D&D General Why are we fighting?

[UngainlyTitan]

In the last game I played, we had a couple of chase scenes. One running after an assassin, another where we ran with the McGuffin.

If I'm DMing there will often be multiple ways to get away or chase after a party. I use the chase rules in the DMG as an inspiration and starting point. Doesn't always apply of course, but if the pursued can even break line of sight it often opens up possibilities.

Once again the lack of skill challenge shows. Though I think there needs to be added some kind of meta currency to make check more reliable or to buy an autosuccess.

For example the fighter and the cleric are being chased and run across the bazaar where they see a crowd of beggars. The cleric throws some coin in front of the beggars and the reverse their cloaks and pretend to be beggars scrambling for coin. Spending some meta plot coupon to buy a success. May be at the price of giving the DM a future use of a complication depending on the die roll.

 

[tetrasodium]

It’s 6-8 medium encounters per adventuring day. Kick those up to deadly and you only need 3-4.

The slog is when the PCs have burned the resources they’re going to and settled into the endless cantrip pew pew to finish off the fight. Dealing a few hits to the PCs from there and saying the monsters are dead saves time with the mechanical result being about 90% the same

Yes but bumping the combats has an impact on its own & creates problems where some players get nullified others go from needing a six or right to needing a seven or nine.. Then the short rest classes go somewhat unaffected because they just refuse to move forward until they take another rest

 

[iserith]

Once again the lack of skill challenge shows. Though I think there needs to be added some kind of meta currency to make check more reliable or to buy an autosuccess.

For example the fighter and the cleric are being chased and run across the bazaar where they see a crowd of beggars. The cleric throws some coin in front of the beggars and the reverse their cloaks and pretend to be beggars scrambling for coin. Spending some meta plot coupon to buy a success. May be at the price of giving the DM a future use of a complication depending on the die roll.

The existing chase rules in D&D 5e have it where you can pay off the next person's complication roll with Inspiration. I spend Inspiration so you don't potentially have to make a Strength (Athletics) check to jump over the ravine or whatever which can slow you down and allow pursuers to catch you. Then at the end of the round, we all get to make a Dexterity (Stealth) check to escape.

 

[Oofta]

Once again the lack of skill challenge shows. Though I think there needs to be added some kind of meta currency to make check more reliable or to buy an autosuccess.

For example the fighter and the cleric are being chased and run across the bazaar where they see a crowd of beggars. The cleric throws some coin in front of the beggars and the reverse their cloaks and pretend to be beggars scrambling for coin. Spending some meta plot coupon to buy a success. May be at the price of giving the DM a future use of a complication depending on the die roll.

That's why I use the chase rules as inspiration. You don't need a meta plot coupon, you just need some way of adjudicating whether the ruse worked. In this case it's probably a contest and not guaranteed to succeed.

One thing I do is have a cheat sheet of what PCs are good at, which I can easily see because I use DndBeyond. So let's say the chase is on a busy street during market/rush hours. The PCs are chasing after Timmy Two-Fingers. Timmy scares some horses on purpose by using an acrobatics to dive under the horse which freaks it out. I'll say Timmy rolls high, the horses freak and the cart overturns, barrels go rolling everywhere.

The PCs trailing behind now have to overcome this obstacle. They could try their own acrobatics check to slide under the horses, they could use athletics to just bash through the barrels, investigation to calculate how the barrels are moving. Maybe they have boots of springing and striding but I'll ask for a perception check to see if they notice the fruit cart on the other side. Scenes will, of course, vary.

When stuff like this happens I'll describe the scene and then, based on the PC's best attributes give them an idea or two of what they can attempt. They can always try something else of course. I do run into people now and then that want to use board game rules and cast magic missile or whatever, but I just explain that they only see the fleeing target briefly or are literally just following the chaos the pursued is creating.

When it comes to speed, I just explain it like a car chase, if car chases actually happened on crowded streets the top speed of the cars doesn't really matter. You can't run full out most of the time, you're constantly dodging or pushing people aside, assessing alternate routes and possible shortcuts.

Of course the scenario has to be right for this kind of scene, but it's not hard to come up with options with practice.

 

[RuinousPowers]

It’s 6-8 medium encounters per adventuring day. Kick those up to deadly and you only need 3-4.

The slog is when the PCs have burned the resources they’re going to and settled into the endless cantrip pew pew to finish off the fight. Dealing a few hits to the PCs from there and saying the monsters are dead saves time with the mechanical result being about 90% the same

Ok, just pulling the example from Kobold Fight Club...
If you plan a deadly encounter (18 orcs) for a 4 person party of 8th level characters and they flee after the first is killed, does that still count as a deadly encounter?

 

[dave2008]

Yes, that is the problem. Here the need arises to switch from combat mode to evasion mode. I don't know if 5E has rules for this, but BECMI does.

5e does in the DMG. I can't speak to their quality as we just use skill checks when things go to a retreat / chase scenario and I've never looked at them much.

 

[Burnside]

"Folks often complain that combat in 5th Edition isn't fun." I really haven't heard any "folks" say this tbh. I mean, I'm sure some have? But I don't feel that is a common complaint about 5E.

For my part, as DM I definitely do not have enemies continue to fight to the death to the last creature if they would logically choose to surrender or flee instead. I also find that most non-climactic combat encounters very rarely last longer than 3 rounds, nor should they. As a designer, I definitely include story objectives and environmental challenges in my combat encounters.

I feel like 5E supports all this pretty well, and he's trying to pin a "problem" on system design that probably has mostly to do with a combination of adventure design, DMing, and, yes, sometimes, player choices.

 

[dave2008]

Doesn't the 5e model rely on 6-8 combats per long rest to drain resources so the last fights (vs the Boss) are dangerous? If combats end when 25% of the enemies are defeated or a single monster takes 50% damage, won't that just leave the party mostly fresh when they get to the final dungeon encounters?

Not completely true, but generally correct. You can run 5e very well with fewer encounters (we average 2-3), but you need to increase the difficulty. For this you need to look more at the expected XP / day guidelines and not the encounter building guidelines to determine how difficult your encounters should be. I works well for us all the way down to 1 encounter in an adventure day.

 

[Burnside]

For those arguing that it's mechanically impossible to flee in 5E, that very much depends on an environment. In a large dungeon environment, I find that creatures fleeing from combat with the party have a very solid chance of escaping if they can break line of sight and reach an intersection. Once the party catches up, they then need to rely on skill checks to track which way the creature went. A creature trying to flee across a big open field in plain sight is doomed, but that's actually pretty realistic.

 

[Xamnam]

Doesn't the 5e model rely on 6-8 combats per long rest to drain resources so the last fights (vs the Boss) are dangerous? If combats end when 25% of the enemies are defeated or a single monster takes 50% damage, won't that just leave the party mostly fresh when they get to the final dungeon encounters?

Only if your goal is to leave the party at roughly zero resources at the end of the adventuring day. Dangerous and out of steam are related but separate concerns.