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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8089839" data-attributes="member: 87792">There are in my experience four ways that the mechanics themselves can encourage combat to not be boring - and D&D 5e fails hard at all four. I'm not bored of running combats, but I am bored of D&D 5e combat.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Speed - if combat is fast I simply don't have time to be bored. D&D 5e combat is slow.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Threatening consequences - if combat is swingy then every dice roll matters because it could lead to death or serious long term conseqences. Hit points are almost consequence free other than death, and bounded accuracy leads to monsters that are easily hit, which leads to bullet sponge enemy design.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tactically varied - if fictional positioning matters then each fight is going to be different. 5e goes out of its way to destroy tactics. Flanking isn't a thing. Spellcasters are as effective with most of their spells in melee as at range. Thanks to the rules for finesse and throwing weapons an NPC archer does almost as much damage as accurately with a shortsword as a bow, and a brute does almost as much damage with a javelin as accurately as a one handed axe. This all means that the main tactic that matters is focus fire.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Otherwise encourages narration - this covers a range of things including hit location and wound rules, stunting, the Wushu Open giving an extra dice for each thing described, scene based aspects, choices of what the success means as in Apocalypse World, etc.</li> </ul>D&D 5e gives me none of these things. This doesn't mean I can't run an interesting combat in 5e - it means that if I've succeeded in running an interesting combat in 5e I've done it despite the system, dragging the system with me. If I run a fast and tense combat in Apocalypse World with threatening consequences that's normal and easy because that's what Apocalypse World encourages. If I run an interesting and swingy combat in D&D 4e with two of the players reduced below 0hp at different times, and the players working together to push the monsters into their own pit traps then it's been a joy because that's the sort of game 4e encourages. If my Fate game has made the scenery pop with aspects, and there are long term consequences  for the characters with it ending in surrender rather than death this too has been helped by the rules because that's what Fate does and what Fate encourages.Meanwhile the bolded suggestions in the original post of what to do almost say the same thing. "Take the gameplay the rules of 5e acually encourage and flush them down the toilet. Instead make up your own stuff." <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"></li> </ul>If those are the solution then why on earth do I have a large and relatively complex system with multiple 320 page rulebooks in the first place? That list of solutions is pretty much an open admission that the system itself is a problem and the DM needs to do the work of fixing it as well as every other part of DMing.</blockquote>

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