I support static defences. I just want to see these attacks resolved as quickly as possible in a way that reflects the abilities of the target: so I think elegant game design beats out any sense of fidelity to the legacy of D&D.
Full agreement with me! 5e combat while faster than 3e/4e, is stil SLOW. Bakc in 1e any medium fight took 15 minutes to go through, not over an hour!
Many tricks can be used to speed things up, but a good "6E" DMG should propose several official rules variant to adress this.
- In my campaign we don't even roll for damage. Players aren't supposed to know how many HP monster hves nayway. And there is already enough randomness in the to hit roll itself! Given that our group finds vanilla 5e rules a bit too generous "little players held by hands" for easi fights, we upped the difficilty and the swinginess of battles.
We go with this: Base Weapon Damage (and only that) is always maxed (a few abilities dependent on damage rolls need a little tweaking, but that is all). Crits simple deal double damage. ALL the damage. Plus they inflict "severe wounds" (not lose an eye or a arm, more like CON Save vs Some disadvantage or penalty that can be cured but not super fast with only a couple cure wounds spells). Yup crits are very serious stuff with us. Also, downing to 0 HP, ALSO save vs Severe wounds too thus no more of the stupid whack-a-mole healing the downed fighter back to 1 HP so he can fight again. All other damage dice are half the max of the dice (and not the average).
Thus more damage per round = slightly faster fights. And I can put less monsters for the same challenge. And no more slow anti-mathy players rolling damage one frakking dice at a time then slowely adding them all up one by one. Which also means slightly faster fights. Or searching which damage dice to roll for the millionth time. All of which also means slightly faster fights.
Main benefit is that there is TONS less game table clutter! Which
also means slightly faster fights.
- Side initiative, rolled only in round 1 and even then not always, with a bonus towards PCs vs monsters: PCs vs only minor enemies?(i.e. not "general or leader or elite" on enemy side) then the PCs win Init by default. An Ambush? The ambushing group always get to act first. DEX is a good enough uber stat without needing to boosting Initiative. A feayt ike Altern3ess would give the entire PARTY the bonus, but not a whooping +5! Prof Bonus should count here: higher levels means higher odds of acting first.
- Anti-Analysis-Paralysis and Anti-Min-Maxing variant DMG rules. In our group, a player's ENTIRE ROUND has to be fully predeclared. Not with "if he does that then else". Nope if you have two attacks, you specify if you strike the ogre twice or split the attacks on ogre + goblin. THEN you roll both together (with different colored dice). Same for movement: you can't WAIT if an enemy falls down to decide if you move away with the rest of your move, etc.
Maybe the rule is "if you don't roll all your attack dice all togethyer, you just lose the remaining attacks".
And/or everybody remains fully active until end of round (thus, mutually assured destruction beomes possible).
Yes, this "nerfs" the PCs more than the baddies. Yes, this limits options and tactical choices. But dang it speeds things up a LOT.
Also, there is a common real life precedent: real life battles had tons of situations where combattants suffering a deadly wound kept on fighting for some time, sometime even MINUTES. It is a VERY frequent thing. Adrenaline can do wonders you migghyt not even realize you're deadlly wounded you and jut still keep on fighting. Only in video games does dealing the last HP of damage means the enemy INSTANTLY falls down.
- Maybe return to the simplicity of options of 1E/2E. Currently a player's round is a complex bag of tokens, tht he can spend "one at a time, waiting to know the result, then send the next one." You havce 1 Acytion token, 1 bonus Action token, 1 Interaction with an Object token, 1 Reaction token, and typicallly 6 "move five feet" tokens. Thatr is a
lot of flexiblity but it just ends up bogging the game down to a crawl. In 5e you either moved, or attacked, or charged, or shooted, or cast ONE spell (not: I cast with my action
and cast somerthintg else with my bonus action too
and get to also do something else for free with my concentraytion spell I cast earlier!"). All of those
mutuallly exclusive. The number of PCs that could attack more than once was SEVERELY limited and the number of attacks too., It just wasn't as much of a dice rolling festival! The thing is that 5E's rounds ares like 2 or 3 rounds worth of 1e/2e. Plus they are more complex to solve, too (like splitting movement any number of ways you wish). But HPs are up through the roof. So yeah it figures that a 15 minutres 1E battle takes 1 hour in 5e.
- Return to less of "epic heroes demigods that can do anything and everything", and "more courageous mortals adventurers". At least, not until HIGH levels, that is.