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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 8827616" data-attributes="member: 20323">Where I've seen 5e's design succeed the most (when it comes to combat) is "Combat as Puzzle."Example: You step on a tendril, and suddenly that seemingly benign brownish yellow flower writhes to life above the shelf mushroom staircase you're ascending, showering you with yellow spores. On the forest floor below, the dozens of catatonic sallow skinned zombies that you'd previously slipped past unmolested suddenly snap to awareness, lurching towards the base of the mushroom stairs.Default 5e usually isn't scary after 1st level, but the DM can bring enough threat to make it scary. Often times, bringing that threat, however, make combat take longer. Well, the longer time opens up more opportunities to do cool stuff. But what's the point of that cool stuff? Is it just showing off your powers, or is it applying that power towards something?That's when the "Combat as Puzzle" shines – even if you don't have control over all the circumstances leading up to the combat, if you can figure out the weak point / trick in the combat, then it goes much faster and plays out as if you'd done the recon/prep in an OSR game. And while you're figuring it out, you get to do cool stuff & hopefully you'll figure out how to apply one of those cool powers to solve the puzzle.</blockquote>