D&D (2024) Is Combat Tedious on Purpose?

[Stormonu]

5E has become "50 ways to deplete your enemies hit points". Picking powers and abilities seems cool, until you've used them a half dozen times and its become boring. I do think hit point bloat has become a major factor in making combats overstay their welcome and I've contemplated several times going back to something like OSE to get fights over quicker. And just not play the levels past around 9th.

 

[TiQuinn]

Yeah, it's a contentious title, but we're living in a post-social media world where click bait titles are how you get views. But let's start from the beginning. Is combat in 5th edition tedious? After a few weeks of running it with the players moving from levels 1 through 4, I can safely say, yes, combat is a bit tedious. Between movement, bonus actions, actions, and keeping track of everything, including spell effects and weapon masteries, I'm finding combat, something that should be the highlight of D&D, to be a grind.

It got me to thinking, is this a deliberate design choice on the part of WotC? An effort to get us to rely on their APP and/or VTT so they can more effectively monetize D&D? I hate to be a Conspiracy Carl here, but I can't help but wonder.

Is 5.5 more tedious than 5.0?

 

[Quickleaf]

Is 5.5 more tedious than 5.0?

I asked that question and McGibster shared their answer/experience already: D&D (2024) - Is Combat Tedious on Purpose? (Links to exact post)

 

[Incenjucar]

One of the nice things about Pathfinder 2E's three action system is that it allows combos of actions of the same weight (rather than a standard and a bonus/minor action). You increase the variety of rounds without needing to pile on new bonus actions. Stronger abilities use up more actions, but even then you can eventually get an extra action.

 

[Black Dougal]

I find it tedious BUT I think it depends on the group honestly more than other factors. I find many 5e groups I join to be tedious, very tedious. But I noticed it comes down to the players not knowing what their characters can do and or not preparing during others' turns. My steady group I play in is great, everyone knows the rules, knows their characters and things go smoothly. The group I DM is the same group. Pickup games and joining new groups has been very tedious and I do understand it takes time to find the right group(s) but I am not having much luck. One game I played in half the group bowed out after the first session, it was so tedious. LOL I didn't want to ruin play for those that stayed and we are 3 sessions in...it's so bad I tried to get killed so I could bow out.

IMO I think the digital world and things like VTTs are great but people need to read the rules and at least know what their character does. This has been my experience with tedious combat and it's anecdotal.

 

[Lanefan]

This is one of those classic "complexity vs speed" type scenarios.

I think it's also a question of swinginess vs speed.

Combat could easily be much shorter and faster if everyone - PC and foe alike - simply had a lot fewer hit points. Problem is, that also makes combats more swingy and less predictable; and while I personally would find this a good thing, the designers seem to disagree.

Longer combats - as in, having them take more combat rounds to resolve - reduce the swinginess and increase predictability by giving randomness more opportunity to regress to the average; at cost of said combats taking much longer to play through.

 

[Voadam]

I think combat pacing is generally big for player engagement and fun during D&D combat. Fiddly mechanics that only sometimes come up in relevance are a drag on pacing because you kind of need to pay attention to them to implement their effect even if it is normally not that relevant. 3.0 D&D had this with things like the dodge feat that was pick one opponent to get a +1 AC dodge bonus against each round, and in 5e24 there are things like the weapon mastery slow which reduces an opponent's speed on a hit for one round by 10'. Even little things that you have to track and consider and possibly make minor adjustments for constantly add a drag to mentally processing stuff and so are a little drag on the speed of getting to the next action and keeping things brisk and not distracting from other relevant elements. When this is for very little payoff in the action it is even more annoying.

This is going to vary hugely between DMs and players for how quickly they can process their turns in combat and there is some elements of edition design in general or specific mechanics of a particular PC or monster that can add to that one way or the other.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Oh god yes.

I admit having player other systems and even old D&D eds colors my opinion. Old School is "I attack it. I hit. Damage." Next player. There is just far to much going in in modern D&D combat.

Also lets talk about Shadowrun and combat systems.....

Conversely, if combat were anything like the "Old School" thing you describe, I would be doing the pantomime in your linked image. I can't stand combat that is literally nothing but "I attack, I hit, damage, NEXT". It's so, so, so goddamn BORING. I'd rather play Solitaire or watch paint dry.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think it's also a question of swinginess vs speed.

Combat could easily be much shorter and faster if everyone - PC and foe alike - simply had a lot fewer hit points. Problem is, that also makes combats more swingy and less predictable; and while I personally would find this a good thing, the designers seem to disagree.

Longer combats - as in, having them take more combat rounds to resolve - reduce the swinginess and increase predictability by giving randomness more opportunity to regress to the average; at cost of said combats taking much longer to play through.

It's why I prefer volatility rather than lethality.

Lethality measures how likely it is that your character is going to die in any given situation. Volatility measures how frequently your character changes state, whether or not that state is (specifically) death.

OSR games are extremely lethal in most cases, where literally any combat has a pretty meaningful chance of death until you get several levels under your belt, which you have previously noted may take literal years IRL. But, ironically, they are not actually very volatile, because the state-flip is usually almost binary and happens hard, fast, and (often) without any ability to bounce back. Despite being a radically different kind of game, 3e also ended up in this space too, because its ludicrously powerful spells (particularly save-or-die/save-or-suck spells) meant that either you won spectacularly and thus didn't see much change of state, or you lost spectacularly and thus only saw one change of state.

In a volatile but not particularly lethal game, the risk of death is always there, but the actual eventuality of death is rare. Instead, you have sudden harm and then a heroic rally. You have a bold maneuver and then a sudden cost paid. The experience is tense not because it could end at any second, but because the state-of-play is rising and falling all the time, and at different rates for different characters.

It's the difference between a bomb-defusing scene in a TV show (where characters are much more expendable than films or books, typically), and a chase scene. The bomb-defusing is tense because it could go badly at any moment, but there's really only two things that can happen: bomb kills everyone, or bomb does nothing. You can't really milk it for any tension beyond that simple binary. A chase scene, however, can have all sorts of changes, up and down, back and forth. You can have an early setback and then a rally. You can have early success and then a sudden swerve (literally or figuratively!) And even the conclusion admits a spectrum of possible results, rather than a hard binary (even a "per-character" hard binary, if you want to specify that finely).

 

[Staffan]

For example bonus actions were created so that spellcasters can do something else when they cast their spells. But by doing so we created a new action that every character wants to use.

IME, bonus actions are used far more by non-casters (or half-casters) than full casters. For non- or half-casters, the bonus action becomes "here's a thing you can do in addition to just attacking", which gives them some interesting (ideally) options. Casters usually get to have enough fun with just the one spell, and have rules specifically making it hard to use bonus actions (IIRC, 5.0 allows a bonus action leveled spell and a regular action cantrip but not vice versa; and I think they simplified it in 5.1 so you can just cast one leveled spell per round no matter what, thereby also closing the Action Surge loophole).

One of the nice things about Pathfinder 2E's three action system is that it allows combos of actions of the same weight (rather than a standard and a bonus/minor action). You increase the variety of rounds without needing to pile on new bonus actions. Stronger abilities use up more actions, but even then you can eventually get an extra action.

You have a point, but I have often found the PF2 action system restrictive, because it doesn't really allow for "extras".

For example, let's say we've just seen the villain run off and close the door behind them. In 5e, I can just move up to the door, open it, and follow the villain in hot pursuit. If the villain hasn't gotten too far, or I'm armed with a ranged weapon, I might even be able to attack. But in PF2, that's at least three actions: Stride to the door, Interact to open the door, and then Stride through and in pursuit of the villain. Definitely no attack. And if the GM is particularly strict, I might also have to spend some actions juggling items to get a free hand with which to Interact with the door.

Another thing I've seen in PF2 is that characters either tend to have a strict action routine they need to follow to be reasonably useful, or be bereft of useful third actions entirely. For example, your typical sword & board fighter would likely go Raise Shield, Stride, Strike in most cases, or if they start out next to a foe either Raise Shield, Strike, Strike-5 or Raise Shield, Strike, Step away (because there are many enemies you really don't want to start their turn next to you so they can do one of their 3-action routines). But as a caster, I usually spend 2 actions on casting something, and then I have another action. It's neat if I need to move, and in some cases it can be useful to try to Recall Knowledge or something, but I often find myself trying to figure out what to do with the third action. On the other hand, most rounds in D&D5 don't give much in the way of variety either, but in PF2 it feels more like I'm wasting a resource.