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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 9789813" data-attributes="member: 2067">I know "tradition" is a popular scapegoat 'round these parts, but honestly it's just differing priorities. While nuking traditional disabling effects would certainly tighten up the combat loop, it would weaken other areas of the game, and those areas are vital, too. D&D is destined to do its best to serve many chefs, because the broadest possible appeal of the game is not necessarily the one with the tightest possible combat engine. This will always be a bee in some folks' bonnet. Which is why everyone has their Fantasy Heartbreaker, more tuned for what they personally want out of D&D, while dropping things that make D&D broadly appealing. Simplicity and the modularity of the subsystems are similar: these two elements make parts of the game stronger, as much as they compete with, say, folks who really want to lean into strategic min/maxing. Tradition - including traditional disabling effects - has a constructive role to play in actively making the game more fun for some players.Thanks, man! Means a lot coming from you. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I would love D&D to get better at designating different kinds of encounters mechanically (boss encounters definitely being one of the biggest things). Though, I'm a little skeptical of the idea that DMs these days tend to focus on specific encounters. There might be a bit of design leading play here, where a DM might want something with a bigger scope, but the game's design clearly leans into encounters, so the DM does, too. There's not much ink spilt in the core books about how to make an interesting and balanced dungeon, or how to use game systems to branch and fork your narrative and challenge your party with a story-based loss that has some teeth but isn't a fun-stopper. There's a lot about how to make an interesting and balanced encounter, though. Complaints about "grind" feel like complaints about an encounter focus to me. About stopping the rest of the game to engage with the combat loop that's not super engaging to you for an hour. For instance:For some groups it really is a problem! 3 rounds of combat is a long time to spend in combat when combat is as detailed as it is in 5e. And when you're in combat, some of the more impactful decisions you can make as a character in a narrative are on pause while you make smaller decisions about how to whittle down enemy resources when you know the system is set up to help you win. I honestly don't think folks (overall) were happier with a system that stuck to one lane. The broad attempt to serve enough playstyles "well enough" is part of why I think D&D is the thing that it is. Focus on any one playstyle might make a tighter game, but it would be a less popular one.</blockquote>

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