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

[AlViking]

The only real way to mitigate this in 5E seems to be Safe Haven resting. You simply can’t take a long rest outside of a designated safe have and short rests take 8 hours and are interruptible.

With the 2024 rules, rolling initiative, taking damage casting a spell other than a cantrip interrupts a short or long rest. One hour of walking or strenuous activity disrupts a long rest.

 

[tetrasodium]

With the 2024 rules, rolling initiative, taking damage casting a spell other than a cantrip interrupts a short or long rest. One hour of walking or strenuous activity disrupts a long rest.

Trouble with lifting that up as a solution is that literally any interruption just leads to "ok and now we are going to take a long/short rest like we just tried". Cite only one in a day or whatever & it crashes into either "well we didn't finish one so it's still not even one" or "ok we will wait N hours & then take a long/short rest". Bring up dwindling rations?... Who cares, PCs can carry an absurd amount of those and will be sure to do so if ever stopped like this even once.

It's the obvious result of 5e's trivialized all or nothing explosive and total rest design that completely shields the party from the risk of ending a rest worse off than they started. All they need to do is keep at it knowing that the GM's only options with any weight are fiat and adversarial execution.

 

[Shadowdweller00]

It's the obvious result of 5e's trivialized all or nothing explosive and total rest design that completely shields the party from the risk of ending a test worse off than they started. All they need to do is keep at it knowing that the GM's only options with any weight are fiat and adversarial execution.

On top of 1) making rests exceptionally difficult to prevent via spells like the ritual-cast Tiny Hut and 2) the nearly complete removal of ANY lasting adverse condition. So that there's essentially no stakes.

It truly and honestly disgusts me.

 

[overgeeked]

On top of 1) making rests exceptionally difficult to prevent via spells like the ritual-cast Tiny Hut and 2) the nearly complete removal of ANY lasting adverse condition. So that there's essentially no stakes.

It truly and honestly disgusts me.

Right. Which is why you use safe-haven rests and ban spells like tiny hut. It’s not problem solved in one go, but it gets you most of the way there.

 

[MGibster]

Which would be fine if the PCs' resources were in fact expendable and able to be chipped away at, but the concept is undermined by a) their ability to recover those resources far too quickly and easily and b) some of those resources never diminishing (e.g. cantrips).

This is part of what makes combat tedious to me. When you can't even whittle away resources with a minor encounter, what's even the point of the fight? During the last session, the PCs were level four, and one of the characters attempted to disengage without taking the action so three creatures took a reaction to hit him. I scored two critical hits and managed to get him close to zero hit points, but in the next round he was nearly at full again, and by the time the fight was over the PCs weren't really down anything meaningful. I suppose I could just add more encounters if I want to whittle down resources, but that would just be dull.

 

[overgeeked]

This is part of what makes combat tedious to me. When you can't even whittle away resources with a minor encounter, what's even the point of the fight? During the last session, the PCs were level four, and one of the characters attempted to disengage without taking the action so three creatures took a reaction to hit him. I scored two critical hits and managed to get him close to zero hit points, but in the next round he was nearly at full again, and by the time the fight was over the PCs weren't really down anything meaningful. I suppose I could just add more encounters if I want to whittle down resources, but that would just be dull.

Yeah. That's why the DMG suggests 6-8 encounters between long rests, so the PCs' resources are actually taxed. Or using something like safe-have rests to stretch the adventuring day out more.

Another way to go is to make the fights inherently interesting unto themselves rather than worry about draining resources. Something like Pointy Hat's Battlefield Actions would work great.

 

[AlViking]

Trouble with lifting that up as a solution is that literally any interruption just leads to "ok and now we are going to take a long/short rest like we just tried". Cite only one in a day or whatever & it crashes into either "well we didn't finish one so it's still not even one" or "ok we will wait N hours & then take a long/short rest". Bring up dwindling rations?... Who cares, PCs can carry an absurd amount of those and will be sure to do so if ever stopped like this even once.

It's the obvious result of 5e's trivialized all or nothing explosive and total rest design that completely shields the party from the risk of ending a rest worse off than they started. All they need to do is keep at it knowing that the GM's only options with any weight are fiat and adversarial execution.

I never said it was a complete solution, just how they recommend handling it now. When I run a game I just figure out reasons they can't take a short rest but I could just as easily see limiting them to one short rest per day or even between long rests.

I think there are many ways to balance things like rests but that might be a separate thread. If you want a truly gritty game modern DnD probably isn't it.

 

[tetrasodium]

I never said it was a complete solution, just how they recommend handling it now. When I run a game I just figure out reasons they can't take a short rest but I could just as easily see limiting them to one short rest per day or even between long rests.

I think there are many ways to balance things like rests but that might be a separate thread. If you want a truly gritty game modern DnD probably isn't it.

That bold bit is still the problem though. Rest rules themselves set the bar so low the only reasons are effectively "will our gm used fiat to one off change resting rules this rest or will they just troll us into submission with an endless chain of pointless interruptions'.the rules there set the stage for the GM having a choice a choice between failure and creating frustration when it comes to inappropriate rests.

 

[Lanefan]

Another and IMO much better option is to make it that resting doesn't get you everything back, most particularly hit points, but instead restores just a part of what you're down.

And sure, if you're only down 6 h.p. out of 70 then an overnight rest should get you back to full. If, however, you're at 6 out of 70 then no way should an overnight rest get you back to full. In my system it's 10%, so someone with maximum 70 h.p. would get back 7 from an overnight rest while someone with maximum 20 would get back 2 - the very specific intent of this is to make it that everyone rests back at the same relative rate meaning those with lots of h.p. don't get hosed. This could work in 5.xe as well.

And for a vague handwave at lingering injuries, if you rolled a death save since your last long rest your next long rest doesn't get you back anything.

Corollary to this is the removal of at-will healing of any kind such that magical or other healing always costs a resource of some sort (a spell, a consumable item, whatever), which at least sometimes makes the use of that resource a conscious choice vs using it for other things.

 

[GrimCo]

One solution is - don't even bother. That's what i do. Dropped trash encounters. Only fights party get's into is meaningful fights and fights that make sense in setting. No more bunch of small encounters whose only purpose is to force players to spend some slots or other abilities and then force them to burn recovery abilities, so i can just force same expenditure again trough few encounters. That attrition game gets boring super fast. I activly encourage players to not spare resources "just in case there is bigger fight around corner". There isn't one. I telegraph trough descriptions if the fight is against someone important or against minions.

Now, to avoid combat being tedious and grindy, I tailor encounters. I know what's average my group can dish out per round if they go nova and if they don't go nova. So, "small" encounter is one where they can beat it with only their non expendable resources, and monsters have enough hp to survive one round of average damage, do their cool stuff once, then die round two. For "big" encounters- same thing, but they can survive average "nova", act once, die round two. If party rolls well (crits, above damage) they sometimes put them down in round one. Well, so what. At least they feel awesome cause they rolled super well. Either way, they get to use all their cool toys, feel like big heroes and have fun. If they fight big bad and maul him round one before it even gets to act, who cares. High fives and GG for all.

Other thing i do, is avoid cleanups. Sometimes luck isn't there. People roll low, lot's of misses, lots of low damage rolls. Once they drop opponents to 30% ( either in number of opponents or in number of total enemy hp), i zoom out from combat as a minigame and turn it into narration game. I tell them what oponents are doing ( fleeing, surrendering, some may fight to death) and then players just tell me what they do. No dice rolls needed. I know they will win, they know they will win. No point in dragging it on for few extra round just so they can confirm win trough dice.