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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jmarso" data-source="post: 8405940" data-attributes="member: 7032066">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.</blockquote>

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