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

[CleverNickName]

It's funny--I remember when 5E first came out, people were delighted at how fast combat was. What's changed?

Well, a lot of additional content was added since then. It might be different at other peoples' tables, but we've found that there can be a pretty steep learning curve for some of the new character classes and options introduced by new supplements. Sometimes that learning curve can slow the game down quite a bit for a few months, especially in combat. We're still getting used to our Artificer and our Whisper Bard, and already someone is clamoring about the Spore Druid that is in Tasha's Cauldron.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Faster I think than 3e for my group. 4e...no comment.

not quite as fast as 1e for my group since there were fewer options that were codified and quantified and for us less calculations.

side note: I have never seen anyone complain about 5e in my group. There was some grousing about 5 ft steps and bonus calcilations for individual attacks in 3e.

Side note: I think this must be related to what each group prefers. We get bent out of shape if we don’t get to fight! And preferably for a significant part of the session.... If it was all intrigue without butt kicking, I think my group would be unsatisfied. The fighting is 50% of why we play!

back on topic, I think 1e/2e, 5e, 3/3.5, 4e in order of increasing time to resolve combats.

 

[embee]

It can bog down. But then ask yourself? What is the point of the combat?

If it is bogging things down, is it serving an entertainment purpose?

Consider the point in a combat when the outcome is pretty darn clear. The group only has 1 or 2 more enemies and there is no way they will lose. Why continue to roll? It's not doing anything other than wasting time and bogging things down.

Once it's a surround-and-pound, perhaps wrap up the combat. "Okay. You guys finish off the baddie. It has yadda-yadda loot on it." Do you need to spend 5 or 10 minutes on a foregone conclusion that isn't roleplay?

My answer is often "no."

If the baddie isn't going to win, maybe just end that fight with a "how do you want it to end?"

 

[Bacon Bits]

So, my question is three parts:

1) Do you feel D&D combat is slow (or "drags")?

No, not for us. Large numbers, summoned creatures, polymorph effects, and some other spells can really draw combat out, however.

3) Has it always been that way? I'm not familiar with very much of 1E or 2E.

Compared to 4e, 5e is light years faster. 4e combat had a lot of potential moving pieces. Hp were moderately too high, and when you got to higher level there were a lot things going on constantly. Large combats at high level took hours and could be mentally draining, IMX.

Compared to 3e, 5e is moderately faster. 3e was incredibly fiddley in terms of bonuses, and it took much longer to resolve a lot of combats than 5e. Sure, certain spells could end a combat immediately, but that was pretty rare, IMX.

Compared to 1e/2e, 5e is somewhat longer. The thing about 1e/2e is that you might run into a situation where stuff didn't make sense or you'd have to look stuff up, or you might have several save or die effects and it'd be over right away. 1e/2e also tended to involve a lot more missing, especially at lower levels. HP were lower, but damage rolls were even lower than that. 1d8+2 was a lot of damage in 1e/2e. Also, the core attack roll in 1e/2e is slightly more complex which makes things just a touch slower. Even if the combat rules are bare bones, players and DM are rolling perhaps a dozen attack rolls a round. That time adds up. Like, there's a reason combat wheels for 1e/2e exist and not for 5e. Also, if you're playing with the full initiative system (melee/missile/spell, weapon speed, casting time, managing round segments, etc.) the game could be a lot more complicated. IMX, nobody actually did that, though.

Overall, I think 5e is about as simple and straightforward a systems as we've had. Other editions could have combats run faster than 5e, and you can certainly run 5e in a way that combat goes slowly, but in general I think it's fairly fast for a D&D game.

Bear in mind that the way HP increase with level means that D&D is kind of inherently an attrition-based game. Characters are expected to survive multiple hits. Lots of RPGs have NPCs die in 1 hit unless they're specials.

 

[Bupp]

Using the Escalation Die from 13th Age really speeds things up. Right about when fights would start getting bogged down, those bonuses to hit kick in.

As others have said, roll attack and damage dice together. It's minor, but saves a lot of time.

As we move thru the initiative order, I make sure everyone knows their turn is coming up. Like "ok, Aratesh you're up, Baradan is next, and then Daesys". They need to know what they are doing when their turn comes up. It's a fight, with six second rounds, you don't have tons of time to think.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I've a table of 8 new or casual players, so it tends to be slow-ish, but that's not the system's fault at that point. To keep everyone focused and a good pace, I put a few ''quality of life'' rules:

• Play spellcasters if you know you can handle it. I can work with you outside of the game, but if you are not interested in leaning how your spells work outside the game, I wont help you learn it mid-battle.
• Keep the action flowing: roleplay while doing stuff and dont hesitate 30 minutes (IRL) in front of doors!
• No do-over, no ''I also roll for perception'' (in fact, no ''I roll'' describe, and I'll call the roll).
• No splitting the party.
• Theater of the mind, no square counting: if I say you can land that fireball but hit one engaged ally in the process, arguing for 15 minutes wont change anything.
• Dont call BS on my monsters: if I say the ''bloodied'' Ogre goes berserk and can now do 1 attack against all creatures next to him as an action instead of just ''Attack'', I dont need you to tell me that this is not written in the MM.

I cant really do more than that.
I've thought of using average damage. I also roll my monsters HP after the first damage taken, so there's a slight chance that this was a pretty weak Ogre with 28 HP!

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

So, my question is three parts:

1) Do you feel D&D combat is slow (or "drags")?

2) If yes, how do you address this in 5E?

3) Has it always been that way? I'm not familiar with very much of 1E or 2E.

Of the games that I am currently, or was in the last few years, the 5e ones 5e have the fastest "round-to-round" combat. Compared to Cyclopedia D&D, Savage worlds and Vampire 2nd ed (and definitely compared to D&D 3.5 /Pathfinder), the 5e groups resolve each round of combat faster.
The total lengths of combat are a little hard to compare since the 5e groups have more complex encounters: The DMs for those tended to involve terrain and reinforcements whereas the cyclopedia DM is less inclined to having so many moving parts.

At higher levels, 5e combats seem to involve more rounds than both cyclopedia or 3.5ish combats. From my experience, this seems to be due to the power of spellcasters in those editions. Cyclopedia isn't quite as "rocket tag" as 3.5, but it is still noticeable that a level 3+ spell in those editions is more likely to end a fight (with occasional mopping up) rather than just contribute to it, which is what the spells seem to do in 5e more.

However, these are amongst a group of gamers who have been playing assorted games for decades. Newer groups of players and DMs tend to take a lot longer. From memory, the 5e groups still seem faster than the novice Pathfinder groups, but its been a while since I was involved in a new D&D group that wasn't 5e, so I'm not sure how far to trust it.

As to what you can do to improve matters in your particular 5e group, where do you think the delays are? Are you rotating rounds fast, but finding the combats drag on spending rounds and rounds beating on things with little resolution? Or is each round itself taking a long time to resolve? When it comes to their initiative, is each player ready to declare their action, roll their dice, and give the result? Or do you have players who only start thinking about what they're going to do when it comes to their action, page through books to find the rules, spend time choosing dice and so on?

 

[tetrasodium]

there can be a pretty steep learning curve for some of the new character classes and options introduced by new supplements. Sometimes that learning curve can slow the game down quite a bit for a few months, especially in combat. We're still getting used to our Artificer and our Whisper Bard, and already someone is clamoring about the Spore Druid that is in Tasha's Cauldron.

Its especially steep when the consequences for getting dropped below 1hp are so low and the difficulty of full hp/spell recovery is so low that there is not much reason for a player to get a grip on the class organically as they advance so they can fully leverage it in a fight without the slowdowns.

Artificer is pretty simple as a class though. Sure you can make a lot of neat stuff... during a long rest.. but the artificer archetypes themselves tend to be pretty one trick ponies with half caster progression casting once you start playing them I. Fights

 

[Guest User]

(well, other than 4E when single rounds could take an hour or more at high levels).

I've experienced this exact phenomenon in every edition I have played.
Even Mentzer's Companion, Master, and Immortals Rulesets took time.

What I think has changed most of all, is our sense of time. There is Pre Mobile phone sense of time, and then there is a Post Mobile phone sense of time.

The longest set piece battle I have ever ran for D&D took approximately 14 hours over 2 days. This involved, 10 players with 14th level characters, + NPC allies, + summoned creatures etc.
(It was also a NYE/ NY Day game..sober we could have shaved some time off)

In comparison, I've never played a game of Diplomacy that took less then 2 days.
In wargaming the joke that was always said was that the "recreation of the battle, took longer then the actual battle"

Slow cumbersome rules used to be a feature.

1e Shadowrun is the only game, that I found played very fast...and that ended once the Bodyguard Archetype was introduced.

 

[CubicsRube]

As the DM I found I was often the bottleneck to be honest. So here's what I do.

(Note I'm running shadow of the demon lord, but it's transferrable).

• Monsters have a set attack and players roll defense. Roll20 already has an option for this, it helps the players feel like they are actively involved and keeps them paying attention.
• Monsters use average damage (or max damage for some baddies)
• I move all monsters at once. So i might say "3 attacks on sam, dc is 15, 2 on phil dc 15, a firebolt is cast on chris, dc 14". Then they all roll defense, tell me how many failures and i give them the damage. Then it's back to their turn. This saves a shed load of time for me
• If a fight is clearly one sided i wrap it up narratively

Next time I run 5e I'm likely to add in morale rules as well.