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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jahydin" data-source="post: 8769810" data-attributes="member: 6984869">Wow, lots of good back and forth since I last posted.One point I see popping up a bit has got me thinking:"Who cares as long as the players are happy" (This should literally be the tagline for 5th edition D&D btw.)Can't speak for everyone, but the games I DM, the players would NOT have a good time if it wasn't for me tweaking things on the fly to get combats to "work". And sure, at the end they're happy and high-fiving, but you as the DM know it was just smoke and mirrors and thanks to YOU and not the system. It's kind of a hollow feeling to be honest.My payers and I play games to challenge each other. It took me a long time to realize, unlike 3E and 4E, that's not what 5E is about. At least not in the same ways. After Level 4 or so in 5E, combats are not about being challenging; they are about feeling like a superhero and having fun. Once I realized that it made things waaaay easier. I could stop caring about getting combats "right" and also throw out my pages and pages of house rules I had to come up with. I could now focus more on the real challenge: the story. 5E games have to have a strong and compelling story that challenges the players to be clever in order to accomplish their goals. For instance, fighting your way through guards to get to the brainwashed king isn't the actual challenge of this scenario, it would be how to do it without killing anyone and also how to un-brainwash him. Still a challenge, just in a different way.And it makes sense really. 5E is all about giant campaigns with specific heroes players get attached to. Unlike other challenges, combat is the one that can "end it all", so why not err heavily on the player's side?That sort of thing was not for my main group though. We moved to Pathfinder 2E and I recommend it to anyone who wants challenging combat to be a big part of their games again.</blockquote>

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