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

[KYRON45]

I think combat is only boring if you're bored with combat.
D&D is mostly about combat, if you don't like combat D&D might not be the system for you. And that's ok.

 

[mrpopstar]

I personally find combat to be a bit tedious.

I'm story focused and take great care to build combats that are dynamic—intentionally using terrain, opportunities for cover, constant movement, etc. Theater of the mind is most engaging to me, and I'm careful to describe the combat from every angle through the eyes of the character whose turn it is.

Coming from that practice and perspective, I wish for more abstraction in the interest of expediency. A more efficient approach to managing the ever-changing, constantly shifting melee would be much appreciated.

Currently, all of the little bits are great on paper but translate to slog—however slight—once initiative is rolled. I like the premise of combat being its own mini game. I just wish the mini game were more mini.

The Champion's attack for damage, attack for damage, attack for damage, attack for damage, is just fine by me, so long as there are chairs to wield, tables to mount, chandelier's to swing from, etc., etc.

 

[Minigiant]

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...)

Personally I don't know how much that would help without actually game design


Because much of the tedium could from the game designers attempting to meet the aesthetic goals of themselves and their community. So actually play experience takes a hit.

I mean 5es tedium comes from

1. Bounded accuracy bloating HP
2. Bounded Accuracy forces PCs to grow heavily horizontally in combat (bonus actions, weapon mastery, feats,)
3. A rejection of statblock spells causing spells to be easy to forget complex blocks of text
4. Desire to make warriors interesting by giving them more stuff
5. Desire to keep warriors from being overshadowed by casters by giving them more stuff

I mean, if 5e AC went from 10 to 30 base instead of 10 to 20, you could speed up turns just by making warriors just more accurate and heavy and medium armor have higher AC.

 

[TheSword]

Yes. "Combat" in 5e is tedious & that is because it's designed for an 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. System 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.

It’s interesting. I’ve been running my party through Undermountain in WFRP 4e, and the bizarre thing is there is no need to rest. There aren’t per day powers and character can stitch up wounds with Heal Checks - up to a point. It’s strange to think that resting could be driven simply by being tired and not a need to refresh resources.

That said I think that Balanced and Fun are two separate things. It’s possible for combat to be a blast simply because the character choices are I alignment.

 

[GrimCo]

Combat can be tedious slog or can be fast and furious. It largley depends on group ( how well people know their characters, how well they synergise together ) and on DM's encounter design. One thing you can't control is dice. I had sessions where everyone rolled piss poor in medium level games ( lv 7-9). Bunch of misses, hits that do barley above minimum damage, hits that turn into misses by use of spells/abilities. Combats dragged on and on.

In high level games, combat got tedious when i tried using waves of opponents. At one point it was something like 15 vs 5. It works as a challenge, but it takes long time to finish. So now, i mostly just skip trash encounters ( those that only serve to eat away portion of pc-s abilities). Use 1-2 monsters, 1-2 encounters per session and just tell players to go nova hard from round 1. They have a blast using their most powerful abilities, combat is rather quick ( even for lv 15-20 characters) and everyone's happy.

 

[Stormonu]

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.

If you needed to buy 5 base books to play D&D, I'd quit - and I think a lot of people would follow on that.

Hell, plenty of games systems get by with one book. We've gotten spoiled by the number of options that D&D has in its "core" rules, sometimes I think to the detriment of onboarding new folks.

 

[SkidAce]

There are good reasons for HP bloat, such as giving a buffer for climactic monsters so they don’t drop before they can do something scary/threatening/cool. It preserves tension.

I read the "climatic" as a geography/environment adjective, and was really confused at first.

That's on me...lol.

 

[el-remmen]

I have not found 5E combat tedious and rarely, if ever, have I run into the issue of it being a slog. Perhaps ironically, however, combats in my games tend to take significantly longer (in terms of number of rounds) than most people on here describe, and unless a fight is very obvious lopsided, we can rarely tell what the outcome is going to be until it is concluded or within a round or two of concluding.

I am also blessed with two groups who are very engaged in what is going on during combat, even when it is not their turn and are usually ready to go with their turn (even our slowest player, who we sometimes chide, seems faster than many folks here describe turns taking).

That said, the version of weapon mastery I will be incorporating into my homebrew rules (on a trial basis) limits their use to once per turn to keep them from slowing things down - and who can get one and how many is also severely limited. On the other hand, we've introduced other crunchy bits like diagonal movement and the potential dangers of shooting at an enemy engaged with in melee an ally.

On the other other hand, we've haven't played past 10th level much (part of why my homebrew rules cut off leveling at 10th and re-adds versions of some higher level abilities to the lower levels).

 

[Hexmage-EN]

When I play D&D I find that the amount of time I wait for my turn to come back up is most important to whether I enjoy a combat, so as both a player and DM I pride myself on resolving my turn as quickly as possible. To do that I've found that a custom user interface that puts all the needed information in one place is better than what is presented by default.

As a player I format my own character sheet like a monster statblock, with general info at top, followed by traits, actions, bonus actions, reactions, and items. I firmly believe that the default D&D character sheet should be formatted this way for ease of use. I also keep a card of potential routines each turn, such as:

• Action. Dagger. +7. 1d4+4. Bonus Action: Disengage.
• Action: Dagger w/ Sneak Attack. 1d4+3d6+4. Bonus Action: Disengage.
• Action: Shortbow +7. 1d6+4. Bonus Action: Dash.
• Bonus Action. Steady Aim. Action: Shortbow w/ Sneak Attack. +7. 1d6+3d6+4.

When playing a spellcaster I make sure to have the text of the spells either printed off or saved to my phone.

As a DM, I have all statblocks either printed off or easily accessible on my phone along with a sheet of pre-rolled damage results for every opponent's attacks that I check off in sequence. In terms of dice I generally only need two d20 for rolling attacks and saves, using a dice roller app on my phone for anything unexpected that comes up. I also have small cards with a monster's name and AC on both sides that I drape over the DM screen in initiative order, with the side facing me having additional reminders and a pre-determined initiative roll. For keeping track of status conditions I also have rings to place around maps and minis and small tabs I can affix to the cards to remind both players and myself what condition is effecting who.

All of these things have improved my games and are more impactful in speeding up combat. I firmly believe it is the user interface (and sometimes the user) rather than the rules themselves that are the problem in making a combat feel slow, especially since 2024 has pruned a lot of the unnecessarily wordy "natural language" that made it more difficult to find game mechanics.

I also only use the physical books for reference out of game. Having to thumb through a book to hunt down needed information slows down the game no matter what side of the table it's on. As a DM I take notes from whatever book I'm using, and if I can't recall a specific detail from an adventure book I make something up instead to keep things moving rather than force everyone to wait on me.

 

[tetrasodium]

It’s interesting. I’ve been running my party through Undermountain in WFRP 4e, and the bizarre thing is there is no need to rest. There aren’t per day powers and character can stitch up wounds with Heal Checks - up to a point. It’s strange to think that resting could be driven simply by being tired and not a need to refresh resources.

That said I think that Balanced and Fun are two separate things. It’s possible for combat to be a blast simply because the character choices are I alignment.

Yea of 4e's ADEU∆ design is a totally different beast with a totally different set of cost/benefit considerations that are separate from 5e's attrition model. Although I think that some of the more egregious & difficult for the GM to solve unaided wounds in 5e's attrition based design are directly blooming in the overly type efforts to shoehorn easily accessable ADEU player facing options into core§. Having those player facing hooks pulled so far that direction without even so much as a UA providing drop in optional/variant rules for the GM to drag their campaign's baseline back towards attrition with the shield of an official wotc blessing leads to a scenario where the trouble just gets worse or shifts to "I'm mad that Alice nerfed us, this can't possibly work [and I intend to prove it can't by doing nothing to adapt to her needs]"

∆ At will, Daily, Encounter, Universal

§ short rest classes, effectively all or nothing rests that encourage players to rest early often and try again if interrupted, neovancian casting, etc