D&D 5E Has D&D Combat Always Been Slow?

[TwoSix]

For my part, I don't even play with my old in-person group of friends anymore. They simply can't produce the same excellent gaming experiences that I can get with my new(er), hand-picked group who otherwise don't meet up outside of D&D games. So with my old D&D group it's board games, card games, and barbeque (pre-pandemic anyway) and that's just fine.

I'll admit, the idea of putting together a curated group of the players I consider the overall "best" players has occurred to me.

 

[Oofta]

I'll admit, the idea of putting together a curated group of the players I consider the overall "best" players has occurred to me.

Really? I guess that's just ... foreign to me. Unless someone doesn't really want to play or is disruptive we can have fun. There is no award for "good gaming", no final exam, no pop quizzes. It's a game.

 

[Argyle King]

So my question is similar to yours: Is combat perceived as being slow because it's keeping people away from the content they prefer? Or would they do more combat if combat wasn't so slow (for them)?

I think, for me, it's both.


I had mentioned the prison escape during the Star Wars game. One session fit in more of both.

I wouldn't say that game has less options or is simpler.

Also, in the other games we play, round-to-round is less static. Doing damage or making an attack matters, even if it doesn't kill. In the cae of SW, even failing at something can produce a change.

 

[TwoSix]

Really? I guess that's just ... foreign to me. Unless someone doesn't really want to play or is disruptive we can have fun. There is no award for "good gaming", no final exam, no pop quizzes. It's a game.

There are different kinds of fun, I guess. I'm happy to play Smash Bros. with my 8 year old and my 5 year old, but we're mostly just goofing around. It's a different vibe from playing with my brother and my teenage sons, who are much more on my level.

Playing with people who are all more skilled simply provides a different flow from playing with people who still need to be walked through how spells work or how to calculate attacks. Different kinds of fun.

 

[Monayuris]

@iserith made a really good point. You can do a lot to keep combat interesting by narrating things after the player does them then again after calling the next player.

Alice: I attack the elf with....
DM: That's a good hit. Alice you bring that mace around and really smash the heck out of that elf's arm with blood going everywhere
DM: Bob your up, alice just smashed the heck out of point this elf & your pretty sure you heard bones snapping
Bob: I cast firebolt at the same elf!....
DM: Bob that firebolt streaks off and explodes dead centermass on the orc scorching away a big chunk from his armor
DM: Chuck your up, bob just burned a hole in the orc's armor
Chuck: I attack & smite!
DM: Chuck you bring that sword around & at the very last moment of slicing through the gap blown out of in his armor you unleash that smite really ruining his day & you know that because you are pretty sure you see a lung & those are normally best kept unexposed.. oh yea the elf is bloodied
DM: Alice that elf whips out some kinda trinket & smashes it on the ground just behind you causing flames to explode everywhere ... make a dex save..
Alice: it's 3...
DM: wince.. 3 was quite a it less than the xx you needed, that fire rises up around you scorching at the flesh through your armor for yy damage. your up too but standing in a pillar of fire....
Alice I move here and swing at the elf with my mace...

so on & so forth. The narration doesn't need to be carefully thought out & tracked, just graphic & filled with some interesting combination of blood drama & action. Once players realize that it's not something they should be trying to use for advantage by doing things like expecting a lower ac because of the scorched hole in the armor or for the baddie to switch to a 1h weapon just because you described the players being pretty sure they broke the bad guy's arm they won't notice if you described elf#3 getting his knee smashed into an angle it's not supposed to bend three times that fight. The only problem you will have is something I've only seen in 5e.... specifically this:
PC: I get three attacks. For my first attack I roll x... is that a hit?...
gm: That's a hit.. gimme some damage
PC: I deal Y damage... stares at gm
gm: ok *describes some stuff
PC: how is it doing, is he still standing?...
PC: For my seconf attack I roll x... is that a hit?...
gm: That's a hit.. gimme some damage
PC: I deal Y damage... stares at gm
gm: ok *describes some stuff less enthusiastically
PC: how is it doing, is he still standing?...
PC: For my third attack I roll x... is that a hit?...
gm: That's a hit.. gimme some damage
PC: I deal Y damage... stares at gm
gm: ok you hit it for 12
PC: how is it doing, is he still standing?...
GM : yea bob your up alice is spending a lot of time staring at the elf in the fight but he got in some good hits
alice: ok I have three attacks so for my first attack....
GM along with everyone but alice: dies inside
I don't know if it's because 5e changed away from the attack action as a standard action to extra attacks & bonus action offhand, because 5e made the attackroll almost certain & just gave everything a huge sack of hp, because 5e got rid of the penalty on second/third/etc attack to make them more of "maybe I'll get lucky" bonus or whatever... but I never noticed it with such prevalence in 3.5/pf as in 5e. Ultimately I had to houserule that all attack rolls need to be made at once with a target or targets declared before I say how many hit for my own sanity but I still see people trying it every so often

I get this with 5E all the time.

One thing I've noticed with 5E and more modern games is that they have more powers and abilities, so they have more tricks. I notice players tend to describe and declare what they do, each step of the way. It is as if they need to 'show their work' to show how they are using these tricks in combat.

As a DM, I don't care about any of that. I tell players the ACs of monsters so they know what they need to hit.

All I want to hear is:

PC: I hit the Troll 3 times for 28 total damage.
GM: Ok. Next player...

It is harder to do in 5E though, because so many actions are dependent on the results of prior actions. You many time HAVE to wait and resolve one at a time.

In my B/X games... I just get reports of X hits for Y damage from each of my players and I apply damage as it comes in. It is lightning fast.

 

[Oofta]

There are different kinds of fun, I guess. I'm happy to play Smash Bros. with my 8 year old and my 5 year old, but we're mostly just goofing around. It's a different vibe from playing with my brother and my teenage sons, who are much more on my level.

Playing with people who are all more skilled simply provides a different flow from playing with people who still need to be walked through how spells work or how to calculate attacks. Different kinds of fun.

Maybe I've always been lucky, or it's just self-selecting or excluding people because they don't game exactly like I want them to seems odd. In my current group I have some people who are really in to RP, some that are just enjoying themselves during the RP but only really get excited in combat. I've had people that were bad at math, people that were brilliant tacticians.

There have been times when I complain to my wife after the game how bad certain players are at tactics, but that just means I adjust the threat level to compensate. For the guy bad at math, we worked up a cheat sheet. There are all sorts of options. It's incredibly rare that I'll disinvite (or cease to invite) someone and even then it was because of being abrasive, anti-social or continuously challenging DM rules.

I guess if I had all the time in the world to game maybe I'd have an A-Team, but I'd still keep the B-Team around. Well, except for the guy who thought he was a werewolf. There's only so much crazy I want in the house.

 

[Don Durito]

I think team based initiative makes things go much quicker (ad&d). You had the magic-user start with fireball or haste. Then the fighters or rangers go mop up what was left.

The need to roll initiative and write down scores is a remarkably big part of what makes combat slow.

I'm not sure exactly what it is - I think a big part of it is the shift in mindset from "on all the time" to "can switch off when not my turn". I think pretty much any alternative that lets you just go straight into the combat from the start helps a lot.

I think one key element is that role-playing can be exhausting and that players often treat combat as a bit of a mental break (I know I do). It's probably better to avoid that and just have breaks in the session.

 

[dave2008]

LOL it would be funny since we use TV for a VTT/secondary display to include a countdown timer on the screen for everyone to see! I know a couple players who would never be able to manage it. Heck, even 60 seconds would be rough for them.

Initially we did use a timer, but just a little alarm clock / kitchen timer. What was great was that as it ticked down there became a real sense of urgency that kept everyone on their toes.

 

[iserith]

There are different kinds of fun, I guess. I'm happy to play Smash Bros. with my 8 year old and my 5 year old, but we're mostly just goofing around. It's a different vibe from playing with my brother and my teenage sons, who are much more on my level.

Playing with people who are all more skilled simply provides a different flow from playing with people who still need to be walked through how spells work or how to calculate attacks. Different kinds of fun.

Yeah, my thinking on this is that this hobby isn't a small commitment in time which in my view is a valuable commodity (since you only get so much of it before you die). So if I'm going to commit 4 hours of play-time per week plus whatever my prep time comes out to, then I for damn sure want that game to be the absolute best that it can be. If that means I have to replace some players (or DMs), then that's what I'm going to do. There's also a huge disparity in the player-to-DM ratio which means that there's pretty much no good reason in my view to put up with a player who isn't holding up their end. I won't even think twice about it.

I do the same for any other task that takes a good percentage of time - eating, sleeping, working, etc. It needs to be the best or else I'm not building the best life I can.

 

[Helldritch]

Strange, I do think that combat is a bit slow, but not to the extent that some people seem to experience. It was enough for me to switch to side initiative and now the combats go quite faster. If a player wants to go first, he/she says so and the other wait and see. It prevents a lot of wake up calls if the turn of a player is a bit long as the player that is too long in taking the turn just falls into the dodge action at the end of the group's turn. I have done that a few times I normal initiative and now, players are all much more attentive as they do not want to pass a turn dodging when they don't want to.

I was very doubtful about side initiative but it works a lot and it also has the "side" effect of reducing the importance of dexterity. As I said in an other thread, I still do not know what to do about feats that deals with initiatives but I bet that we will come up with something if and when the need arise.