D&D General Why are we fighting?

[Hussar]

I believe that some contributing factors are some of the game design:

•using HP as a primary way to scale monsters
•going back toward 1 creature of a CR against a party

I know there was some backlash against 4E, but I don't understand why 5E would keep the HP bloat (bad) from 4E while also getting rid of the better encounter-design philosophy of 4E.

I think the opposite choice should have been made: less numbers bloat; keep the idea that one standard creature is roughly equal to one PC.

I ranther thought they had lowered the ho bloat considerably. 5e combats generally last about three rounds.

That’s not bloat.

Which also makes running tricky since there’s almost no time most of the time for the baddies to go from, hey maybe we should run to ah shucks I’m dead.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I'm another data point for "I rarely encounter this issue." Sometimes fights drag, but that's usually when no one can roll above a 9 for several rounds, which is an unintended result of using dice at all. Sometimes I play with someone who can't make a decision so their turns drag the whole thing to a halt, but that's true in any turn-based game.

So nothing about this feel particular to dnd combat. If anything, I think I've seen more combat slogs in systems designed to counter this like 4e of PF2, when people don't know the system so make a lot of inefficient choices, and/or the dm builds encounters that end up sloggy because they don't understand yet how log things take to resolve or how certain monster defenses actually affect combat pace. But again, that's more about the lack of system mastery that a condemnation of the system per se.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Yes, I'm not really sure how DMs are falling into presenting boring fights in the first place.

1) The game making you feel obligated to run waaaay too many fights per session or per level.
2) The game making monsters super boring most of the time and BA encouraging you to keep reusing those boring monsters as you level.
3) The game clinging to resource attrition so later fights take place with PCs who have been rendered boring by that attrition.
4) The game no longer really encouraging holistic encounter design where the location matters
5) The game putting the dice in charge, meaning when the party runs cold, its gets boring.

 

[Andvari]

I love building encounters like this. For example, a fight with ogres with axes in a forest. Anyone that misses while a tree is in reach might hit the tree instead, and if they did enough damage (like if they were an ogre or something) they would fell the tree, potentially hitting someone on the field and creating hindering terrain.

10% chance the tree is a treant.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Yes, I'm not really sure how DMs are falling into presenting boring fights in the first place. All the fights except one in my session the other night were rolled right off a random table and none of them were boring. (Separately - 2 hellhounds; 8 harpies; 1 manticore. Staged encounters were swarms of bats and a half-dragon basilisk. The PCs engaged the bats socially instead of fighting.)

They forget to add terrain, which makes fights kinda same-y, especially if (for perfectly valid narrative reasons) there's a lot of the same creature type to fight.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I know there was some backlash against 4E, but I don't understand why 5E would keep the HP bloat (bad) from 4E while also getting rid of the better encounter-design philosophy of 4E.

I think the opposite choice should have been made: less numbers bloat; keep the idea that one standard creature is roughly equal to one PC.

yeah if they were going to take one leave one I would think leave the HP bloat take the monster/encounter designs

 

[billd91]

I agree with your assessment here. I suspect Matt is the one who is finding combat in 5th ed. is boring and assuming, or projecting, that sentiment to the majority of the D&D community.

I don't think he's projecting it to the majority of the D&D community. He's saying many people feel combat is kinda boring. And I'm sure it's true. There are many people who feel that way, many people who don't, and we don't really know the proportion between them and the overall community.

Thank you! When I saw the video title, I was expecting an edition war bit, so I was surprised when... Actually, maybe it was an edition war bit.

I think he laments the relative simplicity of the monsters and the things they can do compared to some of 4e's design. But, as he points out, he's working on it from a 3pp perspective.

Because when they tried to make it not-boring, a portion of fans got so upset about everyone consistently having interesting things to do, they actively slagged the edition for its entire run and at least a decade thereafter.

Now THAT's an edition war response.

So nothing about this feel particular to dnd combat. If anything, I think I've seen more combat slogs in systems designed to counter this like 4e of PF2, when people don't know the system so make a lot of inefficient choices, and/or the dm builds encounters that end up sloggy because they don't understand yet how log things take to resolve or how certain monster defenses actually affect combat pace. But again, that's more about the lack of system mastery that a condemnation of the system per se.

Yeah, I thought we experienced a lot of slog in 4e. Granted, we played early, got fed up, and ditched early before they supposedly "fixed" the math. But at the time there were many people who were finding 4e combat a boring slog for some of the same reasons - tons of hit points on certain monster roles, running out of interesting powers and spamming the at wills, etc.

But I think the rest of MC's points about having an objective other than hit point obliteration are good ones.

I'd also add that there's a DM/player behavioral component to the blame here. Are the players ready for their turns? Are they paying attention to the other players on their turns or just tuning back in on their own turns? Is the DM too focused on the mechanics of their NPCs/Monsters that they aren't doing anything else interesting other than marching through the squares, counting up ranges, and rolling hits/damage, or are they trying to make the monster behavior interesting?

 

[iserith]

1) The game making you feel obligated to run waaaay too many fights per session or per level.
2) The game making monsters super boring most of the time and BA encouraging you to keep reusing those boring monsters as you level.
3) The game clinging to resource attrition so later fights take place with PCs who have been rendered boring by that attrition.
4) The game no longer really encouraging holistic encounter design where the location matters
5) The game putting the dice in charge, meaning when the party runs cold, its gets boring.

For #1, nobody reads the DMG anyway so I'm not sure this is a serious problem outside of forum discussions where people are looking up the rules to quote at each other to prove a point. That said, I do run the recommended number of encounters between rests, on average, and it's never boring. This also touches on #3, where attrition makes fights more difficult and thus, in my view, less boring since the tension is higher. It's also on the players to conserve their resources in the face of anticipated attrition so this can't really be a DM problem.

As for #2, I'm not sure the monster on its own makes for a boring encounter. It's what the DM does with them. A tool is only as good as its user. And #5, if the party goes a round without making progress, that just raises tension since the monsters now get another shot at chewing up their resources. Some games like D&D 4e have damage-on-a-miss, but I haven't missed it in D&D 5e (where it still effectively exists for certain spells).

There are a lot of resources in the DMG which talk about setting/terrain (#4), but again, nobody reads it. To @jmartkdr2's point, I've certainly been in plenty of games where the map clearly has terrain on it, but the DM doesn't enforce any of that terrain's effects (or use it to the monster's advantage). It's purely decorative, and a missed opportunity in my view.

 

[overgeeked]

They forget to add terrain, which makes fights kinda same-y, especially if (for perfectly valid narrative reasons) there's a lot of the same creature type to fight.

The mere existence of terrain doesn't solve the problem. The players then have to interact with that terrain. In my experience most players refuse to. Because unless the referee is incredibly generous, their normal attacks and spells will always be better than whatever environmental effect they might get out of interacting with the terrain. At best, they'll maybe hide behind cover for a round or two, but that extends rather than shortens combat.

Combat becomes a slog once the victory of one side becomes a foregone conclusion. The idea is finding ways to shorten the time between when the fight is no longer contentious and the actual end of the combat. Combine that with making fights generally more inherently interesting unto themselves by introducing goals other than simply slaughtering all the bad guys.

 

[Argyle King]

I ranther thought they had lowered the ho bloat considerably. 5e combats generally last about three rounds.

That’s not bloat.

Which also makes running tricky since there’s almost no time most of the time for the baddies to go from, hey maybe we should run to ah shucks I’m dead.

I think that's true at lower levels or if you're comparing only to 4E.

However, increasing HP is still very much a primary part of making creatures more difficult.

I've thankfully had a good DM in my usual face-to-face group, and they're comfortable with doing a lot of their own monster design.

But, by the book, a lot of high-level challenges still tend toward being bags of HP.

There's also a lack of granularity when it comes to resistance in 5E. So, a lot of creatures effectively do have more HP. The game simultaneously says that magic items shouldn't be assumed and designs monsters using a very binary method of determining resistance (which hinges upon having or not having items).

My opinion is that I would have rather kept the 4E-style encounter design (with more creatures and more moving parts,) but went with numbers for building monsters (and the 'physics engine' of the game world) that are more similar to older editions of D&D.