Howdy All,
Has anyone else found that player's don't really have all that many meaningful or interesting options/abilities during combat? (Obviously setting aside full time caster types). When COVID finally blows over I want to get back into in-person DMing but I can't help but feel like combat in 5e is way too 'bleh' and static.
Does anyone else feel this way? Has anyone else found a solution if they indeed see it as a problem?
My solution has a couple parts, most of which happen behind the DM's screen.
1. Multi-layered scenarios with interactable stuff
The biggest thing is presenting multi-layered encounter scenarios which signal to the players various things they might interact with (including terrain, but not limited to just terrain).
For instance, I had lasso-wielding cultists riding camels in my last session, and I narrated how when a PC was lassoed, the rider secured the other end to a "horn" on their saddle; the clever player leapt off the edge of a cliff with two cultists, letting them fall to their doom, but counting on lasso secured to that "horn" and the mass of the camel to stop them from falling, and it worked.
The idea being a bit more old school in that I'm trying to encourage my players looking to their own creativity & read of the situation first for their solutions, rather than instinctively looking to the rules and character sheet as their answers. Of course, that's a play style, so YMMV.
2. Encounters with objectives besides "kill all monsters"
If every fight boils down to a race to 0 hit points, then players are naturally going to get very good at that race, and focus on reliable strategies to get there. Instead, I like to include an interesting objective to most encounters.
One example from my last campaign (Tomb of Annihilation) was when the party was crossing Lake Luo by canoe; they'd just left behind a goblin village where there were lurking enemies to the goblin PC. En route, they were attacked by a swarm of mephits that was really dangerous. One of the players thought to check underneath the canoe and found a fetish of hair tied to the skeg of the canoe, the wizard PC recognized it as a component for a curse that they correctly deduced was drawing the mephits to them. By cutting loose the fetish, they ended what would otherwise have been a brutal encounter. Now, they were aware that the enemies of the goblin paladin were willing to break the tense truce that existed in the goblin village, and had evidence they could bring to the goblin queen.
A good DMing habit to get into is to look for opportunities to inject interesting objectives into encounters you haven't had time to plan out or otherwise seem headed toward a "kill all monsters" scenario. A few "kill all monsters" is ok, but IMO they should be the spice rather than the heart of the meal.
3. Say "yes" to creative tactics from players of martial PCs
This is a corollary to my house rule allowing casters to tweak their spells by upcasting them or expending Inspiration.
Especially with fighters, but more generally with martial-oriented PCs, I often let the player attach some kind of forced movement or some minor maneuver to their attacks.
Here's an example going back to that player from point #1 - the player wanted to tackle two cultists, essentially Shoving both of them, one 5 feet, the other 10 feet, and falling off the cliff edge with them. I took what I knew of the rules and that PC's capabilities (typically attacked as Action and bonus action grapple), and simply had him make two Shove attempts as their action + bonus action, and let him do the 10 foot shove since he was sacrificing themself (well, potentially, if the lasso were cut or the camel failed its Strength check). It was a very easy quick call, and accomplished exactly what the player was trying.
4. A few house rules
I've been playing with some house rules to attach special moves to weapons in the way Baldur's Gate 3 has "weapon skills." For example, a pinning shot made with a bow that does damage and also reduces/negates the target's speed. I'm still honing that add-on system (finding the design space that doesn't overlap existing features is trick), so it's nothing I'm yet ready to share, but the key is to add such house rules with 5e's simplicity in mind. You can go too far in this direction, and at that point you may be better off with a different game, so it's a balancing act.
. A DM can do the same thing and choose glass cannon monsters, or at least skew that direction. But I think it also works to just have more, smaller combats (potentially strung together) where each individual fight doesn't have time to get boring.
