D&D 5E Is D&D combat fun?

[Lyxen]

I have always loved combat in D&D, but more in some editions than others.

• I loved it in BECMI and AD&D, it was really fast and epic, we could fight across the back of dragons assaulting a fortress on the astral plane without any problem, and there were always surprises and epic actions.
• I liked it at start in 3e then got past level 5 and the joy died in me because it was soooooo slooooooowwwwww and so much time was spent adding silly modifiers and verifying rules and contradicting each other with other rules...
• I liked it at start in 4e, but then got to lvl 10 and realised that I'd seen everything that was to be seen, the next 20 levels were going to be exactly the same with bigger numbers (and they were when we played them), because we were totally grid bound with characters who could only function in that environment.

And now 5e is, quite frankly, the best ever. It's blindingly fast (no declaration then resolution, ToTM or simple conceptual maps if we want, no delays and interrupting each other), we can run 3 in an evening if we want even at high level, it merges well with other phases of the game with very minor additions, it's simple enough that even casual players have no problem with it, and at the same time it allows us to go crazy with new powers or items when we get them.

I understand the frustration of people who want more crunchiness in their combat, but honestly, there are editions (or other games like PF) much more suited to that.

 

[tetrasodium]

I personally find combat to be one of my favorite parts of the game, provided it's done right. Combat can be dull or fun depending on the players, the setup, and most importantly, the DM.

If everyone gets animated, excited, and looks to make combat cinematic and 'story telling' as much as role playing a conversation in town, it can be awesome. Vibrant descriptions, big arm movements, swinging from the chandeliers, and having the players describe their killshots in fun, gory detail can bring it alive. It's even more awesome when there is a genuine threat to the existence of the party, and the DM plays the monsters smart. Nothing ruins combat for me in a game more than the DM playing the monsters 'stupid' or going soft on tactics because he's afraid of killing a PC. There's no sense of accomplishment for the players when the DM deliberately nerfs the opponents and worse, lets the players see him doing it.

There is a 'sameness' to the mechanics and character builds of 5E that detracts from the overall experience, I think. The effort to create balance also creates a blandness of sorts. I currently play in two campaigns, one 5E and one 2E, and the combats in the 2E game are definitely more exciting, faster-resolving, often unbalanced (forcing creative, even sometimes desperate solutions), and always potentially deadly. Surviving them is Capital F Fun, because we know with that particular DM, the threat is real. If you die, you roll a new character using Method 1 and rejoin the party as a new guy at first level. Which just increases your risk as the campaign rolls on. Storytelling games are all well and good, but in my book, a DnD game of any stripe with no actual threat to the players is boring. This issue is one of the reasons I'm really looking forward to exploring the tweaks in LevelUp.

I think that ironically that bland sameiness is made worse by the decision to balance around no feats & no magic items while condensing feat chains into much more powerful feats . The power that used to come from those feats & magic items didn't go away though & just got baked into the base race/class/archetype. That shift to the character sheet before the GM is involved makes the bland sameiness even worse because the gm an't do anything to crank the levers or direct it for the needs of the group & campaign like in the past.

Magic items were once relatively easy to get with some limits& it's no coincidence that so many 3.5 builds/guides once tended to suggest or even go so far as to require a particular highly specific keystone magic item to even make the build work at the 300% level it was designed to operate at. That gave the GM a lot of ways they could control limit & redistrbute power Maybe a wis/str/con codzlila build needs a specific magic item, simply limiting it to the same body slot as needed for stat items of those three would allow the GM to give the hypothetical uber-codzilla to be a choice between unlocking that uber-codzlilla ability while dropping an important stat by 2 4 6 or theoretically even 8 points while a more grounded build that was just bit OTT might face choices between tough options like deciding between +4 attrib item for the stat they really need or +2 with a secondary bonus like +1 to an important save or the ability to sneak attack undead.

Take a couple "actually RAW doesn't allow that" builds like the well known coffeelock & more recent nuclear wizard but pretend they do work like CoDzilla & such once did. For purposes of discussion pretend they do work for a minute. They don't need any magic items, they get better with nearly any magic item & the designspace allocated to magic items is so narrow the GM has almost no room to create tough choices that don't raise the power level or just make it equally if not more powerful in a slightly different way the player is willing to accept.

All of that makes to ensure that the already overly simplified bland

Spoiler: rockemmsockemrobots

where the vast majority of the time the players just charge in knowing without a doubt that it doesn't really matter what they do in order to win with certainty any more than the red robot player in the video. Players go through the motions with no meaningful difference & almost no chance of surprise unexpected results combat after combat. Without tactical elements or meaningful resource attrition/depletion within the confines of of normal gameplay there is not even a need to choose between the pros & cons of using more powerful limited use abilities in most fights vrs using unlimited at wills to save the big guns till later just in case.

Add in things like an underused action economy & slapdash jarringly overused concentration as others have noted & players really don't even have the option to spice things up if things look like they might be bad. Without that option for the players the GM winds up with a narrowly restricted band between pointless snooze encounters, entirely predictable encounters, LOLdeadly encounters, & "wow I didn't expect to tpk you that fast"

 

[Umbran]

Some people prefer sushi but personally I'd rather have chicken fingers.

There's nothing wrong with either preference.

Yeah, but apparently, if they bother talking about preferences, they're being "edgy"? That's... certainly a position to take. I don't know how self-consistent it is, though.

So, I am asking: Do you find 5E combat fun?

I think the question is positioned so that we are apt to come to inaccurate conclusions from the answers.

As you noted, there are several aspects to combat - among them are the combat system itself, the encounter in which the system is used, and the adventure in which that encounter appears, and the people at the table, and their character designs. The question doesn't differentiate between these areas. So, if someone says they don't fid it fun, it can come off as a criticism of the system design, when it is quite possible the cause of dissatisfaction lies elsewhere.

During this pandemic, I have gotten to play a lot more than usual, because a number of disparate GMs I know decided to stand up games online. And the experience has reminded me the wide spectrum of possible combat experiences D&D can produce, such that I don't think that there is a general answer to the question.

D&D combat can be fun. But there are many ways for it to end up mediocre.

So what say you? And I'd love more detailed thoughts about your answer in the comments.

So, the thing for me is for the past year or so, in with three D&D games, the game with the combat that has overall and most consistently been the most entertaining has not been D&D, and hasn't been in a system most folks point to for "fun combat".

I can point to a stack of reasons why, both in the D&D and not-D&D games, only some of which are strictly about system.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I think it's more that we're seven years into the edition and people are getting bored. Gotta talk about something.

I have still a lot to explore.
I like combat in 5e because it is fast enough to resolve, so that in constraint time frames, there is still enough time to play the game.
And I never noticed your aforementioned
Hp diminishing slog.

 

[Shardstone]

It seems like a lot of the biggest critics sometimes should just play another game. They fail to realize that DnD is a game for general public (kids included) and 5E has objectively been the most popular edition by far. If they want something less structured or more complex, there are other editions and games that may suit them better. And every campaign I've ever been a part of hand waves stuff and makes custom rules.

"If you don't like it, go do something else" is an incredibly naïve and oversimplified view of what people are saying. People who want to change 5E want to do so because there's a lot in D&D they like, either be it the mechanics, brand, ideas, or so on that the game provides. The desire to modify and change the game, and to see the game evolve, should never be responded to with the equivalent of you telling us to sod off and play something else.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Come up with some interesting shops and shopkeepers, stuff that might happen, and some unique items for sale and a DM can easily keep the players entertained for an hour. Some stuff, yeah, it can be "you pick up a pack of 20 arrows," but adding more detail than that now and then can really bring the world to life.

I love social interaction. And shopping! :-D

And combat and exploration—in other games.

I generally find D&D combat to be fun. The times when it's un-fun, most of the causal factors for me are things that would make combat not fun in just about any system, such as too many players, too difficult/too easy all the time, people taking too long on their turn to decide what to do, not knowing the rules, etc.

 

[schneeland]

I voted "generally no", but that's not completely accurate. I think combat in D&D5 is ok. Most of the time not exceptionally great or interesting, but a nice change of pace and often at least mildly entertaining. And the ~25 years I have played D&D also mean that a) I am familiar enough with the rules to not require constant page flipping and b) the game contains a number of iconic monsters that I'm quite fond of - it's always nice to see a beholder, a mimic or mind flayer appear.
The real downside is that my dice seem to have learned about my lackluster enthusiasm for the current edition and now constantly roll bad in combat to retaliate

Closing note: I will still play D&D with the right people and I do enjoy the game. It's mostly that, if I have a choice, I'd rather play other games (some of them, like DCC, being basically D&D offspring, others, like Forbidden Lands, at least fairly close to old-school D&D).

 

[lingual]

"If you don't like it, go do something else" is an incredibly naïve and oversimplified view of what people are saying. People who want to change 5E want to do so because there's a lot in D&D they like, either be it the mechanics, brand, ideas, or so on that the game provides. The desire to modify and change the game, and to see the game evolve, should never be responded to with the equivalent of you telling us to sod off and play something else.

Yer right. I apologize. I do see quite a few "WOTC is bad at game design" posts and shouldn't equate those with honest feedback.

 

[Lanefan]

Nah, we don't need to discuss further. I'm sure there are exceptions like yours and my comment wasn't meant for anyone in particular.

Just curious about that 12% that think a significant portion of the game is boring and why they continue to play.

What has me more curious is in that recent long Exploration thread, the seemingly-high number of posters (way more than 12%!) who either found exploration boring or did their best to skip it using a version of 4e's get-to-the-action mantra.

After that, that only 12% find combat boring looks pretty good.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I have yet to see how the "action economy" is substantially different from any previous edition (except 4E when I have no real experience of, so cannot speak to) and seems to work just fine for my groups.

I haven't played previous editions, so I won't comment on them and how they're different from/similar to D&D 5e's action economy. However, I will say that D&D 5e's action economy problems are fairly major, like how villains can get swamped out by the shear amount of actions the party gets to do before they get to go again, how clunky it is to try to choose certain bonus action options over others and how it can take a long time to get your stuff working together, and how counterintuitive much of it is (like you can't Ready a Bonus Action, but can an Action, how you can cast a spell that has the casting time of a bonus action and an Action cantrip, but you can't cast a bonus action cantrip and a non-cantrip spell that has the casting time of an action, etc).

That's what I meant. Can you agree with any of this? Because, IMO, these are all problems that make combat less fun for my table, but could be fixed if WotC in 5.5e/or a backwards-compatible 6e did something like Pathfinder 2e's Three-Action System or something else to fix these issues.