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

[EzekielRaiden]

It's about cycle she not actual age.

Many "popular games" don't have in internal discussion on the flaws of the game and how to fix them. They are in honeymoon stage still. No subreddits or forums on fire with "X is broken" or "Y doesn't work" threads.

By this standard, 5e's honeymoon ended shortly after it was published.

Personally, I consider the "honeymoon phase" to be the period where discussion is almost totally dominated by effusive praise. For 5e, that period lasted about six years. Because, let me tell you, as a critic of 5e? That period was almost unbearable. For a while we couldn't go two months without someone posting yet another "golly gee willikers, I just can't get over how amazeballs perfect 5e is, let's talk about it!" Toward the end of that 6-year period, it did taper off a bit, but then you had people basically reacting to that tapering off by being all "suddenly folks aren't showering 5e with every praise-word known to man and some unknown to us, let's fix that!", but that period was (thankfully) short-lived.

Once Tasha's came out, it became possible to criticize 5e at all, without getting dogpiled by the people insisting how utterly amazing every part of it was. Once the (as always, incredibly stupidly-named) "One D&D" playtest was revealed to the world, it actually became possible to engage people on that criticism. I distinctly remember, sometime around 2018-2019, having discussions on this very forum where folks INSISTED that the 5e DMG was one of the greatest DMGs ever written, and moreover that anyone who said otherwise had an "agenda" or something ridiculous like that. Like literally casting aspersions at the very thought of criticizing it.

Now? Oh, now we get folks using what I've heard called the "slow breakup" technique, where things near-instantly flipped from "there are no problems" to "ugggggh can we PLEASE stop talking about those problems that everyone has always recognized???" In other words, we skip from denying there is any problem at all, to rejecting further discussion because it's pointless, without passing through that crucial (but, for fans, unpleasant) middle step of ever actually talking about the problems.

 

[Nightfly]

Those of you who have played a lot of 2024e, how badly does the Topple mastery slow down the game? Forcing a saving throw on every hit seems like a recipe for trouble. I've only played a bit of the new rules and only at low levels, so I haven't seen it be a problem, but I can imagine it starting to really gum up the works once fighters start getting 3 or 4 attacks per round.

 

[TheSword]

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.

Honestly, I haven’t found it better or worse as a DM.

As a player, I have found it more fun and I find I am wanting to play more than ever.

 

[TheSword]

Those of you who have played a lot of 2024e, how badly does the Topple mastery slow down the game? Forcing a saving throw on every hit seems like a recipe for trouble. I've only played a bit of the new rules and only at low levels, so I haven't seen it be a problem, but I can imagine it starting to really gum up the works once fighters start getting 3 or 4 attacks per round.

I think you have to remember that a lot of time there will be one target and they can only be toppled once. The rest of the attacks are likely to be used to get advantage from that topple. It’s not as bad as you think it would be. It’s also not a particularly common mastery.

 

[Minigiant]

By this standard, 5e's honeymoon ended shortly after it was published

Well I was really talking about D&D's honeymoon phase.
Which seems to be 30 years ago in 2e when it ended. Which makes sense for PreInternet.

This is compared to Shadowdark were all mostly still in the honeymoon where criticism is nearly invisible due to its newness. Or Pathfinder which codified keywords in 2e and has enough age you can get tedium arguments.

Personally, I consider the "honeymoon phase" to be the period where discussion is almost totally dominated by effusive praise. For 5e, that period lasted about six years. Because, let me tell you, as a critic of 5e? That period was almost unbearable. For a while we couldn't go two months without someone posting yet another "golly gee willikers, I just can't get over how amazeballs perfect 5e is, let's talk about it!" Toward the end of that 6-year period, it did taper off a bit, but then you had people basically reacting to that tapering off by being all "suddenly folks aren't showering 5e with every praise-word known to man and some unknown to us, let's fix that!", but that period was (thankfully) short-lived.

That's more what I call the honeymoon phase. When the game's zeitgeist is mostly positive, thankful, and congratulatory.

Tedium tends to enter when highlighting one or more negative aspects tends to take one of the 3 rings of the circus.

 

[Kromanjon]

It's the old complex vs simple preference.

Diametrically opposed. Ones fast the other isn't.

5.5 probably tge best trade off between the two. It's not that much more complicated than 5.0. Less complicated than 3 0, 3.5 and 4E.

Not sure this is what I meant. Mine was a question of simple and fast vs. simple and slow. Could a simple system be made more interesting if each roll of the die came with greater risks? Slowly depleting hp can feel like a slog but is that really the fault of simple mechanics? Slowly depleting hp through complex means doesn't seem all that much better. Perhaps speeding things up is the answer (as some have already suggested by lowering hp and increasing damage).

 

[jgsugden]

These threads are one of the reasons why I think we need more DM guidance that actually provides advice for DMs on running games, not just on rules. I've long thought there should be 5 D&D books: PHB (minus spells, a little guidance on story contribution expectations for players), MM, Magic Folio (Spells, Magic Items), DMG Rules, and DMG Guidance. DMG Guidance would cover storytelling, acting, handling players that present challenges, etc...)

D&D is a role playing game. Characters are playing characters in a story. The story has to be told well to keep it interesting - and that requires controlling things like tempo in the narrative.

If the combat is dragging - end it. Have the bad guys run away or surrender. Or, if necessary, give the PCs a way to easily end the combat via a McGuffin in the environment (a ceiling they can collapse, for example).

In the future, design every combat to add an interesting environmental quirk that makes the combat different from other combats. Are there elevated platforms that could be used? A lava pool? Quicksand? A Roper that the PCs want to stay out of the reach of? Then build in clocks. Something will happen during the combat. Either an extra wave of enemies will arrive, a key enemy will be trying to escape, or a ceremony will be completed, or the environment will change .... something that the PCs can be trying to beat.

These are the basic tools I try to incorporate when building combats to keep them different and engaging.

 

[Kromanjon]

DMG Guidance would cover storytelling, acting, handling players that present challenges, etc...

Honestly I've never seen any part of my rpg playing as acting. Storytelling, maybe. Now from what I've seen when DMGs do try to add how to handle different types of players it has a tendency to fall into som half baked pseudo psychology. Your milage may of course vary.

If the combat is dragging - end it. Have the bad guys run away or surrender. Or, if necessary, give the PCs a way to easily end the combat via a McGuffin in the environment (a ceiling they can collapse, for example).

But what if every combat is dragging? When the fifth ceiling has collapsed to end a combat the players might start wondering about the dungeons structural integrity.

In the future, design every combat to add an interesting environmental quirk that makes the combat different from other combats. Are there elevated platforms that could be used? A lava pool? Quicksand? A Roper that the PCs want to stay out of the reach of? Then build in clocks. Something will happen during the combat. Either an extra wave of enemies will arrive, a key enemy will be trying to escape, or a ceremony will be completed, or the environment will change .... something that the PCs can be trying to beat.

This is great advice but it is also great advice that can backfire. By simply placing a battle on a bridge a bunch of weird and exciting situations suddenly unlock. However adding interesting environments can also be the thing that slows the battle down further as it adds extra hurdles for the characters to overcome before they can start to whittle down their opponents hp. Some things, like a chasm for instance, might even lock some characters out of the fight all together.

 

[wedgeski]

No, I don't find combat tedious. 5E balances pacing and complexity quite well. If, as the DM, you have the time and energy to enrich the experience with interesting terrain, atmospheric factors, battlefield objectives, etc., all the better. I have also accepted that, at anywhere except the extreme low levels, challenging the party means introducing them to scarily powerful opponents. It certainly keeps them on their toes.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yes. "Combat" in 5e is tedious & that is because it's designed for a white room one off combat focus group-able test scenario that doesn't reflect how combat in actual campaigns plays out.

D&d PCs are designed to operate on a attrition based model that quickly falls to a 5mwd when there is not enough combat to adequately power the attrition treadmill. The GM can crank the difficulty of encounters to move that treadmill faster, but without even getting into class specific problems∆ caused by that, that's a fool's errand with quickly diminishing returns as new problems are created due to 5e removing so many of the mechanical hooks like vancian casting that made "we need to go all out to survive" mattering less and less without tedious encounters

It didn't need to be that way, but that is what 5e enshrined at every level of design that it could. Unfortunately 3024:chose to preserve or exacerbate as much of that as it could.

∆some builds and classes win big, others lose big and it makes a mess for the GM to solve in a sysstem with few if any guardrails on taking those gm efforts to slingshot extreme CharOp even beyond the well known lolbroke feat/multi class combos wotc all but actively promotes as intended normal play.