D&D General GM's are you bored of your combat and is it because you made it boring?

[Puddles]

@Bedrockgames it seems like you have a good grasp on what you enjoy (shorter combats), and I’m sure if you play D&D you probably design your combat encounters to meet that goal.

My mind is conjuring up a few thoughts on making a combat encounter both short and tactical, that you might find useful:

In video games (and many other games), positive feedback loops can be incorporated into the mechanics to help a scenario reach a quick conclusion. For example, in games like Call of Duty you often get rewarded with a bonus for a “kill streak”, this might be something small like summoning a drone to scout the area, revealing the map, all the way to bringing down an attack helicopter to unleash a hail of bullets upon the enemy. The point is, it creates a death spiral for the other team that is in this case desirable because it allows one side to reach a decisive victory quickly.

So one idea could be to include something like this in your combats. It could be literally be the kill streak mechanic where you have a list of “Heroic Actions” the players can take. Each time an enemy is slain, the players gain 1 point and each Heroic Action has a requisite number of points to spend on it. The more powerful the ability, the more points it requires.

Where this adds tactics is if each ability has it’s own niche, and players need to debate and decide where and when to spend their points.

If a system like this is too gamey and breaks immersion, another idea is to adopt a simple morale system.

For example, you could give each encounter a morale score, the lower the number the more ill-disciplined the enemies. Then, you could give the players ways to tally points against this score each round. If, in a single round, the moral score is exceeded by the points tallied, the enemy routs and the combat is over. This would encourage players to use shock and awe tactics to try and overcome the enemy in a single round of combat if possible and could be both tactical, short and immersive.

I would keep the moral score of the encounter hidden, but the ways in which points can be accrued, public. Examples include; the players could gain 1 point for surprising the enemy, 1 for each enemy slain, an additional point for each leader or spellcaster slain, 1 for each crit rolled, 1 each time the enemy suffers damage they are vulnerable to, 1 for a successful intimidation, etc etc.

Anyway, I hope these ideas are of any use.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For example, you could give each encounter a morale score, the lower the number the more ill-disciplined the enemies. Then, you could give the players ways to tally points against this score each round. If, in a single round, the moral score is exceeded by the points tallied, the enemy routs and the combat is over. This would encourage players to use shock and awe tactics to try and overcome the enemy in a single round of combat if possible and could be both tactical, short and immersive.

I like this idea a lot.

I never understood why 3E dumped Morale. In 2E I used it heavily (I may well be a freak in this, but I saw other DMs use it at least a bit), and it kept combat "honest" in a certain way that was lacking in a lot of 3E and yes, sorry 4E, but also some 4E stuff. DMs can always eyeball it, and a lot do, but some just don't seem to consider it (I have to admit, as a player, I have a habit of saying "wow these guys are some tough cookies!" or similar when some bunch of bandits are standing around to get slaughtered, which has prompted a couple of DMs to clearly think about this, without being too obvious, I think).

I think it does require DMs to design adventures to allow for fleeing enemies though - and just as early MMORPGs all had fleeing enemies, but modern ones don't, because it introduces a lot of complexity, I think few pre-written adventures allow for this.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I read through your post but didn't see anything about terrain. Terrain can make all the difference in a battle. Use it to add tactical challenges to the players.

I would like to see a random terrain generator. Any time I plan "interesting" terrain it ends up looking the same. Generals do not normally create terrain, just exploit what's there (well, sometimes they create terrain, especially if they had access to magic, but typically not).

 

[Puddles]

I like this idea a lot.

I never understood why 3E dumped Morale. In 2E I used it heavily (I may well be a freak in this, but I saw other DMs use it at least a bit), and it kept combat "honest" in a certain way that was lacking in a lot of 3E and yes, sorry 4E, but also some 4E stuff. DMs can always eyeball it, and a lot do, but some just don't seem to consider it (I have to admit, as a player, I have a habit of saying "wow these guys are some tough cookies!" or similar when some bunch of bandits are standing around to get slaughtered, which has prompted a couple of DMs to clearly think about this, without being too obvious, I think).

I think it does require DMs to design adventures to allow for fleeing enemies though - and just as early MMORPGs all had fleeing enemies, but modern ones don't, because it introduces a lot of complexity, I think few pre-written adventures allow for this.

Yes, the classic problem with morale comes to dungeons, where each time an enemy flees it makes the next encounter harder. One solution is the one Matt Coalville advocates for, which is the number of goblins in the next room never changes. If 2 goblins flee into the next room, the 4 goblins planned to be in it just become 2 old and 2 new.

Otherwise you might want to build upon the rules and say either a.) fleeing goblins don’t automatically rally in the next room, or b.) the presence of terrified goblins actually lowers the morale of the next encounter (which could lead to a snowballing of mass hysteria throughout the dungeon which I find amusing to think about).

Personally, I am like you in that I just eyeball morale and tend to ask myself “Why are they fighting?” at the start of each round to decide if they should stay or if they should go.

It was just an idea really to explore making combats both short and tactical, which I think it would do as having a defined morale system that the players can manipulate gives them agency in combat.

 

[Puddles]

Welcome to Enworld and what a great post!

Thanks for the welcome! It’s really appreciated

 

[Helldritch]

I've heard this argument before, and it's one which I feel completely fails to either understand or account for opportunity cost. Anyone touting the Help action as a good idea above about level 5, in combat, using your main Action, is definitely not understanding opportunity cost outside the more niche of a niche situations. It's the True Strike of Actions.

And yet, it works. When you have a lot of trouble hitting an opponent, better have advantage on one character and taking the chance of actually hitting with better chances than to have to characters fail. I have seen character of level 18+ using it exactly because of that. Restraining an opponent might also mean that two or more characters will have advantage on hitting the enemy. Wow... you either self blind yourself on tactical moves or there is something you don't understand in tactics...

This is Nietzschean nonsense. I studied archaeology, and was interested in paleontology, and the idea that only the fittest creatures survive to the oldest ages is absolute gibberish. It's especially not true for intelligent creatures like humans. Dragons don't have a society, but their sheer size and power means they can and will have other creatures do their bidding.

Utter BS arguement. Science proved you wrong. As for dragons not having a society, I recommand you to read The complete book of dragons. There is even a serie of novel set in Mystara about the Draconic society... so yep my point stands.

We're not just talking about "ancient" dragons, either. There's a whole spectrum of dragons, and the general prescriptive advice is to play them all like they're tactical geniuses. Which is just ridiculous. They're people with personalities, flaws, dumb fixed ideas even though they're smart, and so on. Some ancient dragons will be war-scarred veterans you describe. Some will be fat, lazy, and even fading, their best days long past them, even if they're still getting larger like a crocodile. No-one but top-rank adventurers can even challenge an ancient dragon, pretty much. No army can. No single Wizard. Other dragons are unlikely to mess with most dragons, just like most top predators don't fight each other, particularly not to the death - why? Because they might kill/injure themselves in the attack. It's potentially lose/lose. Smaller dragons will simply flee larger ones, because they don't stand a chance. Only extreme circumstances or the Good/Evil thing are ever likely to lead to dragons fighting each other, cool as it may conceptually be. It's even less likely with dragons being intelligent and able to communicate. If some elder wyrm descends on some young dragon and says "give me your stuff", the young one may puff and hiss but unless he's real dumb he's not going to fight. I admit that in some cases time would weed out dragons who were really, really dumb, but not those who were kind of just sorta-dumb.

Exactly, were are talking about those that are surving to ancient status or are on their way. The rest of your aguments are circular logic giving me credits again by trying to minimize the effect.

The dragons you'll have a real problem with are those who actively attack human cities, who hit hard targets, who study those targets, and take them down. They would be an incredible menace. You could build an entire campaign around fighting one of those (and its minions, and dealing with the results of its attacks - they might cause unconnected raiders or unscrupulous nations to war on half-burned cities and so on, or necromancers might be having a field day).

Again, they are the ones that will survive to ancient status (or are on their way). The dumb will die.

But you can't make me believe that's most dragons. It's not most dragons in fiction (Smaug uses no tactics, for example, simply assuming he is so tough he is unstoppable, despite clearly being very intelligent), and it's not most dragons in D&D lore, who are typically slightly cowardly creatures, who hang out in some backwater, and raid lightly-defended or defenceless farmsteads, caravans, and so on.

Never tried to make you believe that. Everyone can make mistakes. Dragons are not coward, they are intelligent creature of raw power. They know that and it can make them make mistakes.

So you think some Lich which has literally been locked in a tomb for 4000 years, going slowly completely and totally insane, is going to be a rational and cunning opponent? I very much doubt it. Older isn't better. Older can mean outdated and stupid. I notice some fantasy authors have some fun with this (Steven Erikson does with Malazan - some ancient stuff is terrifying - but some of it just thinks it's terrifying and is actually a joke). An ancient tomb-lich may well be extremely powerful, but he's also extremely likely to walk face-first into a trap, or fail to understand what a cannon is and why it's a problem that it's pointed at him.

Liches are in fact particularly likely to be smart-but-morons. The trouble is they're so powerful and they have a backup which can be hard/impossible to find - they only had to be clever/sane when they did the phylactery and became a Lich, not after thousands of years of wandering around a tomb mumbling to themselves.

Wow, you need to review what is a Lich and reread. A wizard becomes a Lich to study strange forgotten secrets/lore and to eventually reach godhood. Not every lich succeed. It is a case where many are called, few are chosen... But if a Lich is a morron insane lunatic with no rational, it is far from the lich I have read about. Say hello to Vecna, Acererak, Lizandred and quite a few others.

Ancient dragons will run the gamut too. Some will be basically terrifying gods-on-earth. Some will be Smaug - i.e. foolish, tactic-less, and prone to walk face-first into something which might kill them without even thinking about it.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned though is that ancient dragons and liches will typically be staggeringly familiar with their surroundings (even without magic), and so if met on home terrain, will have some huge advantages even if they don't have a lot of traps (and some bonkers lich probably does have a lot of traps). Hundreds of years will give you something beyond familiarity.

Finaly something rational. On this I agree.

 

[Helldritch]

I like this idea a lot.

I never understood why 3E dumped Morale. In 2E I used it heavily (I may well be a freak in this, but I saw other DMs use it at least a bit), and it kept combat "honest" in a certain way that was lacking in a lot of 3E and yes, sorry 4E, but also some 4E stuff. DMs can always eyeball it, and a lot do, but some just don't seem to consider it (I have to admit, as a player, I have a habit of saying "wow these guys are some tough cookies!" or similar when some bunch of bandits are standing around to get slaughtered, which has prompted a couple of DMs to clearly think about this, without being too obvious, I think).

I think it does require DMs to design adventures to allow for fleeing enemies though - and just as early MMORPGs all had fleeing enemies, but modern ones don't, because it introduces a lot of complexity, I think few pre-written adventures allow for this.

Fully agree on that. I too, never understood why they left out the morale checks. It was a nice way to help young DM to see that not all fights had to be to the death. It was a good thing and it showed players that sometimes, fleeing is the best solution. When your monsters/enemies tries to flee, it shows that you can try it too.

 

[Asisreo]

I like this idea a lot.

I never understood why 3E dumped Morale. In 2E I used it heavily (I may well be a freak in this, but I saw other DMs use it at least a bit), and it kept combat "honest" in a certain way that was lacking in a lot of 3E and yes, sorry 4E, but also some 4E stuff. DMs can always eyeball it, and a lot do, but some just don't seem to consider it (I have to admit, as a player, I have a habit of saying "wow these guys are some tough cookies!" or similar when some bunch of bandits are standing around to get slaughtered, which has prompted a couple of DMs to clearly think about this, without being too obvious, I think).

I think it does require DMs to design adventures to allow for fleeing enemies though - and just as early MMORPGs all had fleeing enemies, but modern ones don't, because it introduces a lot of complexity, I think few pre-written adventures allow for this.

Morale exists as an optional rule in the DMG.

Involving saves, fleeing and surrenders. It's not truly robust but it does exist in 5e.

 

[nevin]

I like this idea a lot.

I never understood why 3E dumped Morale. In 2E I used it heavily (I may well be a freak in this, but I saw other DMs use it at least a bit), and it kept combat "honest" in a certain way that was lacking in a lot of 3E and yes, sorry 4E, but also some 4E stuff. DMs can always eyeball it, and a lot do, but some just don't seem to consider it (I have to admit, as a player, I have a habit of saying "wow these guys are some tough cookies!" or similar when some bunch of bandits are standing around to get slaughtered, which has prompted a couple of DMs to clearly think about this, without being too obvious, I think).

I think it does require DMs to design adventures to allow for fleeing enemies though - and just as early MMORPGs all had fleeing enemies, but modern ones don't, because it introduces a lot of complexity, I think few pre-written adventures allow for this.

I use fleeing enemies all the time. Most intelligent creatures are going to run if they see that they have no chance. And some encounters like say with smart bandits, may have planned to escape if things go wrong.

 

[nevin]

It did occur to me after I posted that intelligent creatures are not always, sane, or have an intelligence that is similar to what we humans do. A dragon protecting her brood might fight to the death. An intelligent creature may make bad decsions. similar creatures with different circumstances might run away and then harrass the party with surprise attacks or just leave and never be seen again. You can't count on intelligent creatures using thier brains the circumstances of the encounter can change what is rational.