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

[SteveC]

Tedious as opposed to being fun and exciting. The player characters in my current campaign have reached level five, and most combat encounters last 4-5 rounds. Keeping in mind all my players except one is using D&D Beyond off their phones instead of having a character sheet, here's how it goes. Player takes an action, often has to hunt through their character sheet for special abilities, modifiers, or spell effects, player takes a bonus action, and then tack on the effects of weapon mastery it takes a while to get through combat even if it ends after 4-5 rounds.

This sounds like a really rough situation and I feel for you tremendously. I play exclusively online, but I have a document with what my character can do with the edge cases included and it helps me tremendously. But I feel for you because we have one player who is a really smart guy in real life but in D&D ... he's just challenged. I sort of got that feeling from your post. The rest of the players in my group play complex characters and get the rules, so we can help him out. If the whole group was like that, I don't know what I'd do. There's all sorts of "player management" techniques you can use, from having players have reference sheets to giving them a timer for turns to just having them tell you what they want to do and have you manage the character but I don't know that any of that would really help.

In the interest of fairness, some of these problems are exacerbated by my players. Of the six players, only three of them have a firm grasp of the rules and their character's ability. I think two of them don't even own a copy of the PHB. One of them had a completely different idea of what a Druid was all about in D&D, seemingly wanting what was essentially a Hunter from World of Warcraft. I can't blame that on the rules.

From what you say here, I don't know if there's a rules solution, though. I think that there's a part to D&D where it requires the players to do some of the lifting to make the game run, and that includes some level of rules mastery. I don't know that there's a 5E solution in it for you. From my perspective, it seems like changing back to something like BECMI or moving two an entirely different system such as one of the Blades in the Dark or PbtA ones might make it work, since those games play very much with a conversation. In our group, we played Feng Shui recently, and the player who couldn't get the rules to work just clicked and had a blast. Perhaps in his case the rules got in the way of an excellent imagination. Maybe find a game like that? The game Grimwild might be to your group's liking, since it's much more narrative, but still has the chassis of D&D classes.

I guess I'm trying to say that I really sympathize with you but I don't know that this is a 5E design issue.

 

[MGibster]

I guess I'm trying to say that I really sympathize with you but I don't know that this is a 5E design issue.

There are design issues exacerbated by some of my players' proclivities. I'm not one inclined to heavily modify any game I play and that's not going to change with D&D, so I'm just going to have to live with it and hope they reconsider when they make 6th edition. I'd like to see them do something with the ease and frequency of rests as well as consider removing bonus actions. But that's just me.

 

[Quickleaf]

Tedious as opposed to being fun and exciting. The player characters in my current campaign have reached level five, and most combat encounters last 4-5 rounds. Keeping in mind all my players except one is using D&D Beyond off their phones instead of having a character sheet, here's how it goes. Player takes an action, often has to hunt through their character sheet for special abilities, modifiers, or spell effects, player takes a bonus action, and then tack on the effects of weapon mastery it takes a while to get through combat even if it ends after 4-5 rounds.

It's tedious because it feels pointless a lot of times. Given how easy it is to rest, there's very little meaningful resource management. It doesn't matter if they lost a few hit points in that last fight because or used some special ability because they can get a lot of it back with a short rest. It doesn't even matter how long they spend in the dungeon because food, water, and sources of light aren't even going to be a problem. I feel as though the game isn't designed to be challenging for players but rather allow them to engage in super heroics with little risk.

In the interest of fairness, some of these problems are exacerbated by my players. Of the six players, only three of them have a firm grasp of the rules and their character's ability. I think two of them don't even own a copy of the PHB. One of them had a completely different idea of what a Druid was all about in D&D, seemingly wanting what was essentially a Hunter from World of Warcraft. I can't blame that on the rules.

Wow, it's like I'm listening to myself DMing during 4th edition!

Every group I've been in kind of matches what you describe – half are invested/rules-savvy, half are casual/no-books, and several struggle with knowing what their characters do (through a combo of badly organized digital sheets, tax-form paper sheets, or just being lazy). I don't think your group is anomalous. I think that's a typical group.

So while player habits are partly to blame, and digital sheet functionality is partly to blame, I also think we CAN blame the rules.

I wouldn't say this about a more bespoke game targeting a specific kind of player, but D&D is the big tent. Its rules (and their paper or digital implementation) should be designed for exactly your use case, to make it easier on your casual players, with options for complexity for your invested players.

 

[HappyHubris]

In my experience, you can make combat fun or have it be a slog.

Engaging Combat:

• Players are excited to fight, either due to plot reasons or because you've taken a few minutes to lay out a scenario.
• Players sprinkle their combat with RP ("Bob murmurs a desperate prayer as his eyes and hands burst into flames. A fireball lights up the room! (level 4)" vs "I cast fireball at level 4.")
• Players work in some comraderie and reactions to each other's turns.
• Players have enough dice to roll their common spells all at once. 9 D6s at once is a lot quicker than 9 individual rolls. If you find yourself rolling multiple of X over and over, grab some extra dice.
• Players are ready on their turns, including having references ready or memorization complete for things like saving throws, conditions, number of dice, spell radius, etc. You should have a couple of options ready and a decision tree.
• DM uses a grid instead of theatre of the mind, so martials get to manage space, positioning, opportunity attacks, etc. Also so players can keep track of combat without asking the DM to clarify over and over how many enemies could be hit by a fireball.
• Enemies allow players to use their fun toys. Give your light cleric some undead to fight, your battlemaster some humanoids to disarm, or your caster some magic to counterspell.
• Players have a reason to move instead of standing and slugging out the fight. This could be adds that prompt ranged to flee, environmental challenges, props/objectives needed for combat, etc.
• Avoid plain square or circular rooms that fail to offer cover, pathing trade-offs, or space to maneuver. Try and utilize things like line of sight or even terrain elevation. Hang a heavy chandelier. Add a gunpowder cache. Let your barbarian throw someone into a tank of sharks.
• Some sort of ticking clock that makes players invested in efficient play instead of grinding out a win. This could be a ritual and countdown, escaping enemy who you need to catch, etc.
• Vary objectives from "lower the enemy health to zero". Maybe you're defending an objective, activating devices, surviving for X waves that are too numerous to kill. Mix in encounters where intuitive game mechanics are flipped on their head, like enemies who resurrect and duplicate upon death that must be knocked into a chasm.

You don't have to do all of these, but I sure notice when my tables have more of these traits.

 

[AlViking]

Wow, it's like I'm listening to myself DMing during 4th edition!

Every group I've been in kind of matches what you describe – half are invested/rules-savvy, half are casual/no-books, and several struggle with knowing what their characters do (through a combo of badly organized digital sheets, tax-form paper sheets, or just being lazy). I don't think your group is anomalous. I think that's a typical group.

So while player habits are partly to blame, and digital sheet functionality is partly to blame, I also think we CAN blame the rules.

I wouldn't say this about a more bespoke game targeting a specific kind of player, but D&D is the big tent. Its rules (and their paper or digital implementation) should be designed for exactly your use case, to make it easier on your casual players, with options for complexity for your invested players.

I find that if combat every gets tedious it's the players hemming and hawing than the rules. That or digging for dice from a massive pile and then when they're done putting them back so they can do it again next turn.

The rules don't necessarily help but I'm not convinced they're the problem. If you wanted a faster game you could always resolve every combat with a single die roll. There's always going to be compromise, but a more specialized game? People playing those are less likely to be casual players no matter what the complexity of the game is.

 

[HappyHubris]

I wouldn't say this about a more bespoke game targeting a specific kind of player, but D&D is the big tent. Its rules (and their paper or digital implementation) should be designed for exactly your use case, to make it easier on your casual players, with options for complexity for your invested players.

The system is sort of stuck straddling two types of players.

As the default system, it will get a lot of people who might like the heroic roleplay of TTRPGs but not enjoy memorizing rules or using math.

But other people are good at juggling rules and abilities and want to have a bunch of options to manage or choose from to prevent boredom. They are also much more likely to be influencers or big spenders.

In a perfect world we'd have two dominant systems like Pathfinder and something like StoneTop to sort these groups, but D&D ends up accommodating both.

One option would be to ape MMORPGs and have one simple sub-class per class like the Champion Fighter to allow newbies to manage less. But that's more of a band-aid than a fix. I don't know how well WotC playtests with "bad players", but they probably are as important as "good players" to most tables.

 

[Shardstone]

After lots of experimentation, I think having a system to shake up the combat every round or every so often keeps 5E from ever feeling tedious for me.

Some examples:

1. At the end of each round, a new element is introduced. The most impactful elements usually involve changing the battlefield or adding new big hazards.
2. Roll a d6 every 10 minutes. Add another d6 for each roll. On a 6, something happens, like an enemy does a big move or actives a sudden plan. If multiple 6's are rolled, the event is more severe.
3. Have a Countdown like the Underclock or a Clock that goes down after every turn. At certain thresholds/times, something happens, or when the clock runs out something big happens.

I have to highlight that changing the battlefield or introducing a big hazard really goes a long way. If you do this with a couple elements, like a Countdown that ends in a battlefield change and at certain thresholds the enemies or environment take special actions, you get a pretty dynamic combat.

It works because the only thing you're doing normally is just trying to get hit points to 0. By introducing various factors that are interesting and demand attention or response, no two combats feel the same, people don't blank out each round, and everyone is invested in the evolving nature of the mental space that's being discussed.

YMMV but the above paragraph IMO I think is close to universally or objectively true.

 

[AnotherGuy]

This thread has some wonderful ideas to pull from, when I have time I'm going to make a doc of the best ideas.
Love this kind of thread (idea pooling/sharing).

 

[Umbran]

So your contention is that maximizing profits by any (legal) means at the expense of any non-financial consideration is the only realistic option for WotC to take?

Overstating someone else's position is a common rhetorical technique on the internet.
It is also destructive to reasonable discussion, driving it to poles without nuance or depth of thought.
So please stop. I will not engage with your strawmen.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Overstating someone else's position is a common rhetorical technique on the internet.
It is also destructive to reasonable discussion, driving it to poles without nuance or depth of thought.
So please stop. I will not engage with your strawmen.

Sorry if I overstated your position. It seemed to me a logical extrapolation of what you were suggesting. Can you explain it again please?