D&D (2024) Is Combat Tedious on Purpose?

[Lanefan]

Because I did this. All throughout both the "D&D Next" and "One D&D" play tests. I voiced my criticisms, I pointed out issues, I correctly predicted many of the things that actually ended up happening.

Ditto*, only from quite likely the complete opposite direction to you**. We probably just cancelled each other out.

* - except the predictions piece, I got those all wrong.
** - as in, I expect you'd generally want the design to be more 4e-like where I'd prefer it move much farther away from 4e than it did.

 

[Micah Sweet]

See, this is extremely frustrating.

Because I did this. All throughout both the "D&D Next" and "One D&D" play tests. I voiced my criticisms, I pointed out issues, I correctly predicted many of the things that actually ended up happening.

You know what I was told? "It's just a play test, you can't expect them to fix everything." Or, worse, "It's too early. You can't actually know things are a problem. Wait for the next packet, you'll get your stuff." Then it was "wait for the end of the public play test." Then it was "wait for release." Then, and I am 100% not joking, someone actually told me this on another forum with absolute sincerity, "Wait a couple years after launch." I was in fact slippery-sloped; every time a boundary came where I had been told I was finally allowed to have a critical opinion, I was told to wait longer because I couldn't truly understand the game until more info came out.

And now? Now that 5.5e is out and with us? "Well, it's way too late to actually do anything, so your criticism is irrelevant and unproductive, so you should just stop doing it."

No. Absolutely the Nine Hells not. Screw that noise.

What is your solution then? I really do feel your pain. Clearly neither of us were happy with the playtest, but equally clearly our own opinions were overruled, outvoted, or ignored. We fought and lost. Now it is what it is so far as WotC is concerned.

 

[Lanefan]

It could also be that your personal opinion didn't make a dent compared to the number of people who wanted a different direction. Even if the designers take every single comment into consideration they still have to weigh opinions that are popular and their own vision. If you can only accept perfection in a game you are going to be doomed to disappointment.

In fairness, I don't see it as a matter of "only accept[ing] perfection"; I see it as a matter of wanting to move the root system closer to what I really want such that it takes less kitbashing on my part in order to get it there.

In 2012-13 I had fairly high hopes that 5e would achieve this, due to two promises (or sales pitches?) made during playtest:

1. that any previous edition could be fairly well emulated, meaning I could use it largely as written for 1e-style play
2. modularity of design, as modular systems are by their nature much easier to modify than unified systems

Then 5e-actual was released, neither of those promises were kept, and so I stayed with what I already had.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In fairness, I don't see it as a matter of "only accept[ing] perfection"; I see it as a matter of wanting to move the root system closer to what I really want such that it takes less kitbashing on my part in order to get it there.

In 2012-13 I had fairly high hopes that 5e would achieve this, due to two promises (or sales pitches?) made during playtest:

1. that any previous edition could be fairly well emulated, meaning I could use it largely as written for 1e-style play
2. modularity of design, as modular systems are by their nature much easier to modify than unified systems

Then 5e-actual was released, neither of those promises were kept, and so I stayed with what I already had.

I bore with WotC's game until a better version of 5e for me came out (Level Up), and then switched to using that as the base for my homebrew.

 

[AlViking]

In fairness, I don't see it as a matter of "only accept[ing] perfection"; I see it as a matter of wanting to move the root system closer to what I really want such that it takes less kitbashing on my part in order to get it there.

In 2012-13 I had fairly high hopes that 5e would achieve this, due to two promises (or sales pitches?) made during playtest:

1. that any previous edition could be fairly well emulated, meaning I could use it largely as written for 1e-style play
2. modularity of design, as modular systems are by their nature much easier to modify than unified systems

Then 5e-actual was released, neither of those promises were kept, and so I stayed with what I already had.

We all have our own personal preferences and desires. There have been products, TV shows, book series in the past that I found worthwhile that morphed over time into something I didn't care for. I just accepted that the product wasn't for me anymore and moved on since my opinion wasn't going to change anything. I used to love playing the Doom video game but the last version just didn't work for me so I moved on.

 

[Staffan]

In 2012-13 I had fairly high hopes that 5e would achieve this, due to two promises (or sales pitches?) made during playtest:

1. that any previous edition could be fairly well emulated, meaning I could use it largely as written for 1e-style play
2. modularity of design, as modular systems are by their nature much easier to modify than unified systems

Then 5e-actual was released, neither of those promises were kept, and so I stayed with what I already had.

As I recall, these goals were stated in early-stage website articles. My guess is that when they actually started to implement them, it turned out that they didn't work out in practice. That said, there are certainly 1e-isms in the game as-is (or at least there were in 5.0) – notably how characters, once initial choices (race, class, background, and subclass sometime at level 1-3) are made, are mostly on rails with only a few exceptions.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Yeah, it's a contentious title, but we're living in a post-social media world where click bait titles are how you get views. But let's start from the beginning. Is combat in 5th edition tedious? After a few weeks of running it with the players moving from levels 1 through 4, I can safely say, yes, combat is a bit tedious. Between movement, bonus actions, actions, and keeping track of everything, including spell effects and weapon masteries, I'm finding combat, something that should be the highlight of D&D, to be a grind.

It got me to thinking, is this a deliberate design choice on the part of WotC? An effort to get us to rely on their APP and/or VTT so they can more effectively monetize D&D? I hate to be a Conspiracy Carl here, but I can't help but wonder.

I've honestly found combat pretty tedious in most versions of WOTC D&D

 

[Umbran]

Because I did this. All throughout both the "D&D Next" and "One D&D" play tests. I voiced my criticisms, I pointed out issues, I correctly predicted many of the things that actually ended up happening.

Sorry, but there are no guarantees in this world. Nobody is entitled to the results they want.

And now? Now that 5.5e is out and with us? "Well, it's way too late to actually do anything, so your criticism is irrelevant and unproductive, so you should just stop doing it."

But, as a practical matter, it is too late.

And I didn't say, "Stop doing it." I said that it wasn't generally useful or constructive. There are things that one could focus that energy on that would be useful - persistently presenting critique to folks who already know what the game does isn't one of them.

No. Absolutely the Nine Hells not. Screw that noise.

I am sorry if you didn't get what you wanted out of the game. But it isn't like anyone here was responsible for it. Taking your frustrations out on others will not make it better for you.

 

[Kromanjon]

For me, the lethality isn't the issue. The repetition is the issue, as repetition does not call for meaningful input or decisions by the player. Making it lethal makes that... worse, really. Now it is a risk that the character faces, but which the player is just waiting to see the resolution without meaningful input.

That "real life" sometimes falls out this way does not make it interesting at the game table.

D&D, and other games, can tend to fall into "basic attack, roll damage" repetition when that basic attack is pretty much the optimal choice. If other choices don't exist, have perceived poor chances of changing the situation in the player's favor, or require too high an investment of resources for the perceived gain, the incentive becomes the uninteresting "lather, rinse, repeat" combat mode.

And incentivizing a mode that doesn't engage the player isn't great.

But if each strike could be a kill does that not incentivize players to find other solutions than just trading blows with the enemy? Also it would probably remove the repetitious nature of combat as most fights would end pretty quick.

I get that people want to do "cool" things but when all the cool things only boil down to decreasing monster hp or increasing my hp then ruleswise they don't seem all that cool. Of course dying all the time isn't cool either, I get that, but perhaps the answer isn't in adding complexity to the rules but instead fostering a game style where players don't "just attack" and instead describes their actions in interesting ways and has the GM do the same to the monsters and the environment.

I guess my next question would be, is it possible to make combat exciting through narrative while still just using the same attack and roll for damage sequence?

 

[GrimCo]

I don't mind it if only because "I attack, I hit, roll damage" takes (or bloody well should take!) a trivial amount of time, meaning the rounds go by fast and the whole combat doesn't take long....unless everyone has bags of hit points you have to chop through.

That's the beauty of early-TSR-era D&D: at low-mid level it's easy to get through three or four or five small-ish combats in a typical session, should that be the situation they're in. Even at very low level, 3e combats took longer; and it quickly got worse as the levels advanced. From what I've read on these forums plus some tales from friends, I'm going to guess things haven't improved much in the editions since.

5e combat can be rather quick, if you want it quick. But you need to pick, do you want challenging tactical fight or you want quick and epic. It boils down on what makes combat fun for your group. If they like combat so they can use their cool powers, it's very easy to design encounter, even high level one, that will last 5-10 minutes max. If they like tactical challenge, combat will take time. No way around it.