Systems Where You Dread Running Combat

[Ralif Redhammer]

Same. If a game gives me that much of a visceral dislike to a part, the whole isn't going to work when I'm running it. And even if it's something I could hack out of the game, there are umpteen million other games that don't entail that work competing for time.

Now, I have found myself as a player in games where I didn't like the combat mechanics, or some other part of it. I generally stuck it out, based on trust in the GM, but those games often didn't last. If you are unsure on it, chances are someone else in the group will have the same reaction, if not everyone else. And from there, the game isn't going to last. People will lose interest, find excuses why they can't play this or that session. The players will stop being invested in the game.

If there's any part of a system I dread, I'm not running it. I'm probably not even playing it.

 

[Argyle King]

I wouldn't say "dread" because I still generally enjoy playing, but sometimes the slowest part of contemporary D&D is combat. Using HP as the primary way of making monsters tougher slows things down.

Sometimes, it's clear that the monsters will lose, but it still takes a lot of time to get through the numbers.

I think it may be skewed expectations I have from other games. In GURPS, shooting somebody in the face typically leads to killing (or at least disabling) that target; in D&D, in means they lose some HP.

I learned some tricks while DMing to build D&D 4E monsters differently and alleviate that problem from later tiers of 4E. I haven't yet found a good solution for 5th Edition at later levels.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For me, what differentiates 4e from classic D&D attrition is that most hits have not only the attrition component but some sort of forced movement and/or debuff component. Which is much more directly connected to the fiction.

That was my point; that there's hit point attrition and hit point attrition. OD&D has almost no mechanical support for anything but just slugging away and chipping something down. Anything further was an essentially arbitrary negotiation between the player and the GM, and as such easily taught people not to try in many cases.

Once you get into a game that bakes in things like status effects, action denial and forced movement, its a very different game in the field.

 

[Ath-kethin]

I can't stand D&D hit point attrition style combat. I find the monotony of it extremely tedious and boring.

Having changed (back) to running OSR and pre-WotC versions of D&D a while ago, it's amazing how much faster and more interesting combat is. There is no $&@#! reason for monsters to have hundreds upon hundreds of hit points.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Having changed (back) to running OSR and pre-WotC versions of D&D a while ago, it's amazing how much faster and more interesting combat is. There is no $&@#! reason for monsters to have hundreds upon hundreds of hit points.

Even though OD&D didn't have modern numbers, it still turning into an attrition thing; it wasn't like the FM with doing 1D8+3 was going to get through something with 20 hit points all that fast, after all.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Even though OD&D didn't have modern numbers, it still turning into an attrition thing; it wasn't like the FM with doing 1D8+3 was going to get through something with 20 hit points all that fast, after all.

1d8+3 will chew through a 20 hp monsters faster than 1d8+5 will chew through a 100 hp monster.

Or, more to the point: the 19 hp a TSR era ogre sported go by much faster than the 59 hp a 5e ogre has.

 

[Thomas Shey]

1d8+3 will chew through a 20 hp monsters faster than 1d8+5 will chew through a 100 hp monster.

Or, more to the point: the 19 hp a TSR era ogre sported go by much faster than the 59 hp a 5e ogre has.

5e isn't the only modern version of D&D, and not all of them ramp up hit points while leaving damage alone.

That said, the point was that, between needing to hit and the damage, that 20 hit point monster is probably still six rounds of combat, which may be more than some people want.

 

[Blue]

I wouldn't say "dread" because I still generally enjoy playing, but sometimes the slowest part of contemporary D&D is combat. Using HP as the primary way of making monsters tougher slows things down.

Except that it doesn't.

With bounded accuracy they have reduced the high defenses (AC and saves) that made more attacks miss which reduced average damage. With damage reduction removed they have taken away another place damage was reduced all the time.

The end result is more hits for more damage each and combats that work out to the same length.

Which is what they were going for - tuning HP so that combats went about as long as they would in previous editions.

 

[Argyle King]

Except that it doesn't.

With bounded accuracy they have reduced the high defenses (AC and saves) that made more attacks miss which reduced average damage. With damage reduction removed they have taken away another place damage was reduced all the time.

The end result is more hits for more damage each and combats that work out to the same length.

Which is what they were going for - tuning HP so that combats went about as long as they would in previous editions.

That hasn't been my experience.

Of the rpgs I currently play, D&D combat drags the most. Even when it's relatively fast, it seems largely static.

 

[aramis erak]

That hasn't been my experience.

Of the rpgs I currently play, D&D combat drags the most. Even when it's relatively fast, it seems largely static.

Your experience isn't typical, I'd hazard.
In a 3 hour session in store of D&D 5E, I've routinely gotten through 3-4 encounters of "average" difficulty.
Sentinel Comics it's more like 2-3 encounters of "average" difficulty
In a 5 hour session of AD&D 2E, in store, I would struggle to get through the Retail Play modules with 5-10 encounters.
In my home games, AD&D combats typically took 30 minutes to an hour. Cyclopedia, 20 to 40 minutes. 5E varied from 10 minutes to an hour, save for double-deadly which ran up to two hours.
My SG1 game via discord had several hour to 1.5 hour fights, but that was because of careful use of terrain and the slowdown of VOIP gaming with a VTT, and two players severely prone to analysis paralysis.