5e combat system too simple / boring?

[Azurewraith]

It is always strictly true that the DM controls the difficulty of the challenge. I see nothing "over the top" about a CR 10 monster versus 1st-level characters. In fact, I've just written a Planescapesque (that's a word) adventure where the primary antagonist is a Yochlol (CR 10) and the PCs are 1st level. The risk of death is serious and it can still be defeated. It just requires the players to go about it in clever ways of their own devising.

I also have no issue attacking unconscious PCs. I encourage my players to create backup characters so we're prepared for this sort of thing.

Thats certainly interesting id be intrested to know how the scenario panned out as i see any first lvl char bumping into a yochlol would be eaten alive given it would be hitting on 10 in some cases and doing around 26points of on average and from 10ft away.

Some of my pcs hate char gen they would rather eat their own arms lol.

 

[TheLastRogue]

I've been following this post, but I still might have overlooked someone saying this. Anyways, here it goes:

When Combat is simply you 4 'heroes' try and kill these 4 skeletons (or whatever) it can become boring...especially if it is the dominant structure of most of your combats. Combatants should have goals, environments should come into play, etc.

Just killing a bunch of kobolds in a cave warren ... encounter after encounter... quickly becomes tedious. But, if they react, use traps, or, most importantly, have some motivations (like trip an alarm, call reinforcements, and so on) combat becomes more alive.

Even better is to ask yourself why is this a fight in the first place? Did the PC's corner a thief in his gang hideout? Chances are they not only have to fight his henchmen but also get to him before he escapes with the goods.

Sure, you've encountered the evil sorcerer, but he is less interested in fighting you guys as he is making sure his hostages die so as to initiate his evil ritual.

The fight with the goblin shaman and her warriors isn't just a battle to the death, the PCs (and goblins) have to be wary of the fact they're fighting in a cave bear den and that the beast is likely to return any moment.

In short, if combat is littered with additional concerns, goals, and motivations besides just inflict as much damage as possible, combat maintains novelty, excitement, and player interest. Against motivated opponents and in dynamic encounters, there is always more to do than simply swing your sword.

Now, of course, sometimes its nice to just have some 'vanilla' combat... but, if all you ever eat is 'vanilla,' it gets boring.


Hope the above is clear.

 

[hejtmane]

5e isn't going to give a player who's used to the crunch of other editions/games what she wants. That's one of the joys of 5e - it's SIMPLE. That doesn't mean it has to be boring, though. You can evoke the crunch through words. Roleplay it. The point is to get away from numbers and math and into describing what happens by appealing to the senses.

Boring Way:

Player: I attack the orc. 2 attacks, plus Smite. [rolls] 10 and 23.

DM: 10 misses, 23 hits.

Player: 8, plus 12 from the smite.

DM: It's dead.

Not Boring Way:

Player: I bring my shield on guard, swinging my sword and singing a hymn to the glory of Torm, praying he sees fit to grant me the strength to Smite the foul orc. [rolls die] First attack, ah, crap, that's only a 10. Second attack is 23. I'll put the Smite on that one.

DM: Your first blow strikes the orc's shield. He appears shaken, his defenses slow and clumsy. Your second stroke strikes true, skimming around the edge of his shield to bite into his body. And behold, Torm has heard your prayer and your hymn, finding them pleasing. You feel the power of holy vengeance well up within you. Roll damage.

Player: Um, 8, plus 12 from the Smite.

DM: [having determined that was enough to kill the orc] Your sword bites into the orc's chest, driving deep. Your god's power crackles leaps from your arm, along the blade, and into its body, exploding from the hapless fool's eye sockets as its evil is consumed from within. Black blood streams from its mouth as it collapses, smoking and hissing, at your feet.

See what I mean?

You can do it for spells, too:

Boring way:

Player: I cast Fire Bolt. [rolls] 19.

DM: Hit. Roll damage.

Player: 6.

DM: Okay. Not quite dead. Your turn, Brian.

Not Boring Way:

Player: A spark leaps from my fingertip and streaks toward the goblin as I utter the arcane incantation Fire Bolt. [rolls] 19 to hit.

DM: Your spark explodes into a wreath of fire to envelop the goblin. Roll damage.

Player: 6.

DM: The goblin shrieks in anger and pain. The stench of burned goblin hair and brimstone assaults the Fighter's nostrils as the mystical flames disperse. This is just the opening he needs to move in and attack.

Anyway, you get the drift. It's all flavor text, but it's INTERESTING flavor text. It can be helpful to use the critical tables from Rolemaster to get an idea, especially for describing killing blows. Another method is to write some descriptive phrases on index cards and keep them handy.

You read my mine on how to describe combat that is how my combat goes with flavor and flare.

I also do not use traditional initiative I dropped it for the popcorn method I found this makes combat less boring and has kept my players more engaged because it is not always the same order for attacks for the players talk about boring and over rewarding one stat (imo).

I also add one other feature just like a natural 20 is a critical hit a 1 is a critical fail something bad is going to happen sometimes injuring your own teammate roll for falling etc. This adds to the action and I get no complaints from my players they actually like it even though it hurts them sometimes.

 

[iserith]

Thats certainly interesting id be intrested to know how the scenario panned out as i see any first lvl char bumping into a yochlol would be eaten alive given it would be hitting on 10 in some cases and doing around 26points of on average and from 10ft away.

The way to survive the yochlol is not to bump into it unless you have the means to defeat it. If it turns up in the room you are in, run or hide or both. Therein lay the challenge which encompasses all three pillars of the game. You may never have to fight the thing if you can achieve your primary goal (activating one of many portals out of its lair) without it. Or you may try to engineer a way to defeat it for that sweet, sweet XP. (Immediate bump to 3rd or 4th level? Yes please!)

I was inspired to write it by watching folks playing Alien: Isolation.

 

[Azurewraith]

The way to survive the yochlol is not to bump into it unless you have the means to defeat it. If it turns up in the room you are in, run or hide or both. Therein lay the challenge which encompasses all three pillars of the game. You may never have to fight the thing if you can achieve your primary goal (activating one of many portals out of its lair) without it. Or you may try to engineer a way to defeat it for that sweet, sweet XP. (Immediate bump to 3rd or 4th level? Yes please!)

I was inspired to write it by watching folks playing Alien: Isolation.

Oh alien isolation great game. Must be nice to play with people who's immediate reaction is if we attack now that's a suprise round right?

 

[Tony Vargas]

And it's not threatening enough, especially as you gain levels. Getting the proper level of attrition is extremely difficult in 5E.

Given the latitude the DM has, not /that/ difficult. Maybe difficult to do without feeling like a jerk or stretching credulity, but you can always throw another/tougher encounter at the party until you've attritted them to your satisfaction.

It is failure of the rules. It's a failure that has existed in every version of D&D unless you incorporate optional rules. You can describe a broken arm in an amazing fashion, but if it has no game effect it is meaningless.

That's a failure of hps if hps are meant to model broken arms, if you accept that they're meant to model the 'plot armor' of genre fiction, it's a success.

In general terms you can imagine that as a flow cart. First you must decide what action(s) to take, then dice must be rolled, and then finally it comes to resolution and description.

Let's compare 5e for a moment to a few other games: D&D 4e, Legend of the Five Rings, and 13th Age.

4e tried to make the first step more exciting. L5R tries to make the second step more exciting. 13A try to give the same kind of excitement you get from the first step, but they shunt it into the second step.

So, 5e isn't trying to be exciting, but...

Some of the advice given here in this thread can be summarized as, "describe things better". That is an excellent way to make the third step more exciting...

...you can try to make it more exciting.

but it won't improve the first and second steps. In 5e non-casters have relatively few action types available to them, or at least few that can be used often and are efficient. So if you want the first step (choosing an action) to be more exciting, you really kind of need to be a Wizard or something.

'Or something' being about 30 of the available sub-classes in the PH. The choiceless non-casters are really there for people who abhor making choices. The built-in assumption that those people never want to play someone who tosses magic, or that no one who wants to make a meaningful choice now and then would be interested in a non-caster class is problem, though. It's the same problem as "high level doesn't need to be well-designed, and let's just speed through it, because 'no one plays high-level that much'" - the game has always (or almost always) been really bad at certain things, so it's easy to look at patterns of how people actually play and see a preference for (or at least indifference to) things being bad in exactly those ways.


[sblock="13A fighter SUX rant"]I played a 13A Fighter once. It was in a playtest, but they haven't changed since then.

13th Age's Fighters are kind of clever in this regard. Their main mechanic is that they roll attacks and then can add on one special effect, but which effect they can use depends on the d20 roll. Some of them can only be used on an even roll, some only on a 16+, some need to both odd and miss the target, etc. Not everybody's cup of tea, but it's a cute idea.

I guess it goes to show you how much tastes vary. I found the 13A fighter absolutely appalling. It's a 0-agency class, it doesn't need a player, it needs a few line of code - it's not a character, it's a mob. It just takes a random walk through the combat, with the dice dictating everything, an example of literal 'roll playing.' The 13A expansion of dice mechanics to determine the activation of abilities is a great innovation for monsters, lightening the DM's load noticeably, and works OK as a resource-limiter for PC (your roll determines whether the ability stays available or needs to recharge) but as an activator (determining when you use an ability) it should never be inflicted on any PC class. [/sblock]

 

[Sage Genesis]

So, 5e isn't trying to be exciting, but...
...you can try to make it more exciting.

That's not really what I meant. 5e is not trying to be exciting in a certain way, for certain classes. For example, Champions are not meant to come with lots of "Step 1" choices baked into the class. So if you're looking for that kind of experience it's not a good kind of subclass to pick. Getting your excitement in a different area, such as through narration, can elevate the overall play experience but that one specific complaint won't be addressed by it - a player who accidentally picked Champion and finds himself bored with his options can still be so even if you describe things in a fun way.


And as for 13th Age Fighters... well, I've run two different campaigns with entirely different groups which both had Fighters in them. Both players loved them and their mechanics. So I guess they did something right. Not every class should be (or even can be) ideal for every player. Some people love them, some don't. That's fine.

 

[jayoungr]

It was originally written up for Star Wars Saga Edition, but "The List" from the Order 66 podcast is great advice for many game systems. I refer to it frequently when designing encounters for D&D. Here's a summary of its points (taken from this forum post):

Combat Encounter Checklist:
1. Rule of Six (space adversaries at least 6 squares apart)
2. Large Area (2x2 squares of space per character)
3. Provide Cover
4. Provide Concealment
5. Include Terrain
6. Include Doors and lock some of them
7. Include Hazards
8. Include opportunities for Skill checks
9. Include Elevations

 

[Tony Vargas]

That's not really what I meant. 5e is not trying to be exciting in a certain way, for certain classes.

Not every class should be (or even can be) ideal for every player. Some people love them, some don't.

That is one of the limitations of class-based systems, yes. A class generally covers both a range of concepts and a set of playstyles, hardwiring a linkage between the two. If your playstyle & desired concept don't fit the resultant stereotype, you're out of luck. So it's really a case of 'can't be.' Ideally, a player should be able to play the character he wants and have a good experience with it. But a narrowly-designed class can spoil that - unless there's another class that can cover the same sort of concept, but works for different styles. 13A, for instance, also has a Barbarian and added a Commander class, so you can have different approaches to a warrior concept that suit very different styles of play. 5e, for a more relevant instance, has the Sorcerer and Warlock (and Lore Bard, EK, & AT) providing alternatives to it's version of the traditional Wizard (which, itself, has 8 sub-classes to choose from).

 

[EzekielRaiden]

My experience of 5e, such as it is, has not illustrated that the combat system is particularly interesting, and can in fact get quite boring. People frequently tout the speed of combats, but I have yet to see a 5e combat run meaningfully faster than 4e would. Out of a 3-4 hour session, we still spend 1-2 hours in combat. If we only get a single combat in a session, it might drop down to half an hour, but certainly no less than that. We use a grid (via Roll20, so all the math stuff, distances, and grid positions are handled for us), but AFAICT no variant rules.

And, despite having taken community advice on the kind of character to play as a 4e-fan+5e-skeptic trying to give 5e a chance, I still feel like I have far too few choices. We've only gotten up to level 3, but combats are still mostly meat-grinder-y, leaving me terrified for my character's survival--a non-ideal situation when I'd specifically made the character for being decent-to-good at melee (a grappling Valor Bard). Unlike most people, I don't find a constant substantial risk of death to be exciting, I find it harrowing and unpleasant, a constant specter hanging over my head.* I habitually describe my character's actions, so there's no improvement to be gained there, though I'm afraid I'm not quite clever/funny enough to come up with real zingers for vicious mockery every turn. Which, incidentally, vicious mockery the vast majority of what I do, because I have so few spells to work with, I feel compelled to hoard them until they're truly needed--mostly cure wounds, or the occasional faerie fire.

The most frustrating thing is that I feel like I am supposed to have a substantial toolbox and lots of bells and whistles, but I'm either too terrified to use them, or can't justify the expenditure on so few threats (or so small a threat). For example, I'm playing a Dragonborn, but I have yet to use my dragon breath--because the only fight I've been in where it would've been worth using, I was bleeding on the floor by the end of the first round and never got the chance. I have allegedly powerful utility spells like sleep, but they succeed so rarely or so minimally, I can't justify spending the slot when it could instead be used to keep one of my allies from getting pasted. I don't dare get in melee range most of the time, because almost every time I have, I've been brutally punished for it (first: zombie nearly knocked me out in one hit; second: mummy attacked me exactly once and cursed me almost to death; third: bandit lord should have killed me and I was only saved by DM fiat)--which doubly sucks because melee is core to what I've tried to do with the character.

I know lots of people are pleased with the simplicity of 5e, but I just straight up haven't seen most of the good things people talk about, and the bad things seem significantly worse than how most people sell them. I'm still invested in the 5e campaign my group is playing, but the system has thus far proven a frustration I tolerate, not a facilitator of anything positive.

*For me, random death = "game over, you lose, please stop playing now," not "ooh, so close, try again!" because I find it difficult or even impossible to invest in randomly-generated characters. This is not likely to change anytime soon.

So, 5e isn't trying to be exciting, but...
...you can try to make it more exciting. 'Or something' being about 30 of the available sub-classes in the PH. The choiceless non-casters are really there for people who abhor making choices. The built-in assumption that those people never want to play someone who tosses magic, or that no one who wants to make a meaningful choice now and then would be interested in a non-caster class is problem, though. It's the same problem as "high level doesn't need to be well-designed, and let's just speed through it, because 'no one plays high-level that much'" - the game has always (or almost always) been really bad at certain things, so it's easy to look at patterns of how people actually play and see a preference for (or at least indifference to) things being bad in exactly those ways.

Yeah, I can definitely agree with that. It's one of D&D's numerous "chicken-and-egg" problems, and also one of its "all solutions MUST be extreme"* problems, unfortunately. (Really, it's "all solutions in the past have been extreme, so an edition which mainly prioritizes dressing up traditional mores must follow suit." But that's not as pithy.)

So to get the most out of 5th edition combat, you either need your reaction to matter... or you need to learn to appreciate what other people do in combat to keep yourself interested in the outcome.

I...find the second option you suggest hard to comprehend. What does the events during other peoples' turns matter, for my enjoyment of what I'm doing? Whether or not the things they do are interesting/dangerous/boring is...entirely orthogonal to whether I am turned off by the combat (whether through lack of engagement, removal of most options due to substantial risk of death, or whatever else). Though it doesn't help that even in a party where everyone can cast spells, everyone is either making a regular attack (possibly with a bit of movement) or casting a cantrip 80%+ of the time.

Only boring people get bored...

Wow! Thanks for that. So insightful. I'll make sure to be a less boring person in the future!