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

[clearstream]

I simply stated that people can't overstate how much brand recognition D&D has and how much it has helped them.

To pin down the connection to the topic at hand. Did brand recognition help the D&D game designers to make combat fun? Or did brand recognition mean they didn't need to make combat fun?

 

[Lanefan]

The point is that the game isn't 'broken' or a 'mess'.

Well, I disagree; which is why I haven't adopted 5e as my system of choice.

5e has some good ideas. It also has some bad ones, many of them carried forward from 3e or 4e, and in the end is messy enough that to fix it such that it's something I'm willing to run would simply take more work than I'm willing to do.

 

[John R Davis]

Well, I disagree; which is why I haven't adopted 5e as my system of choice.

5e has some good ideas. It also has some bad ones, many of them carried forward from 3e or 4e, and in the end is messy enough that to fix it such that it's something I'm willing to run would simply take more work than I'm willing to do.

Thing is you can disagree with something, and be clearly wrong. It's not a mess. Millions of people play it a week. They wouldn't if it's a mess. People tweak things. But it's not a mess, otherwise people in this day and age would abandon it. It's not perfect, buts it good, and we shouldn't lose that goodness in pursuit of the perfect. If it wasn't good people wouldn't play it.

 

[Lanefan]

You've managed to slip in optimisers in every single issue that's I've discussed on these boards in the last two weeks. Optimisers are not the evil you make them to be.

At some tables and-or in some gaming communities they certainly can be; and if the poster you were replying to is used to such non-optimising tables/communities than IMO it's fair comment.

 

[Lanefan]

Thing is you can disagree with something, and be clearly wrong. It's not a mess. Millions of people play it a week. They wouldn't if it's a mess.

People considered 1e a mess back in the early 80s and millions of people played it every week notwithstanding.

People tweak things. But it's not a mess, otherwise people in this day and age would abandon it. It's not perfect, buts it good, and we shouldn't lose that goodness in pursuit of the perfect. If it wasn't good people wouldn't play it.

Thing is, each edition has had good aspects and bad aspects; and each redesign throws out some good aspects in attempts to fix the bad ones.

5e is hella popular, and I think that's great. I'm not sold, however, on the notion that its popularity is necessarily due to how good its design is.

 

[ad_hoc]

As opposed, I think encounter building is a mess. They had something really, really good and functional with 4E but they got rid of it. And 5E is, in my opinion, one of the worst encounter building experience I've had. Almost every element you're supposed to base yourself off to judge an encounter is precise. All the encounters I design are technically deadly, but they're just the right fit for my group (who are not optimisers in any way). I have to go over deadly to push them seriously.

And I think it's great. It's one thing to say it doesn't work for you and it's another to say it's "a mess" in general.

Most people use it just fine. Your trouble with it doesn't mean that it is bad or doesn't work for most people.

This one might be more a bit more contentious. But I think the action, bonus action system is really bad. In its essence it's pretty simple. But it causes much more question and incomprehension from new players (in my experience, of course) than almost any part of the system. It works. But it could be much better I think. In a game where one of the most, if not the most impactful element of balance is the amount of actions that both sides have (action economy), it's a weird concept to have a bonus action that you can't really use, except in situations where you have an ability that calls for it. And it feels really bad not to use it because you can't? Like, you really ought to take something you can cast as a bonus action.

I agree that I'm not huge on the action + bonus action system. Mearls has lamented that he doesn't like it either. In the end it ends up being 2 actions with fussiness added in.

What I don't think is that this is a major issue. It could be better but it isn't catastrophic. I don't think it makes the game a mess and it doesn't majorly impact my fun.

 

[Marc_C]

It depends greatly on the DM to provide challenging tactics and interesting locations. Otherwise it's extremely predictable what each player will do with any D&D edition.

That is why I prefer the random stunt system of Fantasy AGE for combat. Makes encounters less predictable.

 

[John R Davis]

FA and it's derivatives are great fast furious fun games.....but crazy frustrating if you don't roll a double in the combat!!

 

[Malmuria]

So I have seen twice in as many days, folks mention how "combat isn't that fun," which reinforced an occasional claim I have seen on these boards that confuses me, that combat is "a slog" or "a waste of time" (the latter usually going along with with discussion of random encounters or combats not directly related to achieving a narrative goal of an adventure).

When D&D combat is not fun for me, it is because it is a "Everyone lines up and fights" kind of combat or a combat where one or two optimized tactics are all that is needed to succeed and it goes on too long - though in generally I do like a longish combat (well, long by standards of what I gather other people think is long).

Thing is you can disagree with something, and be clearly wrong. It's not a mess. Millions of people play it a week. They wouldn't if it's a mess. People tweak things. But it's not a mess, otherwise people in this day and age would abandon it. It's not perfect, buts it good, and we shouldn't lose that goodness in pursuit of the perfect. If it wasn't good people wouldn't play it.

This topic came in part out of the thread about how many encounters per adventuring day people have. There I suggested that one of the reasons many people don't have 6-8 medium encounters per adventuring day is because that does not make for entertaining gameplay. That is, there is a something of a gap between how designers imagined people might play when they designed the CR system and XP budgets, and how a lot of people actually play, which perhaps leans more toward what critical role does: lots of story and free form RP, a few high stakes fights per day (where, crucially, the DM has put thought into designing the encounter). I'm not sure that the random-encounter style of play, the default in early editions, is all that popular now, and part of the reason is that they take too long to resolve and don't add to the story that people want to develop, i.e., are not fun.

Critical role and other popular actual plays are really instructive when it comes to how the game is actually played. It suggests that what many people find compelling is OC character creation, helped by 5e's simple but evocative class design and streamlined resolution mechanic for most checks (roll d20, add bonus).

Similarly, I think the existence of Pathfinder 2e and the various 3rd party 5e products (Level Up, various monster books) suggests that involved, varied tactical gameplay across all levels is a niche that core 5e does not do well, hence creating markets for other games or for supplements.

 

[John R Davis]

Yeah Malmuria. Loads different and effective RPGs out there to suit all tastes. If you don't find game A to tick your boxes, try game B. I play a lot, and lots different games dependent on what I'm in the mood for.