someone. He can be legally braindead, and I can still attempt to trip someone. I never have to ask the GM "can I do this" and hope he'll let me. I tell the GM "I'm going to try this" and the dice tell me if I succeed.

In 5th? All of that is either at the whim and mercy of the GM, or (like weapon differences beyond damage die type) utterly meaningless. I don't like combat systems where 2/3rds of the things I might want to try rely on the GM being in a good mood that day.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/27 21:30:58


Post by: Spoletta


squidhills wrote:
5th Edition has rules for swinging your weapon and casting your spells. EVERYTHING else is GM's discretion. If your GM is good, he'll allow you to attempt whatever crazy idea you come up with, work out a mechanic that works, and have you roll. If your GM is bad (or very new and not comfortable straying outside of any well-defined rules), he'll prevent you from trying anything that doesn't have a hard and fast rule in the book.

You can look at that and say "any game can be made boring with a crap GM". And you'd be right. But you'd be glossing over 5th Edition combat's core issue; everything that isn't "swing weapon" or "cast spell" is dependent on whether your GM is "good" or "bad".

In 3.5/Pathfinder, position on the battlefield matters. Movement in combat matters. Flanking matters. Trip-Fighters are a viable build. Disarm-Fighters are a viable build. Sunder-Fighters (while denying everyone else valuable loot) are a viable build. Certain weapons work better for certain tasks. My GM can be a mound of pudding and it won't change whether or not I'm flanking someone. He can be legally braindead, and I can still attempt to trip someone. I never have to ask the GM "can I do this" and hope he'll let me. I tell the GM "I'm going to try this" and the dice tell me if I succeed.

In 5th? All of that is either at the whim and mercy of the GM, or (like weapon differences beyond damage die type) utterly meaningless. I don't like combat systems where 2/3rds of the things I might want to try rely on the GM being in a good mood that day.


Those kind of systems is what i call "No freedom of action". I want to disarm an opponent? It's hard coded, so either i do it like that or i don't. You have the feat/skill/class/weapon whatever or it isn't happening, which sucks. In 5th i want to disarm an opponent? I describe the action to the DM and roll for it.

Yeah, D&D sucks with a bad DM. But that is true for the RP part as well.
Doesn't mean that combat rules are bad, it means that D&D is a game as good as the DM, which is surely a flaw.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 01:11:02


Post by: Manchu


 Lance845 wrote:
And that was my point. Of course the players and dm can just do what they want. But shouldnt the game just work allowing it to begin with?
And that was my point; it does.
squidhills wrote:
I don't like combat systems where 2/3rds of the things I might want to try rely on the GM being in a good mood that day.
It sounds like what you are really after is a tactical skirmish miniatures game. Try 4E.
Spoletta wrote:
Doesn't mean that combat rules are bad, it means that D&D is a game as good as the DM, which is surely a flaw.
If it’s a flaw, it’s not a flaw of D&D but rather all RPGs.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 01:22:15


Post by: Lance845


The game doesn't need to hard code every potential action as it's own separate action if the rules of the game are flexible enough.

As a contrast the Unisystem had 2 versions. The cinematic version had a big list of combat manuevers that covered basically everything. You want to kick someone in the balls? Stab them in the heart? Head butt? There is a manuver. You get +/- to your stat + skill and it modifies damage and triggers effect. Thats hard coded.

But alternatively, the game just says if you want to do something it's stat + Skill with penalties for targetting smaller things.

Wanna disarm? Dex + Weapon - 2 or 3 depending on the weapon you are targetting and the opponent opposes with Dex + weapon of their own. Ties g to the defender. Attacker wins the weapon has left their hand.

The BASIC mechanics on the unisystem are robust enough to cover everything quickly and effeciently without the DM needing to make some gak up on the fly. DnD isn't. It needs bespoke rules or it needs a good DM whos happy to color outside the lines.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 01:25:27


Post by: Manchu


I’m pretty sure D&D also has the concept of modified opposed checks.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 02:31:41


Post by: Lance845


 Manchu wrote:
I’m pretty sure D&D also has the concept of modified opposed checks.


It has the CONCEPT for doing things like stealth vs a spot check or whatever the hell they call it in 5th. But they don't have it for combat. Because DnD still runs on d20 which is using DCs for the majority of it's mechanics including combat. You can't do an opposed roll for disarming or whatever because attacking isn't attribute mod + "skill". It's BAB or proficency, + attribute + other bs vs a specialized DC that is your AC.

The unisystem runs entirely on the singular mechanic of stat + skill. It's built to do it opposed. Built to modify the roll based on outside factors. And built to gauge degrees of success when doing a task unopposed or opposed.

Again, DnD just isn't built for it. The system isn't robust or flexible enough.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 10:30:04


Post by: harlokin


 Manchu wrote:
It sounds like what you are really after is a tactical skirmish miniatures game. Try 4E.


4E is no less (or more) a RPG than the other editions of D&D.There are plenty of other RPGs that have interesting tactical decision making during combat, for example Savage Worlds, 2d20 Conan, or Exalted, which are not tactical skirmish games and don't rely on GM fiat to make the combat engaging.

 Manchu wrote:
If it’s a flaw, it’s not a flaw of D&D but rather all RPGs.


It is a flaw of D&D, and not all RPGs are equally flawed in that respect.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 11:18:08


Post by: Manchu


No one is arguing that 4E is not a RPG.

In terms of combat, it is structured around the conceit of being a miniatures game; which sounds like what a number of posters ITT are looking for. That may also be true for Savage Worlds, etc.

Every RPG depends on the players. System will never make up for bad players, where actual roleplay is concerned.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 11:27:32


Post by: harlokin


I can't argue with any of that, bad players will always be a drag factor on any game.

But if rolling a d20 to see what happens is the limit of the tactical options available within a system, that puts a huge burden on the GM to make it fun.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 11:33:32


Post by: Manchu


The burden is also on the players to come up with interesting things for their PCs to do.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 11:50:37


Post by: some bloke


 Manchu wrote:
The burden is also on the players to come up with interesting things for their PCs to do.


agreed. If the PC's all just walk up and hit their opponents then the fight will consist of the PC's walking up and hitting the opponents.

I'm setting up a campaign, and I plan to try and make as many of the "combat encounters" require thought as possible. EG, there's a group of goblins on the other side of the bridge, but they don't seem keen to go on the bridge. If a PC says they walk up and hit them, then I'll say to make a dexterity save as the bridge that they were obviously luring you onto collapses under you.

a room full of dudes to kill, which you cannot leave until the dudes have been killed, is as uninspiring of a "combat encounter" as saying "I walk up and hit them" is an uninspiring PC response to it.

It's up for the GM to make a challenging encounter, which requires some thought and such to approach.
It's up to the PC's to decide how they will approach it. They might walk up and hit things, they might throw rocks, or release caged animals, or use mage hand to undo the belt buckle of the main boss as they square up for a fight, or loot stuff nearby to get ahead of their fellow adventurers, or, or, or.

The GM's set up will limit their decisions, so it has to be dynamic and elaborate enough, and well described enough, to give the players more agency.


EG the difference between a room full of enemies with a magically locked door which stays shut until the enemies are dead (limited choices) and a long corridor with 2 doors at one end - one they came in through, and another that is locked which they wish to exit by - whilst a horde of enemies (can be a horde due to space restrictions dropping their effective numbers) pour down the corridor. The door leads to the only surviving bridge, and the corridor is open on one side, with huge wooden totem poles standing alongside the ravine.
The fighter classes might hold them back, whilst the rogue picks the lock and the support classes try to help, while the barbarian (or other strong characters) might try to tip a totem pole over to bridge the gap. Thus players have different roles available in the encounter, and different options of things to do, rather than all having to fight. One player might have a way to magically transport one player at a time over the ravine, etc etc. good encounters offer diverse options.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 12:21:24


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
That is disingenuous. This whole thread is about dms stepping outside the box to accommodate players doing whacky gak.

5th has far less allowances than 3rd for the sake of simplicity. Like disarms and feints being basically non existant rules wise. How individual dms handle those situations, with luck rolls, advantage/disadvantage, and whatever is all well and good but that is dm intervention when the system itself fails to hold up its end of the bargain.

And that was my point. Of course the players and dm can just do what they want. But shouldnt the game just work allowing it to begin with?


I mean, again, I've played fifth all of one single time, but disarms and feints are both things that my Fighter has the option to do. It's baked into the subclass that he got really excited about, and looking at the subclasses I have to admit that I like that the mechanically intense sorts of combat maneuvers were gated behind that one particular subclass and, if you want, you can choose to have one that's infinitely simpler if you so desire.

If I had presented this player with a character sheet that included "Feinting Strike, Parry, Riposte, Disarming Strike, Goading Strike" etc on his first playing session, his reaction would have been identical to mine when I tried fourth and got handed a fistful of cards that said "once per day, once per short rest, once per encounter" and got told "so these are all the things your character can do, keep track of them!"

But now that he's had about 12 hours of play time under his belt, and he's got the hang of the basics, he can branch out and play around with the more complicated tricks and maneuvers and decide what his character's fighting style is.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 12:32:04


Post by: harlokin


Other RPGs give the characters actual tactical options for combat, with clearly defined parameters, that are not simply rounds of 'mother may I' with the GM.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 12:38:50


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
 Manchu wrote:
I’m pretty sure D&D also has the concept of modified opposed checks.


It has the CONCEPT for doing things like stealth vs a spot check or whatever the hell they call it in 5th. But they don't have it for combat. Because DnD still runs on d20 which is using DCs for the majority of it's mechanics including combat. You can't do an opposed roll for disarming or whatever because attacking isn't attribute mod + "skill". It's BAB or proficency, + attribute + other bs vs a specialized DC that is your AC.

The unisystem runs entirely on the singular mechanic of stat + skill. It's built to do it opposed. Built to modify the roll based on outside factors. And built to gauge degrees of success when doing a task unopposed or opposed.

Again, DnD just isn't built for it. The system isn't robust or flexible enough.


I mean, yes but also not really. The only thing that making an action against your opponent "opposed" vs making them oppose it with a static value, is greatly increasing the random swing from 1 D20 roll to 2 D20 rolls. a character who is really really clumsy at a -1 making an attack at an opponent who is really really dextrous at +5 is VASTLY more swingy if they both need to roll a D20 and add, versus the dextrous character always having a native DC of 15 rather than 10 to be hit.

and also, there are plenty of in-combat circumstances that can change the momentary odds of the same attack, they're just not *usually* opposed rolls. Hide is a basic action in combat, which is an opposed stealth vs perception check. Dodge gives an opponent disadvantage on their attack if you can see them. Help gives an ally advantage on their next attack. And that's just the basic combat actions.

One of the biggest frustrations I have had with D (high number) systems is the fact that your character's skill and the circumstances tend to matter less than the result of the die roll in a lot of situations. I would much rather apply advantage/disadvantage, halve or double damage, raise or lower the DC of doing something than have to oppose with another random D20 roll, it's faster to resolve and makes it far more likely that abilities and actions' effects actually MATTER.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
 harlokin wrote:
Other RPGs give the characters actual tactical options for combat, with clearly defined parameters, that are not simply rounds of 'mother may I' with the GM.


I've got, in my group right now, a level 3 druid, whose options in combat are:

1) attack with his weapon in melee
2) provide advantage to an ally's attack on an enemy within melee range of him
3) increase his AC by dodging
4) Hide, forcing enemies to oppose his stealth with perception
5) move double speed
6) Disengage from combat without provoking an attack of opportunity
7) Transform into what is right now 6 different animal options, which change his melee combat profile and give him bonus HP but remove his access to spellcasting as long as he stays in it
8) cast a small AOE on a point that pushes all enemies away 2 squares and deals slight damage if they fail their save
9) cast a pure damage spell that does heavy damage to one target and light damage to any surrounding enemies in an aoe
10) heat up an opponent's metal armor or weapon, causing damage to a single target and forcing them to check if they disarm
11) cast an unlimited spell that causes light damage at range
12) Heal an ally they can touch

12 purely mechanical options, without getting into anything that CAN be done with a discussion with the DM, you know, like in a roleplaying game. And that's at level 3 of 20, and he can change out 8-12 any time he likes for any of like 30 other options from the first and second level spell list.

The simplest possible character types still have access to 1-6, and there is not a single character class that I have found that does not have some way to increase the number of options they have each round above 6, if they so choose. You CAN stick to 6, but only on purpose.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 12:58:24


Post by: Manchu


 harlokin wrote:
simply rounds of 'mother may I' with the GM.
This sounds like dysfunction, or maybe growing pains.

Players don’t need to ask the DM for permission for their characters to attempt something. Players need to explain how their characters are attempting things so the DM has enough info to make a call about whether a roll is necessary and, if so, what kind of roll should be made.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 13:05:56


Post by: harlokin


Not necessarily. It may come to a matter of gaming taste.

One system may have rules for disarming, or making a powerful attack at the expense of defence, or distracting opponent. Another may have no such thing, but instead leaves it in the purview of the GM to adjudicate on a case-by-case basis what a character may attempt, what the parameters are, and whether it succeeds.

I have a strong preference for the former, but the latter is also a popular option.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 13:09:05


Post by: the_scotsman


 harlokin wrote:
Not necessarily. It may come to a matter of gaming taste.

One system may have rules for disarming, or making a powerful attack at the expense of defence, or distracting opponent. Another may have no such thing, but instead leaves it in the purview of the GM to adjudicate on a case-by-case basis what a character may attempt, what the parameters are, and whether it succeeds.

I have a strong preference for the former, but the latter is also a popular option.


It's a good thing DnD 5e has literally all those things if you want them, huh.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 13:20:52


Post by: harlokin


the_scotsman wrote:
 harlokin wrote:
Not necessarily. It may come to a matter of gaming taste.

One system may have rules for disarming, or making a powerful attack at the expense of defence, or distracting opponent. Another may have no such thing, but instead leaves it in the purview of the GM to adjudicate on a case-by-case basis what a character may attempt, what the parameters are, and whether it succeeds.

I have a strong preference for the former, but the latter is also a popular option.


It's a good thing DnD 5e has literally all those things if you want them, huh.


I don't play any flavour of D&D any more, but thanks.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 13:26:08


Post by: the_scotsman


 harlokin wrote:
the_scotsman wrote:
 harlokin wrote:
Not necessarily. It may come to a matter of gaming taste.

One system may have rules for disarming, or making a powerful attack at the expense of defence, or distracting opponent. Another may have no such thing, but instead leaves it in the purview of the GM to adjudicate on a case-by-case basis what a character may attempt, what the parameters are, and whether it succeeds.

I have a strong preference for the former, but the latter is also a popular option.


It's a good thing DnD 5e has literally all those things if you want them, huh.


I don't play any flavour of D&D any more, but thanks.


Then what purpose could you possibly have in coming into a thread about the latest edition of a game you don't play and claiming it doesn't have mechanics that it does actually have?



D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 13:31:54


Post by: harlokin


the_scotsman wrote:
 harlokin wrote:
the_scotsman wrote:
 harlokin wrote:
Not necessarily. It may come to a matter of gaming taste.

One system may have rules for disarming, or making a powerful attack at the expense of defence, or distracting opponent. Another may have no such thing, but instead leaves it in the purview of the GM to adjudicate on a case-by-case basis what a character may attempt, what the parameters are, and whether it succeeds.

I have a strong preference for the former, but the latter is also a popular option.


It's a good thing DnD 5e has literally all those things if you want them, huh.


I don't play any flavour of D&D any more, but thanks.


Then what purpose could you possibly have in coming into a thread about the latest edition of a game you don't play and claiming it doesn't have mechanics that it does actually have?



I am interested in RPGs. Other editions and other RPGs were mentioned, and part of the discussion was game design in general.

D&D combat, from it's inception has been 'roll d20 and see what happens'.

If you don't care to interact with me, don't.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 13:34:12


Post by: Easy E


When I first started this thread, D&D combat was boring and part of the reason was because the group I had joined was not ready to approach combat as something other than crunchy crunch and always do the "optimal thing" you can do stat-wise. Neither the DM or the other players were ready for my "RPG based" approach to solving combat encounters.

Now that I have played with the group for a couple months, they have altered their styles a lot. Now it is much more narrative and forcing the DM to come up with what to roll and do in order for things to happen beyond a simple d20 combat roll all the time.

This was an evolution the Players had to go through on how to use the system differently.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 13:35:18


Post by: Lance845


D20 is a minature game. 4th is no more or less a miniature game than 3rd or 5th. The moment the combat is measures on 5 ft squares in a grid its built to work with miniatures.

Go to your flgs. Wizards has miniatures to sell you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
the_scotsman wrote:
 Lance845 wrote:
That is disingenuous. This whole thread is about dms stepping outside the box to accommodate players doing whacky gak.

5th has far less allowances than 3rd for the sake of simplicity. Like disarms and feints being basically non existant rules wise. How individual dms handle those situations, with luck rolls, advantage/disadvantage, and whatever is all well and good but that is dm intervention when the system itself fails to hold up its end of the bargain.

And that was my point. Of course the players and dm can just do what they want. But shouldnt the game just work allowing it to begin with?


I mean, again, I've played fifth all of one single time, but disarms and feints are both things that my Fighter has the option to do. It's baked into the subclass that he got really excited about, and looking at the subclasses I have to admit that I like that the mechanically intense sorts of combat maneuvers were gated behind that one particular subclass and, if you want, you can choose to have one that's infinitely simpler if you so desire.

If I had presented this player with a character sheet that included "Feinting Strike, Parry, Riposte, Disarming Strike, Goading Strike" etc on his first playing session, his reaction would have been identical to mine when I tried fourth and got handed a fistful of cards that said "once per day, once per short rest, once per encounter" and got told "so these are all the things your character can do, keep track of them!"

But now that he's had about 12 hours of play time under his belt, and he's got the hang of the basics, he can branch out and play around with the more complicated tricks and maneuvers and decide what his character's fighting style is.


Those things shouldnt be bespoke subclass options. They should just be what a person can do with weapon in hand.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 13:57:56


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
D20 is a minature game. 4th is no more or less a miniature game than 3rd or 5th. The moment the combat is measures on 5 ft squares in a grid its built to work with miniatures.

Go to your flgs. Wizards has miniatures to sell you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
the_scotsman wrote:
 Lance845 wrote:
That is disingenuous. This whole thread is about dms stepping outside the box to accommodate players doing whacky gak.

5th has far less allowances than 3rd for the sake of simplicity. Like disarms and feints being basically non existant rules wise. How individual dms handle those situations, with luck rolls, advantage/disadvantage, and whatever is all well and good but that is dm intervention when the system itself fails to hold up its end of the bargain.

And that was my point. Of course the players and dm can just do what they want. But shouldnt the game just work allowing it to begin with?


I mean, again, I've played fifth all of one single time, but disarms and feints are both things that my Fighter has the option to do. It's baked into the subclass that he got really excited about, and looking at the subclasses I have to admit that I like that the mechanically intense sorts of combat maneuvers were gated behind that one particular subclass and, if you want, you can choose to have one that's infinitely simpler if you so desire.

If I had presented this player with a character sheet that included "Feinting Strike, Parry, Riposte, Disarming Strike, Goading Strike" etc on his first playing session, his reaction would have been identical to mine when I tried fourth and got handed a fistful of cards that said "once per day, once per short rest, once per encounter" and got told "so these are all the things your character can do, keep track of them!"

But now that he's had about 12 hours of play time under his belt, and he's got the hang of the basics, he can branch out and play around with the more complicated tricks and maneuvers and decide what his character's fighting style is.


Those things shouldnt be bespoke subclass options. They should just be what a person can do with weapon in hand.


I guess my question then would be: what do you have to distinguish the various weapon-using classes, then? It seems to me, if you want to include Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, and Rogue, which are the fighting classes I would say are the most difficult to differentiate using spellcasting (All of them can use subclasses and multiclasses to get to some spellcasting, but by default do not have access to that. I leave out Ranger Bard and Paladin because they have in-built spellcasting that you can argue differentiates them from other weapon-focused classes)

The way DnD 5e handles that is to take those special things you can do with a weapon in hand, and divides them up amongst the various classes (or in some cases, expands access to them so that you can do them in addition to a normal combat attack, or better than other classes do them).

Basic weapony attack actions:
-Dodge
-Disengage
-Attack
-Throw a weapon light enough to be thrown
-Shoot a ranged weapon
-Attack twice with two small weapons

Actions that are available as default (not subclass gated) to various martial classes
-Big strong attack that leaves you open (Barbarian)
-Sneak attack that requires you to fight from an unexpected angle but does more damage (Rogue)
-Protect an ally with a shield (Fighter)
-stun an enemy with an attack or deflect a ranged attack(monk)

etc.

It makes more sense to me that those kind of actions that you argue are "just things you should be able to do with a weapon" should only be that if there's a reasonable chance you'd be able to do them if you were just...a guy. without any kind of particular combat training. If you handed me a sword, with no formal training, I'd probably be able to hit someone with it, try to use it to make sure my opponent didn't hit me, hold it up threateningly so I could safely back away, or try to distract an opponent so my buddy could hit them. If EVERYBODY can perform all the specialized combat actions, how do you distinguish a single-combat specialized duellist from a rampaging barbarian who wants to use a huge axe to cleave through their enemies?

If you told me "OK, disarm them" or "OK, do a feint so they think you're going one way but you're actually going another" I'd probably just...not know how to do that. Also, Disarming is potentially an INCREDIBLY potent effect in a game where a huge amount of an enemy's damage potential might depend on them having the flaming magic sword of doom - I can absolutely see why actually permanently removing an opponent's weapon and sending it flying across the room for them to have to go pick up is a hyper-specialized thing. Just temporarily impeding an opponent's attack with a weapon by knocking it aside or trying to hold it is much less of a gigantic power swing in a fight, and...surprise, that's an action everyone gets.

So it makes sense for those things to be default actions, but only if the players are ALL going to be playing, by default, people who have formal training in combat with weapons.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 14:16:40


Post by: some bloke


I agree with the scotsman - I would not expect a rogue to be able to perform reckless attacks any more than I would expect a barbarian to be able to perform sneak attacks, or a fighter to perform stunning monk attacks. It's an important part of the class system that these are class locked - if you want to learn them, you need to learn some of that class. nothing to stop a level 6 character being a level 3 rogue and a level 3 barbarian. Or a level 3 monk and a level 3 fighter. You can get access to a lot of mixed abilities, but I agree that you shouldn't have them all as options - otherwise the fighter, whose specialty is his trick moves and combat prowess, might as well be a wizard - all the same moves, but now also fireball.

I think the idea is that a sorcerer, who relies on magic for fighting, would know which end of a sword is the sharp one, but would not know fencing moves like feints, and would lack the confidence for reckless attacks, the guile for sneak attacks, the skill for stunning strikes. he can stab someone, but that's the extent of his skill.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 14:17:53


Post by: Manchu


D20 is a minature game. 4th is no more or less a miniature game than 3rd or 5th.
Eh, you’re sorta right. That five-foot step in 3E makes it really hard to argue that it’s not a minis game, although people argue that point nonetheless. With 4E, the cat was entirely out of the bag (a good thing IMO). 5E is designed so you can play its combat as a minis game if you want to but you could also not if you don’t want.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 14:39:06


Post by: the_scotsman


 some bloke wrote:
I agree with the scotsman - I would not expect a rogue to be able to perform reckless attacks any more than I would expect a barbarian to be able to perform sneak attacks, or a fighter to perform stunning monk attacks. It's an important part of the class system that these are class locked - if you want to learn them, you need to learn some of that class. nothing to stop a level 6 character being a level 3 rogue and a level 3 barbarian. Or a level 3 monk and a level 3 fighter. You can get access to a lot of mixed abilities, but I agree that you shouldn't have them all as options - otherwise the fighter, whose specialty is his trick moves and combat prowess, might as well be a wizard - all the same moves, but now also fireball.

I think the idea is that a sorcerer, who relies on magic for fighting, would know which end of a sword is the sharp one, but would not know fencing moves like feints, and would lack the confidence for reckless attacks, the guile for sneak attacks, the skill for stunning strikes. he can stab someone, but that's the extent of his skill.


And even more than that - again, just talking PURE mechanics here, pure rules as written no asking the GM, the sorceror who barely knows where the pointy end is CAN STILL DO ALL THOSE THINGS, he's just bad at them so they're in no way as good as if the other character archetypes tried to do them.

Let's say I'm a sorceror and I want to do a sneak attack on an enemy. I can take my turn to Hide, make an opposed Stealth vs Perception check on an enemy (which is probably not great), then take my next turn to attack him in melee with my weak weak sword arm, and I do get advantage on the roll, but that's it.

Now let's say I'm a rogue, dedicated to this sort of thing. I take a bonus action to slip out of sight, then my main action to perform a sneak attack on that same enemy. I do it all in one turn, get advantage on the roll, AND do an extra D6 damage because I'm a dedicated sneakerboy and I know where to stick it to hit the kidneys.

Or let's say I want to use Sorceror Mcunadvisableaction to disable a dude attacking me with a knife. I can use a Shove action in place of an attack to make an opposed strength (Athletics) check and he gets to choose either Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) to oppose me. if I win, I knock him prone, and he's got disadvantage on all attacks and defense unless he chooses to get up using his whole action.

I can do the same action if I'm instead playing a fighter who is a wrestler, but I can use Shove to knock the dude prone, action surge to grapple the dude, deal bonus damage to him as if I'd also punched him because I'm a wrestling specialist, and use my movement to drag the dude 15 feet.

Because the 95 pounds soaking wet sorceror does not and should not have the same action options in combat that macho man randy savage has.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 16:22:38


Post by: Lance845


 some bloke wrote:
I agree with the scotsman - I would not expect a rogue to be able to perform reckless attacks any more than I would expect a barbarian to be able to perform sneak attacks, or a fighter to perform stunning monk attacks. It's an important part of the class system that these are class locked - if you want to learn them, you need to learn some of that class. nothing to stop a level 6 character being a level 3 rogue and a level 3 barbarian. Or a level 3 monk and a level 3 fighter. You can get access to a lot of mixed abilities, but I agree that you shouldn't have them all as options - otherwise the fighter, whose specialty is his trick moves and combat prowess, might as well be a wizard - all the same moves, but now also fireball.

I think the idea is that a sorcerer, who relies on magic for fighting, would know which end of a sword is the sharp one, but would not know fencing moves like feints, and would lack the confidence for reckless attacks, the guile for sneak attacks, the skill for stunning strikes. he can stab someone, but that's the extent of his skill.


And this is when you stop considering characters people and start considering them diablo or wow classes.

The dread pirate roberts can disarm, and parry, and dodge, and wrestle, and is he a rogue or a fighter? Hes a person. And a person with a weapon can use it. This is the issue with class based games. Your putting people into boxes, which means you need to specialize the boxes, which then strips logical options from the other boxes. Why shouldn't the barbarian be able to parry and dodge and disarm? You know conan? The archetype from which the barbarian exists? Hes known for stealth, sneak attacks, parrys, disarms, feints, and rages. So what the hell? At least in 3rd he could take feats. In 5th its not even a fighter thing. Its a fighter SUB CLASS thing. The op talked about fighting in interesting ways. So why is it only one subclass that gets the stock standard interesting melee options?




Automatically Appended Next Post:
And another example. Fahferd and the grey mouser. Fritz liebers classics. Fahf is a barbarian singer and the grey mouser is a rogueish wizards apentice who learned enough about magic to know to stay away from it (but could still do it). They are both theives. They both sneak attack. And they both have done mock battles with parry dodges feints and gak to make money as they travel around. Arguably they are both bards to some extent. So what? How do you make those characters?

Both have supernatual entites as patrons... So warlocks too?
Faf also became a prophet for issac of the jug, a minor god.

So what?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 16:53:13


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
 some bloke wrote:
I agree with the scotsman - I would not expect a rogue to be able to perform reckless attacks any more than I would expect a barbarian to be able to perform sneak attacks, or a fighter to perform stunning monk attacks. It's an important part of the class system that these are class locked - if you want to learn them, you need to learn some of that class. nothing to stop a level 6 character being a level 3 rogue and a level 3 barbarian. Or a level 3 monk and a level 3 fighter. You can get access to a lot of mixed abilities, but I agree that you shouldn't have them all as options - otherwise the fighter, whose specialty is his trick moves and combat prowess, might as well be a wizard - all the same moves, but now also fireball.

I think the idea is that a sorcerer, who relies on magic for fighting, would know which end of a sword is the sharp one, but would not know fencing moves like feints, and would lack the confidence for reckless attacks, the guile for sneak attacks, the skill for stunning strikes. he can stab someone, but that's the extent of his skill.


And this is when you stop considering characters people and start considering them diablo or wow classes.

The dread pirate roberts can disarm, and parry, and dodge, and wrestle, and is he a rogue or a fighter? Hes a person. And a person with a weapon can use it. This is the issue with class based games. Your putting people into boxes, which means you need to specialize the boxes, which then strips logical options from the other boxes. Why should the barbarian be able to parry and dodge and disarm? At least in 3rd he could take feats. In 5th its not even a fighter thing. Its a fighter SUB CLASS thing. The op talked about fighting in interesting ways. So why is it only one subclass that gets the stock standard interesting melee options?



Again, you are just wrong on this. Everyone, every single guy in dnd of every single class, can perform combat maneuvers outside of just "attack". They can all engage in opposed skill test rolls where both players roll a D20 and add their relevant skills. Everyone can:

Hide (Opposed skill check stealth vs perception)
Dodge (disadvantage on attacks coming at you)
Grapple (Opposed athletics vs athletics or acrobatics skill test to reduce opponent's movement to zero)
Shove (Opposed athletics vs athletics or acrobatics skill test to push an opponent one square or knock them prone)
Aid (Grant advantage to an ally's attack vs a melee range enemy)

And if there's something that irritates you that isn't in that list, odds are there's an optional rule presented somewhere. Let's take Disarm since we've been talking about it. DMG page 271, Disarming Attack.

"A creature can use a weapon attack to knock a weapon or another item from a target's grasp. The attacker makes an attack roll contested by the target's Strength (Athletics) check or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. If the attacker wins the contest, the attack causes no damage or other ill effect, but the defender drops the item.The attacker has disadvantage on its attack roll if the target is holding the item with two or more hands. The target has advantage on its ability check if it is larger than the attacking creature, or disadvantage if it is smaller."

The only distinction between this and the special Battle Master "Disarming Strike" is you don't get to do damage in addition and it's an opposed check rather than your roll being replaced with a more reliable saving throw. Now, picking your weapon up is actually something that you can do as part of your movement action on your turn, so if an opponent goes immediately after you, you can just pick it up. But if you had a free hand, you could grab the weapon yourself, or an ally could grab it if their turn was before your opponent's.

Until I actually tried this system, I definitely thought the way you did regarding classes. But digging into it...classes are incredibly permissive compared to other systems I've looked at. You can just take levels in another class if you want to do their special gak, and usually their special gak can be replicated in different ways with different classes.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Lance845 wrote:
 some bloke wrote:
I agree with the scotsman - I would not expect a rogue to be able to perform reckless attacks any more than I would expect a barbarian to be able to perform sneak attacks, or a fighter to perform stunning monk attacks. It's an important part of the class system that these are class locked - if you want to learn them, you need to learn some of that class. nothing to stop a level 6 character being a level 3 rogue and a level 3 barbarian. Or a level 3 monk and a level 3 fighter. You can get access to a lot of mixed abilities, but I agree that you shouldn't have them all as options - otherwise the fighter, whose specialty is his trick moves and combat prowess, might as well be a wizard - all the same moves, but now also fireball.

I think the idea is that a sorcerer, who relies on magic for fighting, would know which end of a sword is the sharp one, but would not know fencing moves like feints, and would lack the confidence for reckless attacks, the guile for sneak attacks, the skill for stunning strikes. he can stab someone, but that's the extent of his skill.


And this is when you stop considering characters people and start considering them diablo or wow classes.

The dread pirate roberts can disarm, and parry, and dodge, and wrestle, and is he a rogue or a fighter? Hes a person. And a person with a weapon can use it. This is the issue with class based games. Your putting people into boxes, which means you need to specialize the boxes, which then strips logical options from the other boxes. Why shouldn't the barbarian be able to parry and dodge and disarm? You know conan? The archetype from which the barbarian exists? Hes known for stealth, sneak attacks, parrys, disarms, feints, and rages. So what the hell? At least in 3rd he could take feats. In 5th its not even a fighter thing. Its a fighter SUB CLASS thing. The op talked about fighting in interesting ways. So why is it only one subclass that gets the stock standard interesting melee options?




Automatically Appended Next Post:
And another example. Fahferd and the grey mouser. Fritz liebers classics. Fahf is a barbarian singer and the grey mouser is a rogueish wizards apentice who learned enough about magic to know to stay away from it (but could still do it). They are both theives. They both sneak attack. And they both have done mock battles with parry dodges feints and gak to make money as they travel around. Arguably they are both bards to some extent. So what? How do you make those characters?

Both have supernatual entites as patrons... So warlocks too?
Faf also became a prophet for issac of the jug, a minor god.

So what?


I don't know much about the story, but I'd guess something like (depending on what aspects of their personalities you want to lean into)

Fahferd: Barbarian, background Entertainer which gets you Performance for the mock battles and singing, maybe something like Path of the Zealot if you want to lean into the whole god thing, or else go for Barbarian/Fighter if you want the battle master attacks. Everyone can sneak attack to get surprise rounds and advantage on attack rolls, so there's no reason he has to be a rogue.

I don't know, I would view Barbarian more as "someone who gets mad and smashes" more so than a particular background of "someone from a non-civilized society." If it doesn't make sense for Faf to go into fits of rage when he fights, Fighter as a primary class seems more apt - he sounds more tactical from your description.

Mouser: Arcane Trickster rogue. You got magic, you got stealing, you got sneak attacks. Go for Charlatan background for more stealing gak.

You're viewing classes as a rigid fixed entity, they're just names for how the different rules work and interact. Not everyone who has a divine entity speak to them or grant them abilities has to be a cleric. There are multiple different subclasses of barbarian or paladin or fighter or whatever that allow you to make a character the way you want them to play.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 17:11:03


Post by: Easy E


Yeah, if certain things only certain classes can do.... you are getting into some of the root issues of D&D beyond just "Combat is boring".

Why are there arbitrary class distinctions anyway? I played a game where the big choices were race and if you could/could not wield magic (everyone had some innate magic). Everything else was stat and skill based so I could have a guy who could use magic, wear armor, throw a spear, and cook really well. However, he couldn't ride a horse or fast talk his way out of a situation. He was a pretty well rounded character.

Magic was limited by a different usage mechanic, you only had so many skill points to spread around, so many stat points, etc. The limits were not based on an arbitrary class distinction but on character creation resource management.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 17:17:25


Post by: the_scotsman


 Easy E wrote:
Yeah, if certain things only certain classes can do.... you are getting into some of the root issues of D&D beyond just "Combat is boring".

Why are there arbitrary class distinctions anyway? I played a game where the big choices were race and if you could/could not wield magic (everyone had some innate magic). Everything else was stat and skill based so I could have a guy who could use magic, wear armor, throw a spear, and cook really well. However, he couldn't ride a horse or fast talk his way out of a situation. He was a pretty well rounded character.

Magic was limited by a different usage mechanic, you only had so many skill points to spread around, so many stat points, etc. The limits were not based on an arbitrary class distinction but on character creation resource management.


Probably because it's the single most mass-market roleplaying game out there, and a lot of the gak in it is designed to be instantly approachable. it's a roleplaying game designed to accommodate people who don't roleplaying game and people who like more complexity.

It's just kind of goofy to call class disinctions arbitrary...they aren't arbitrary, they're subdivided into easily digestible packages for folks who aren't familiar with RPGs. Hence why I'm playing this one with my traditionally non-nerdy friends.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 17:51:07


Post by: Lance845


Bull gak dnd is accessible. Explain to non gamers why you have 2 numbers to tell you how strong you are when you only ever use one of them. Attributes are one thing. But attribute modifiers are another and the one you actually care about.

If dnd was designed from the ground up to be accessible then your strength would be 3 and you would be adding your strength to things.

The truth is dnd is the oldest and most well known. Its popular for that alone. It has brand recognition and is marketed well. Its the same reason 40k is the most popular mini war game despite having rules written by dyslexic children and being a miserable slog.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 17:58:28


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
Bull gak dnd is accessible. Explain to non gamers why you have 2 numbers to tell you how strong you are when you only ever use one of them. Attributes are one thing. But attribute modifiers are another and the one you actually care about.

If dnd was designed from the ground up to be accessible then your strength would be 3 and you would be adding your strength to things.

The truth is dnd is the oldest and most well known. Its popular for that alone. It has brand recognition and is marketed well. Its the same reason 40k is the most popular mini war game despite having rules written by dyslexic children and being a miserable slog.


I literally did do that just recently. It was pretty easy. I am playing a game right now with four people whose most complex game experience is probably settlers of catan. It took about 30min in dndbeyond to set their characters up, and they've taken to roll20 dnd extremely easily thanks to the links in the character sheets.

in my experience, the biggest hurdles that non-nerdy types have with role playing games is

1) Roleplaying, saying things as the character, doing things that the character would do

2) what can my guy do?

The class and background system in dnd make it relatively easy to know what kind of a dude you're playing, because you can easily imagine a fantasy character you're familiar with from Lord of the Rings or something and do what they do, and the limited set of abilities that branch out into other abilities but which, critically, are basically optional, is exactly what people unfamiliar with RPGs need.

Characters having fixed, diablo-style abilities and spells is 100% a thing I'm not a fan of in RPGs, but having it, and keeping it somewhat limited, is absolutely an accessibility feature, whether you like it or not.

Out of curiosity, are we going to go back to dodging, dashing, grappling, disarming, pushing, sneak attacks, distracting and such as actions in combat and how those do actually exist within the rules, or are you choosing to drop that subject and go for something else? it is the topic of the thread, after all, if you just want to pivot to "dnd sux" maybe try the general thread?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 18:47:24


Post by: Lance845


I have been responding on my phone durring down times at work. Complex breaking up of posts to respond to individual points is more work then its worth in this format. Im happy to get back into that when i have a co puter where i can reference documents and use quote unquote to make it not an unintelligile wall of text. If it gets too far away im happy to pm you so that discussion doesnt get all weird here.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/28 23:21:11


Post by: Melissia


 Lance845 wrote:
And this is when you stop considering characters people and start considering them diablo or wow classes.

The dread pirate roberts can disarm, and parry, and dodge, and wrestle, and is he a rogue or a fighter? Hes a person.
Could be either. Or a bard. Or a even barbarian, or cleric, or any number of things could be all of these. Or with multiclassing, a couple or even several of them.

The lazy "no, he's a person" is at best little more than a bunch of pointless, asinine frivolity. The class system doesn't reduce characters to just their class. It's just a mechanical way to help people differentiate their characters from other members of the party, in ways that allow each person in the group to add to the experience of the group as a whole. So yes, the Dread Pirate Roberts is a person-- but where do his skills and expertise lie? Surely his skills and expertise are a bit different than Janice from Accounting in the office across the hall. In what way does he typically deal with the world around him? That's pretty drastically different than how, say, Harry Potter deals with the world. Where do his weaknesses lie? There's some things the Dread Pirate Roberts can't do, or can't do very well at all, which is why he has people around him to help him do them. And so on.

DnD is built around a party of adventurers of contrasting roles supporting each other as they explore the world and confront great challenges. Thus the class system.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 01:29:02


Post by: the_scotsman


I mean, id make him a swashbuckler rogue for sure. You could do Battle Master for him but I feel like he should be doing serious damage to single opponents. .


Luckily everyone can grapple, maneuver, above and disarm so it's really how you want your character to do damage.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 02:18:10


Post by: squidhills


 Manchu wrote:
It sounds like what you are really after is a tactical skirmish miniatures game. Try 4E


No thank you. 4E is a tabletop miniatures skirmish game, and I want an RPG. I just want an RPG where the thing that is an important part of most sessions (combat) isn't entirely up to the GM's whim.

For the other poster who made a comment that 3.5/Pathfinder is bad for having rules for combat maneuvers that are bad, well... yes, they are bad for having bad rules. But at least they have rules. You can argue the merits of whether or not particular mechanics are good or bad (3.5 combat maneuvers are terrible/ Pathfinder's aren't great, but are much better) but saying that the lack of rules is superior to the existence of rules is nonsensical. If you have to houserule common combat maneuvers (everybody in an RPG has tried to trip or grapple someone at some point) your game's rules are incomplete. You've also made it difficult for players to move between tables. If I'm at a table with GM A and he says a trip roll is just an unmodified attack roll that leaves the target prone; fine. What happens when I go to play at GM B's table, and he decides that trip attacks are an unmodified attack roll with disadvantage? If I'm used to GM A's method, I'm not going to enjoy rolling twice and taking the worst result at B's table. Now I go to GM C's table, and he's a big 3.5 grognard, so trip is an unmodified attack roll, followed by an opposed strength test. That's 2 rolls to do what I could do with one at GM A's table. Now I play with GM D, and he's brand new to GMing. He's unsure of himself, so he wants to stick to RAW. He doesn't allow trips at all, because there aren't any rules for them. Now what?

When I sit down at a gaming table with my friends, I want to be surprised by the adventure. I want to be surprised by the GM. I do not want to be surprised by the rules.

Lance845 has the right of it. Cinematic Unisystem is the bee's knees. I played in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer campaign that ran for most of a decade and had a blast. But that is because the game actually has rules for combat beyond "swing weapon" or "cast spell". It is an example of an actual easy-to-learn, rules-light system that works without having to ask the GM's permission to do stuff. But good luck getting anyone to play it. The books are out of print and the Whedonverse shows are long off the air and out of the public conciousness.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 07:07:46


Post by: some bloke


Also with Conan the barbarian, him being renowned for sneak attacks etc, he's probably a high level character, not a starting barbarian, and he could well have some levels in other classes.

If there weren't classes then it would make leveling up a slightly more boring affair. gritty realism doesn't do so well in a high fantasy setting.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 10:07:43


Post by: Lance845


 some bloke wrote:
Also with Conan the barbarian, him being renowned for sneak attacks etc, he's probably a high level character, not a starting barbarian, and he could well have some levels in other classes.

If there weren't classes then it would make leveling up a slightly more boring affair. gritty realism doesn't do so well in a high fantasy setting.


Have you never played a point buy or classless game? Hellboy rpg uses gurps ( not the best but it exists). Forbidden lands barely has a thing you could call a class. Unisystem has a large series a books for their zombie game all flesh must be eaten that give them other setting themes and fleshed out rules. Dungeon and zombies is their fantasy splat. Arrgh thar be zombies for pirates. The good the bad and the zombie for westerns. Have the players fight anything but zombies and its just an rpg.

Classes and gritty realism are not opposites or in fact in any way related. You can have gritty real games with classes. And you can have cartoony whacky gak with point buy.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 10:30:17


Post by: Melissia


 Lance845 wrote:
Have you never played a point buy or classless game?
I have. A lot of them do actually have a problem at high levels of not much to do with your xp cause you've already got everything, and everyone looking essentially the same.

Which isn't to say class-based systems don't have that problem, but classless systems aren't perfect either. Pick which system matches the game you and your players desire to play, rather than trying to argue which one is "objectively superior" or some other such self-important garbage. I myself like games with either kind of systems, it all depends on the game itself.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 10:37:14


Post by: Kroem


I liked the FFX sphere grid system, I wonder if any pen and paper RPG games did a similar thing?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 11:52:34


Post by: the_scotsman


squidhills wrote:
 Manchu wrote:
It sounds like what you are really after is a tactical skirmish miniatures game. Try 4E


No thank you. 4E is a tabletop miniatures skirmish game, and I want an RPG. I just want an RPG where the thing that is an important part of most sessions (combat) isn't entirely up to the GM's whim.

For the other poster who made a comment that 3.5/Pathfinder is bad for having rules for combat maneuvers that are bad, well... yes, they are bad for having bad rules. But at least they have rules. You can argue the merits of whether or not particular mechanics are good or bad (3.5 combat maneuvers are terrible/ Pathfinder's aren't great, but are much better) but saying that the lack of rules is superior to the existence of rules is nonsensical. If you have to houserule common combat maneuvers (everybody in an RPG has tried to trip or grapple someone at some point) your game's rules are incomplete. You've also made it difficult for players to move between tables. If I'm at a table with GM A and he says a trip roll is just an unmodified attack roll that leaves the target prone; fine. What happens when I go to play at GM B's table, and he decides that trip attacks are an unmodified attack roll with disadvantage? If I'm used to GM A's method, I'm not going to enjoy rolling twice and taking the worst result at B's table. Now I go to GM C's table, and he's a big 3.5 grognard, so trip is an unmodified attack roll, followed by an opposed strength test. That's 2 rolls to do what I could do with one at GM A's table. Now I play with GM D, and he's brand new to GMing. He's unsure of himself, so he wants to stick to RAW. He doesn't allow trips at all, because there aren't any rules for them. Now what?

When I sit down at a gaming table with my friends, I want to be surprised by the adventure. I want to be surprised by the GM. I do not want to be surprised by the rules.

Lance845 has the right of it. Cinematic Unisystem is the bee's knees. I played in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer campaign that ran for most of a decade and had a blast. But that is because the game actually has rules for combat beyond "swing weapon" or "cast spell". It is an example of an actual easy-to-learn, rules-light system that works without having to ask the GM's permission to do stuff. But good luck getting anyone to play it. The books are out of print and the Whedonverse shows are long off the air and out of the public conciousness.


This thread is just gonna be people claiming a thing isn't in 5e, I look it up, and the thing is in 5e, isn't it? That's what it's been so far, but I have learned a HELL of a lot about combat in 5e by debunking these claims, so please keep it coming!

OK, I went and looked up the Cinematic Unisystem combat maneuvers table, and let's compare it to 5e.

You've got stuff like Neck Snap, Decapitate, Heart Stake, Groin Shot: 5e definitely does not have these. I kind of question their value in a system that has hit points? If I can just say "My guy decapitates" instead of attacking with my greatsword...I'm gonna decapitate. That's a thing that kills someone instantly, usually.

You have separate maneuvers for gun shot, bow shot, crossbow shot, punch, melee weapon attack...all these are just covered by "attack" in 5e, so we'll ignore those too.

Dodge: Is in 5e, basic combat action.

Grapple: Is in 5e (Grapple is under the Attack action rather than a standard action, as far as I can tell because martial classes get the "make an action to attack twice" thing commonly, which would allow them to Grapple+Attack, Grapple+Shove which we'll get into later, etc)

Aiming: Is not in 5e. If you want to stand still and get advantage on your next ranged attack in 5e, you'd have to call that a Hide action or a Prepared action, depending on the context of what you want to do (i.e., waiting for an enemy to charge out of cover, or just wanting your next attack to be more accurate for some other reason.

Catch Weapon: Looks like this is catch ranged weapon? In 5e, this is a monk only skill. I don't know, this might work as a thing everyone can try to do in a cinematic universe system, but I feel like if you gave me 1,000,000 tries to catch an arrow I would fail 1,000,000 times.

Disarm: Rules for this are in "Additional combat actions" DMG 271-272. And I can see why this would be left more up to the GM's discretion to allow conditionally - there's a big difference between disarming a hobgoblin marauder and disarming a high-level creature like a Death Knight or a Lich whose damage would probably drop considerably if he had to start making unarmed strikes. But there are RAW rules for how to handle it.

Feint: This looks like a melee version of "Aim" from earlier. In 5e, "feint" appears in the text of the "help" action, so if you want to do it, you have to do it to help an ally rather than help yourself. Which, to be fair, you cannot do using the cinematic unisystem "feint" action - it appears to be only available to use selfishly.

Headbutt, Punch, Kick, Spin Kick, Jump Kick: These are separate actions in CU and would probably all fall under "Unarmed strike" in 5e, unless you were trying to kick an enemy to move them (over a cliff, into a well, etc) in which case they'd fall under "Shove".

Knock Out: You do this in dnd by reducing a creature's hit points to 0. You can't just say "I knock him out" as an action.

Parry: This is something that not everyone can do in 5e. There are various classes and subclasses that gain some form of defense or defensive reaction with a melee weapon, but no universal action for it.

Slam-Tackle: You have two options here in 5e, depending on what you want your tackle to do. If you want to knock an opponent down, use Shove. If you want to move through an opponent using your strength, use Overrun.

Sweep Kick, Takedown: Again, use Shove. Having 5 separate highly specific sounding rules that amount to "opponent get knocked down" does not make a system better IMO.

Wrestling Hold: Sounds like a Grapple to me. Note that in 5e, using Grapple in conjunction with Shove (which martial classes that can make 2 attacks per round can do in one turn) will reduce a target's speed to 0 thus preventing them from using movement to Stand Up. In that way you've effectively got two levels of Grappling to represent just grabbing on to someone or successfully knocking them down and having them in a hold.

Toss: Does not exist as a default option that everyone can do in 5e unless they're hiding in class/subclass abilities. There are rules for throwing improvised weapons which includes the damage those improvised objects take, so if a large creature were to throw a small character, that would have rules.

Things Dnd5e has rules for that do not appear to exist in CU's combat maneuvers list:

-Climb on to a larger creature

-Cleave through multiple enemies

-Duck out of sight (Hide as an in-combat option)

-Shove or Shove Aside

-Duck/Dodge past an enemy

Honestly, I'm not super impressed with huge lists like this. I've found in most games, having something like this means that the players will either discover that some particular maneuver (say, a Spin Kick or a Groin Kick or something) is super OP and it makes more sense to just do that than to attack normally, and you've got to slog through a campaign of 5 people fething Three Stooging their way through all your combat encounters ("I eye poke!" "I eye poke too!" "I also eye poke!") until you finally tell them no, we're disallowing spin kicks, no more spin kicking. Or, you present this massive, crazy, fething alphabetical list with Kick, Jump Kick, Spin Kick, Sweep Kick and Groin Kick as separate combat actions players have to keep track of, and something utterly basic like "melee weapon attack" wedged in somewhere between Purple Nurple and Indian Burn, and your players just have no fething idea what to do with all of it.

Nah. Half these actions fall into the two categories of "Attack" and "Something you let the player describe when you roll a critical hit or finish an enemy off".


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 12:29:43


Post by: Melissia


I mean, yeah, it's a pretty long-standing tradition in dnd for either the DM to describe, or ask the player to describe, how one kills the enemy on a critical hit.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 12:57:03


Post by: Manchu


squidhills wrote:
without having to ask the GM's permission to do stuff
Again with this. You guys are not playing D&D correctly. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say you are mis-perceiving it?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 13:37:58


Post by: the_scotsman


Well, I did a quick page through the Cinematic Unisystem, and I do think if I had to play a "crunchy" rpg I'd choose dnd 5e over it.

1) Character creation, definitely way more fluid and many many more choices. Character progression, to me seems less interesting. Having interesting special maneuvers, powers, etc in the class level system gives you something to consider pretty much every time you gain a level, versus just improving your attributes or skills and getting +1 to a roll. I like the fact that certain classes can take multiple actions in their turn, or gain the ability to do things as bonus actions, and I like that the highly flexible subclasses are available fairly shallowly in most class trees - a level 6 character can pretty easily have their pick of 2 subclasses, for example.

2) Complain about having to rely on GM fiat in 5e, and propose this as a better alternative with less of that? I'm sorry? Let's just take a peek at the ol' Combat section here:

Spoiler:


INITIATIVE: At the beginning of a fight, you determine who attacks first. Common sense is the first
determinant of Initiative. What are the circumstances of the fight? If it’s an ambush, for example, the ambushers
go first. If a character is attacking a gun-toting goon, and is too far away to grab it, the gunman gets to shoot first.
Unleashing a mental or supernatural power goes before a kick, and so on. Generally, mental actions
(spells and similar supernatural powers) go first, followed by ranged weapons (guns, crossbows, cruise missiles)
and finally by good old punches, kicks, baseball bats and “full copper re-pipes.”
If the situation is less clear-cut (a White Hat chances upon a vampire, for example), the character with
the highest Dexterity (modified by Fast Reaction Time) goes first. If both sides have the same Dexterity (and
they both have or lack Fast Reaction Time), each side rolls a die. The higher roll wins; a tie means both
characters act at the same time (really painful if they were punching each other in the face). During subsequent
Turns, determine Initiative in the same manner, or award it to the character who has momentum (whoever
managed to connect a punch without being hit back, for example)"


So, every round of combat in this system literally begins with a quick round of "mother may I" with the GM, where you say how many attacks or whatnot you'd like to do, and then the GM determines using "common sense" who would get to go first.

um.

And this is the system that relies so much LESS on GM fiat?

3) Calculating numbers of successes

Boy, for complaining that DnD's stat modifier and variable DC system is annoying to calculate, having to do that calculation on every roll seems...way more obnoxious to me. Rolls in CU follow the formula Attribute+Skill+D10 roll result then you compare the result to the "success level table" which starts at 9, and then you get 1 success for every 2 above 9 until 4 successes, then it's every 3. And in combat, it seems like most rolls are contested, so both players will need to figure out which stats are relevant, roll d10, add to the total, and compare to the table.

The reason I prefer DnD for this is that most of the clunkiest math is static, so you can do it on your character sheet, and just always have it in front of you. Sure, Armor Class is a weird calculation, but once you've done it one time, you're fine. And skill checks are your stat bonus+a fixed proficiency bonus that you either have or don't have, so you can just write the number "+5" next to your perception, and every time the DM says "roll perception" you immediately know to roll D20 and add 5, instead of having to

1) look up what skill+attribute combo is required for what you're doing, plus any applicable modifiers
2) Roll d10 and add up those numbers
3) determine using the success table how many successes that is, which is handily not some kind of easy to remember mathmatical formula, so you'd have to have it printed right on your sheet or something.

and then the opponent has to follow the same process to figure out how to roll to defend against you, unless you're doing some unopposed task with a modifier, which, pssst: Is the same as Difficulty Class but with the numbers moved around. The GM deciding you need to roll at -5 to get a 9 is exactly the same as the DM deciding the DC of a task is 15 instead of 5.

4) hyper-specific language and rule names

this is a little pet peeve of mine personally, but if I had my druthers I would always make rules names as general as humanly possible, and lay out rules writing in a manner that very clearly separates descriptions/fluff from rules info. Stuff like this:

Spoiler:
KNIFE: Switchblades or easily concealed knives, used by thugs and lowlifes. Base damage is 2 x
Strength points (Slash/stab type). This drops to 2 x (Strength -1) points when the knife is thrown.
A smaller version is called a pigsticker. Kinda cute actually, s’long as the handle isn’t sticking out of your
body. Does 2 x (Strength - 1) points of damage (Slash/stab type). This drops to (Strength -1) points when the
pigsticker is thrown.
The Big Knife is your typical ohmygodthatsabigknife (known as a short sword in other times). Does 3 x
Strength points of base damage (Slash/stab type).


God I hate when rules are formatted like that. Just a big jumble of words intermingling descriptions with what the thing actually does. Either describe the thing, in a separate paragraph, and then put all the rules effects at the bottom where it's easily differentiable, or give me a big table with just the rules effects.



D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 13:47:02


Post by: Lance845


Thats not what i am saying. I am saying d20 specifically plays like a video game or table top skirmisher and has a lot of problems that stem from both the core d20 mechanic and the way it handles level/class. Its always been less a role playing game and more a daggerfall murder hobo loot video game.

The fact that a dragon can bathe your character in fire and bring them fromm 100 to 1 hp with no il effect says it all. It says it twice when its as though it never happened after they take a nap.

The majority of point buy or classless game do better at making your character a person in a world and facilitating the role play in the rpg. D20 doesnt. And (back on topic) its combat suffers for that reason. If its boring and uninteresting its because its a diablo boss. Hit it hard and fast so it dies before it can do anything.because if its not dead it might as well be 100% alive. Just like you.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 14:02:25


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
Thats not what i am saying. I am saying d20 specifically plays like a video game or table top skirmisher and has a lot of problems that stem from both the core d20 mechanic and the way it handles level/class. Its always been less a role playing game and more a daggerfall murder hobo loot video game.

The fact that a dragon can bathe your character in fire and bring them fromm 100 to 1 hp with no il effect says it all. It says it twice when its as though it never happened after they take a nap.

The majority of point buy or classless game do better at making your character a person in a world and facilitating the role play in the rpg. D20 doesnt. And (back on topic) its combat suffers for that reason. If its boring and uninteresting its because its a diablo boss. Hit it hard and fast so it dies before it can do anything.because if its not dead it might as well be 100% alive. Just like you.


Right, in a good RPG combat system like Cinematic Unisystem, things are different. Instead of having hit points, you have Life Points. Instead of Death Saves, you take Survival Tests when reduced to 0 hit points to see if you die.

But it can be different! You can be poisoned, stunned, grappled, knocked down, and subjected to all kinds of conditions in the CU, unlike in crappy DnD 5e combat, where you can only be poisoned, grappled, stunned, knocked prone, paralyzed, silenced, etc.

I do prefer stuff like the Powered by the Apocalypse system, where there are explicit rules about not just saying the name of the ability you're using and rolling for it, and a lot more conditional successes where you talk about what went wrong with what you're trying to do, and damage is more abstracted and involves more conditions being applied by just damage before you die.

But in this thread, it seems like people are complaining about having to talk to the GM about what happens, and want a system where everything is written out, black and white, exactly what Y happens when X is done - and that is going to result in a game where players will play more like Diablo characters in a skirmish game.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 14:24:16


Post by: Lance845


You forget that under unisystem when you got bellow 10 lp you suffer a -2 to all physical actions (human average health is 22) or that bellow 5 its -4. Or that recover takes a lot more than telling the dm its nap time.

Or in free league year zero your str is your health and when you take damage it matters because its a direct impact on your actions.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 14:43:46


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
You forget that under unisystem when you got bellow 10 lp you suffer a -2 to all physical actions (human average health is 22) or that bellow 5 its -4. Or that recover takes a lot more than telling the dm its nap time.

Or in free league year zero your str is your health and when you take damage it matters because its a direct impact on your actions.


And you forget that if you want things to work like that in DnD, you very much can using optional systems like "Gritty Realism" - or if you DONT want things to work like that under unisystem, you also can.

It depends on what kind of game you want to be playing. in CU, you can spend a drama point to have an injured character be "back and ready to go for the next episode."

Which makes perfect sense if you're running a cinematic, TV-series style game. Personally, "resting takes 7 days" vs "resting takes 8 hours" makes little difference in my enjoyment of a game, and at the table I sincerely doubt it would make a whole heck of a lot of difference.



D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 14:49:11


Post by: Melissia


 Lance845 wrote:
Thats not what i am saying. I am saying d20 specifically plays like a video game or table top skirmisher
Maybe you could try, you know... playing it differently than the way you describe?

I've been playing DnD since way back when my first group was playing ADnD nearly 25 years ago. The combat system from the very start has always been nothing more than a means to resolve conflicts without having players risk getting in to god-modes and "I can't fail at anything!" attitudes. It's there to assist roleplaying by adding random chance to it, the random chance being modified by your various character features.

I say that to preface the statement that I haven't had any problems at all with actual roleplaying using the dnd system.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 14:53:30


Post by: Lance845


 Melissia wrote:
 Lance845 wrote:
Thats not what i am saying. I am saying d20 specifically plays like a video game or table top skirmisher
Maybe you could try, you know... playing it differently than the way you describe?

I've been playing DnD since way back when my first group was playing ADnD nearly 25 years ago. The combat system from the very start has always been nothing more than a means to resolve conflicts without having players risk getting in to god-modes and "I can't fail at anything!" attitudes. It's there to assist roleplaying by adding random chance to it, the random chance being modified by your various character features.

I say that to preface the statement that I haven't had any problems at all with actual roleplaying using the dnd system.


This isnt a critque based on what good roleplayers and good dms can do with bad mechanics. Good roleplayers and dms need no mechanics. They can just go outside and play pretend 100% free form
Im saying what d20 IS and what its mechanics encourage.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
What good roleplayers and dms manage to do DESPITE dnd is full on commendable.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 14:58:17


Post by: Melissia


 Lance845 wrote:
Good roleplayers and dms need no mechanics.
Well, that would explain why you're sitting here in this thread arguing about which mechanics are best, because apparently you AREN'T, by your own admission, a good roleplayer. Fething come off it and stop with the lazy, smug, self-aggrandizing patronizing of people who have different tastes in roleplaying games than you.

If you don't like having mechanical elements in your roleplaying, just don't use them. Plenty of people, including people that are FAR better roleplayers than you, enjoy them. These roleplaying game mechanics are for many people a good part of the fun of roleplaying something like DnD, Shadowrun, Legend of 5 Rings, Exalted, Vampire, and so on. If they're not what you're looking for... just don't use them. There's nothing wrong with that. But this absurd crusade against them is just silly and childish.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 15:17:03


Post by: Lance845


I love the personal attacks about my ability as a roleplayer based on no examples of my roleplaying while im discussing the mechanical implications of a game.

Turn about being fair play. Why dont you stop sucking wizards dick and holding dnd up on its golden pedestal long enough to give it a fair critique of it good and bads?

I never said you were not free to go like whatever it is you like. Even if its bad. Calling out a bad system for being bad is just that. Nothing more. Nothing less.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 15:35:57


Post by: Melissia


The irony of accusing me of "sucking WotC's dick" is that the editions I said are the best DnD editions were the ones that came AFTER Hasbro bought the company, kicked Wizards in the balls, and then told them how to make better games-- and this after I mentioned numerous systems that have mechanical elements that I enjoy other than DnD, but you're so blinded by your hate for DnD that you just apparently didn't even see it even though you're responding to my post.

Oh, and quit whining about "personal attacks", you're literally saying to everyone that anyone who wants mechanical elements in their game is a bad roleplayer. "GOOD roleplayers don't NEED that!" and other such crap.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 15:38:28


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
I love the personal attacks about my ability as a roleplayer based on no examples of my roleplaying while im discussing the mechanical implications of a game.

Turn about being fair play. Why dont you stop sucking wizards dick and holding dnd up on its golden pedestal long enough to give it a fair critique of it good and bads?

I never said you were not free to go like whatever it is you like. Even if its bad. Calling out a bad system for being bad is just that. Nothing more. Nothing less.


"Hey, why don't you give a fair critique of the good and bad aspects of this system?

....Anyway this system is bad."

I never said DnD didn't have aspects of it that were not good and bad. Personally speaking, one of my biggest complaints about it is exactly what you just brought up - damage is very abstracted to where taking 99/100 of your hit points in damage does not affect your combat abilities, but getting knocked over, stunned, blinded, etc most definitely does.

That is 100% a weakness of DnD.

...What is NOT a weakness of DnD is

1) Claiming it doesn't have gak it does actually have, and you just don't know about it

2) Claiming it always works 1 way, when the core rulebook presents optional alternatives to the very thing you consider a pet peeve

3) Claiming that cumbersome math or clunky rules sytems are uniquely a problem with it, when it takes the smallest of glances at the system you hold up as superior to find equally obnoxious/clunky systems.



D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 15:50:42


Post by: Lance845


1) the core rule book of dnd is the players handbook. Its the only book NEEDED to play. The dmg is what it says on the cover. A guide. Nothing in there is a hard fast rule. Its all alternatives and boils down to "do what you want, but heres some tables if that helps".

2) see 1.

3) i never gave dnd exclusivity. I gave it ownership. Dnd has those things. They are not the ONLY ones who have them.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 15:55:44


Post by: Melissia


The PHB is all that's needed to "play", but the DMG is part of the "core" of DnD, intended for the DM-- thus its name. The players have the Player's Handbook, and the dungeon master has the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Thus, traditionally each of the players will have their copy of the PHB, and the DM who has their copy of the DMG. Though usually not everyone actually has a copy of the PHB, and people share, but them's the breaks.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:03:01


Post by: Lance845


The key words there are hand book and guide. The players get a list of rules. What they can and cannot do and how they do it. The dm guides. It points you in some directions but sets no boundaries.

Again, where are dnds RULES?

The dmg helps. Its a great resource. But its ONLY a resource.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:04:36


Post by: Melissia


 Lance845 wrote:
Again, where are dnds RULES?
For players, they're in the PHB. For DMs, they're in the DMG.

The rules are split between two books.

Even if you want to argue the MM is a supplement (it's considered a core by the DnD community), the DMG is not by any means a supplement. It contains a lot of necessary content for dungeon-mastering a game.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:07:25


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
1) the core rule book of dnd is the players handbook. Its the only book NEEDED to play. The dmg is what it says on the cover. A guide. Nothing in there is a hard fast rule. Its all alternatives and boils down to "do what you want, but heres some tables if that helps".

2) see 1.

3) i never gave dnd exclusivity. I gave it ownership. Dnd has those things. They are not the ONLY ones who have them.


Boy, you sure are going to have a dull game of DnD if you don't have the rules for any monster, NPC or item.

....Also, most of the gak you were complaining with is actually in the PHB, like all the rules for executing combat maneuvers other than "attack" that you earlier claimed didn't exist. The "Additional combat actions" section in the DMG is relatively specific stuff.



D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:16:18


Post by: Lance845


You dont need a MM to make up monsters and you dont need a dmg to run a game. Experienced enough dms realize that there are only so many variations on stat blocks. Make a note card. Add some stats. Use the phb to get weapon and armor stats and go.

Do you really need the mm to tell you hhohow tto make a higher level spell casting goblin? Or could you just add a level or sorcerer?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:16:51


Post by: the_scotsman


Also, you're just wrong. What books are required to play DnD is probably going to be determined by the company that makes it, and they say:

CORE RULEBOOKS

If you want to create a greater variety of characters or populate your adventures with other monsters, check out the fifth edition Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual. These rulebooks introduce you to the vast multiverse of D&D and invite you to create unique characters and worlds within it.

Player's Handbook: For players of course, with everything needed to build and run a vast variety of characters.

Dungeon Master's Guide: For DMs to run their game, create memorable adventures, and manage entire campaigns.

Monster Manual: A resource to stock the dungeons and wilds of the game with sometimes wondrous, sometimes dangerous, and always fantastic creatures!

These are obviously the three base books required to play the full game of dnd. Starter boxes provide condensed versions of these books, but are exactly as much the full game as the Battle Primer and the in-box rules are the rules required to play 40k.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:18:08


Post by: Lance845


Ehere do you get the rules for levels and spells?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:19:34


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
You dont need a MM to make up monsters and you dont need a dmg to run a game. Experienced enough dms realize that there are only so many variations on stat blocks. Make a note card. Add some stats. Use the phb to get weapon and armor stats and go.

Do you really need the mm to tell you hhohow tto make a higher level spell casting goblin? Or could you just add a level or sorcerer?


.........You don't need any more intelligence or effort to make up rules for an Improvised Action to perform a spin-kick or take an opponent's knife or do a crotch shot or whatever other cringy fething gak was in the CU combat maneuvers list, but here we fething are my man. You've created a beautiful premise here: Something must be in the books to be real, or else it's just a game of Ask The GM, but if something is in the books, then it doesn't exist because all books are optional.

You might as well argue that rules for players above level 5 don't exist, because the PHB is optional content - you can play DnD just fine with the starter box!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Lance845 wrote:
Ehere do you get the rules for levels and spells?


It takes literally zero effort to make up a spell. A good roleplayer doesn't need a list telling them what spells or levels are.





See how fething stupid this is getting?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:23:17


Post by: Melissia


 Lance845 wrote:
Ehere do you get the rules for levels and spells?
In a lot of places, actually. The PHB, the DMG, the MM, Volo's, Xanathar's, Mordenkainen's, SCAG, Ravnica, Acquisitions Incorporated, Eberron, Wildemount, as well as several of the adventure modules.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:25:36


Post by: Lance845


Are you telling me that you have dmed and never once made up a monster? Or changed a stat block? Or just winged the stats for an npc?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:26:48


Post by: Melissia


 Lance845 wrote:
Are you telling me that you have dmed and never once made up a monster? Or changed a stat block? Or just winged the stats for an npc?
Non-sequiturs are a bad way to argue.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:29:50


Post by: Lance845


 Melissia wrote:
 Lance845 wrote:
Are you telling me that you have dmed and never once made up a monster? Or changed a stat block? Or just winged the stats for an npc?
Non-sequiturs are a bad way to argue.


Let the scotsman know that.

The point is you have. And you can. And the dmg is entirely optional. But the actual rules for levels classes, skills, combat, spells, death.... They arent anywhere but the phb. Yes, MORE spells are other places. But the dmg on its own isnt a game. And the mm on its own isnt a game. But the phb on its own is.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:32:23


Post by: Melissia


 Lance845 wrote:
the dmg on its own isnt a game. And the mm on its own isnt a game.
Actually, you can play DnD with just the DMG if you so want to. The DMG has enough in it that you can have a perfectly enjoyable roleplaying campaign with it. In fact, I've done that, though it's not entirely to my taste.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:33:34


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
Are you telling me that you have dmed and never once made up a monster? Or changed a stat block? Or just winged the stats for an npc?


No, I do that all the time, as should every dm. I'm saying that in previous pages, when it suited your little narrative, you were holding that up as a core WEAKNESS of DnD - the fact that there wasn't enough actions codified into the rules, and too much fell under the purview of "improvised action."

Unlike other "great systems" like unisystem, with their nighmarish horribly-formatted paragraphs of cringily written fluff layered on top of rules.

Boy, sure is great that if I want my character to kick someone in the balls, I don't have to make something up on the fly like "athletics test opposed by athletics or acrobatics and if he loses he's stunned for one round" or "I did already say he's wearing plate armor, so you're going to probably take a couple points of damage to your foot if you do that" and instead I can know for sure that it's Dexterity+Kung Fu-5 for 10 Bashing and "Hard on boys" whatever that means.

Either it's good to have systems where you have a large amount of improvisational leniency with rules that serve primarily as examples for the GM to make up their own stuff, or it's bad because then players can only engage in games of Mother May I with the GM.

Pick one, please.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:43:00


Post by: Lance845


There is a distinct difference between wjatwvery, dm included, can do.. Which is literally anything they want... At their table. And what the rules of the game are. Arguing that anyone can do anything is meaningless. Because at that point fething d20 and the unisystem dont even exist.

When someone is discussing the mechanics of d20 they are discussing the rules as written in the actual rule book. The phb. The implicit fact that the dm can just do what they want is irrelevant.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:47:00


Post by: Melissia


 Lance845 wrote:
When someone is discussing the mechanics of d20 they are discussing the rules as written in the actual rule book
And the DMG, which has rules that aren't in the PHB. And the MM, which has rules that aren't in the PHB. And the supplements, which have rules that aren't in the PHB. In fact, most arguments these days about rules in DnD aren't even over the portion of the rules in the PHB, they're over the various rules included in the Unearthed Arcana articles.

DnD hasn't been "one book has all the rules" for at least forty years, and this is still the case no matter how much you attempt to be whiny and pedantic about it.

You've long since lost track of your own arguments and are arguing complete and utter nonsense now.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:52:06


Post by: the_scotsman


 Lance845 wrote:
There is a distinct difference between wjatwvery, dm included, can do.. Which is literally anything they want... At their table. And what the rules of the game are. Arguing that anyone can do anything is meaningless. Because at that point fething d20 and the unisystem dont even exist.

When someone is discussing the mechanics of d20 they are discussing the rules as written in the actual rule book. The phb. The implicit fact that the dm can just do what they want is irrelevant.


It's weird, the rules in my PHB say that I can do an "improvised action" - what book do you figure I'd have to turn to in order to get some guidance on what that action entails? It sounds like what I want to do at this point falls under the heading of "improvise".


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:56:15


Post by: Easy E


Let's not be all pissy everyone. We can all have parts of systems we like better and worse, and prefer different things in games and the things emphasized in other games.

I think the core issue is that we all like different things and some games deliver on those things better than others.

No need to make an Us vs. Them argument at all.

I have learned a lot about D&D mechanics thanks to this thread, even though I am not a huge fan of them compared to some other systems. However, like many here I have been RPGing for a couple decades and know pretty well what I want from the experience. If I am not getting it, then I need to figure out how I am going to get it with the help of my GM/Players. I need to be the change I want to see in the RPG group I am playing with, and not be a dick about it.



D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 16:58:11


Post by: Melissia


 Easy E wrote:
However, like many here I have been RPGing for a couple decades and know pretty well what I want from the experience. If I am not getting it, then I need to figure out how I am going to get it with the help of my GM/Players.
Basically this is what I've been arguing. If DnD isn't the right game for your group, just don't use it, or houserule it until it becomes the game your group wants.

There's plenty of other games out there. Personally, I've lately been itching for some Shadowrun, preferably 4th or 5th edition.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 17:03:24


Post by: the_scotsman


 Easy E wrote:
Let's not be all pissy everyone. We can all have parts of systems we like better and worse, and prefer different things in games and the things emphasized in other games.

I think the core issue is that we all like different things and some games deliver on those things better than others.

No need to make an Us vs. Them argument at all.

I have learned a lot about D&D mechanics thanks to this thread, even though I am not a huge fan of them compared to some other systems. However, like many here I have been RPGing for a couple decades and know pretty well what I want from the experience. If I am not getting it, then I need to figure out how I am going to get it with the help of my GM/Players. I need to be the change I want to see in the RPG group I am playing with, and not be a dick about it.



Yeah, and that's absolutely fine. For me, the main point of frequenting this thread has actually been to learn a little more about the mechanics of the game, as I haven't played for long. It's just frustrating to me to see intensely disingenuous arguments getting trotted out to make claims.

If the PHB is the only core rulebook of DnD, it's got some serious flaws beyond not having fixed rules in its core list of combat maneuvers for kicking someone in the nuts - there's not even a single example of a monster stat block! How are you supposed to know how to make one up?


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 18:00:22


Post by: Lance845


the_scotsman wrote:
 Easy E wrote:
Let's not be all pissy everyone. We can all have parts of systems we like better and worse, and prefer different things in games and the things emphasized in other games.

I think the core issue is that we all like different things and some games deliver on those things better than others.

No need to make an Us vs. Them argument at all.

I have learned a lot about D&D mechanics thanks to this thread, even though I am not a huge fan of them compared to some other systems. However, like many here I have been RPGing for a couple decades and know pretty well what I want from the experience. If I am not getting it, then I need to figure out how I am going to get it with the help of my GM/Players. I need to be the change I want to see in the RPG group I am playing with, and not be a dick about it.



Yeah, and that's absolutely fine. For me, the main point of frequenting this thread has actually been to learn a little more about the mechanics of the game, as I haven't played for long. It's just frustrating to me to see intensely disingenuous arguments getting trotted out to make claims.

If the PHB is the only core rulebook of DnD, it's got some serious flaws beyond not having fixed rules in its core list of combat maneuvers for kicking someone in the nuts - there's not even a single example of a monster stat block! How are you supposed to know how to make one up?


Absolute worst case. The dm makes a character. There the mods for half ork. Theres the armor. Theres the weapons. Make hima fighter. The dm has a half ork bouncer whos guarding a shady black market warehouse.

Again, you dont need a stat block. Its in the phb. Do you have 5 players and you want a even fight? 5 npcs of the same level.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 18:05:34


Post by: SirDonlad


i wanted to post this here - was writing a post on another thread and realized it was more relavent to this thread

i got annoyed at the process...
player declares action to attack
player rolls to hit once
player rolls for damage
player looks at DM who is trying to add something without providing random bonusses on the fly

It felt like as the DM i didn't need to be there for the combat with that process

i ended up splitting the players dice-rolling process with description eg...

player: i run at the nearest enemy and hit them with my sword
Me: 'PC' steels himself and breaks into a sprint toward the line of enemies; as he draws near he raises his sword above his head...
Me to player: roll to hit please.. ....DC 13 (or whatever it is)
player: thats a 12, plus 1 - i got 13 exactly!
me: ... 'PC' swings his sword down across the lead enemy who takes a step back - the tip of your sword arcing past his face...
me to player: roll for damage please..
player: okay, thats 10 damage altogether (enemy has 10 hit points remaining)
me: ... the tip of your sword slices through his armour as it scores down the chest of your opponent, slowing it but not stopping, before your blade carries on down into the top of the mans thigh - he collapses to the ground in agony, letting go of his weapons and instead clutching the gaping wound on his thigh - this man will surely bleed out..
me: 'other PC', you observe 'PC' set off toward the enemy, sword held aloft and screaming - it is your time to act...
other player: i fire an arrow at the next closest enemy to the one 'PC' is running toward
me: staying still, you watch and judge which enemy 'PC' is running toward and take aim at one you can see just past 'PC' to his side (same side as 'other PC' is on from 'PC')
me to 'other player': roll to hit please... DC 13 again
other player: i got 15 plus 2 for a 17 total!
Me: your arrow flies true, streaking under 'PC's raised sword arm, striking the enemy to the side...
me to 'other player': roll for the damage if you please?...
other player: ah, whiffed it - thats 3 damage
me: your arrow thunks into the midriff of your target, clearly entering his body because he immediately stiffens in reflex to the pain...

i think that the dice roll will provide you with your storytelling if you let it, but the usual way of trying to 'speed up' combat by players rolling all the dice they use each turn before you describe it stops you being able to create any suspense.
If you let the players roll to hit and damage at the same time they already know how your description is going to end up.
The only intrest the DM can provide is coming from any saving throws or tricky stuff like 'in the moment bonuses' or delaying enemy actions and having them use reactions, but I think that is a DM fail because that just relies on the enemies rolling high on the initiative order or dying quick as the players effectively get a free turn at the start of combat.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 18:15:51


Post by: the_scotsman


 SirDonlad wrote:
i wanted to post this here - was writing a post on another thread and realized it was more relavent to this thread

i got annoyed at the process...
player declares action to attack
player rolls to hit once
player rolls for damage
player looks at DM who is trying to add something without providing random bonusses on the fly

It felt like as the DM i didn't need to be there for the combat with that process

i ended up splitting the players dice-rolling process with description eg...

player: i run at the nearest enemy and hit them with my sword
Me: 'PC' steels himself and breaks into a sprint toward the line of enemies; as he draws near he raises his sword above his head...
Me to player: roll to hit please.. ....DC 13 (or whatever it is)
player: thats a 12, plus 1 - i got 13 exactly!
me: ... 'PC' swings his sword down across the lead enemy who takes a step back - the tip of your sword arcing past his face...
me to player: roll for damage please..
player: okay, thats 10 damage altogether (enemy has 10 hit points remaining)
me: ... the tip of your sword slices through his armour as it scores down the chest of your opponent, slowing it but not stopping, before your blade carries on down into the top of the mans thigh - he collapses to the ground in agony, letting go of his weapons and instead clutching the gaping wound on his thigh - this man will surely bleed out..
me: 'other PC', you observe 'PC' set off toward the enemy, sword held aloft and screaming - it is your time to act...
other player: i fire an arrow at the next closest enemy to the one 'PC' is running toward
me: staying still, you watch and judge which enemy 'PC' is running toward and take aim at one you can see just past 'PC' to his side (same side as 'other PC' is on from 'PC')
me to 'other player': roll to hit please... DC 13 again
other player: i got 15 plus 2 for a 17 total!
Me: your arrow flies true, streaking under 'PC's raised sword arm, striking the enemy to the side...
me to 'other player': roll for the damage if you please?...
other player: ah, whiffed it - thats 3 damage
me: your arrow thunks into the midriff of your target, clearly entering his body because he immediately stiffens in reflex to the pain...

i think that the dice roll will provide you with your storytelling if you let it, but the usual way of trying to 'speed up' combat by players rolling all the dice they use each turn before you describe it stops you being able to create any suspense.
If you let the players roll to hit and damage at the same time they already know how your description is going to end up.
The only intrest the DM can provide is coming from any saving throws or tricky stuff like 'in the moment bonuses' or delaying enemy actions and having them use reactions, but I think that is a DM fail because that just relies on the enemies rolling high on the initiative order or dying quick as the players effectively get a free turn at the start of combat.


I think that comes down to DM style. Personally speaking, I try to encourage players to describe their own actions, and I try to avoid directly taking control of any actions my players take unless it's something that they, as a player, don't know, like a check for the character to know something or recognize something the player might not.

And even then, it's sometimes funnier to ask players to make something up for a thing, especially if I don't have a particular plan. Some of the most memorable NPCs in my games have been created spontaneously by players rolling to already know somebody I had thrown in as a random NPC.

"I'm from here, do I know that guy?" "Sure, roll the dice" "I got a high number!" "Great, who is it?"

That almost always ends somewhere funny in my experience. And you can write it down and keep track of all your PCs' second cousins and local sports star idols!

All my favorite systems involve pretty continuous player/GM negotiation and back-and-forth. It's one reason why I tend to love games based on the Powered by the Apocalypse system, where by far the likeliest outcome to any action is a "Partial Success" where you get what you want, but...


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 19:10:30


Post by: SirDonlad


the_scotsman wrote:
I think that comes down to DM style. Personally speaking, I try to encourage players to describe their own actions, and I try to avoid directly taking control of any actions my players take unless it's something that they, as a player, don't know, like a check for the character to know something or recognize something the player might not.

And even then, it's sometimes funnier to ask players to make something up for a thing, especially if I don't have a particular plan. Some of the most memorable NPCs in my games have been created spontaneously by players rolling to already know somebody I had thrown in as a random NPC.

"I'm from here, do I know that guy?" "Sure, roll the dice" "I got a high number!" "Great, who is it?"

That almost always ends somewhere funny in my experience. And you can write it down and keep track of all your PCs' second cousins and local sports star idols!

All my favorite systems involve pretty continuous player/GM negotiation and back-and-forth. It's one reason why I tend to love games based on the Powered by the Apocalypse system, where by far the likeliest outcome to any action is a "Partial Success" where you get what you want, but...


If the players want to perform a specific action and describe how that's going to start off then i'm cool with it, but my own failure when i was a player was getting all specific about where i was going to try and hit (if you know about anatomy or medicine it very quickly becomes 'every shot is a kill shot') so nearly every shot or swing was described as hitting somewhere else anyway as the damage i could do was nowhere close to the max hit points of the creature/opponent and that got boring real quick.
It's like stating you're going for a beheadding move on an enemy who still has 100 hit points - you'll be putting a huge DC on it to account for the rarity of being able to pull that off and what do you say when they don't get it? i would end up having a two threshold description; one for if they get the crit 20 and another for actually hitting them but that just gives the player a meta-induced-vorpalsword for free - granted, some reward for getting into the spirit of the game is acceptable but that's just too good.
edit: maybe thats the time where i have to realize that trying that would be seriously detrimental and the success of the roll determines how well they get away with trying it anyway.

That 's a cracking idea about the NPC's - i'm going to steal that, thankyouverymuch!


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 19:52:21


Post by: Voss


the_scotsman wrote:
think that comes down to DM style. Personally speaking, I try to encourage players to describe their own actions, and I try to avoid directly taking control of any actions my players take unless it's something that they, as a player, don't know, like a check for the character to know something or recognize something the player might not.


DM style can be interesting. I watch a fair amount of Critical Role, less for the game, and more for the entertainment from the actors. But while Mercer often lets the group have their heads and go off in whatever random direction their little hearts desires, he does have one quirk that really gets to me, particularly in the second campaign. For whatever reason, he's a big fan of dream sequences, which isn't a problem, up until he starts describing how the PC thinks and feels about the situation. That's a huge party foul in my book- the DM doesn't get a say in how my character feels or responds emotionally (bar actual mind control nonsense).


As far as D&D combat goes, Critical Role also shows off some of the most boring fights imaginable, and they often drag on for two or three hours just for a single fight, often against a single creature. That's... really mind numbing. It doesn't help that Matt loves flying creatures and the party goes out of its way not to have tools for flyers, so half the party just sort of mucks about, helpless. At 200+ ~4 hour episodes, I'd have expected them to pick up on the value of either flight magic or ranged weapons, but no.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 21:15:59


Post by: squidhills


 Melissia wrote:

There's plenty of other games out there. Personally, I've lately been itching for some Shadowrun, preferably 4th or 5th edition.


I've recently tried my hand at running 5th Edition, after playing in 2 campaigns. It's... difficult. At best. On a good day, I will only have to look up one or two things to answer a player's question about a rule. On a bad day, it's a lot more than that. The 5th Edition Shadowrun rulebook is written wrong. Not written badly; it's written WRONG. The index does not direct you to the proper page (as an example, look up "called shot" in the index and tell me how many pages you flip to before you actually find the rules). Sidebars with examples of rules in action are located nowhere near the rule they are demonstrating. Players are punished for creating their own characters, rather than using the pregens (I mathed out character creation for previous editions, and it is shameful how weak PCs start out as compared to 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th eds). Character creation rules are written in Ancient Greek (I've played every edition of Shadowrun, and I still had a hard time deciphering 5ths character creation rules, despite them being 85% the same as 1st thru 3rd).

None of which is helped by having a table of players that haven't played a Shadowrun game before.

Don't get me wrong: 5th Edition Shadowrun is fun, once you figure out the rules. But that rule book needs to be brought before the Hague on a charge of Crimes Against Humanity.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 21:22:47


Post by: Lance845


Voss wrote:
the_scotsman wrote:
think that comes down to DM style. Personally speaking, I try to encourage players to describe their own actions, and I try to avoid directly taking control of any actions my players take unless it's something that they, as a player, don't know, like a check for the character to know something or recognize something the player might not.


DM style can be interesting. I watch a fair amount of Critical Role, less for the game, and more for the entertainment from the actors. But while Mercer often lets the group have their heads and go off in whatever random direction their little hearts desires, he does have one quirk that really gets to me, particularly in the second campaign. For whatever reason, he's a big fan of dream sequences, which isn't a problem, up until he starts describing how the PC thinks and feels about the situation. That's a huge party foul in my book- the DM doesn't get a say in how my character feels or responds emotionally (bar actual mind control nonsense).


As far as D&D combat goes, Critical Role also shows off some of the most boring fights imaginable, and they often drag on for two or three hours just for a single fight, often against a single creature. That's... really mind numbing. It doesn't help that Matt loves flying creatures and the party goes out of its way not to have tools for flyers, so half the party just sort of mucks about, helpless. At 200+ ~4 hour episodes, I'd have expected them to pick up on the value of either flight magic or ranged weapons, but no.


I have found D&D is for Nerds to be the best dnd podcast. It's funny as all hell, some of the best dming and rping around (once you get past the first season where several players were new to the game), and they keep the action going the vast majority of the time. Adam might be one of the best DMs I have ever seen once a few bits clicked into place and I realized what over all narrative he was telling over several different games. Really impressive stuff.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 21:52:55


Post by: Melissia


squidhills wrote:
Don't get me wrong: 5th Edition Shadowrun is fun, once you figure out the rules. But that rule book needs to be brought before the Hague on a charge of Crimes Against Humanity.
The tragedy of this is that 6th edition is actually worse.

But yeah, I like 5th edition's chargen, but I hate everything after that. Thinking if we do end up playing it'll be 4th edition.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 21:56:48


Post by: Hankovitch


The downfall of "narrate every roll" is that D&D combat is structured around several rounds worth of PCs and hostiles taking their turns doing actions, most of which ultimately just result in chunks of HP being stripped from a target. Most players and GMs exhaust their creativity and patience well before finishing the combat. Most combats will inevitably devolve into "my turn, roll roll roll, subtract some points, who's next."

The D&D ruleset is lots and lots of gristle and very little steak.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/29 22:00:44


Post by: Melissia


Depends on what kind of enemies and encounters you're giving them, really. But yeah, DnD is not much of a "one hit kills" type game most of the time-- with the exception of 4th edition Minions.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/30 01:26:27


Post by: squidhills


the_scotsman wrote:

Boy, for complaining that DnD's stat modifier and variable DC system is annoying to calculate, having to do that calculation on every roll seems...way more obnoxious to me. Rolls in CU follow the formula Attribute+Skill+D10 roll result then you compare the result to the "success level table" which starts at 9, and then you get 1 success for every 2 above 9 until 4 successes, then it's every 3. And in combat, it seems like most rolls are contested, so both players will need to figure out which stats are relevant, roll d10, add to the total, and compare to the table.

The reason I prefer DnD for this is that most of the clunkiest math is static, so you can do it on your character sheet, and just always have it in front of you.



Just wanted to point out that all of this "clunky" math is also static in CU. There is, in fact, a spot on the character sheet for you to write down all the different combat maneuvers you can do, as well as your modifier to the D10 roll. Your attack rolls in melee are always going to be DEX + Getting Medieval + D10. So if your DEX is 3 and your Getting Medieval is 4, you write: "Melee attack = 7 + D10" on your sheet.

Kind of like how you write (Proficiency Bonus) + STR + D20 on your character sheet in D&D.

All of the combat maneuvers are handled the same way. Sure, it's awkward to read the rule book when it says (and I'm paraphrasing here, as I don't have the book in front of me... left it at a friend's house just before plague lockdown) Decapitation = Attribute + Skill (-5) Damage = STR + weapon (subtype) x5.

But a character sheet wouldn't say that. It would say: Decapitation = 2+D10, Damage = 60.

Nobody ever does all the math in an RPG on the fly. Everybody writes it down on their character sheet. You only have to alter the numbers when a relevant skill or attribute increases.

Kind of like how you have to alter your numbers when your proficiency bonus or your attribute bonus goes up in D&D.

A lot of games have what looks like clunky-ass math at first, but most of them can be expressed as static numbers on a character sheet, so this isn't unique to CU or D&D. Though I will say that 3.5's rules for combat maneuvers were so bad, the math seemed to change every time I read them.

As for your question about the wisdom of having decapitation attacks or other instant-kills in a game with hit points, CU has an answer to that, which isn't obvious from just reading the combat maneuver calculations. In the full rules on decapitations, stake-to-the-heart, and other insta-kills, you have to first land the hit, which is always made at a penalty. See my above math for decapitation being at a -5 penalty. I think it's higher in reality, but I don't have the books handy. Then, you check the damage you inflicted. If your total is not more than the target's current HP, you fail to decapitate them, and only do minimum damage (which is less than you would do on a normal hit). So not only is it harder to land a hit, you still have to inflict enough damage for it to stick, otherwise the hit is reduced in effectiveness by a lot. The idea is that you soften the enemy up with a few normal hits to lower his current HP, then you go in for the killing blow. Stake-to-the-heart is handled the same way, though the specific numbers are different. This mimics combat from the BtVS and Angel shows, as people very rarely open a combat by staking a vamp. They usually punch and/or kick them a few times first, then go for the stake.

Thematically, a lot of the insta-kill moves in CU are vital to the games being played. A game about fighting vampires that doesn't let you stake them in the heart for an instant-win? That's a bad vampire game. A game that has some vampires in it, but isn't based mostly around fighting vampires and that won't let you stake a vamp for an instant-win? Not automatically a bad game. I get why D&D doesn't let you stake their vampires in the heart; D&D has always sucked at called shots, and the game provides multiple ways to kill a vampire beyond sunlight and wooden stakes, so it isn't needed. Though, I do think D&D could use a decapitation mechanic apart from vorpal swords. I don't know how 5th Ed handles hydras and ettins (because we never ran into any) but in 3.5 there were unique decapitation rules for the hydra, which only applied to the hydra, as though any other monster was immune to decapitation (except via vorpal sword). And ettins were cited as dying if one of their two heads were to be cut off, despite vorpal swords being the only way to achieve this, and ettins being many, many CR below a character who would be likely to have a vorpal weapon. Any character high enough level to own a vorpal sword would be powerful enough to solo an ettin and kill it without triggering the vorpal function.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/30 11:09:13


Post by: Melissia


squidhills wrote:
I don't know how 5th Ed handles hydras
Did you try, you know... looking?
Multiple Heads. The hydra has five heads. While it has more than one head, the hydra has advantage on saving throws against being blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, stunned, and knocked unconscious.
Whenever the hydra takes 25 or more damage in a single turn, one of its heads dies. If all its heads die, the hydra dies.

At the end of its turn, it grows two heads for each of its heads that died since its last turn, unless it has taken fire damage since its last turn. The hydra regains 10 hit points for each head regrown in this way.
And speaking of staking vampires?
Vampire Weaknesses. The vampire has the following flaws:
Forbiddance. The vampire can't enter a residence without an invitation from one of the occupants.

Harmed by Running Water. The vampire takes 20 acid damage if it ends its turn in running water.

Stake to the Heart. If a piercing weapon made of wood is driven into the vampire's heart while the vampire is incapacitated in its resting place, the vampire is paralyzed until the stake is removed.

Sunlight Hypersensitivity. The vampire takes 20 radiant damage when it starts its turn in sunlight. While in sunlight, it has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks.
Both of these are from a quick google search for "dnd 5e [monster name]" and are in the MM. Sure, you're not going to just easily and randomly jam a stake through an awake and aware vampire's heart with these rules (and even in the games you're talking about, it should never be easy to stake a vampire), but that's where either cleverness or talking with the DM about a special action to attempt it lies.

It's almost like, in spite of Lance's previous arguments, the Monster Manual (where both of these entries came from) is a core book and includes important mechanics for dealing with monsters that have unique weaknesses and giving DMs ideas on how to give unique weaknesses to their own custom-made monsters.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/30 11:31:23


Post by: the_scotsman


Well, this thread inspired me to figure out how to do called shots in my dnd game (Since, "can we attack him in the hand?" has happened before)

I've decided my call is this:

-Any attack just looking to take out an enemy by hitting it in vital areas is what you are doing when you're attacking the enemy's hit points. That's a normal attack, you're trying to stab it in the organs or slash it in the blood bits.

-Any attack looking to attack the mobility of a creature by hurting its legs, tentacles, etc, deals 1/2 damage and reduces land and swimming speed by 10ft or flying speed by 1/2 of its original total.

Any attack looking to remove a dangerous extremity is made at +5AC, deals no Hit Point damage, but permanently removes the target's ability to attack with that extremity.

-Any attack that seeks to stun, a creature will deal 1/2 damage and remove its ability to attack (or remove its ability to use its most dangerous attack in the case of a multiattack monster)

-Any attack that seeks to destroy sensory apparatus is made at +5AC, deals no Hit Point damage, but inflicts blindness.

I will say, though, I think there's a lot to be said for a system that starts simple, but gives you plenty of tools to make it more complex, rather than a system that presents an overwhelming amount of information right off the bat that you then have to simplify and make sense of. "here's 30 different things you can do in combat, hidden somewhere in this list is 'Attack with a melee weapon', also in this list are all the things you roll when someone is trying to hit you, we didn't separate those for you, we also combined some options together and gave you the choice of different stats to use but there ARE five different kinds of kick, so make sure you study up on that thanks." or in Call of Cthulu terms,

"I want to attack the monster"

"Ok, roll your guns stat"

"Let's see, egyptology, accounting, psychoanalysis, interpretive dance, string theory....guns, there we go, I've got a twelve."

I do think it is an honest strength of DnD that a character with 30 different possible combat actions at high levels can coexist reasonably with a character who just moves and attacks. The fact that two of my players could sit comfy for 3-4 sessions just attacking things when it came to combat let them get acclimated to roleplaying, how combat worked, and eventually they started asking to do more complicated things on their turns.

I guess that is just me preferring systems to be as stripped-down and vague as possible to allow for the minimum of "read the character sheet, do exactly what it says." Heck, in my favorite superhero game, nearly all the classes have absolutely nothing to do with what kind of powers your character has, and just relate to their core motivations and the general trope that they fill within the story.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/30 15:11:20


Post by: Manchu


 Melissia wrote:
The combat system from the very start has always been nothing more than a means to resolve conflicts without having players risk getting in to god-modes and "I can't fail at anything!" attitudes. It's there to assist roleplaying by adding random chance to it, the random chance being modified by your various character features.
Here we have an accurate understanding of combat in D&D.

At least up until the late 90s! Then things took a turn, towards miniatures skirmish gaming. And that I think is where it became possible to say “oh, well this is boring and there are no choices.” The game started presenting itself more and more as something other than a theater of the mind experience where the main aspect of play was imagining yourself as a character in a fantasy setting.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/30 16:21:43


Post by: Easy E


 Manchu wrote:
 Melissia wrote:
The combat system from the very start has always been nothing more than a means to resolve conflicts without having players risk getting in to god-modes and "I can't fail at anything!" attitudes. It's there to assist roleplaying by adding random chance to it, the random chance being modified by your various character features.
Here we have an accurate understanding of combat in D&D.

At least up until the late 90s! Then things took a turn, towards miniatures skirmish gaming. And that I think is where it became possible to say “oh, well this is boring and there are no choices.” The game started presenting itself more and more as something other than a theater of the mind experience where the main aspect of play was imagining yourself as a character in a fantasy setting.


Completely agree.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/30 19:14:36


Post by: Melissia


I kinda disagree a little bit with that, but I can see why one would think that after seeing, for example, 4th edition. TotM is still quite important for third and fifth, though.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/30 19:30:28


Post by: Manchu


It’s important (well, crucial) for all of them when it comes to actual roleplay. The issue I think is that roleplay started to take a backseat because it’s easier to sell books full of rules for combat, along with minis and tiles and so forth.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/04/30 21:29:16


Post by: Da Boss


Dungeons and Dragons grew out of miniature wargames. The use of miniatures and dungeon tiles and all that goes as far back as the hobby itself. There is nothing particularly new about dungeons and dragons being focused on combat, having rules focused on combat, using miniatures or being heavily focused on tactical play. That is as old school as it gets when it comes to dungeons and dragons.

Old does not mean better, of course. But I find the argument that all the push toward tactical play and splatbooks started in the 90s to be incorrect.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/05/01 00:24:45


Post by: Manchu


I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that.

D&D was not, as often assumed, at all the natural progression of Chainmail (which by the way, was a historical mass battles game with mere supplements for fantasy and single combat). The big breakthrough of inventing roleplaying games was realizing that players could take on the role of a character in an imagined setting; something that actually grew out of playing Diplomacy rather than wargames or miniatures games. When D&D was first published in 1974 it was played strictly as a “paper and pencil game” (to use Gygax’s phrase) “without benefit of any visual aids,” specifically miniatures. In his own group, Gygax stopped using miniatures when he ceased playing Chainmail and started playing D&D. Put it another way, D&D began when Gygax put the miniatures away.

Players generally started using miniatures with D&D a couple of years later. Gygax described how this came about: “Miniature figure manufacturers began to provide more and more models aimed at the D&D market — characters, monsters, weapons, dungeon furnishings, etc. Availability sparked interest, and the obvious benefits of using figures became apparent: Distances could be pinned down, opponents were obvious, and a certain extra excitement was generated by use of painted castings of what players ‘saw.’” But even by the time of that writing (1978), Gygax felt the need to explain why area of effect ranges could not be used with outdoor ground scale; namely because the people playing D&D didn’t know a thing about miniatures gaming! As he said, “even the most obvious precepts of table top play are arcane to them.” People may have been buying up and painting cool figures and monsters but they had only a crude grasp of how to use them, which of course was not accounted for by the actual rules of D&D, either, as Gygax notes in taking responsibility for the situation.

And so it went up through the 1990s, when gateway products like the board game Dragon Strike introduced kids (such as yours truly) to D&D through miniatures moving around on a gridded map, a la GW board games from the 1980s. (I’m intentionally omitting Battlesystems, because it was sold as a miniatures game based on D&D stats rather than a way to play D&D as a miniatures game.) By the mid 1990s, in the waning days of TSR, another development had been bubbling up: selling a bunch of stuff to players rather than Dungeon Masters. This started at the end of the 80s with The Complete [insert class name] here books but had moved on to more tangible goodies like decks of reference cards, player screens, and ultimately the Player Packs which were plastic carrying cases that came with all kinds of stuff including pewter miniatures! Player Packs, like Dragon Strike, were also a kind of introductory product. The stage was set for WotC’s strategy: sell as much or more product to players as/than DMs!


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/05/01 01:06:35


Post by: squidhills


 Melissia wrote:
squidhills wrote:
I don't know how 5th Ed handles hydras
Did you try, you know... looking?


Sorry, let me rephrase myself. "I don't know how 5th Edition handles hydras and I don't care, because my table no longer plays 5th Edition."

Feel free to copypaste that into my previous post.

And thanks for the info on hydras and vamps in 5th Ed; all it does is re-inforce what I was saying: Hydras, and hydras alone, have a decapitation mechanic that doesn't involve vorpal weapons. The rest of the MM does not, despite many monsters possessing both neck(s) and head(s). And good for 5th Ed for adding a stake to the heart mechanic for vamps. They didn't have one in 3.5. But you need to re-read my post. I wasn't complaining about a lack of heart-staking combat maneuvers in D&D. I said it wasn't needed, as D&D provides other methods of killing vampires. I was complaining about the lack of non-vorpal decapitation mechanics, solely due to the fact that one monster has unique rules for it, when logically, any monster with the requisite anatomy would be susceptible to the old chop-chop.

Of course, if 3.5 did implement something like a wide-reaching decapitation combat maneuver, I can only assume the rules for it would be labyrinthine and confusingly worded.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/05/01 11:58:15


Post by: Melissia


squidhills wrote:
And thanks for the info on hydras and vamps in 5th Ed; all it does is re-inforce what I was saying: Hydras, and hydras alone, have a decapitation mechanic that doesn't involve vorpal weapons.
Actually, hydras are not the only one that has a mechanic like that, such as Strahd Zombies, though THEIR heads continues to attack after being removed. I could keep going, but it'd be pointless because the various monster entries are for the DM's sake, not the player's sake, and the DM is literally told to make whatever changes they need to make the campaign they want to run work.

Even still, you misunderstand me-- I know what you're talking about for a "decapitation attack", I've played that style of game before. However, having played all five editions I have to say that frankly 3rd edition was BETTER for removing a lot of the instant death mechanics found in older DnD editions. "Save or die" was far, FAR too common in 1st and 2nd editions, on both sides. It wasn't uncommon in 1st and 2nd edition to just have a stack of character sheets you bring to the table, knowing you'd die at least once each session and wanting to be prepared to jump in with a new character if you did, and at lower levels there was no way to get those characters back (and at higher levels oftentimes you'd be stuck doing nothing anyway until they had the resources to resurrect).

For all the talk about older editions being more centered on theatre of the mind, there was a LOT of bad mechanics about them that stopped or reduced the ability of the players to roleplay. Called shots are certainly an interesting mechanic and you could make something up with a houserule if you wanted, but I'd avoid a "DECAPITATING STRIKE INSTANT WIN!" button at all costs-- in my experience, those kinds of things are either powergamed heavily or utterly useless, and no room in between. And before you get snarky about my use of the word "you" there thinking I'm implying you personally would play DnD again any time soon, I meant the generic "you, the reader".


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/05/02 20:53:15


Post by: squidhills


Didn't know about Strahd zombies (because there aren't any in Dungeon of the Mad Mage or Dragonheist and those are the two adventures my group did) having decap mechanics, all I know is those guys didn't have that in 3.5 (Ravenloft MM just gives them regen and says they must be completely destroyed by disintegrate or an explodey turn undead). It sounds like 5th added a lot of unique kill mechanics to the MM that weren't there in previous editions. If that's the case, I actually like that. On paper, it makes combats more than just "reduce HP to 0 to win". Unfortunately, none of the monsters we encountered in our time playing 5th used those mechanics (or the GM didn't see fit to inform us about it when we made the requisite knowledge checks) so every fight was "reduce HP to 0 to win" only less interesting than it would've been in another system.

And I agree "save or die" is usually ass. It's the worst part of 1st and 2nd Edition. It's a relic from a time when the game was very much "players vs GM" and counting discarded character sheets was how a GM won. There is a lot less save or die in 3rd Edition, at least at the lower levels. Vorpal weapons can trigger save or die, but they don't show up till higher levels (due to item cost) when most PCs can pass the (laughable) DC 15 Fort save fairly reliably. Even if they die, at the level vorpal weapons should be showing up at, the party should have ways to mitigate death (raise dead, resurrection, breath of life, etc).

But if you implement decapitation rules intelligently, it doesn't have to be an instant-win button. Read my explanation for CU's decapitation system again. They make landing a decap hit difficult (a -5 in CU would be equivalent to a -10 in D&D... not something anyone under level 10 should even attempt if they want to have a realistic chance of hitting) and then you have to inflict 100% of the target's current HP total, or you fail to kill them and only do minimum damage. The Death domain for clerics in 3.5 has something similar with the death touch domain power, and I've never seen anyone use it because it has such a low % chance of killing the target, it's just easier to do normal damage. CU's decap maneuver isn't an instant-win button, because anyone who goes around spamming that is never going to actually kill anything (they'd never hit, and even if they hit, they'd never do enough damage to kill because you need to soften a target up first with normal attacks) and a similarly designed rule for D&D would work the same way. You wouldn't want to use it at low level, because you'd never hit, and at higher level you'd still need to beat on the boss monster for a while before the decap damage would be fatal. As for monsters using it on PCs, the same holds true. Goblins would never land a hit using it, and the boss would still have to beat on the players for a bit before it would be a viable attack. Even then, with how 5th handles damage, it would just reduce you to 0 Hp and trigger death saves. With how 3.5 and Pathfinder handle damage below 0 HP, it could very well kill a character, but it wouldn't be a likely attack to have to deal with until you are high enough level to mitigate it through resurrection magic.

It's less of a 2d edition "save or die" and more of a 3rd edition "Hail Mary pass"... you know those save or suck spells the wizard never uses because the monsters always have stupid high saves? But if just one of those spells sticks to the target, the battle can swing in the players' favor? It'd be like that.

If the rules were well-written. Which, as I said last post, I'm not sure 3.5 could manage (Pathfinder would do it better, but with the burst damage spam that high-level Pathfinder turns into, it would be kind of superfluous). You're free to disagree about the merits, of course. And I fully understand not liking save or die nor wanting it in the game (though as long as we have vorpal weapons and the disintegrate spell, we still have it) but from a purely math-hammer angle, it could be made to work.

 Melissia wrote:
And before you get snarky about my use of the word "you" there thinking I'm implying you personally would play DnD again any time soon, I meant the generic "you, the reader".


Y'know, I've noticed both of us getting snarky and passive-agressive at each other in this thread and I don't like it. I respect you and I enjoy reading your posts. I don't want to end up on your ignore list, nor do I want you to end up on mine. I'd like for us to argue the point without arguing with each other. I'll start making an effort to double-check my posts for tone to try to keep this from happening again.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/05/02 21:35:28


Post by: Melissia


I mean, that just describes DnD 3.5th's Power Attack.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/05/03 01:51:52


Post by: squidhills


 Melissia wrote:
I mean, that just describes DnD 3.5th's Power Attack.


Power Attack doesn't do nearly the kind of damage I'm talking about though. For a rough approximation of what CU's decapitation does, picture an attack made at -10, that inflicts an automatic critical hit with a +1 increase to the critical multiplier (so x2 becomes x 3, etc). If the total damage rolled does not meet or exceed the target's current HP, the attack does minimal base damage (not multiplied as if a crit). That's a crude sketch of how CU's decapitation would translate into D&D. Power attack is just a -1/+1 attack/damage modifier (or -1/+2 in Pathfinder) which, even at a -10/+10 isn't going to do the kind of damage you can pull from a critical hit (especially with STR bonuses added in).


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/05/03 12:34:15


Post by: Melissia


So Epic Power Attack then. I mean, yeah, very few players got to epic levels. But I'm just comparing it to something that was already in game.

I'm not trying to be dismissive here, or argue that DnD 3.5 was the perfect system (by no means was it, I don't think I'll ever play it again!), despite what some previous posters accused me of. But there's a LOT of things in dnd 3.5, so many gigabytes worth of supplements and books, and that's just the first party books. Didn't have everything, to be sure, though.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/05/03 20:15:02


Post by: squidhills


 Melissia wrote:
So Epic Power Attack then. I mean, yeah, very few players got to epic levels. But I'm just comparing it to something that was already in game.

I'm not trying to be dismissive here, or argue that DnD 3.5 was the perfect system (by no means was it, I don't think I'll ever play it again!), despite what some previous posters accused me of. But there's a LOT of things in dnd 3.5, so many gigabytes worth of supplements and books, and that's just the first party books. Didn't have everything, to be sure, though.


I'll have to defer to your knowledge on Epic Power Attack. I took one look at the Epic Level Handbook and called a priest over to exorcise it. Most of my table had a very low opinion of that book. Actually, considering that we had access to just about every book that 3.5 produced (at least the 1st party ones, anyway) we tended to disregard the vast majority of them. Even without the GM limiting people to specific books during play, we would've avoided most of the 3.5 catalogue due to low opinions of most of the material (I'm looking at you, Complete Scoundrel). So many of those books were written just to put words on a page and not to provide anything useful or interesting to the game.

We were pretty much a self-imposed PHB 1 & 2, DMG, Spell Compendium, Magic Item Compendium, and Forgotten Realms player's guide (for the races, feats, and deities mostly) table. Occasionally, someone would ask to use something out of Unearthed Arcana, but that was rare.

For Pathfinder, though, we've been much more open to the splat books. I think the only book nobody has ever pulled from is Ultimate Intrigue, and that's only because of how situational most of the stuff in that book is. If you are in a campaign built entirely around intrigue, investigation, and conspiracy, it's great. If you're doing a more generic fantasy adventure (or a published adventure path) most of the stuff in that book isn't going to benefit your character.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/05/04 04:13:53


Post by: Voss


Ultimate Intrigue was just bizarre. (Exactly the kind of splat that WotC was infamous for at the end of edition- trying out new stuff by throwing it at the walls to see what sticks).

The signature class for the book doesn't even fit the setting its written for, and the archetypes are serial-numbers-filed off versions of the Hulk, Spiderman, Sailor Moon & etc.

And the meat of the class is weird social powers around a secret identity (like Batman), which doesn't fit the genre, or the setting or that you're sitting around and killing goblins and dragons with other characters that... aren't doing that.

The weird 'better-in-costume'/'better-out-of-costume' split mechanics seem strange and terrible when everybody else can just use all their abilities all the time.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/06/29 14:20:05


Post by: warboss


Question for those familiar with d&d5e... Does advantage always correspond with a disadvantage on an opposed role or are they calculated independently? I.e. If one character is at an advantage because of a situation, is the other automatically at a disadvantage for the same reason? Logically by the English definition of the words it works that way but I don't know/doubt that is how It works mechanically in game. For example, a prone character is trying to grab something away from the guy standing next to him and is at a disadvantage... would the upright character also be at an advantage? Or is the single application of the system granting one or the other the full extent and there would have to be another condition (like having more free hands for the standing person) necessary to grant him/her an advantage?

It seems like a lot of the conditions for adv/disadvantage correspond to 3.x situational modifiers. Does it replace all of them or just some?

Thanks in advance as I just heard about this system and am unfamiliar with 5e.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/06/29 14:43:23


Post by: LordofHats


 warboss wrote:
Question for those familiar with d&d5e... Does advantage always correspond with a disadvantage on an opposed role or are they calculated independently?


A character either has advantage or they don't. A character either has disadvantage or they don't. Having either/or does not in and of itself affect any character but the character in question.

I.e. If one character is at an advantage because of a situation, is the other automatically at a disadvantage for the same reason?


No. The state's are independent of each other, though there are a large number of mechanics that bestow both on attackers/defenders based on circumstance.

For example, there is the Barbarian's ability to Reckless Attack. When this option is used, the Barbarian gains Advantage on all attacks. When this option is used, enemies all gain Advantage when attacking the Barbarian. The mechanic specifically states who has what and under what circumstances.

A Prone creature has Disadvantage on attacks. An attacker gains Advantage against a prone creature within 5 ft. but disadvantage if further away (some GM's might house rule that weapons with reach at 10 ft. still have Advantage). Like with Reckless Attack, the Prone rule in Conditions specifically states who has Advantage and Disadvantage and under what circumstances.

Advantage can be declared by the GM based on circumstance, and vice versa. The rules do not state a Prone creature has Disdvantage on opposed rolls, but I could see a GM saying a character has Disadvantage on resisting a grapple or restraining action. That would be up to the GM.

Also keep in mind that a single instance of disadvantage on a character cancels out ALL sources of advantage on them and vice versa. They do not stack unless running a house rule (I've met GMs who run it that way). If a Barbarian Reckless Attacks and a creature does something that gives Disadvantage on attack rolls, then the Barbarian attacks normally and has no Advantage. However, if the Barbarian is attacked, their attackers may still have Advantage if the source of Disadvantage only targets enemies and not allies (the state's are mechaniclly independent).


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/06/29 14:54:37


Post by: Voss


 warboss wrote:
Question for those familiar with d&d5e... Does advantage always correspond with a disadvantage on an opposed role or are they calculated independently? I.e. If one character is at an advantage because of a situation, is the other automatically at a disadvantage for the same reason? Logically by the English definition of the words it works that way but I don't know/doubt that is how It works mechanically in game. For example, a prone character is trying to grab something away from the guy standing next to him and is at a disadvantage... would the upright character also be at an advantage? Or is the single application of the system granting one or the other the full extent and there would have to be another condition (like having more free hands for the standing person) necessary to grant him/her an advantage?

It seems like a lot of the conditions for adv/disadvantage correspond to 3.x situational modifiers. Does it replace all of them or just some?

Thanks in advance as I just heard about this system and am unfamiliar with 5e.


They're independent. Some sort of effect generally has to explicitly grant them (or the DM just decrees they apply).

Its worth comparing poisoned to the prone and restrained conditions on the same page (292 of the PH)- poisoned only gives the poisoned creature disadvantage, while restrained gives the restrained creature disadvantage on attacks and other creatures advantage against it. Prone inflicts disadvantage, but grants advantage or disadvantage to attackers based on distance. So, each has to be assigned to a creature by some sort of rule or effect.

As for 3e modifiers, just some. Flanking, for example, vanished from the PH and got turned into an optional rule in the DMG.
Going by 3e modifiers would be a mistake (as far as 5e rules are concerned)- there just isn't enough overlap. 5e is basically sticks multiple editions in a blender and calls it all 'inspiration.'


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/06/29 14:59:08


Post by: LordofHats


A lot of GM's ignore the flanking rules in general because they're too easy and it kind of becomes an advantage/disadvantage bonanza when the game already has an abundance of sources of both. There's apparently a popular house rule going around now where instead GM's are using Flanking to give a flat bonus to attack rolls but again, that's a house rule.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/06/29 15:20:16


Post by: warboss


Thanks for the quick replies and examples. It seems like it's not automatic and the rules specify when it affects both combatants and/or grants both conditions.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2020/06/29 20:37:01


Post by: Albertorius


 warboss wrote:
Thanks for the quick replies and examples. It seems like it's not automatic and the rules specify when it affects both combatants and/or grants both conditions.


In general I like the way Shadow of the Demon Lord handles ad/disadvantage much more than 5e's, which is too all or nothing for me. The idea is very similar, but you can be affected by multiple instances of advantages and disadvantages. They cancel each other, so you'll only ever have either advantage or disadvantage for a specific roll, but you can have multiple. Then, for each advantage or disadvantage (Boon or Bane) you have, you add 1d6 to the d20 roll. If you're rolling with advantage, you add the highest d6 to the d20 roll: if you're rolling with disadvantage, you subtract it.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/08 21:23:33


Post by: AlanPetersdrew


Well, Warhammer 40k taught me patience. Usually, patience isn’t exactly the best quality you can have, however in my play environment with the way I play it I had to learn it quickly.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/14 21:28:12


Post by: A.T.


squidhills wrote:
...we would've avoided most of the 3.5 catalogue due to low opinions of most of the material (I'm looking at you, Complete Scoundrel). So many of those books were written just to put words on a page and not to provide anything useful or interesting to the game.
IIRC scoundrel had the skill tricks - options for rogue-types to spend their piles of skillpoints in ways other than maxing out a dozen of their key skills and sinking another 20 points into profession:winemaker.

There was usually at least one useful thing in each book, and about ten different ways it didn't quite work as intended with things from other books.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/22 10:16:14


Post by: kirotheavenger


I had my first experience of DnD a week or two ago, essentially a dungeon crawling one shot.

I have to agree with this assessment of it. I played a fighter and really enjoyed having my Battle Maneuvre dice to play around with, but beyond that pretty much all I could do was roll to-hit as my enemies did the same.

The health and healing was also deeply unsatisfactory to me.
Our paladin went down, iirc, twice. Coming from Dark Heresy, the first time it happened I was like oh gak, this must be really bad. Nah, just feed him a health potion and he's right as rain.

The healing in general was a rude contrast from Dark Heresy, it's almost like wounds didn't matter. I spent the whole fight getting shredded by bows and battleaxes but pop a few spells or take a kip and it's like nothing had ever happened.

Also the amount of health you have is crazy, and wounds mean nothing until you're suddenly conscious.

I suppose all this fits essentially the high fantasy super hero story that DnD promises. Run up to the goblin, stab it, hope he misses you, repreat. But I feel it falls short of the more realistic and engaging interpretation I was hoping for.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/22 11:54:07


Post by: A.T.


 kirotheavenger wrote:
The healing in general was a rude contrast from Dark Heresy, it's almost like wounds didn't matter.
The cumulative critical damage charts in Dark Heresy always had the potential for some amusement. A character could walk off dozens of points of damage from having a titan step on them, and then step on a lego brick and explode.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/22 12:42:32


Post by: kirotheavenger


I think in your specific example the titan would be likely to inflict more than 10 critical damage on any one location, but you're not entirely wrong.

The system wasn't perfect but at least getting hurt was bad.

Before I played this oneshot I watched a bunch of play-throughs/stories and stuff on Youtube to get a feel for it. I was confused how people were describing epic fights where half the party went down, surrounded by enemies, and then stuff continued like that was nothing.
Now I get it. Losing health and going down doesn't matter, like at all, in DnD.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/22 12:56:33


Post by: the_scotsman


 kirotheavenger wrote:
I think in your specific example the titan would be likely to inflict more than 10 critical damage on any one location, but you're not entirely wrong.

The system wasn't perfect but at least getting hurt was bad.

Before I played this oneshot I watched a bunch of play-throughs/stories and stuff on Youtube to get a feel for it. I was confused how people were describing epic fights where half the party went down, surrounded by enemies, and then stuff continued like that was nothing.
Now I get it. Losing health and going down doesn't matter, like at all, in DnD.


Yep - it's my #1 complaint with the DnD combat system currently.

Getting stunned, blinded, charmed, grabbed, tangled up etc all have mechanical effects, but anything that is "damage" just goes into a big ol' bucket entitled "the number of points you dun gots til you're dead."

I'm enjoying the hell out of my current RPG group so I am in no way going to rock the boat, but boy oh boy do I very often wish we could play with a damage system like Fates, where you have very few "hit points" but you avoid taking instances of damage by suffering minor, moderate and severe consequences that have an actually lasting effect on your character.

Even basic, 40k-style "hit this threshold, suffer these maluses to your fighting abilities as you get worn down" would be an improvement.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/22 14:03:15


Post by: A.T.


 the_scotsman wrote:
Even basic, 40k-style "hit this threshold, suffer these maluses to your fighting abilities as you get worn down" would be an improvement.
The exalted system played on that. When you gained more hitpoints you had some control over which bracket to add them to, and you got more hitpoints if you put them in higher brackets.

So two characters with the same level of advancement - one might tank a few hits without penalties and then drop right through into critical damage, while another might take twice the punishment to die but spend most of that time with wound penalties.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/22 19:29:29


Post by: Easy E


To make combat more interesting as a Martial character I am always "badgering" my GM about getting advantage/disadvantage through different moves. I.e. pulling carpets out from under people to knock them down, using my whip to swing into them, trying to knock them off things, throwing tables around, grappling, etc.

I also get tired of running up and hitting them with my biggest stick on a swingy d20 roll.

Do not even get me started on defensive options for players..... ugh. Just subtract HP.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/23 00:28:58


Post by: the_scotsman


 Easy E wrote:
To make combat more interesting as a Martial character I am always "badgering" my GM about getting advantage/disadvantage through different moves. I.e. pulling carpets out from under people to knock them down, using my whip to swing into them, trying to knock them off things, throwing tables around, grappling, etc.

I also get tired of running up and hitting them with my biggest stick on a swingy d20 roll.

Do not even get me started on defensive options for players..... ugh. Just subtract HP.


tbf you do always have the option to knock someone over (through Shove), stop their movement (Through Grapple), do something defensive to make yourself more difficult to hit (through Dodge) so however you want to describe those actions you can basically ham it up.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/23 00:47:25


Post by: Voss


 Easy E wrote:
To make combat more interesting as a Martial character I am always "badgering" my GM about getting advantage/disadvantage through different moves. I.e. pulling carpets out from under people to knock them down, using my whip to swing into them, trying to knock them off things, throwing tables around, grappling, etc.


Part of the problem with 5e is most of those things are your entire action (according to the rules, anyway), and... don't really accomplish much.
Prone is probably the best, but only if most of your party is melee-focused. If you've got a lot of ranged/spellcasters, you've just made things worse for them.

Grapple is the most bizarrely useless condition in the game*. The only thing is does is set speed to 0. They can attack the grappler, make ranged attacks at other people, cast spells, etc with zero penalty whatsoever. Restrained is actually really good, but grapple doesn't have much use beyond stopping non-teleportation movement, which while sometimes important for capturing people you've already overmatched and want to run, it mostly just means putting the 'tank' label on the grappler.

The game's setup is real harsh on the idea that if you aren't depleting hit points, you're stretching out the combat and generally making it harder on the party (more resources burned, whether attacking or healing afterwards). Focus fire always, save being clever for outside of combat where it might make a difference in the magical tea party that is 5e's vaguely defined grasp of non-combat situations.


*well, besides charmed. Which despite what people believe (largely from earlier editions) only means they won't attack the _caster_, and makes the caster better at socializing at them. It doesn't prevent anything from murdering your buddies in any way at all. And even the social aspect still has the difficulty of persuading someone in combat time. Its best use is really charming someone you aren't fighting and who you can get away with no serious repercussions later. (like charming someone for directions, but not charming a merchant, who will eventually snap out of it and probably notify the Watch).


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/23 08:27:45


Post by: kirotheavenger


To a certain extent, I wouldn't want to see too much ridiculous stuff.
I'd struggle to mentally justify why your opponent doesn't just step forwards and stab you whilst you're faffing about with the carpet or monkey swinging off the chandelier ("he's waiting for his turn").

As I mentioned earlier, I really enjoyed the Fighter's Battle Manoeuvres. I feel they made combat a lot more enjoyable as I had the option to make it more interesting in ways but are also pretty logical.
But I couldn't use those against mooks though, as you only get so many dice.

I get that melee combat is difficult to implement in a way that doesn't just boil down to dice-offs, especially if the intent is to represent characters of different skill levels rather than players of different aptitude.
So I can't think of any way to materially improve the sword swinging aspect, my main target would be to make damage and healing to feel more significant. "oh know, I've been stabbed" should be an expression of fear, not sarcastic humour as you lose 4/28 health.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/23 14:57:07


Post by: Easy E


Dice-offs are fine. In fact, I would prefer an opposed dice-off system rather than what we have.

I would also love something to do on the defense rather than just remove hit points. A roll-off would be an improvement as at least I can say I am blocking/parrying or something if I win the dice-off and they can not hit me.

I also dislike Hit Point systems in general, and prefer Health levels, where as you move through the levels you gain penalties. This makes combat attritional in nature.




D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/24 11:55:33


Post by: the_scotsman


 Easy E wrote:
Dice-offs are fine. In fact, I would prefer an opposed dice-off system rather than what we have.

I would also love something to do on the defense rather than just remove hit points. A roll-off would be an improvement as at least I can say I am blocking/parrying or something if I win the dice-off and they can not hit me.

I also dislike Hit Point systems in general, and prefer Health levels, where as you move through the levels you gain penalties. This makes combat attritional in nature.




Yeah. My problem at this point, is that people that I play with are very much attached to the 'special stuff' their characters can do with their class and subclass and race and stuff, and a simplified system that, to me, would be more inherently satisfying with health levels and damage effects would feel like it was making all the characters the same to them.

Almost any given thing that you'd want to be present as an option in DnD is SOMEWHERE in there, it's just usually gated behind some subclass or some feat or some thing. There's a lot in there, but a lot of it is like, you have to seek it out. Like I wanted to build a martial character who was heavily based around using a shield, so I built a fighter with the Shield Master feat and the Protection style, which opened up a lot of those options that I wanted, but locked me out of a bunch of other options that feel like things you should be able to do in combat or at least attempt.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/24 14:17:36


Post by: Easy E


Exactly! There is a lot of "gate-keeping" (for lack of a better word) between class abilities in order to make any given class "unique".

Then, the mechanics and class start to dictate what can be done by the player, rather than the Player dictating what the character is going to do.

That said, this "strategic level" is most of the appeal of D&D to a lot of folks. I.e. making sure you go get the right class to create the combinations you want to use in the game. Plus, it is something you can work on and study outside of actually playing to keep you in the "game". This also adds a satisfying layer of "gotcha" when you use your class abilities in a certain way that flummoxes your DM!

It may also have some limited help for new players in guiding them how to play D&D.

Therefore, D&D combat maybe boring BUT it has been wildly successful at keeping people engaged with playing it. The simplicity and the segmentation maybe part of that appeal. It is a feature and not a bug!


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/27 01:00:01


Post by: Slowroll


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If you have a way to attack with a bonus action, Dodge is REALLY powerful. It is essentially +5 AC and immunity to crits unless the disadvantage is cancelled out.

Along those same lines I've seen my favorite class, Barbarian, thoughtof as the most boring. If you use all the tools they can change up their damage taken/damage output ratio to a higher extreme than any other class I can think of. But players tend to think of offense first with defense more of a bonus. At least my players have. And if you aren't a dice nerd, it can still be boring. Its less boring when played on a map rather than theater of the mind. I do agree with the ease of recovering from 0 HP being the worst part of 5E D&D.

But, D&D 5E is the most accessible, gateway RPG. A lot of the stuff people are asking for already exists in other games, even other "new" ones. Pathfinder 2 has active defenses and a pile of maneuvers. Call of Cthulhu 7th has opposed rolls, no HP gain with experience and an interesting "Fight Back" mechanic. It doesn't hurt to try new things with your group and see if anything sticks, or the variety itself might become part of the draw. There are a lot of good games out there.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/27 15:50:47


Post by: Voss


If you have a way to attack with a bonus action, Dodge is REALLY powerful. It is essentially +5 AC and immunity to crits unless the disadvantage is cancelled out.

In general, however, this can't be done. Most bonus action attacks (Two weapons, flurry of blows, etc) can only be taken if, and only if, you take an attack action.

Dodge mostly means forfeiting your turn and contributing nothing.


The big problem with barbarians is that damage taken/output ratio isn't that useful. Pop up healing, temp hp and disadvantage are far more flexible than a small 'X rages per day' number and an insignificant damage bump (monster HP scales at a wildly different rate). Half damage is great when it matters, but as you go up in level the number of things that are throwing more damage types (that aren't halved by rage) goes up exponentially.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/27 19:11:20


Post by: warboss


What ways are there to freely attack via bonus actions for non-spell casters that can couple with a dodge action? I can't think of any other than via spells but admittedly my experience is limited. There are a few racial ones that you can do as a bonus action that don't require an attack action first (like a minotaur charge) or limited use ones like a lizardman bite but most of the other non-spell bonus attacks (as mentioned above) seem to require a normal attack first.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/28 00:53:12


Post by: Slowroll


 warboss wrote:
What ways are there to freely attack via bonus actions for non-spell casters that can couple with a dodge action? I can't think of any other than via spells but admittedly my experience is limited. There are a few racial ones that you can do as a bonus action that don't require an attack action first (like a minotaur charge) or limited use ones like a lizardman bite but most of the other non-spell bonus attacks (as mentioned above) seem to require a normal attack first.


The Barbarian Frenzy and Battlerager attacks for starters (caveat: at least in my first print of the books, I know they do update later pritnings). There are probably more. You can also use teamwork to get your dodger some attacks, such as with Haste or Commander's Strike.

Dodging being a waste of time has not been my experience, and the way the Barbarian in particulars abilities stack are very powerful if the right combination is picked. Using Shield, 2H, Dodge, Reckless Attack, Frenzy at the right times have been decisive. On the other side, enemies with shields using Dodge to protect missile/polearm guys behind them can be a fun challenge to throw against a party.

At the end of the day, D&D is a modified wargame. Those mathhammer skills you use to evaluate stuff in 40K apply with this too. You can do your own math or if there is interest I can do a writeup.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/28 01:36:10


Post by: Voss


Frenzy is specific to the Frenzied Berserker subclass, and its really punishing to use, a point of exhaustion every time you use it with a rage. That's disadvantage on all ability (skill) checks the first time, and it gets way worse from there: 2 points is half speed and 3 is disadvantage on all attacks and saves. That character is pretty much nonfunctional at that stage, and it can get worse.

Battlerager I had to dig for... and its pretty niche and terrible for a trivial poking attack, where you have to be a dwarf wearing specific armor and find some way to get it enchanted to do magical attacks against creatures where that matters.

Commander's strike is really terrible action and resource economy. The fighter has to make an attack action, give up an attack, use a bonus action AND burn a superiority die just to give another creature one attack IF they burn their reaction.

Haste is haste. Its always good, up until it gets dispelled (Or the caster fails concentration) and the target ends up not-technically-but-effectively stunned (no moves, no actions) for a turn.


----
The problem with the dodge action in actual play is that its very much a gamble- the player is sacrificing the ability to accomplish things, and its only effective if the DM is playing monsters dumb and lining them up to attack that specific character. If they're spread out against multiple party members (or behaving intelligently, like tossing abilities or spells that require saves rather than attacks) the sacrifice just isn't worth it. In most situations, taking down opponents faster is the best option. Playing defensively becomes attrition play, which favors team monster, because they get fresh bodies every time, while the players have dwindling resource pools.


D&D 5th Edition Combat is Boring @ 2021/06/29 12:52:17


Post by: the_scotsman


...I mean there's also cunning actions, as a rogue, or whatever the monk thing is called as a monk that give you bonus action dodges.

Definitely agree on the 'Strategic Layer' being a big draw of DnD5e. It basically allows people to think about all the distinct things their character can do outside of the game session, and then streamlines combat somewhat in the game session as most people lay out a "battle plan" for themselves.

Spellcasters and some subclasses like battlemaster provide options on the fly, but in general you do build the things you want your character to be able to do in that 'strategic planning layer' of the game between sessions.