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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 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.

 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.

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.

 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.

 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.

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.

 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.

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.

 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).

 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.