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<blockquote data-quote="Raduin711" data-source="post: 8135802" data-attributes="member: 15303">5e combat feels very blow-by-blow to me. There's wiggle room for a little bit of narrative seasoning, but for the most part, it feels like 1 die roll = 1 swing of your weapon. This isn't supposed to be the case narratively, but the mechanics tell a different story.Looking at the last samurai clip, there is a lot going on there that isn't really modeled anywhere in the D&amp;D rules. For example, Nathan has to parry a lot of blows. This is covered in the rules with AC, full stop. AC is completely passive, is based on what your character is wearing, and doesn't care whether you are fighting one human opponent, 8 human opponents, or 1 dragon. We can pretend that our PC is parrying all of these blows, but more than likely we are going to describe 3 failed attacks rather than 3 parried blows. It's like the difference between the active voice and passive voice in writing. In D&amp;D mechanics, the attacker is always active because they declare the action and roll the dice, and the defender is always passive, and this flavors our descriptions. It's the difference between &quot;You blocked his attack&quot; and &quot;He missed.&quot; Since only the attacker participates in an attack roll, D&amp;D favors &quot;He missed.&quot; We can SAY &quot;you blocked his attack&quot;, but it doesn't feel like it because we've done nothing but sit quietly or maybe remind the DM what our AC is.This all contributes to the feeling that your character only ever really does 1 or 2 things a round, and why it can be kind of a struggle to fill in the gaps.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Raduin711, post: 8135802, member: 15303"] 5e combat feels very blow-by-blow to me. There's wiggle room for a little bit of narrative seasoning, but for the most part, it feels like 1 die roll = 1 swing of your weapon. This isn't supposed to be the case narratively, but the mechanics tell a different story. Looking at the last samurai clip, there is a lot going on there that isn't really modeled anywhere in the D&D rules. For example, Nathan has to parry a lot of blows. This is covered in the rules with AC, full stop. AC is completely passive, is based on what your character is wearing, and doesn't care whether you are fighting one human opponent, 8 human opponents, or 1 dragon. We can pretend that our PC is parrying all of these blows, but more than likely we are going to describe 3 failed attacks rather than 3 parried blows. It's like the difference between the active voice and passive voice in writing. In D&D mechanics, the attacker is always active because they declare the action and roll the dice, and the defender is always passive, and this flavors our descriptions. It's the difference between "You blocked his attack" and "He missed." Since only the attacker participates in an attack roll, D&D favors "He missed." We can SAY "you blocked his attack", but it doesn't feel like it because we've done nothing but sit quietly or maybe remind the DM what our AC is. This all contributes to the feeling that your character only ever really does 1 or 2 things a round, and why it can be kind of a struggle to fill in the gaps. [/QUOTE]

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