5e combat system too simple / boring?

[Condiments]

There's almost none of the tactical gameplay from previous editions. Combats are often very immoble. If you want mobile combats and tactics you really have to make an effort to include them, the system does not lend or push you towards them at all and the feats and abilities that emulate some of the more tactical gameplay of previous editions are highly limited and substantially less powerful than competing options.

Generally, I find 5E combat quick, which I like...but not very interesting, which I don't like.

Yeah I tend to agree with this. 5th edition was my first PnP, and my first time DMing so I had little experience as to how to structure adventures or make interesting fights. Unfortunately, throwing a group of monsters together at the appropriate difficulty level and throwing them at the players...generally doesn't lend itself to interesting encounters unless DM really goes out of this way to push the system. Monsters are generally bags of hit points with few unique abilities, and limited tactical options compared to the players. I remember almost being bored to literal tears during some fights during the first few sessions of my campaign, and wondering what I was doing wrong. Everything else flowed so nicely outside of combat, but as soon as initiative rolled....bleh.

Which was a pretty big disappointment from my end. Being mostly a videogame player before playing 5th edition, I wanted to give those pulse pounding climatic battles that I remembered from the old cRPGs that I had played years before to my players. I tried my hardest with various experiments and playing with encounter design, and it feels like there is always something missing.

I've gotten significantly better at designing battles since then and straining party resources over various fights in an adventuring day. The "adventuring day" is a pretty whimsical notion though, given the open ended nature of this game and player ingenuity. My wily players usually find a way to circumvent fights or come up with an insane plan.

So yeah OP, 5e from my observations is a pretty laid back game that concentrates on multiple fights draining party resources with little risk to PCs. Pushing it outside those boundaries requires more DM work and sleight of hand to make things more tactically interesting like using terrain, LOS, mages, environment hazards/boons. If you're not careful, however, the system beings to strain under pressure. The system is very swingy, and relies on things being decisive within 2-3 rounds(which means less strategic/tactically interesting fights), and if you push outside of that you're in a danger zone. Though most of my most interesting fights according to my players involve these types of situations.

I've never tried 4e but the talk of how interesting the combats were makes me want to try it out, maybe with something like 13th age's escalation die mixed in to speed up combats.

 

[Li Shenron]

Some of the guys in my regular 5e group are becoming a bit bored with the simplicity of 5th edition combat. Not having played through 4th (oldschool returning 2e guy) I don't really have much of a point of reference.Do any other people in here share this problem, and have you any examples of house rules or other methods you use to spice up combats which might otherwise me a bit ploddy?

My opinion is that in 5e it is more up to the players to make combat interesting.

And I do not mean through descriptions... replacing "I attack with my sword" with a long flamboyant description of your swinging and praising your deity, followed by the DM's Pulitzer-level description of the orc's facial expression of pain and blood pattern on the floor is entertaining once and already tedious the second time.

I really mean that the player has to do some work to make combat more interesting from a functional/tactical point of view.

It certainly depends on character build choices, clearly if you chose a Fighter/Champion instead of a Fighter/Battlemaster, or if you go with ability score increases instead of feats, it will be more difficult to try novelty tactics. And unfortunately the novelty tactics are often not the most efficient, to which point I am afraid we must admit that most times efficiency is boredom! If players keep only thinking in terms of "damage output", combat will keep being a boring task of maximization.

The options are there, you don't need a flood of supplements for tactical variety, but you need to start using them. There's tons of spells for each class with not so obvious effects, but if you always focus on damage-dealers and buffs, it's your fault. Look for class abilities that aren't strictly related to boosting offense and defense, for example the Rogue's Cunning Action and the Fighter's Action Surge have a lot of potential for very interesting choices.

As for the DM, the obvious thing to look for is to vary the encounters. It's true that the MM has a large bulk of samey monsters, but most monsters have at least one special ability. Focus on using that one! It doesn't matter if it would be once again more efficient to just let the monster do a regular attack, choose to use that monster's unique feature as much as you can so that the battle will feel different from the others.

Besides that, scourge youtube for memorable movies fight scenes and steal ideas related to external/environmental conditions that can significantly alter a battle's dynamics.

 

[Celtavian]

I do agree that combat narration can make combats more interesting. You are very much encouraged to use narration to enhance the feeling of exciting combat in 5E. Since you're not spending your time looking up rules or spell text, it's much easier to focus on compelling narration in than 3E/Pathfinder. A DM that wants to make combats less boring and more interesting to the players may want to brush up on their descriptive narration to make the players feel like they're in an exciting fight.

Telling the player when he crits, "Your axe blade cleaves the chain links of the orcs armor splitting his flesh and collarbone. Blood splatters your axe haft and armor as the orc falls twitching to the ground." That kind of narration goes a long way to enhance 5E combats and paint a picture of the battlefield.

 

[Azurewraith]

I do find 5e combats can be a bit boring due to simplicity but then the speed they fly by at seems to off set this some what. Flowery descriptions are great until you find combat is taking 3hours because people have a small novel sat next to them titled "cool ways to describe murderhoboing".

Can combat be made interesting yes it can add in some choke points and flanking routes. Don't just have combat start by you see some goblins on the horizon they stand there staring at you until you approach and murder them brutally. The goblins on the horizon spotted you as well and they scatter into the nearby forest it looked as if they had a bound captive with them. Now the pcs are walking into an ambush in the forest now you can have the pcs start the combat surrounded and you have a extra an extra concern in the captive. Add in traps to the terrain maybe a pitfall to shove people off.

Another major factor in 5e combats being stale to me anyway is there is 0risk of death outside blatant stupid actions add in some permanent injury rules this works 2ways it helps pcs want to pick fights so combat happens less often so seems just that lil bit fresher.

 

[AtomicPope]

If DMs understand the monsters and players they can make combat dynamic. Fifth Edition is a simplistic game, in every sense. It's complicated when it needs to be but moves smoothly most of the time. Unlike 3e, the current edition of D&D doesn't reward you with more attacks when you're not moving. Everyone in 5e can move and fight with full effect. There is no need for Otto's 5ft Shuffle every round in the current edition.

To put it simply, if there's no incentive to get out of the pocket and move then you just stay up there and bang it out. It's easy to give players reasons to move - damage auras, terrain, swarms, pack tactics, et al. Many classes benefit from repositioning - Rogues can Hide, Monks can push, Rangers can Whirlwind, et al. Many melee classes do not - Paladins, Champion Fighters, Berserker Barbarians, et al. If a Barbarian has no reason to move then why should he? Just run up and keep chopping. If the DM makes every monster an Awakened Tree then the only prescription is Moar Axe!

I don't think I'm "lucky" that my DMs (plural) used terrain, multiple monsters, and events to make the combats dynamic. Even the LMoP has many encounters that lend themselves to moving around, taking cover, and using the terrain to make it easier or harder, depending on your point of view. There's Goblins firing arrows from a ledge (reminiscent of The Fellowship of the Ring), Ghouls ambushing characters in a poisonous mushroom field, and Flaming Skulls ducking behind the Spell Forge after shooting fire bolts from his eyes. I barely scratched the surface of the dynamic battles in the Starter Set. If D&D noobs can experience dynamic combats, you grognards can too!

 

[TheLoneRanger1979]

Interesting that you think the simplicity is a winner over the previous complex systems.

Trust me, my group had a year or so lasting campaign in 4E. By the time we reached lvl 12-16 each combat encounter lasted an eternity, unless it involved minions. If i could show you my damage books, and char statistics they are 2-3 times longer then they are for comparative levels in 5E. Yeah, simplicity can be a blessing.

Complex mechanics don't transfer well into pen and paper. CPU backed games are a different thing though. All the calculations are in the background, so you don't lose much time.

What you do win with the lose of time lost in battles is the time won in actual role playing. Unlike in 4E, where the actual time spent was about 4:1 to 9:1 in favor of combat mechanics, in 5E we spend around equal time for both. Even fighting gets to be more interesting if you role play through it. Use aid and grapple and improvise actions that you can assign DC for. Much more fun then listing though 10 pages of daily powers....... at least for me.

 

[strider13x]

Only boring people get bored...

 

[Sage Genesis]

Whether or not something is "interesting" or "boring" depends on many different facets. Let's look at some of them, starting with the basics of taking a turn.

In general terms you can imagine that as a flow cart. First you must decide what action(s) to take, then dice must be rolled, and then finally it comes to resolution and description.

Let's compare 5e for a moment to a few other games: D&D 4e, Legend of the Five Rings, and 13th Age.

4e tried to make the first step more exciting. Just saying "I attack" is too simple for its tastes so it provides you with some class features, at-will attacks, encounter and daily powers, magic item activations, interactions with monster/environment/trap elements, and so forth. So the first step is really exciting if you're into that kind of thing. (There are some drawbacks to this approach as well but that's not the issue we're debating right now so let's leave it at that.)

L5R tries to make the second step more exciting. Combat relies on raises - for those who don't know the game, accuracy tends to be pretty high but you can accept penalties prior to rolling to get increased effects on a hit. Not just disarms and knockdowns, but also extra damage dice and "class features" can rely on this mechanic. The first step is still simple: you just say "I attack" on a lot of turns but then it comes to dice and that part is more exciting because there's gambles and odds to weigh. Which is cool if you like playing with risk-reward.

13th Age's Fighters are kind of clever in this regard. Their main mechanic is that they roll attacks and then can add on one special effect, but which effect they can use depends on the d20 roll. Some of them can only be used on an even roll, some only on a 16+, some need to both odd and miss the target, etc. So they try to give the same kind of excitement you get from the first step, but they shunt it into the second step with a semi-automated system by attaching it to the die roll itself. Nearly all the little effects of 4e and nearly all the speed of 5e. Not everybody's cup of tea, but it's a cute idea.

Some of the advice given here in this thread can be summarized as, "describe things better". That is an excellent way to make the third step more exciting... but it won't improve the first and second steps. In 5e non-casters have relatively few action types available to them, or at least few that can be used often and are efficient. So if you want the first step (choosing an action) to be more exciting, you really kind of need to be a Wizard or something.


There are also other sources of excitement of course, ones that fall outside of the scope basic turn-taking and action resolution mechanics. There are objectives (save the hostages!), story-related tensions ("one of us dies today... brother") and the risk of death/consequences ("there are how many ogres?!"). For those who enjoy strategy over tactics, there is daily resource management for some classes.


But at the end of the day, different groups have different play styles. And different styles focus on different aspects of games to get the excitement they want. If your group gets bored by the first step of the flowchart, then you need to either do some big houseruling or accept that 5e was just not built for your tastes. That's ok. Not every game can be everything to everyone. The idea that the cause lies either with the system or the players is a false dichotomy, because the actual cause lies in the interaction between the two. Sometimes there's just no chemistry, you know? Spice it up, move along, or accept that some of your gaming experiences may be a little on the dull side.

 

[dmnqwk]

You could always replace critical hits with a table based on the D20 roll that affects combat.

For example if you rolled a 15 and hit, no additional effect, but if you rolled a 7 and managed to hit, you would've raked your weapon across their face, causing them to be blinded for 1 round. Or maybe if you rolled advantage, chose to use the weaker number and it was a 7, which still hit, then you barrelled into your foe, knocked them down and get a free improvised attack for 1d4+ability modifier as you "kicked them while they're down".

5e still allows for more interesting combats, but it doesn't include them in the basic design, it's up to the DM and the player to decide "why are they bored" and to do something about it, because they realised the majority of players are not bored by what they provided (or at least they believe that, after viewing how successful/unsuccessful previous editions were).

If the combat seems boring, create an additional table yourself that can be inserted to allow players more control over combat.

 

[iserith]

And it's not threatening enough, especially as you gain levels. Getting the proper level of attrition is extremely difficult in 5E.

This hasn't been my experience. Time sensitive quests and incentivizing pushing onward, plus solid design of challenges, is both easy and fun.

It is failure of the rules. It's a failure that has existed in every version of D&D unless you incorporate optional rules. You can describe a broken arm in an amazing fashion, but if it has no game effect it is meaningless. The player won't notice or care. That's hardly a 5E problem unless you count the short time you can survive at negative hit points in 3E as a great way to show your character is hammered. D&D has usually be you're either at full strength or your down, very little in between.

My point being that the rules say being dropped to 0, for example, isn't anything necessarily gruesome. People are describing things in gruesome ways and then getting a disconnect when the PC is back up and at it fairly quickly after a rest. The issue is describing things in that fashion, which is easily corrected.

And even if the DM wants to implement broken limbs or the like, this is also handled by the basic rules (or the optional rules in the DMG). If a character with a broken arm tries to do something that would normally be successful, it enters the realm of the uncertain or the impossible. For the former, we have ability checks, perhaps with disadvantage, or higher DCs.