D&D General Didn’t Mike Mearls propose a one-roll combat encounter?

[Jer]

I’d rather there be something worth the time investment happen. Combat as foregone conclusion isn’t worth the time or energy. You shouldn’t bother with the full combat rules unless your chances are way less than 95%. Something like 50-60% as the max worth bothering sounds about right. Then your round to round decisions actually matter. Resources actually matter. Movement and positioning actually matter.

Agreed. This is pretty much why every encounter I run after 4th level is a double-strength encounter (between hard and deadly - basically double the XP budget that a "Medium" encounter gives you). After playing 4e for a while I realized that my players are only interested in fights where the game play actually kind of matters - they aren't interested in fights that they will obviously win and they just need to grind through it. If we're breaking out the minis and doing tactics and positioning, they want to feel like it's worth it - any encounter that isn't "worth it" from a game play perspective can be handled narratively with a bit of randomness thrown in to see how many resources they had to burn.

 

[Oofta]

For the most part i just hand wave all of my easy encounters. We may narrate them a bit, but that's all.

Occasionally I want attrition to matter, so we'll do something similar to what others have mentioned. Each player rolls a D20, adds their appropriate attack modifier and we use that to determine if any resources were used. Target DCs vary a bit, but if you got above a 15 no resources were spent, 11-15 minor resources were spent, 10 and below moderate resources.

So for fighter types it's typically damage, for casters randomly split between damage and spell slots used. I also use this once in a while if the battle is turning into a slog. It can speed things up but can be useful as a tool to reinforce that while the group can easily handle low level monsters, it can add up over the course of several encounters if they don't have a chance to fully recuperate.

 

[Blue]

In the "crunchy" of the two RPG systems I am forever noodling around writing, I've had the concept of Importance or Interest. Basically, how big of a deal to the players (in an ideal world) is the outcome? And go various zoom in or zoom out based on that.

So a bar brawl might be a moderate Interest - enough that there's a few dice rolled (or whatever uncertainty resolution I'm playing with) so that we can weave a narrative, but still over in just a few minutes at the table. Trying to sell off captured arms and armor for starting heroes might be the same - that amount of money is a big deal then. But the same thing later would be a single roll.

A big fight might be zoomed all the way in, while a fight to take out a few guards might be at a moderate level or even a single check.

With variations - when I was using a dice mechanic like D&D, I was a bell curve when zooming out, so that "average" results occurred ... well, not more. Because multiple rolls for zooming in would lead to an average ofver time as well. To put in D&D terms, a zoomed in combat might use d20s and go by round, a moderate zoom bar brawl might use 2d10 and just be a few checks, and a zoomed out encounter with some wolves by high level might us 4d6-3 and be a single check. (Just pretend numbers, I wasn't using D&D-like.)

Have an Escalation mechanism to increase the zoom level that can be used.

 

[Weiley31]

Don't forget to toss in a "I help with that" for advantage too.

Here, let me cast Guidance first on that for ya chief. Just to be sure!

 

[Weiley31]

On a more serious note: I could only really see something like that being used for Minions. Against a BBEG? Baator no!

 

[Blue]

For the most part i just hand wave all of my easy encounters. We may narrate them a bit, but that's all.

A technique I picked up from 13th Age is to do montages for things that we want a glimpse but there isn't really uncertainty. So everyone gets to tell a bit of how they were awesome in taking out the gnolls. Or how they helped on a three week trek across the desert, or whatever.

 

[Yaarel]

If the same mechanical checks that resolve mass combat can also resolve individual combat, as well as a mix of masses-and-individuals combat, if elegant, would be nicely useful.

 

[Undrave]

I like the idea of a group check.

Normally I run combat encounters in details because I like having to make tactical decisions every round. But I ALSO usually run exploration, social interaction, travel and downtime in details.

Sometimes there can be a case where things aren't interesting enough in any one of those pillars, and glossing over could be better than a tedious repetition of the same rolls. Most people would choose a summary trapfinding resolution over a long sequence of identical checks for every tile in the floor, so if you expect a certain battle to be a sequence of "fighter swings sword, rogue shoots arrow, wizard casts cantrip", why not a single group check.

By design, almost every combat favors the PCs. Otherwise the party would lose half the time, and no one wants that. However, there's resource loss in almost every combat, which is what the dice and party tactics determines. This would simply remove the party tactics from the equation, leaving it purely to chance. Interestingly, this could solve the issue some have with getting enough encounters per long rest, since you could have 4-5 of these followed by 2-3 real combats.

2) Can any "quick resolve" system appropriately reduce resources and would players feel okay with it.

I think anything that's just some dice rolls is going to be poorly received. But if you had players deciding they wanted to expend X resources on the combat, and then those resources influenced some dice-driven resolution mechanism, and the results would determine whether you lost any other resources, that might work better. An even better approach actually might be for players to "bet" X resources on the combat, and if the dice-based resolution went well maybe they don't lose many of them or even perhaps any, and obviously if it goes badly they lose those resources and perhaps then some, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure this could be figured out, but would people want to?

In 4e I'd run that kind of encounter like a trap you failed to detect. Have the PCs do a roll each opposed by a single roll for the bad guys, for every PC who rolled below, the party must expend a Healing Surge, but they pick who spends it. Or they can just expend a Daily to overcome the encounter with no loss on their side.

If the PCs detected the low level monsters they can instead use stealth to attack stab them in the back or simply avoid them. If the fail at THAT you do the above but with a lower dice roll for the monsters as a reward for the PC's perceptiveness.

 

[Deset Gled]

Occasionally I want attrition to matter, so we'll do something similar to what others have mentioned. Each player rolls a D20, adds their appropriate attack modifier and we use that to determine if any resources were used. Target DCs vary a bit, but if you got above a 15 no resources were spent, 11-15 minor resources were spent, 10 and below moderate resources.

So for fighter types it's typically damage, for casters randomly split between damage and spell slots used. I also use this once in a while if the battle is turning into a slog. It can speed things up but can be useful as a tool to reinforce that while the group can easily handle low level monsters, it can add up over the course of several encounters if they don't have a chance to fully recuperate.

I think the issue of resources management is a huge reason why implementation of "one roll combat" will be vastly different from one version of D&D to another. In 4e, healing surges essentially make HP a fungible resource; in every other edition, you'll have to choose what you're spending to heal (or who sacrificed the HP). In 5e, your caster just spent a level 3 spell; in 3e (and earlier) you'll need to decide between your prep of Fly or Fireball, and then plan the rest of the day around it.

Basically, the level of resource management in the game also determines how much agency the player is giving up by switching to a "one roll" system.

 

[overgeeked]

I think the issue of resources management is a huge reason why implementation of "one roll combat" will be vastly different from one version of D&D to another. In 4e, healing surges essentially make HP a fungible resource; in every other edition, you'll have to choose what you're spending to heal (or who sacrificed the HP). In 5e, your caster just spent a level 3 spell; in 3e (and earlier) you'll need to decide between your prep of Fly or Fireball, and then plan the rest of the day around it.

Basically, the level of resource management in the game also determines how much agency the player is giving up by switching to a "one roll" system.

Hit dice say hello.