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

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not saying that's the only option.

But suggesting "Make less money for a not guaranteed more money in the long term when your customer base is shout at you to don't do it and treating not to buy" is not likely to ever happen.

When D&D Next was announced, almost every single D&D celeb or notable figure not employed by WOTC was saying "New Edition Bad. I won't buy".

Maybe they shouldn't have replaced the core books and confused DDI users and 3pp publishers then. Either direction (new edition or no new edition) would IMO have been a better move than what they did.

 

[GrimCo]

New edition bad is usually - i invested money in books and don't wanna buy whole new set. Problem is, core books are bestsellers. So, compromise solution is - half edition with heavy emphasis on compatibility. But that compatibility comes at the cost of creativity. Design choices are heavily restricted by already published mechanics. Best they can do is tweak it here and there.

 

[Minigiant]

New edition bad is usually - i invested money in books and don't wanna buy whole new set. Problem is, core books are bestsellers. So, compromise solution is - half edition with heavy emphasis on compatibility. But that compatibility comes at the cost of creativity. Design choices are heavily restricted by already published mechanics. Best they can do is tweak it here and there.

Exactly.

People backed all these Kickstarters and bought these supplements. So they don't want the core systems changed so much. PF1 and the OSR live off people not wanting to give up old books.

So D&D's tedious combat evolves at a snails pace.

 

[SteveC]

Looking over the thread it's going in a lot of directions. If I may ask, tedious as opposed to what? What's the goal here? As someone who is playing a game right now at level 8, we're moving around, having dynamic combats, and the typical fight lasts about four rounds. Not sure what more is to be done with it. It's not Feng Shui, but what exactly is the goal here?

 

[tetrasodium]

Looking over the thread it's going in a lot of directions. If I may ask, tedious as opposed to what? What's the goal here? As someone who is playing a game right now at level 8, we're moving around, having dynamic combats, and the typical fight lasts about four rounds. Not sure what more is to be done with it. It's not Feng Shui, but what exactly is the goal here?

Why does an opinion on if combat is tedious or not need a comparison? Quite a few posts through the thread have detailed or quibbled over reasons why individual posters feel one way or the other if you were looking for more than yes or no.

 

[SteveC]

Why does an opinion on if combat is tedious or not need a comparison? Quite a few posts through the thread have detailed or quibbled over reasons why individual posters feel one way or the other if you were looking for more than yes or no.

It helps to understand what you mean. Tedious is a broad term that can mean a lot of different things. What are you looking for in D&D combat that you're not getting? The game Strike has several combat modes where one of them is a simple one-time D6 roll for a combat you're expected to win. That couldn't be further from tedious, but ... how useful is that in a game?

What does tedious combat mean to you? Does it take too long? Not have meaningful decisions? Always run the same way? All of the above? I don't know. Since I'm playing 5E right now, and I find combat not to be as exciting as my favorite games, but also capable of igniting my adrenaline when the DM say, "Roll for Initiative" I'm struggling to understand the issue.

Maybe it's not something easily described, in which case I can answer the question of the original poster and just say, "No." But that's not meaningful discussion, is it?

 

[Lanefan]

I remember there were some good OGL/d20 products including Spycraft, Mutants & Masterminds, and surprisingly Call of Cthulhu d20, plus a few others. But what I most strongly associate the OGL/d20 with is a glut of horrible, horrible products.

You certainly had to sort the wheat from the chaff, that's for sure.

That said, without the OGL neither wheat nor chaff would have been produced at all, so to me it's a pretty big net positive.

 

[Lanefan]

Looking over the thread it's going in a lot of directions. If I may ask, tedious as opposed to what? What's the goal here?

Not the OP but I'd guess the goals are to either a) speed up combat in terms of how much real-world time it takes and-or b) to make combat more dynamic and engaging and-or c) to make combat less predictable.

As someone who is playing a game right now at level 8, we're moving around, having dynamic combats, and the typical fight lasts about four rounds. Not sure what more is to be done with it.

If I may ask, how long in real time do these average-four-rounds combats take to play through?

I ask because if it's a situation where the combat only lasts four rounds but each of those rounds takes an hour to play through (I've seen and done these before in mid-high level 3e) it's still probably tedious.

It's not Feng Shui, but what exactly is the goal here?

Maybe the hope is to be able to fully play through three or four or five small combats in a single session (plus do other things like a bit of exploration and-or RP), as was-is often the case in old-school play even with a party of more than four characters.

 

[SteveC]

If I may ask, how long in real time do these average-four-rounds combats take to play through?

I ask because if it's a situation where the combat only lasts four rounds but each of those rounds takes an hour to play through (I've seen and done these before in mid-high level 3e) it's still probably tedious.

Good question. Typical combat length is about 30-45 minutes, with time between turns maybe 3-5 minutes. We have one player who is a little slow so varies. Out alternate campaign is 5E that moved from 3.5 to 5E (it's Shackled City) and combats in 3.5 at high level (we are 15 I think at last count) used to be 30 minutes long each, so you'd have long downtime. 5E pretty much fixed that to a much more reasonable level. For us, 5E fixed the issue of slow combats, so I can definitely see where the issue comes from in earlier editions.

Maybe the hope is to be able to fully play through three or four or five small combats in a single session (plus do other things like a bit of exploration and-or RP), as was-is often the case in old-school play even with a party of more than four characters.

I think that's pretty reasonable. That's what our level 8 game does. We typically do an "adventuring day" in a session, which has a strong mix of all encounter types.

I can 100% see where D&D combat can be seen as tedious, since I've played all of the editions. I'm just surprised to see people having the issue with 5E combat. And it's likely just how our group's dynamic works. I get the impression that a lot of the folks saying combat is slow are just trading attacks and throwing cantrips. But then I don't know, which is where the question comes from.

 

[MGibster]

Looking over the thread it's going in a lot of directions. If I may ask, tedious as opposed to what? What's the goal here? As someone who is playing a game right now at level 8, we're moving around, having dynamic combats, and the typical fight lasts about four rounds. Not sure what more is to be done with it. It's not Feng Shui, but what exactly is the goal here?

Tedious as opposed to being fun and exciting. The player characters in my current campaign have reached level five, and most combat encounters last 4-5 rounds. Keeping in mind all my players except one is using D&D Beyond off their phones instead of having a character sheet, here's how it goes. Player takes an action, often has to hunt through their character sheet for special abilities, modifiers, or spell effects, player takes a bonus action, and then tack on the effects of weapon mastery it takes a while to get through combat even if it ends after 4-5 rounds.

It's tedious because it feels pointless a lot of times. Given how easy it is to rest, there's very little meaningful resource management. It doesn't matter if they lost a few hit points in that last fight because or used some special ability because they can get a lot of it back with a short rest. It doesn't even matter how long they spend in the dungeon because food, water, and sources of light aren't even going to be a problem. I feel as though the game isn't designed to be challenging for players but rather allow them to engage in super heroics with little risk.

In the interest of fairness, some of these problems are exacerbated by my players. Of the six players, only three of them have a firm grasp of the rules and their character's ability. I think two of them don't even own a copy of the PHB. One of them had a completely different idea of what a Druid was all about in D&D, seemingly wanting what was essentially a Hunter from World of Warcraft. I can't blame that on the rules.