I don't like the combat system

[HappyDaze]

So I've come to realize that I don't like the combat system of this game. It always comes down to battle map fights where decisions are made not by what makes sense in-character, but rather how to game the rules and the map. Stupid crap like two enemies (without blindsight) in heavy smoke having no issues with attacking one another, and movement through the smoke being totally unimpeded by the poor visibility (it's safe to Dash through an area when you can't see).

So, is there a way to play with a totally abstracted combat system? Not TotM--my players won't do it. I want to make all of combat as simple as the skill checks system. Just roll a few checks vs a DC and move on, because combat sucks and is a terrible drag in this system.

[Ignimortis]

So I've come to realize that I don't like the combat system of this game. It always comes down to battle map fights where decisions are made not by what makes sense in-character, but rather how to game the rules and the map. Stupid crap like two enemies (without blindsight) in heavy smoke having no issues with attacking one another, and movement through the smoke being totally unimpeded by the poor visibility (it's safe to Dash through an area when you can't see).

So, is there a way to play with a totally abstracted combat system? Not TotM--my players won't do it. I want to make all of combat as simple as the skill checks system. Just roll a few checks vs a DC and move on, because combat sucks and is a terrible drag in this system.

I mean, you could try to resolve combat by just making a few attack checks against arbitrary DCs. But what will you actually play, and why would you want to keep using D&D for that instead of some rules-light system that does the same thing, but with less restrictions?

[OldTrees1]

Just roll a few checks vs a DC and move on.

Have you considered doing a skill challenge?
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?616779-Skill-Challenges

The downside is you will want to calculate the probability of success. You can even have it with a gradient of success based on how many of the failures occurred.

[Unoriginal]

So I've come to realize that I don't like the combat system of this game. It always comes down to battle map fights where decisions are made not by what makes sense in-character, but rather how to game the rules and the map. Stupid crap like two enemies (without blindsight) in heavy smoke having no issues with attacking one another, and movement through the smoke being totally unimpeded by the poor visibility (it's safe to Dash through an area when you can't see).

So, is there a way to play with a totally abstracted combat system? Not TotM--my players won't do it. I want to make all of combat as simple as the skill checks system. Just roll a few checks vs a DC and move on, because combat sucks and is a terrible drag in this system.


If you want a combat system as simple as the skill system, sure, here's one:

-No one has HPs anymore. PCs get a number of Wounds equal to their level, Monsters get a number of Wounds equal to their CR (rounded up)

-Attack rolls are 1d20+stat mod+proficiency if the character is proficient in the weapon they're using.

-The DC to hit is determined by the DM, going Very Easy (5), Easy (10), Average (15), Hard (20), Very Hard (25) and Near Impossible (30). Don't roll if the attack would it anyway or if it's impossible to hit.

-Any attack that hits deal 1 Wound.


More seriously, though:


Sounds to me like you want to play a different game than 5e. Nothing wrong with that, though.


I mean, you could try to resolve combat by just making a few attack checks against arbitrary DCs. But what will you actually play, and why would you want to keep using D&D for that instead of some rules-light system that does the same thing, but with less restrictions?

This. You're asking us how to use a shovel to hammer nails, when there is a pile of hammers nearby.

[HappyDaze]

I mean, you could try to resolve combat by just making a few attack checks against arbitrary DCs. But what will you actually play, and why would you want to keep using D&D for that instead of some rules-light system that does the same thing, but with less restrictions?

My players only want to play D&D. I'd rather run/play just about any other system, and not all of them are rules light.

Between the crap combat rules--made worse by players that game the system--and the weak ruleset for everything else, there's not much that makes D&D appealing to me. I'm sick of spending time drawing out battle maps, setting up minatures, and then having fights which--while supposedly of Deadly difficulty--are cakewalks because 5e makes everything easy on players.

Eh...

Not wanting to rant. I'm serious when I say I'd rather combat was handled as a set of skill challenges. Is there such a mechanic already out there?

[kazaryu]

My players only want to play D&D. I'd rather run/play just about any other system, and not all of them are rules light.

Between the crap combat rules--made worse by players that game the system--and the weak ruleset for everything else, there's not much that makes D&D appealing to me. I'm sick of spending time drawing out battle maps, setting up minatures, and then having fights which--while supposedly of Deadly difficulty--are cakewalks because 5e makes everything easy on players.

Eh...

Not wanting to rant. I'm serious when I say I'd rather combat was handled as a set of skill challenges. Is there such a mechanic already out there?

tbh it sounds like something you need to bring up to your players.

why do they only want to play dnd?
what about a different version of dnd, one thats more you your taste?

and the ultimate question: what if this just isn't a group that you're compatible DM'ing for? nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with still being friends. but if you're not having fun running DnD for them, then why are you running DnD for them?

i don't mean to be condescending, im genuinely curious. i wanna help. Im just trying to gather more information and also approach the problem from what is, in my opinion, the correct angle.

[OldTrees1]

Not wanting to rant. I'm serious when I say I'd rather combat was handled as a set of skill challenges. Is there such a mechanic already out there?

Yes? I had posted it above (and repeated here). Just have them use an attack, ability check, or skill check as the skill check.


Have you considered doing a skill challenge?
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?616779-Skill-Challenges

The downside is you will want to calculate the probability of success. You can even have it with a gradient of success based on how many of the failures occurred.

What more do you want? I provided a wolframalpha link with an equation for calculating probability.

[HappyDaze]

Yes? I had posted it above (and repeated here). Just have them use an attack, ability check, or skill check as the skill check.



What more do you want? I provided a wolframalpha link with an equation for calculating probability.

I was replying to the other poster when you posted your response.

I'm looking over those options.

Will they actually create a risk of losing (that I find missing in D&D combat), or is it like most skill challenges where success is almost assured and at most just costs some resources to avert failure?

[Crucius]

For some exploration I once abstracted combat to make it faster because the fights weren't exactly meaningful (besides draining resources, there was no story relevance).

I designed it as such: the players roll an intitiative check, an attack roll (melee/ranged/weapon/spell whatever the player chooses) and a relevant skill check (for example perception against stealthy enemies, athletics in rocky terrain with lots of verticality etc). They can substitute one of these rolls for a save DC if they have one (spellcasting or monk ki save for example).

You then fill in all these values in a premade excel sheet, and see where the party average beats the enemy average: initiative vs initiative, attack rolls vs enemy AC and skill vs skill. These values have all been prerolled during prep to save on time.

Then finally you need to balance the CR of the 'combat encouter' vs the amount of resources the party spends on it (how many spell slots and from which level, rage, maneuvers, ki points etc.). I must admit I haven't gotten to this part yet so it's going to be pretty abstract, since the combat I did was the only one for the day so I didn't think resources were going to matter, and just gave them exhaustion if they failed to defeat them (it was a night ambush by some creatures), but I would assign a value to each resource (party dependent, that way you don't have to do it for every class feature ever, saves a lot of work) based on how many the PC has of that resource and whether it comes back on a short or long rest. Let's say they can invest up to three of these resources.

The encounter would deal a set number of potential damage, and each contest they win reduces that damage, and the amount of resources they commit further reduces that damage. After filling all this in the excel sheet should poop out a number which is damage each party member takes. You then tell a story around the theme of the encounter and the level of success of the party.

This requires one big prep session where you think of all the numerical values of the PC's resources and how they will impact the CR, but after that it can be used flexibly by changing the skill check and playing around with the CR and AC of the monsters in the encounters.

[OldTrees1]

I was replying to the other poster when you posted your response.

I'm looking over those options.

Will they actually create a risk of losing (that I find missing in D&D combat), or is it like most skill challenges where success is almost assured and at most just costs some resources to avert failure?

It has a risk of failing the skill challenge. What that failure means is up to you. How likely that failure is depends on the variables you choose.

Let's say 6 successes before 6 failures with a gradient of outcomes from 0 failures (easy victory) to 3 failures (party had to retreat with some resource depletion) to 6 failures (party was utterly defeated. This might be a TPK or following the captured PCs)

At most N failures for 6 successes:
0 failures: (p^6)
1 failures: (p^6)(7-6p)
2 failures: (p^6)(21p^2 - 48p + 28)
3 failures: (p^6)(84 - 216 p + 189 p^2 - 56 p^3)
4 failures: (p^6)(210 - 720 p + 945 p^2 - 560 p^3 + 126 p^4)
5 failures: (p^6)(462 - 1980 p + 3465 p^2 - 3080 p^3 + 1386 p^4 - 252 p^5)
If p=0.9 (aka the PC needs to roll a 3+ on a d20) then the chance to have at most 2 failures is 96.1908% to avoid retreating. Adjust probability to taste. You can adjust the probability per check, the number of successes / the number of fails, and when in the number of fails does it become a defeat.

[HappyDaze]

This requires one big prep session where you think of all the numerical values of the PC's resources and how they will impact the CR, but after that it can be used flexibly by changing the skill check and playing around with the CR and AC of the monsters in the encounters.

Wouldn't this actually require a new "big prep session" every time the spellcasters select new spells? For clerics and druids, that can be quite a range of options that change on a daily basis.

I like this idea, and I'd consider buying a product that did this for me, but I'm not wanting to put that level of work into what I consider a bad game.

For my next session, I think I'll just tell the players what the opponents are and show them the map (it's not like there's really much reason to hide it from them as exploration is crap too). Then let them take turns controlling the monsters and they can do the fights without me. I'll play a video game or watch some Netflix while they waste half the session to arrive at the inevitable "I win" state.

[Unoriginal]

My players only want to play D&D.


I don't think it'd count as "playing D&D" if you cut out the combat system like that. Same way as if you removed magic or all the non-human monsters.

But that's approaching the Ship of Theseus argument and I'd rather not get into that.


I'd rather run/play just about any other system, and not all of them are rules light.

Sounds like you and your players have incompatible desires when it come to what to play.

I suggest stopping DMing for them, proposing one of them to take the D&D DM place, and that you find a different group to GM other systems.



For my next session, I think I'll just tell the players what the opponents are and show them the map (it's not like there's really much reason to hide it from them as exploration is crap too). Then let them take turns controlling the monsters and they can do the fights without me. I'll play a video game or watch some Netflix while they waste half the session to arrive at the inevitable "I win" state.

So you don't like combat, exploration, OR engaging with your players. Why are you DMing for them?


at the inevitable "I win" state.

I take it you don't make deadly combat often.

[HappyDaze]

So you don't like combat, exploration, OR engaging with your players. Why are you DMing for them?



I take it you don't make deadly combat often.

As of a few minutes ago, I'm not DMing for them anymore. I sent them all an email telling them I'm canceling the game. There's only one (maybe two) players in that group I'd consider inviting to another game or accept invitations from to join a game (and one of them never runs).

As for deadly combat, I've seen my players completely destroy encounters that rated almost 50% beyond "deadly" for their level. Sure, the DM can always push it higher, but the idea is for the fights to be challenging and interesting. D&D fights are neither. There is generally only two end conditions: total player victory or total party kill. This isn't a game where any other result happens with any regularity. That's just crap. Players never plan for contingencies because their alpha plan is always the most optimal way to fight. It's incredibly boring.

[Unoriginal]

As of a few minutes ago, I'm not DMing for them anymore. I sent them all an email telling them I'm canceling the game. There's only one (maybe two) players in that group I'd consider inviting to another game or accept invitations from to join a game (and one of them never runs).

As for deadly combat, I've seen my players completely destroy encounters that rated almost 50% beyond "deadly" for their level. Sure, the DM can always push it higher, but the idea is for the fights to be challenging and interesting. D&D fights are neither. There is generally only two end conditions: total player victory or total party kill. This isn't a game where any other result happens with any regularity. That's just crap. Players never plan for contingencies because their alpha plan is always the most optimal way to fight. It's incredibly boring.

Well I disagree, but given that you aren't playing D&D anymore and likely won't ever play it again, I won't engage in that debate.

Congratulation on quitting a system you don't like. You wouldn't believe the number of GMs and players who stick with systems or groups they don't enjoy despite how bad it makes playing for them.

Hope you find a game you like soon.

[Crucius]

Wouldn't this actually require a new "big prep session" every time the spellcasters select new spells? For clerics and druids, that can be quite a range of options that change on a daily basis.

I like this idea, and I'd consider buying a product that did this for me, but I'm not wanting to put that level of work into what I consider a bad game.

For my next session, I think I'll just tell the players what the opponents are and show them the map (it's not like there's really much reason to hide it from them as exploration is crap too). Then let them take turns controlling the monsters and they can do the fights without me. I'll play a video game or watch some Netflix while they waste half the session to arrive at the inevitable "I win" state.

I would approach it on a spell level basis, not each individual spell.

You sound pretty defeated. I feel the place you are in right now. Maybe it's time for that talk with your players about game expectations. You're going to end up there regardless, whether you do this netflix thing or not, the big difference is the level of maturity and comradery you have towards your players (and I assume friends). I get that you are upset, but this won't create any goodwill and will probably damage your relationship with these people.

I know the game is about show-don't tell, but life isn't. Talk. To. These. People. (#toughlove)

[Miele]

So I've come to realize that I don't like the combat system of this game. It always comes down to battle map fights where decisions are made not by what makes sense in-character, but rather how to game the rules and the map. Stupid crap like two enemies (without blindsight) in heavy smoke having no issues with attacking one another, and movement through the smoke being totally unimpeded by the poor visibility (it's safe to Dash through an area when you can't see).

So, is there a way to play with a totally abstracted combat system? Not TotM--my players won't do it. I want to make all of combat as simple as the skill checks system. Just roll a few checks vs a DC and move on, because combat sucks and is a terrible drag in this system.

If you are the DM, you can change everything in a way that suits you better, for example I'd say 2 enemies in heavy smoke roll both at disadvantage (and make a Con save after a while: try to exercise hard in smoke), also if someone wants to dash through without seeing, make them hit a wall, the proverbial rake left in the garden, make them trip and fall prone. Use very few combat encounters, shift towards a less violent campaign, more social situations and whatnot. In all honesty, if you want to abstract combat, why do you need stats on the PC sheet, why do you need spells with precise mechanics, why do you actually play D&D at all if you don't like the rules of D&D?

My suggestion is to find likeminded people that prefer a narrative style to a visual practical style (no maps, miniatures and TotM only), if that isn't doable for any reasons", to play something else. Tabletop games have made gigantic leaps from the old days of Monopoly and Risiko, there are wonderful games with a certain replayability and longevity around.

Seeing that you took a decision, I can only applaud you for dropping something that wasn't very fun for you.

[HappyDaze]

I would approach it on a spell level basis, not each individual spell.

You sound pretty defeated. I feel the place you are in right now. Maybe it's time for that talk with your players about game expectations. You're going to end up there regardless, whether you do this netflix thing or not, the big difference is the level of maturity and comradery you have towards your players (and I assume friends). I get that you are upset, but this won't create any goodwill and will probably damage your relationship with these people.

I know the game is about show-don't tell, but life isn't. Talk. To. These. People. (#toughlove)

One of the players is my wife, so she's the exception, but there is only one other player in the group that I'd call a friend, and he's not really much of one, so I don't really feel like I'm losing anything if I never see these people again (again, excepting my wife). I'd already dropped out a group with two of them in it a few years ago and wasn't thrilled to be gaming with one of them again (he's a lump that barely interacts outside of combat and in combat, h e d r a g s e v e r y t h i n g o u t u n t i l I p u s h h i m t o m a k e a d a m n d e c i s i o n). It's absolutely a chore to engage with him at all, but he's a friend of another player and I figured I'd give him another chance. He wasn't worth it. What's worse is that my wife normally really gets into roleplaying, but she just can't engage with this group & game at all.

[Pex]

You might like GURPS. It has been a long time since I played it, but I think it takes a more realistic approach to combat. For fluff everything is a skill, including weapon usage and spells. Another option is Fantasy Warhammer. Another game I haven't played in a long time, what I remember of it you need careful tactics. You can even do called shots for interesting decisions and consequences.

[Shabbazar]

My players only want to play D&D...

I'm serious when I say I'd rather combat was handled as a set of skill challenges. Is there such a mechanic already out there?

The answer you seek is AD&D, AKA 2nd Edition, which I played in the late 70's, early 80's.

Probably not the perfect solution, but it may get you closer.



...but there is only one other player in the group that I'd call a friend, and he's not really much of one...

One of my very good friends and I totally agree that an ironclad rule of RPGs is: Don't play with people who you wouldn't be friends with anyway if the game didn't exist.

[HappyDaze]

You might like GURPS. It has been a long time since I played it, but I think it takes a more realistic approach to combat. For fluff everything is a skill, including weapon usage and spells. Another option is Fantasy Warhammer. Another game I haven't played in a long time, what I remember of it you need careful tactics. You can even do called shots for interesting decisions and consequences.

I bought the Dungeon Fantasy boxed set a year or two ago. It's a more focused, but not really any lighter, version of GURPS made specifically for...well, D&D-style gaming. Unfortunately, when my players looked at it (including my wife and two of the current crop) there was no real interest and eyes glazed over at the presentation.

Right now, I'm not sure I even want to play or run anything, but I'm definitely leaning away from classic/high fantasy settings. I'm also not at all interested in Star Wars or, really, any game with a setting that wasn't originally made to be a game setting (the inconsistencies that don't matter in TV/movies/books tend to annoy the crap out of me in games).

For now, I'm finding solitaire on my computer more enjoyable that wasting time prepping for a D&D game, so that's something.

[Lunali]

So I've come to realize that I don't like the combat system of this game. It always comes down to battle map fights where decisions are made not by what makes sense in-character, but rather how to game the rules and the map. Stupid crap like two enemies (without blindsight) in heavy smoke having no issues with attacking one another, and movement through the smoke being totally unimpeded by the poor visibility (it's safe to Dash through an area when you can't see).

So, is there a way to play with a totally abstracted combat system? Not TotM--my players won't do it. I want to make all of combat as simple as the skill checks system. Just roll a few checks vs a DC and move on, because combat sucks and is a terrible drag in this system.

To be fair, it's not that two enemies have no issue attacking each other in smoke, it's that they have trouble both attacking and avoiding attacks, which overall balances out to the same amount of attacks landing as if they were out of the smoke.

As for switching to a totally abstracted system, it's going to be TotM no matter what you do as that's kinda the point of an abstracted system. If you want to throw out the DnD combat rules, I would suggest switching to a different rpg as tactical combat is what DnD does well. Even if you switch systems, you could still follow the storylines for the various DnD modules if you have an interest in those.

[EggKookoo]

As for deadly combat, I've seen my players completely destroy encounters that rated almost 50% beyond "deadly" for their level. Sure, the DM can always push it higher, but the idea is for the fights to be challenging and interesting. D&D fights are neither. There is generally only two end conditions: total player victory or total party kill. This isn't a game where any other result happens with any regularity. That's just crap. Players never plan for contingencies because their alpha plan is always the most optimal way to fight. It's incredibly boring.

While I do find fights to be surprisingly easy sometimes, I also manage to give my players a decent fight often as not. I've learned that you can fine-tune encounters without changing CR by adding more monsters of lower individual CR. Four monsters at CR 1 each (CR 4 encounter) will make an easier fight on average than six monsters with a combined CR of 4, but they're both worth the same XP in the end. You can also increase (or decrease) monster HP within the range provided by the MM without changing its CR and XP reward.

D&D 5e is meant to throw lots of short fights at the party. If you only have one combat between long rests, you'll need to tune the fights harder to account for the party always having all their spells slots and whatnot. But if you can get the nominal 6-8 encounters in between long rests, you can keep them more or less even-CR with the party. The early fights in that sequence will be pretty easy, but they'll naturally get harder as you work through them. Then you can throw a couple really hard ones in at the end of that chain to put the fear of death into them. Per RAW I think the party can only benefit from one long rest per day, so you can hit them with other stuff in that time.

Also, let a PC die once in a while, especially once the APL is 5 or higher. At that point, they should be able to afford the occasional raise dead.

[Keltest]

One of my very good friends and I totally agree that an ironclad rule of RPGs is: Don't play with people who you wouldn't be friends with anyway if the game didn't exist.

This sounds like it should be codified as rule -1, for every system. TTRPGs are a social experience. If you dont like the other people, the experience will fail no matter what system you have.

As for the supposedly deadly encounters being less than deadly, how many players were in the group? Anything above 4 players is going to tilt the CR system out of whack, because it was designed for only 4 players.

[Unoriginal]

An encounter is deadly not because of CR, but because of the circumstances and the enemies' actions.

15 goblins in an ambush staying protected behind a barricade s going to be much harder to beat than 15 goblins rushing at you and doing one attack after the other without guile.

[stoutstien]

An encounter is deadly not because of CR, but because of the circumstances and the enemies' actions.

15 goblins in an ambush staying protected behind a barricade s going to be much harder to beat than 15 goblins rushing at you and doing one attack after the other without guile.

to add to this, how challenging an individual encounter is and how deadly it is are two entirely different metrics.
I think a lot of DM could benefit from designing encounters that are purposely not deadly but are considered challenging. I don't think the solving the entire portion of the world revolving around combat are necessary to do this but it's possible.

[Unoriginal]

to add to this, how challenging an individual encounter is and how deadly it is are two entirely different metrics.
I think a lot of DM could benefit from designing encounters that are purposely not deadly but are considered challenging.

Also true. And how awesome the encounter is is yet another metric.

Like I always say, what makes a great encounter isn't the rules, it's:

https://media1.tenor.com/images/333da17a540320f6f1e1b1089d5d34ec/tenor.gif?itemid=4559759



...man I should really write my guide on the topic.

[Mikal]

So I've come to realize that I don't like the combat system of this game. It always comes down to battle map fights where decisions are made not by what makes sense in-character, but rather how to game the rules and the map. Stupid crap like two enemies (without blindsight) in heavy smoke having no issues with attacking one another, and movement through the smoke being totally unimpeded by the poor visibility (it's safe to Dash through an area when you can't see).

So, is there a way to play with a totally abstracted combat system? Not TotM--my players won't do it. I want to make all of combat as simple as the skill checks system. Just roll a few checks vs a DC and move on, because combat sucks and is a terrible drag in this system.

Hope your search for a different game with a system you enjoy goes well then.

[Keltest]

Also true. And how awesome the encounter is is yet another metric.

Like I always say, what makes a great encounter isn't the rules, it's:

https://media1.tenor.com/images/333da17a540320f6f1e1b1089d5d34ec/tenor.gif?itemid=4559759



...man I should really write my guide on the topic.

Can confirm. Just last session, my party got into a fight with a cleric and a couple of knight bodyguards. The encounter was, by every metric, heavily favored towards the party (there were 7 PCs). It was easily the most exciting fight that session because midway through the encounter, a dragon that had been strafing the city took a pot shot at the part that they were in. I had a system rigged up where the dragon would target a random section every 10 minutes real time, so they were very conscious of the clock, and it always got interesting when the dragon did something.

[EggKookoo]

An encounter is deadly not because of CR, but because of the circumstances and the enemies' actions.

15 goblins in an ambush staying protected behind a barricade s going to be much harder to beat than 15 goblins rushing at you and doing one attack after the other without guile.

Absolutely. I mistakenly gave my party surprise against an even-CR encounter. They also happened to mostly have higher initiative than the enemy, which functionally gave the PCs two entire rounds before the monsters got their turns. The monsters we all spread out in a big open room. It was over before they got a chance to do anything.

A subsequent fight wasn't so one-sided, with more than half the monster "party" popping up from behind cover and making ranged attacks, while their heavy tanked for them. Same CR. Much more taxing for the PCs.


to add to this, how challenging an individual encounter is and how deadly it is are two entirely different metrics.
I think a lot of DM could benefit from designing encounters that are purposely not deadly but are considered challenging. I don't think the solving the entire portion of the world revolving around combat are necessary to do this but it's possible.

In addition, also, on top of this, CR isn't "how likely you are to die." It's "how expensive will it be to win this fight?"

Encounters in 5e are meant to drain resources, not be live/die gates. That's why individually they're so easy to survive. You're supposed to survive them, but at a cost. And that cost adds up. You'll have fewer resources for battle #2 than you did for battle #1, making it functionally harder, even if the CR doesn't change.

When you complete your nth even-CR fight and a party member came very close to dying because you're out of healing potions and spell slots and hit dice, that's a hint that it's probably time to take a long rest.

[Pex]

I bought the Dungeon Fantasy boxed set a year or two ago. It's a more focused, but not really any lighter, version of GURPS made specifically for...well, D&D-style gaming. Unfortunately, when my players looked at it (including my wife and two of the current crop) there was no real interest and eyes glazed over at the presentation.

Right now, I'm not sure I even want to play or run anything, but I'm definitely leaning away from classic/high fantasy settings. I'm also not at all interested in Star Wars or, really, any game with a setting that wasn't originally made to be a game setting (the inconsistencies that don't matter in TV/movies/books tend to annoy the crap out of me in games).

For now, I'm finding solitaire on my computer more enjoyable that wasting time prepping for a D&D game, so that's something.

Maybe you're burnt out on DMing. You don't have to DM. Be a player. Doesn't have to be 5E. Let someone else have the responsibility and you get to relax just worrying about your own character.

[HappyDaze]

Maybe you're burnt out on DMing. You don't have to DM. Be a player. Doesn't have to be 5E. Let someone else have the responsibility and you get to relax just worrying about your own character.

I agree, I don't have to be the DM, but with this current group, there's only one other that might (and he's annoyed me as a GM in the past with making up new house rules after every game session). However, if he does run, that still leaves me with D&D and again, I'd rather play 4 hours of solitaire on my computer than play D&D anymore. No gaming really is better than crap gaming, and the input I've gotten has helped to convince me that 5e is total crap for me,

[5eNeedsDarksun]

We generally use the 'theater of the mind' approach and maybe pull out the map once per session. Also at lower levels we were ditching initiative for the most part (which did move things along), however we find at higher levels there are just too many mechanics that are woven into the 5e system to effectively take short cuts and have had to put back RAW initiative.
I generally sympathize and agree with your point of view, but can't say we've found a solution. Having so much movement, effects that last 'until the end of your next turn, reactions, and legendary actions integrated into 5e makes it tricky to streamline.

[MaxWilson]

So I've come to realize that I don't like the combat system of this game. It always comes down to battle map fights where decisions are made not by what makes sense in-character, but rather how to game the rules and the map. Stupid crap like two enemies (without blindsight) in heavy smoke having no issues with attacking one another, and movement through the smoke being totally unimpeded by the poor visibility (it's safe to Dash through an area when you can't see).

So, is there a way to play with a totally abstracted combat system? Not TotM--my players won't do it. I want to make all of combat as simple as the skill checks system. Just roll a few checks vs a DC and move on, because combat sucks and is a terrible drag in this system.

Sure, you could e.g. having everyone roll a number of d6s equal to their level, and monsters roll a number of d6s equal to their CR, and compare to see which is higher--the "winning" side gets to make up a story about what happened in combat.

Like all abstract systems you lose fidelity, but if you and your players all hate the combat system equally, this is better than what you've got.

However, if you really hate the combat system that much, you may find that you are better off playing a system that's designed around stuff you actually enjoy. According to 5E's designers in this video (https://youtu.be/Tdz_lMt-nLw?t=988), 5E was designed around the assumption that D&D consists of discovery/exploration (not just dungeon crawling but also lore, learning stuff about the world; verbatim quote: "I'm going to join the Zhentarim because I want to find out more about what organized crime in the world is like"), roleplaying (verbatim quote: "not just talking in a funny voice, it's learning about the characters, learning about their needs, and then thinking about your own character and 'how would I behave in this situation?'"), and combat. They assumed that "When you kick in the door do you talk to it or stab it?" is an interesting question to you.

It is not designed around hunting for clues to solve mysteries, or exploring emotional conflicts with people with whom you have enduring personal relationships, or slowly going mad as you discover the truth about your universe, or growing your business empire. That isn't to say you can't extend it to crudely handle other types of activities, but... it's possible that other games do it better.


As of a few minutes ago, I'm not DMing for them anymore. I sent them all an email telling them I'm canceling the game. There's only one (maybe two) players in that group I'd consider inviting to another game or accept invitations from to join a game (and one of them never runs).

As for deadly combat, I've seen my players completely destroy encounters that rated almost 50% beyond "deadly" for their level. Sure, the DM can always push it higher, but the idea is for the fights to be challenging and interesting. D&D fights are neither. There is generally only two end conditions: total player victory or total party kill. This isn't a game where any other result happens with any regularity. That's just crap. Players never plan for contingencies because their alpha plan is always the most optimal way to fight. It's incredibly boring.


One of the players is my wife, so she's the exception, but there is only one other player in the group that I'd call a friend, and he's not really much of one, so I don't really feel like I'm losing anything if I never see these people again (again, excepting my wife). I'd already dropped out a group with two of them in it a few years ago and wasn't thrilled to be gaming with one of them again (he's a lump that barely interacts outside of combat and in combat, h e d r a g s e v e r y t h i n g o u t u n t i l I p u s h h i m t o m a k e a d a m n d e c i s i o n). It's absolutely a chore to engage with him at all, but he's a friend of another player and I figured I'd give him another chance. He wasn't worth it. What's worse is that my wife normally really gets into roleplaying, but she just can't engage with this group & game at all.

Congratulations on a good decision!

Finding a different hobby is fine, and normally I'd leave it at that, but since your wife normally really gets into roleplaying, and keeping your wife happy is totally worth doing, I'm going to suggest that you consider some different games, and have a conversation with your wife about what things are important to her in a roleplaying game. Play some indy games, think about what you like about D&D and what you like better about those other games. In particular, DramaSystem (https://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/introducing-dramasystem/) a.k.a. Hillfolk is an extremely interesting system which is certainly worth learning and playing with your wife and maybe a couple close friends, once or twice on a date night. Even if you don't stick with it, it may change the way you approach other role-playing games like D&D.

[HappyDaze]

It is not designed around hunting for clues to solve mysteries, or exploring emotional conflicts with people with whom you have enduring personal relationships, or slowly going mad as you discover the truth about your universe, or growing your business empire. That isn't to say you can't extend it to crudely handle other types of activities, but... it's possible that other games do it better.

We discovered this while trying to play in Eberron. That setting talks about mysteries, intrigue, maddening secrets of the world, and even growing your (or your patron's) organization. But it's a trick because, as you say, D&D is a poor system for that. Unfortunately, those are the elements my wife was looking forward to, and we fell for Eberron's lie that D&D could offer that. In truth, it still doesnt have the mechanical support needed for those activities.

[EggKookoo]

We generally use the 'theater of the mind' approach and maybe pull out the map once per session. Also at lower levels we were ditching initiative for the most part (which did move things along), however we find at higher levels there are just too many mechanics that are woven into the 5e system to effectively take short cuts and have had to put back RAW initiative.

I allow players to do the 3e "take 10" for initiative. Or, rather, I give the the option of using the initiative score rule variant from the DMG. Basically same thing. So far they all do that, and it speeds up the start of combat considerably. Especially since I can pre-roll monster init (or take 10 for them) and create pre-made turn-sequence lists.


We discovered this while trying to play in Eberron. That setting talks about mysteries, intrigue, maddening secrets of the world, and even growing your (or your patron's) organization. But it's a trick because, as you say, D&D is a poor system for that. Unfortunately, those are the elements my wife was looking forward to, and we fell for Eberron's lie that D&D could offer that. In truth, it still doesnt have the mechanical support needed for those activities.

FWIW, you can do these things as long as the primary focus is still something more traditional and dungeon-crawly. Or, you can do this as the focus, but you'll need to work out your own kind of progression mechanic to account for the lack of combat.

D&D is not meant for sporadic combat encounters. It's an 80s action movie in LotR drag.

The cool thing is, once you grok this, you can build an encounter chain without needing to resort to a classic dungeon crawl. It's mainly about managing rests.

[Morty]

We discovered this while trying to play in Eberron. That setting talks about mysteries, intrigue, maddening secrets of the world, and even growing your (or your patron's) organization. But it's a trick because, as you say, D&D is a poor system for that. Unfortunately, those are the elements my wife was looking forward to, and we fell for Eberron's lie that D&D could offer that. In truth, it still doesnt have the mechanical support needed for those activities.

Part of Eberron's premise was taking the ease and convenience of 3E-era magic to its logical conclusion, but yeah. Outside of that, it really felt like a major case of system-setting mismatch.

D&D's combat system really is pretty poor for a game that focuses on it so heavily. There are combat-light systems, combat-medium ones and combat-heavy ones, and then there's D&D in a category of its own. There's really not much that can be done about it without gutting the whole thing and rewriting it from scratch. Sadly, we all know getting people do play anything other than D&D, even if by all accounts they would probably prefer it if they tried, can be a titanic struggle.

[sithlordnergal]

So I've come to realize that I don't like the combat system of this game. It always comes down to battle map fights where decisions are made not by what makes sense in-character, but rather how to game the rules and the map. Stupid crap like two enemies (without blindsight) in heavy smoke having no issues with attacking one another, and movement through the smoke being totally unimpeded by the poor visibility (it's safe to Dash through an area when you can't see).

So, is there a way to play with a totally abstracted combat system? Not TotM--my players won't do it. I want to make all of combat as simple as the skill checks system. Just roll a few checks vs a DC and move on, because combat sucks and is a terrible drag in this system.

So...I'm a bit confused here. Are you annoyed with combat being "too easy"? Are you annoyed that that players take tactical choices over rp ones in combat? You say you want to make combat as simple as the skill system, but that would involve gutting every class and spell in the game.

What classes were your players playing? And how many encounters did you have every adventuring day? Did you have a single combat then a long rest? Because that's a common issue when DMs say that combat is far too easy.

[MaxWilson]

We discovered this while trying to play in Eberron. That setting talks about mysteries, intrigue, maddening secrets of the world, and even growing your (or your patron's) organization. But it's a trick because, as you say, D&D is a poor system for that. Unfortunately, those are the elements my wife was looking forward to, and we fell for Eberron's lie that D&D could offer that. In truth, it still doesnt have the mechanical support needed for those activities.

I don't think D&D has to be bad at intrigue, secrets, or growing organizations, but it's absolutely terrible at teaching DMs how to run such things. (Also, D&D's expectation for how you'll discover secrets about the world is basically that you'll travel the world fighting things and discover clues in Indiana Jones fashion, as opposed to the fashion of a police procedural where the clues are all accessible to you all along and you have to piece them together. Eberron is explicitly designed for pulpy, Indiana Jones-type adventures and I think it's pretty good at that once you crank the difficulty waaay up, better than the average D&D setting, but 5E still isn't good at teaching you how to DM so that the adventure feels like an Indiana Jones story, e.g. it doesn't really teach you pacing.)

What kinds of roleplaying are you and your wife most interested in? Do you want something pulpy and adventurous, or dramatic and emotional? Is your idea of a good game memory that one time you saved your friends from an evil wizard, or about that time when you averted World War III by assassinating Moriarty before he could finish his plot, or about that time you finally got your father to acknowledge that your choice to become a soldier instead of a surgeon was a valid one? 5E is good at the first, okay at the second, and bad at the third. I.e. it's no better than freeform roleplay at emotional/dramatic scenes***, unless you steal mechanics from Dramasystem (https://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/introducing-dramasystem/) a.k.a. Hillfolk.

***For certain kinds of emotional conflicts it's even worse than freeform roleplaying, e.g. if your idea of a Crowning Moment of Awesome is getting revenge on an a traitorous ex-friend by making them feel something, terrified or ashamed or humiliated or repentant, 5E and D&D as a whole will tend to steer away from giving you that emotional reaction in favor of a story where you "win" by reducing that ex-friend to zero HP, whereas freeform roleplaying would give you at least a shot at making them cry or beg forgiveness instead. HOWEVER, once you're aware of this tendency in 5E you can counteract it, if you're the DM, to make 5E no worse than freeform roleplaying, but still not any better.

Do you dislike combat inherently, or do you just think the 5E combat system is calibrated to be too easy and consequence-free? (Or do you dislike the number of exploits in the combat system? AD&D combat is much harder and has more consequences, but also more exploits because magic is more powerful, but also more fragile--even the exploits can fail in unexpected ways.)

[HappyDaze]

I don't think D&D has to be bad at intrigue, secrets, or growing organizations, but it's absolutely terrible at teaching DMs how to run such things. (Also, D&D's expectation for how you'll discover secrets about the world is basically that you'll travel the world fighting things and discover clues in Indiana Jones fashion, as opposed to the fashion of a police procedural where the clues are all accessible to you all along and you have to piece them together. Eberron is explicitly designed for pulpy, Indiana Jones-type adventures and I think it's pretty good at that once you crank the difficulty waaay up, better than the average D&D setting, but 5E still isn't good at teaching you how to DM so that the adventure feels like an Indiana Jones story, e.g. it doesn't really teach you pacing.)

What kinds of roleplaying are you and your wife most interested in? Do you want something pulpy and adventurous, or dramatic and emotional? Is your idea of a good game memory that one time you saved your friends from an evil wizard, or about that time when you averted World War III by assassinating Moriarty before he could finish his plot, or about that time you finally got your father to acknowledge that your choice to become a soldier instead of a surgeon was a valid one? 5E is good at the first, okay at the second, and bad at the third. I.e. it's no better than freeform roleplay at emotional/dramatic scenes***, unless you steal mechanics from Dramasystem (https://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/introducing-dramasystem/) a.k.a. Hillfolk.

***For certain kinds of emotional conflicts it's even worse than freeform roleplaying, e.g. if your idea of a Crowning Moment of Awesome is getting revenge on an a traitorous ex-friend by making them feel something, terrified or ashamed or humiliated or repentant, 5E and D&D as a whole will tend to steer away from giving you that emotional reaction in favor of a story where you "win" by reducing that ex-friend to zero HP, whereas freeform roleplaying would give you at least a shot at making them cry or beg forgiveness instead. HOWEVER, once you're aware of this tendency in 5E you can counteract it, if you're the DM, to make 5E no worse than freeform roleplaying, but still not any better.

Do you dislike combat inherently, or do you just think the 5E combat system is calibrated to be too easy and consequence-free? (Or do you dislike the number of exploits in the combat system? AD&D combat is much harder and has more consequences, but also more exploits because magic is more powerful, but also more fragile--even the exploits can fail in unexpected ways.)
Show me where the D&D rules support anything outside of combat with more than a token effort. Actually, don't bother, I can tell you're a system apologist for it so we're not going to see eye to eye on it at all.

[sithlordnergal]

Show me where the D&D rules support anything outside of combat with more than a token effort. Actually, don't bother, I can tell you're a system apologist for it so we're not going to see eye to eye on it at all.

The skill system, both in the DMG and Xanathar's Guide. It actually does have a lot of depth as to what it can do, despite being relatively simple to master. Also, the spell casting system, its not all combat focused after all.

I will admit that Combat is heavily focused on since that's where the most tactical decisions are made. So they made sure to flesh it out. That said, 3.5 had the same thing where combat was heavily focused on.

[MaxWilson]

Show me where the D&D rules support anything outside of combat with more than a token effort. Actually, don't bother, I can tell you're a system apologist for it so we're not going to see eye to eye on it at all.

Hahahahaha! Hardly an apologist. I probably hate 5E more than you do and in more detail.

[HappyDaze]

So my players sent me a group text today to feel out what I wanted to do next. They told me they all enjoyed the game I was running and wanted to continue it if possible.

I told them they could feel free to continue without me and not to worry about what I was going to do next because I was done playing with them and they could just ****-off for all I cared.

I suppose that I should feel bad for being an *******, but I just don't care anymore.

[Grod_The_Giant]

The skill system, both in the DMG and Xanathar's Guide. It actually does have a lot of depth as to what it can do, despite being relatively simple to master. Also, the spell casting system, its not all combat focused after all.
It does not-- D&D has pretty much always been "the DM sets a DC and you roll once against that." 5e doesn't even offer a crude framework for moving beyond that, like 4e's skill challenges. Spell lists have some non-combat-focused spells, but the majority are still about fighting.

Simplicity in game rules is by no means bad, but D&D suffers from complexity mismatch. If combat was also a single roll, if you stripped away classes and spells and just boiled everything down to "make opposed melee combat checks, winner decides what happens to the loser" you'd have a functional rules-light game*. The problem is that combat is an involved system with tons of options and decision points built in, and with a very clear centralized progression from 1-20. Everything else comes off as very perfunctory and arbitrary because, at least in comparison, it is.

Supporting intrigue doesn't mean just having a basic task resolution mechanic; it means having the rules and framework to handle things like motivation and persuasion in a mostly-objective way. Supporting organization-management doesn't mean "here are some stat blocks for your guys," it means having systems to track the skills and capabilities of your organization in a way that makes them immediately clear to all parties. That's the whole purpose of rules--to take decisions out of the GM's hands, to make it clear to players what they can and can't expect to do without ever having to ask.

In 5e right now can look at your character sheet and get a pretty good idea about how you'd fare in battle against a medusa--and more importantly, so can the GM. They don't have to decide how they want the encounter to go, because the rules provide the framework to step back and run the encounter as a referee more than a puppetmaster. But if my players want to persuade a guard to help them, the system doesn't even give me a starting place. Should it be an easy check? Hard? Impossible? What kind of leverage do the players need to have to make it happen?

As a GM, I don't want to have to do that. I want to be able to look at the guard's sheet and say "he's got a minor trait that would support the players and a major trait that would oppose them, that means they need to have some sort of minor tie to get him to help. So the bard just asking won't work, but going drinking with him and making friends first would." I want to be able to say "can your spies get that information? I dunno, decide what assets you're using and make an espionage check, and the baron will oppose with a loyalty save."

--------------------------

*Well, sort of functional, anyway. "One roll to determine the outcome" doesn't mesh well with the wildly inconsistent RNG of a d20.

[Pex]

Show me where the D&D rules support anything outside of combat with more than a token effort.

I'm with you there. Look at all the flak I get for disliking the 5E skill system. :smallbiggrin:

[sithlordnergal]

-snip-

Okay, I see what you're getting at then. You're talking about a skill system as involved and complex as the combat system, where there are rules for a majority of things instead of just a general "DM sets the DC and you wing it from there" or "DM has to first setup all of those things before hand instead of it being there from the start".

True, 5e doesn't support that sort of thing out of the box. As a DM, you'd need to set that sort of system up. Though I would argue that 5e's simplified skill system actually makes it easier to implement the very system you're talking about. I do get the fact that you wouldn't want to have to do the leg work.

Also, Xanathar's actually does bring up that sort of complexity. Its not quite as fleshed out and complex as what you're saying, but its still there if you're willing to use it.

[MaxWilson]

True, 5e doesn't support that sort of thing out of the box. As a DM, you'd need to set that sort of system up. Though I would argue that 5e's simplified skill system actually makes it easier to implement the very system you're talking about.

It does not make it easier. In fact it's a huge missed opportunity because the missing systems mean that archetypes like Mastermind and Inquisitive have no opportunity tie in and get class features for intrigue or social engineering... So instead they get combat bonuses, yawn.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Okay, I see what you're getting at then. You're talking about a skill system as involved and complex as the combat system, where there are rules for a majority of things instead of just a general "DM sets the DC and you wing it from there" or "DM has to first setup all of those things before hand instead of it being there from the start".

True, 5e doesn't support that sort of thing out of the box. As a DM, you'd need to set that sort of system up. Though I would argue that 5e's simplified skill system actually makes it easier to implement the very system you're talking about. I do get the fact that you wouldn't want to have to do the leg work.

Personally, I don't mind that 5e's skill system is perfunctory compared to combat. It's perfectly adequate for the core D&D experience of exploring a dungeon (literal or metaphorical) and killing monsters. It's just not up to scratch if you to focus a game on anything else.

I would, however, argue your use of the phrase "leg work." All 5e really gives you is a resolution mechanic, and as someone who's written RPGs from scratch, let me tell you-- that's the easy part. Building the kind of frameworks I'm talking about, ones that guide and support roleplaying instead of just replacing it? That's the hard part. That's where the art comes in.

[Miele]

If most of the table experience is "attack!" or check Deception vs DC 20, yes, I can see why D&D is a boring game.

Rules and rulings should help tell a story, it's not an MMO where you need to kill the raid boss, loot the purples and watch a cinematic. Roleplaying means that one should play the role of a different creature: what does it mean to be a gnome, with high charisma and piss poor strength? How to show your intellect, but total lack of wisdom? I admit sometimes I get caught too in the gaming treadmill of combat optimization, but it doesn't have to be that way, it's actually better if it's not, even when dungeon crawling.

Having a thematic party is the first step (session zero is mandatory imo), make it all barbarians, all bards, all casters, all clerics or simply... all halflings? It's a change, narrows options somewhat, requires creativity and can be challenged in different ways. Even if you approach the game in a standard way, try to find something that makes the party a cohesive unit or a bunch of self centered criminals (it twists the stories in a funny way).

I can't explain how I managed to go on for 3 decades as a DM and a player step by step without writing a book or a blog, but it's a learning experience, now I learned that my basic rules are simple:

1) First of all, play with people you like. It's actually better if before the session starts chatting and having a drink is a pleasant experience.
2) The DM is the book writer. If you don't like a book, you stop reading it and you certainly don't ask the writer to start over.
3) Roleplaying is king: if someone wants to play a stupid barbarian prone to violence, having a bard trying to solve everything with words, is not gonna be a very happy experience, unless both can play around this aspect (session zero to decide).
4) Compromise during character creation for group composition maybe, but only slightly: everyone should play a character that is exciting to impersonate. Duplicates are fine, can spark some good RP moments.

Build your adventures, even if they are official printed ones: read them and change them as you prefer. I tend to rebalance encounters and fix inconsistencies in the story if I spot them.

Currently I'm a player, but I can't wait to go back DM'ing, I just love it, thanks also to the others that play with me.

[Magicspook]

So my players sent me a group text today to feel out what I wanted to do next. They told me they all enjoyed the game I was running and wanted to continue it if possible.

I told them they could feel free to continue without me and not to worry about what I was going to do next because I was done playing with them and they could just ****-off for all I cared.

I suppose that I should feel bad for being an *******, but I just don't care anymore.

I'm sorry if I come across as patronising but man, you gotta calm down before you do anything else or things will only get worse. This isn't about DnD anymore. Now is the time to take the rest of the day off (or drown youself in work, whichever you prefer) and let the steam boil off. I don't know where your wife is right now, but DO NOT talk to her about DnD today.

[HappyDaze]

I'm sorry if I come across as patronising but man, you gotta calm down before you do anything else or things will only get worse. This isn't about DnD anymore. Now is the time to take the rest of the day off (or drown youself in work, whichever you prefer) and let the steam boil off. I don't know where your wife is right now, but DO NOT talk to her about DnD today.

Get worse? Sometimes there's nothing more satisfying that telling people off. Not just faceless people on the internet, but people you've spent hours around face-to-face, shooting the bull, and getting to know. The release when you tell them to ****-off and that you don't want to game with them or have them over ever again can be a rush. Sure, it's self-destructive, but we all die alone in the end anyway.

[MaxWilson]

Get worse? Sometimes there's nothing more satisfying that telling people off. Not just faceless people on the internet, but people you've spent hours around face-to-face, shooting the bull, and getting to know. The release when you tell them to ****-off and that you don't want to game with them or have them over ever again can be a rush. Sure, it's self-destructive, but we all die alone in the end anyway.

Heh. Sounds like you really enjoyed writing that post. Seems like you're not used to asserting yourself. Seems like you feel you get taken advantage of a lot.

[Magicspook]

Get worse? Sometimes there's nothing more satisfying that telling people off. Not just faceless people on the internet, but people you've spent hours around face-to-face, shooting the bull, and getting to know. The release when you tell them to ****-off and that you don't want to game with them or have them over ever again can be a rush. Sure, it's self-destructive, but we all die alone in the end anyway.

I am happy for you, although really I was worried you might get into a fight with your wife.

[Man_Over_Game]

Hey, HappyDaze. I can tell you're a good guy, but I honestly think you should consider some help, brother.



You said this:

Actually, don't bother, I can tell you're a system apologist for it so we're not going to see eye to eye on it at all.

From this:

I don't think D&D has to be bad at intrigue, secrets, or growing organizations, but it's absolutely terrible at teaching DMs how to run such things.

What kinds of roleplaying are you and your wife most interested in? Do you want something pulpy and adventurous, or dramatic and emotional? Is your idea of a good game memory that one time you saved your friends from an evil wizard, or about that time when you averted World War III by assassinating Moriarty before he could finish his plot, or about that time you finally got your father to acknowledge that your choice to become a soldier instead of a surgeon was a valid one? 5E is good at the first, okay at the second, and bad at the third. I.e. it's no better than freeform roleplay at emotional/dramatic scenes***, unless you steal mechanics from Dramasystem (https://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/introducing-dramasystem/) a.k.a. Hillfolk.

[...]

Do you dislike combat inherently, or do you just think the 5E combat system is calibrated to be too easy and consequence-free? (Or do you dislike the number of exploits in the combat system? AD&D combat is much harder and has more consequences, but also more exploits because magic is more powerful, but also more fragile--even the exploits can fail in unexpected ways.)

***For certain kinds of emotional conflicts it's even worse than freeform roleplaying, e.g. if your idea of a Crowning Moment of Awesome is getting revenge on an a traitorous ex-friend by making them feel something, terrified or ashamed or humiliated or repentant, 5E and D&D as a whole will tend to steer away from giving you that emotional reaction in favor of a story where you "win" by reducing that ex-friend to zero HP, whereas freeform roleplaying would give you at least a shot at making them cry or beg forgiveness instead. HOWEVER, once you're aware of this tendency in 5E you can counteract it, if you're the DM, to make 5E no worse than freeform roleplaying, but still not any better.



You also said this:

I told them they could feel free to continue without me and not to worry about what I was going to do next because I was done playing with them and they could just ****-off for all I cared.

I suppose that I should feel bad for being an *******, but I just don't care anymore.

MOG's Note: This is contradictory to the spirit of the thread. Why start a thread about making things better if you didn't care?

Get worse? Sometimes there's nothing more satisfying that telling people off. Not just faceless people on the internet, but people you've spent hours around face-to-face, shooting the bull, and getting to know. The release when you tell them to ****-off and that you don't want to game with them or have them over ever again can be a rush. Sure, it's self-destructive, but we all die alone in the end anyway.



You were discussing how to make the game better for your and your friends, and ended the thread with saying "we all die alone", just after telling your group to basically go **** themselves.

These aren't things most people feel they need to get off their chest on a DnD forum, on a DnD related thread asking for technical advice.

Maybe I'm looking into it a little hard. Not sure if it's COVID or work-related issues, but I think you might be depressed, and it's something you should at least try to talk to your wife about.

Having started the uphill battle against my own in just this last week, I can say that acknowledging it with someone you trust is a good first step. And if I'm wrong, all it is is just a chat with your wife.

[Trafalgar]

One of the players is my wife, so she's the exception, but there is only one other player in the group that I'd call a friend, and he's not really much of one, so I don't really feel like I'm losing anything if I never see these people again (again, excepting my wife). I'd already dropped out a group with two of them in it a few years ago and wasn't thrilled to be gaming with one of them again (he's a lump that barely interacts outside of combat and in combat, h e d r a g s e v e r y t h i n g o u t u n t i l I p u s h h i m t o m a k e a d a m n d e c i s i o n). It's absolutely a chore to engage with him at all, but he's a friend of another player and I figured I'd give him another chance. He wasn't worth it. What's worse is that my wife normally really gets into roleplaying, but she just can't engage with this group & game at all.

In the past, I had an issue with players who couldn't make a decision. I bought an hour glass with about 20 seconds worth of sand. As soon as a player seemed indecisive, I would flip the glass. If the sand runs out, your turn gets skipped.

[Lacco]

In the past, I had an issue with players who couldn't make a decision. I bought an hour glass with about 20 seconds worth of sand. As soon as a player seemed indecisive, I would flip the glass. If the sand runs out, your turn gets skipped.

Outside DnD I've seen several solutions. My favourite is burned into the system I use - there are actually rules for Hesitation (if you do not declare your actions within certain timeframe and/or fail a roll, you are not allowed to declare an attack, only defend). For inexperienced players, I do not push this rule, but for experienced ones?

I raise my hand and start counting down from 5 fingers. Once I reach zero and they are still thinking, they hesitated and I take over initiative.

Never failed. Everybody can think of something within 5 seconds (again: not DnD-related game).

[Segev]

This only addresses one thing in the opening post, but I feel the need to share it anyway.

My house rule for blindly fighting is that you only gain Advantage against a foe who can’t see you if you CAN see them. This change makes it so that two guys duking it out blindfolded are both at Disadvantage, since neither can see the other.

[Keltest]

This only addresses one thing in the opening post, but I feel the need to share it anyway.

My house rule for blindly fighting is that you only gain Advantage against a foe who can’t see you if you CAN see them. This change makes it so that two guys duking it out blindfolded are both at Disadvantage, since neither can see the other.

Does this do anything besides make the combat take longer?

[MaxWilson]

Does this do anything besides make the combat take longer?

It prevents awkward exploits like dropping Fog Cloud to counter long-range penalties, or the Restrained or Poisoned condition, or Prone.

(Well, technically it doesn't prevent Fog Cloud from countering long-range penalties, because technically you can still see out of an area of heavy obscurement like a Fog Cloud, but I presume that a DM who has bothered to fix the unseen attacker exploit also just rules that you can't see out of a Fog Cloud. Even without that, you still can't see other creatures WITHIN the same fog cloud as you, so it still counters Restrained/Poisoned/Prone at short range.)

[Segev]

Does this do anything besides make the combat take longer?

It makes it so that two blindfolded guys attacking each other aren't as competent at it as if they weren't blindfolded. Which is the silly result it is designed to avoid.

If you're saying, "Everyone having Disadvantage makes the fight take longer because they miss more," then...well, yes? But if that's your concern, you can speed up fights considerably by just declaring that every attack hits and instantly kills the target, but I doubt that anybody is really encouraging that house rule.

[HappyDaze]

It makes it so that two blindfolded guys attacking each other aren't as competent at it as if they weren't blindfolded. Which is the silly result it is designed to avoid.

If you're saying, "Everyone having Disadvantage makes the fight take longer because they miss more," then...well, yes? But if that's your concern, you can speed up fights considerably by just declaring that every attack hits and instantly kills the target, but I doubt that anybody is really encouraging that house rule.

I'd have loved a computer program that would tell you what a given encounter type would cost in hit points, spell slots, and other expendables so you could play out an interesting encounter that happens after several boring and pointless ones. Just being able to tell the 5th-level party, "After a tough but unremarkable fight, you've lost (as a group) 60 hit points, 3 x 1st-level spell slots, 2 x 2nd-level spells slots, 2 x 3rd-level spell slots, and 3 x uses of class abilities (e.g., bardic inspiration, channel divinity, wild shape, etc.). Divide those costs among yourselves. Now we can move on to the interesting battle" would have been lovely.

The 6-8 encounters per day is a laughable joke when it comes to wilderness encounters. Since we play 4h sessions that might have 2-3 fights in a session, the typical day of travel in a dangerous wilderness would take 2-3 sessions to play out. If we're moving through two weeks of that in-game. that's 21 sessions (roughly one year of play) of fairly pointless fighting just to get to the heart of the adventure. Instead, rolling for encounters means that far fewer encounters come up, and the PCs are at or near full-strength so those encounters have to either be very hard (Deadly+++) to make any difference, or else just skip them...and then exploration gets even less interesting.

Re: MOG's Note: This is contradictory to the spirit of the thread. Why start a thread about making things better if you didn't care?

When I made the original post, I was still considering some way to salvage the game. Between the feedback here and the messages I was getting from my former group, it quickly soured my mood and made me decide I was better off burning the whole thing, the ex-group included.

[Keltest]

It makes it so that two blindfolded guys attacking each other aren't as competent at it as if they weren't blindfolded. Which is the silly result it is designed to avoid.

If you're saying, "Everyone having Disadvantage makes the fight take longer because they miss more," then...well, yes? But if that's your concern, you can speed up fights considerably by just declaring that every attack hits and instantly kills the target, but I doubt that anybody is really encouraging that house rule.

Ok but, assuming one side doesnt have some power that gets disabled with disadvantage that the other doesnt, you aren't really changing the outcome of the fight. You're just making the fighters look sillier than usual while they flail around. If they're the only combatants, you're wasting the players time as well, as the fight isn't actually any harder for either side.

Besides which, sight is more important for defense than offense. You've patched out a feature, not a bug.

[Segev]

Ok but, assuming one side doesnt have some power that gets disabled with disadvantage that the other doesnt, you aren't really changing the outcome of the fight. You're just making the fighters look sillier than usual while they flail around. If they're the only combatants, you're wasting the players time as well, as the fight isn't actually any harder for either side.

Besides which, sight is more important for defense than offense. You've patched out a feature, not a bug.

The assumption here is that they're the only combatants.

Consider a party made up of a human, halfling, elf, and dwarf coming across a group of goblins and their wolves at night. As the fight starts to turn against them, the goblins manage to douse the party's light sources. This blinds both the wolves and the human & halfling, but leaves the elf, dwarf, and goblins able to see.

Even if a wolf and human are fighting each other in the dark, flailing about, that matters when the other sighted creatures are still fighting.

[Man_Over_Game]

The assumption here is that they're the only combatants.

Consider a party made up of a human, halfling, elf, and dwarf coming across a group of goblins and their wolves at night. As the fight starts to turn against them, the goblins manage to douse the party's light sources. This blinds both the wolves and the human & halfling, but leaves the elf, dwarf, and goblins able to see.

Even if a wolf and human are fighting each other in the dark, flailing about, that matters when the other sighted creatures are still fighting.

The other thing this does is provide more value for differences in features. If both creatures had Disadvantage to see, but one was a Samurai that could negate it through his own Fighting Spirit feature, he'd get an edge. He would NOT get that benefit if both creatures were attacking normally while blind (as Advantage does not stack).

By default, it does not matter if a blinded creature is prone if their attacker was also blind.

[Keltest]

The assumption here is that they're the only combatants.

Consider a party made up of a human, halfling, elf, and dwarf coming across a group of goblins and their wolves at night. As the fight starts to turn against them, the goblins manage to douse the party's light sources. This blinds both the wolves and the human & halfling, but leaves the elf, dwarf, and goblins able to see.

Even if a wolf and human are fighting each other in the dark, flailing about, that matters when the other sighted creatures are still fighting.
But that situation isn't different from RAW ecxept for how long the allies have to intervene, and if the attack bonus to ac ratio is skewed enough towards attacking, maybe not even that much. What's the actual positive outcome here?

To be clear, I'm not trying to say you're having badwrongfun, but I legitimately can't see the benefit to this either from a realism or gameplay perspective.

[Man_Over_Game]

I'd have loved a computer program that would tell you what a given encounter type would cost in hit points, spell slots, and other expendables so you could play out an interesting encounter that happens after several boring and pointless ones. Just being able to tell the 5th-level party, "After a tough but unremarkable fight, you've lost (as a group) 60 hit points, 3 x 1st-level spell slots, 2 x 2nd-level spells slots, 2 x 3rd-level spell slots, and 3 x uses of class abilities (e.g., bardic inspiration, channel divinity, wild shape, etc.). Divide those costs among yourselves. Now we can move on to the interesting battle" would have been lovely.

The 6-8 encounters per day is a laughable joke when it comes to wilderness encounters. Since we play 4h sessions that might have 2-3 fights in a session, the typical day of travel in a dangerous wilderness would take 2-3 sessions to play out. If we're moving through two weeks of that in-game. that's 21 sessions (roughly one year of play) of fairly pointless fighting just to get to the heart of the adventure. Instead, rolling for encounters means that far fewer encounters come up, and the PCs are at or near full-strength so those encounters have to either be very hard (Deadly+++) to make any difference, or else just skip them...and then exploration gets even less interesting.

If I get some free time, I could probably work on something like that. I could probably add in tags for the combat itself, like "Nature", "Elemental", "Demon", etc., to account for the type of enemy provided, which cause the players to lose fewer resources based on the number of applicable levels from their classes.
For example, Druids deal with "Nature" and "Elemental" enemies, while Rangers deal with "Nature" and "Stealth" enemies. Then just have the DM tally up the total number of levels for each class (So if you have a character with Druid 1, and another with Druid 4, the party is treated as having total Druid levels of 5).
I'd have to figure out how to divide the costs between HP and spell slots (the more spells you have, the more spells you'd spend but the less HP you'd lose), combined with the fact that just because a team may have 5 characters with 1 Druid level doesn't mean that you have spell slots equal to a level 5 Druid, which means the perfect solution would require the DM entering the levels for every single one of their players and calculating their spell slots separately (which is a lot of work).


Re: MOG's Note: This is contradictory to the spirit of the thread. Why start a thread about making things better if you didn't care?

When I made the original post, I was still considering some way to salvage the game. Between the feedback here and the messages I was getting from my former group, it quickly soured my mood and made me decide I was better off burning the whole thing, the ex-group included.

Gotcha. Sorry if you feel I overstepped. I'd rather be wrong than right on that topic anyway.

[Segev]

But that situation isn't different from RAW ecxept for how long the allies have to intervene, and if the attack bonus to ac ratio is skewed enough towards attacking, maybe not even that much. What's the actual positive outcome here?

To be clear, I'm not trying to say you're having badwrongfun, but I legitimately can't see the benefit to this either from a realism or gameplay perspective.

Here's the benefit from a realism perspective:

Human Hugh is fighting in a cave lit only by his torch against Goblin Gary. Gary douses the torch, and Hugh starts missing a lot more because he can't see where Gary is. Hugh uses a one-shot Charm to cast darkness, enveloping Gary and Hugh in magical darkness through which neither of them can see. Suddenly, Hugh is hitting Gary as easily as he was when the torch was lit. How is that NOT nonsensical?

It also means that, if Gary is lying prone and sniping at Hugh from a distance, Hugh doesn't suddenly get more accurate at hitting Gary with his bow by casting fog cloud on himself. (Well, assuming you're not using the interpretation that you can see out of fog just fine from deep in its heart.)

[Keltest]

Here's the benefit from a realism perspective:

Human Hugh is fighting in a cave lit only by his torch against Goblin Gary. Gary douses the torch, and Hugh starts missing a lot more because he can't see where Gary is. Hugh uses a one-shot Charm to cast darkness, enveloping Gary and Hugh in magical darkness through which neither of them can see. Suddenly, Hugh is hitting Gary as easily as he was when the torch was lit. How is that NOT nonsensical?

It also means that, if Gary is lying prone and sniping at Hugh from a distance, Hugh doesn't suddenly get more accurate at hitting Gary with his bow by casting fog cloud on himself. (Well, assuming you're not using the interpretation that you can see out of fog just fine from deep in its heart.)

Because Gary, who could previously see the attacks to avoid them or take them on his armor or shield, suddenly cannot make his defense. Hugh has many more near hits now instead of hits, but if Gary can't effectively defend, a near perfect hit still does damage.

As for fog cloud, suddenly hugh doesnt have to worry about avoiding gary's shots as much, and so can take his time to aim better... if Gary doesnt just get up and move somewhere else while hugh can't see him to know.

[Segev]

Because Gary, who could previously see the attacks to avoid them or take them on his armor or shield, suddenly cannot make his defense. Hugh has many more near hits now instead of hits, but if Gary can't effectively defend, a near perfect hit still does damage.

As for fog cloud, suddenly hugh doesnt have to worry about avoiding gary's shots as much, and so can take his time to aim better... if Gary doesnt just get up and move somewhere else while hugh can't see him to know.

If you like. But since AC doesn't change based on inability to defend (there's no "flat footed" AC anymore), that doesn't hold much water. Moreover, Gary can see the incoming arrows from the edge of the fog cloud just fine. And, no, it's not that he has less time to react to them, because Elise the Elf, standing in front of the fog, would still be at Disadvantage, while Hugh is not.

Getting more accurate because you can't see somebody is silly.

Hence, my house rule that two blind guys trying to beat each other up will flail about a lot more than two sighted guys trying to beat each other up.

[Keltest]

If you like. But since AC doesn't change based on inability to defend (there's no "flat footed" AC anymore), that doesn't hold much water. Moreover, Gary can see the incoming arrows from the edge of the fog cloud just fine. And, no, it's not that he has less time to react to them, because Elise the Elf, standing in front of the fog, would still be at Disadvantage, while Hugh is not.

Getting more accurate because you can't see somebody is silly.

Hence, my house rule that two blind guys trying to beat each other up will flail about a lot more than two sighted guys trying to beat each other up.

But getting through their defenses because they can't actively defend is not silly. It's the same concept as flat footed ac, but from the other side of the roll.

[Segev]

But getting through their defenses because they can't actively defend is not silly. It's the same concept as flat footed ac, but from the other side of the roll.

Only if you can actually take advantage of that. If you can't see them, you certainly can't aim for where their defenses are weak.

I genuinely can't see your side of this argument; sorry. By which I mean I genuinely don't get it. This bothers me, but I don't see how we can do anything about it. This definitely hinders my ability to persuade you, so I'll just agree to disagree, here. Sorry.

[Keltest]

Only if you can actually take advantage of that. If you can't see them, you certainly can't aim for where their defenses are weak.

I genuinely can't see your side of this argument; sorry. By which I mean I genuinely don't get it. This bothers me, but I don't see how we can do anything about it. This definitely hinders my ability to persuade you, so I'll just agree to disagree, here. Sorry.

If I aim for their head and hit their shoulder, its going to hurt and possibly maim them no? If I aim for their head, they try to block, but they do it badly and I hit their arm, it's going to hurt and possibly maim them, no? A badly aimed hit is still very dangerous if you can't properly deflect it.

Armor isn't a magic indestructible force field that completely protects you unless you find the magic weak spot. If you dont take the blow correctly it's still going to affect you even if it was sloppy or misaimed.

[MaxWilson]

If you like. But since AC doesn't change based on inability to defend (there's no "flat footed" AC anymore), that doesn't hold much water. Moreover, Gary can see the incoming arrows from the edge of the fog cloud just fine. And, no, it's not that he has less time to react to them, because Elise the Elf, standing in front of the fog, would still be at Disadvantage, while Hugh is not.

Getting more accurate because you can't see somebody is silly.

Hence, my house rule that two blind guys trying to beat each other up will flail about a lot more than two sighted guys trying to beat each other up.

Take it a step further. Why grant advantage to an unseen ranged attacker at all? In what way does that improve the game?

[Man_Over_Game]

Take it a step further. Why grant advantage to an unseen ranged attacker at all? In what way does that improve the game?

I mean, without that, there's not really any point in hiding in combat. Even if the Rogue does Hide in the middle of combat, the badguys are still aware of the general area he'd be in, so it's not like he can pull a Gotcha! by trying to leverage his hidden movement.

I've always been a big supporter of "If you spend more than someone else, you get more". Attacking someone who doesn't know you're there means you probably spent something to get it, and you deserve to be compensated in a way that puts you ahead of them. Advantage on attacks is probably the easiest method of going about it.

I do the same thing Segev does, where two blind people both attack each other with Disadvantage, but it's mostly to contrast them from people who are not blind and to draw a bit of sense into a scenario where several people are blind in a system where the penalties (Disadvantage) doesn't stack.

I generally support the idea that if the source of the threat isn't telegraphing what they're doing, you're the one that suffers. Otherwise, the alternative means you're putting some major restrictions on things like Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Deception, Invisibility, etc., and why would that make the game more interesting? Not to mention that you're messing around with a lot of features that would now need replaced (like the lightfoot halfling's hide feature) if it doesn't matter if your actions are telegraphed or not.

[MaxWilson]

I mean, without that, there's not really any point in hiding in combat. Even if the Rogue does Hide in the middle of combat, the badguys are still aware of the general area he'd be in, so it's not like he can pull a Gotcha! by trying to leverage his hidden movement.

Are AC and Magic Resistance pointless because they don't give you advantage on your attacks?

I don't grant advantage to unseen ranged attackers, but I do let them get sneak attack damage even without advantage, as long as they are unseen.

Hiding is still very defensively powerful under these rules, and it is harder to exploit combinations which under RAW make getting advantage on ranged attacks incredibly easy. The way I see it, not only does this make more diegetic sense, it also fixes exploits and gives the PCs a little bit more reason to consider melee specialization despite how vulnerable it makes you to various monster special abilities like Parry, Fire Shield, petrifying gazes, breath weapons, AoEs, etc.

Melee needs all the help it can get.

[Man_Over_Game]

Are AC and Magic Resistance pointless because they don't give you advantage on your attacks?

I don't grant advantage to unseen ranged attackers, but I do let them get sneak attack damage even without advantage, as long as they are unseen.

Hiding is still very defensively powerful under these rules, and it is harder to exploit combinations which under RAW make getting advantage on ranged attacks incredibly easy. The way I see it, not only does this make more diegetic sense, it also fixes exploits and gives the PCs a little bit more reason to consider melee specialization despite how vulnerable it makes you to various monster special abilities like Parry, Fire Shield, petrifying gazes, breath weapons, AoEs, etc.

Melee needs all the help it can get.

AC and Magic Resistance are passive, universal benefits that generally don't require any additional investment, resources, or planning. Hiding is the opposite: Something you actively chose, something you planned, and most importantly is easily mitigated by your enemy's actions.

I agree that the gap between melee and ranged attacks should be closed. I don't think that nerfing the ranged attack feature that really only one class uses is really all that fruitful for the cause, or all that deserving to the one class it does impact. How many times does stealth get used by anyone else?

You could just add a clause to make drawing a non-light weapon provokes Opportunity Attacks (which negatively impacts ranged characters who'd need to swap weapons in an emergency). Or something else. Making hiding less usable in combat just doesn't really seem like it makes the game all that much better.

[MaxWilson]

AC and Magic Resistance are passive, universal benefits that generally don't require any additional investment, resources, or planning. Hiding is the opposite: Something you actively chose, something you planned, and most importantly is easily mitigated by your enemy's actions.

I agree that the gap between melee and ranged attacks should be closed. I don't think that nerfing the ranged attack feature that really only one class uses is really all that fruitful for the cause, or all that deserving to the one class it does impact. How many times does stealth get used by anyone else?

Ranged advantage from being unseen? Ubiquitous. Sharpshooter Gloomstalkers, Eldritch Knights seeing through their own Minor Illusions or out of their own Darkness or targets in natural darkness illuminated by their own Dancing Lights, Skulker Rogues in darkvision or light obscurement, Necromancers with a whole brigade of skeletons shooting with advantage at a target illuminated by Dancing Lights, Guards and Bandits hiding inside concealing brush... By RAW all of those guys get advantage, but it makes no sense that they would! It's not like moving erratically to avoid incoming arrows becomes harder because you can't see the arrows' point of origin. In contrast, advantage on melee attacks makes perfect sense: you can't parry strikes you can't see.

[Man_Over_Game]

Ranged advantage from being unseen? Ubiquitous. Sharpshooter Gloomstalkers, Eldritch Knights seeing through their own Minor Illusions or out of their own Darkness or targets in natural darkness illuminated by their own Dancing Lights, Skulker Rogues in darkvision or light obscurement, Necromancers with a whole brigade of skeletons shooting with advantage at a target illuminated by Dancing Lights, Guards and Bandits hiding inside concealing brush... By RAW all of those guys get advantage, but it makes no sense that they would! It's not like moving erratically to avoid incoming arrows becomes harder because you can't see the arrows' point of origin. In contrast, advantage on melee attacks makes perfect sense: you can't parry strikes you can't see.

I mean, of those that you mentioned, we have:

A primary subclass feature that only works in natural darkness, and only against creatures that have a special feature that'd normally negate the darkness (the only thing that changes is that creatures that have Darkvision are even with those that don't)
A situation where the Illusion disappears after the first shot (as physical contact reveals the illusion), and the EK would already suffer from their own magical Darkness, or spending Concentration on a cantrip on an effect that only works in natural darkness against creatures without Darkvision (which is basically just a complicated way of working around Darkvision)
A rogue with a feat that only functions for Stealth
Necromancer with Concentration on a cantrip (basically just another low-cost method of replacing Darkvision)
And some NPCs that spent an Action to hide before combat, where there's a place to hide, for an ambush.


None of those really sound all that unreasonable, especially when you consider the alternative (like how Necromancers can Concentrate on something more valuable than a Cantrip).

Hiding generally takes one action and some kind of special circumstance to...gain Advantage on generally one attack (unless you have some means of continuing to block line-of-sight). Samurai get like 4 attacks with Advantage, like 2 times a day.

The mentions on Darkvision aren't saying that what you're saying doesn't have merit. It has just as much merit as the situations where a creature with Darkvision gets Advantage against one that doesn't. I just haven't seen that be an issue that's come up all that much.

[Skylivedk]

Here's the benefit from a realism perspective:

Human Hugh is fighting in a cave lit only by his torch against Goblin Gary. Gary douses the torch, and Hugh starts missing a lot more because he can't see where Gary is. Hugh uses a one-shot Charm to cast darkness, enveloping Gary and Hugh in magical darkness through which neither of them can see. Suddenly, Hugh is hitting Gary as easily as he was when the torch was lit. How is that NOT nonsensical?

It also means that, if Gary is lying prone and sniping at Hugh from a distance, Hugh doesn't suddenly get more accurate at hitting Gary with his bow by casting fog cloud on himself. (Well, assuming you're not using the interpretation that you can see out of fog just fine from deep in its heart.)
Agreed on cancelling the disadvantage from range by not being able to see is really weird.

Not agreed on two blinded opponents having a high chance of hitting each other being nonsensical. I'll explain below.



Only if you can actually take advantage of that. If you can't see them, you certainly can't aim for where their defenses are weak.

I genuinely can't see your side of this argument; sorry. By which I mean I genuinely don't get it. This bothers me, but I don't see how we can do anything about it. This definitely hinders my ability to persuade you, so I'll just agree to disagree, here. Sorry.

Have you tested this? I have. Many times. Two people flailing weapons around ARE IMX more prone to hit each other than when both can see. Sounds are enough of an indicator of presence to flail in the right direction, but not to block a hit. Again, I've tested this many many times IRL and with a bunch of different people.


I mean, without that, there's not really any point in hiding in combat. Even if the Rogue does Hide in the middle of combat, the badguys are still aware of the general area he'd be in, so it's not like he can pull a Gotcha! by trying to leverage his hidden movement.

I've always been a big supporter of "If you spend more than someone else, you get more". Attacking someone who doesn't know you're there means you probably spent something to get it, and you deserve to be compensated in a way that puts you ahead of them. Advantage on attacks is probably the easiest method of going about it.

I do the same thing Segev does, where two blind people both attack each other with Disadvantage, but it's mostly to contrast them from people who are not blind and to draw a bit of sense into a scenario where several people are blind in a system where the penalties (Disadvantage) doesn't stack.

I generally support the idea that if the source of the threat isn't telegraphing what they're doing, you're the one that suffers. Otherwise, the alternative means you're putting some major restrictions on things like Sleight of Hand, Stealth, Deception, Invisibility, etc., and why would that make the game more interesting? Not to mention that you're messing around with a lot of features that would now need replaced (like the lightfoot halfling's hide feature) if it doesn't matter if your actions are telegraphed or not.
Two people at range both having disadvantage: definitely. In melee: makes no sense. See above.


Ranged advantage from being unseen? Ubiquitous. Sharpshooter Gloomstalkers, Eldritch Knights seeing through their own Minor Illusions or out of their own Darkness or targets in natural darkness illuminated by their own Dancing Lights, Skulker Rogues in darkvision or light obscurement, Necromancers with a whole brigade of skeletons shooting with advantage at a target illuminated by Dancing Lights, Guards and Bandits hiding inside concealing brush... By RAW all of those guys get advantage, but it makes no sense that they would! It's not like moving erratically to avoid incoming arrows becomes harder because you can't see the arrows' point of origin. In contrast, advantage on melee attacks makes perfect sense: you can't parry strikes you can't see.
I think the source of advantage is to emulate you not seeing the ranged attack coming at all. 5e suffers from not having fields of vision here.

Also, the major suffering is that advantage and disadvantage don't stack in a better way. I saw someone do both differently:
Advantage: add a d20 to the roll, remove lowest.
Disadvantage: add a d20 to the roll, remove highest.

Haven't tested it yet. We've tried with other bonuses or having multiple sources of advantage end up giving advantage against single disadvantage in DMs discretion which also worked.

@OP: I recommend taking a long break, not playing with players you don't like. If you find you miss something in your life from DnD find out what it was and maybe test another system. My one group is about to test Fate and I'm very excited about it

[Kane0]

Just being able to tell the 5th-level party, "After a tough but unremarkable fight, you've lost (as a group) 60 hit points, 3 x 1st-level spell slots, 2 x 2nd-level spells slots, 2 x 3rd-level spell slots, and 3 x uses of class abilities (e.g., bardic inspiration, channel divinity, wild shape, etc.). Divide those costs among yourselves. Now we can move on to the interesting battle" would have been lovely.


Hmm, wouldnt be terribly hard to draw up a chart for this kind of thing. A column for trivial, easy and medium encounters (hard and deadly you would presumably want to do properly?) and rows from levels 1 through 20. Scale HP and spell slots with other reaources (bm maneuvers, ki, channel, etc) being optional that the PCs can choose to burn to save them a certain amount of those lost HP and spell slots. Throw in some conditions (with saves), let them use consumables before and after and that’s that.

Hell, there’s simple trap damage charts that already do a chunk of the legwork for us.

[EggKookoo]

My one group is about to test Fate and I'm very excited about it

Just as long as you don't tempt Fate. Fate has no impulse control.

[HappyDaze]

Hmm, wouldnt be terribly hard to draw up a chart for this kind of thing. A column for trivial, easy and medium encounters (hard and deadly you would presumably want to do properly?) and rows from levels 1 through 20. Scale HP and spell slots with other reaources (bm maneuvers, ki, channel, etc) being optional that the PCs can choose to burn to save them a certain amount of those lost HP and spell slots. Throw in some conditions (with saves), let them use consumables before and after and that’s that.

Hell, there’s simple trap damage charts that already do a chunk of the legwork for us.

I'd love to see what you come up with. It might even get me interested enough to look at 5e again.

[KorvinStarmast]

As of a few minutes ago, I'm not DMing for them anymore. I sent them all an email telling them I'm canceling the game. There's only one (maybe two) players in that group I'd consider inviting to another game or accept invitations from to join a game (and one of them never runs). Have you looked in to 13th Age? There are some neat differences in that game with I find appealing. Also, for the player who drags stuff out, I have a solution that I have used in this edition. Once combat starts, if you can't make a decision, you take the dodge action and I go to the next players' turn. The player gets two, maye three, questions to ask me or another player before telling me what you are doing. If they don't pay attention to what everone else and the monsters are doing in the combat and have something 'ready to go' when their turn comes up, they are being rude to the other players. Also, combat needs to have a feel of urgency to it. (IMO)
Have you tried something like that?

One of the players is my wife, so she's the exception, but there is only one other player in the group that I'd call a friend, {snip the load} What's worse is that my wife normally really gets into roleplaying, but she just can't engage with this group & game at all.
Oh, man, get thee to a new group. If you have your wife playing D&D with you, find a group that lets her enjoy it ... win win.

Like I always say, what makes a great encounter isn't the rules, it's

https://media1.tenor.com/images/333da17a540320f6f1e1b1089d5d34ec/tenor.gif?itemid=4559759

...man I should really write my guide on the topic. Yes, you need to write that guide. :smallbiggrin:

[Lacco]

Have you looked in to 13th Age? There are some neat differences in that game with I find appealing. Also, for the player who drags stuff out, I have a solution that I have used in this edition. Once combat starts, if you can't make a decision, you take the dodge action and I go to the next players' turn. The player gets two, maye three, questions to ask me or another player before telling me what you are doing. If they don't pay attention to what everone else and the monsters are doing in the combat and have something 'ready to go' when their turn comes up, they are being rude to the other players. Also, combat needs to have a feel of urgency to it. (IMO)
Have you tried something like that?

Another houserule of mine: asking "what do I see?" actually means a character actually performs an action. They survey the combat field, roll Perception/Tactics and I give a full report. Then I go to the next in line.

Speeds up the combat. Together with the Hesitation rule it makes players pay attention and ramps up the tension.

Of course, if the player asks a relevant question to clear up confusion, he gets answer for free.

[MaxWilson]

I think the source of advantage is to emulate you not seeing the ranged attack coming at all. 5e suffers from not having fields of vision here.

I could go with having advantage against _surprised_ targets, but not with advantage for the invisible man (whose location is obvious because his footprints are clear visible, and arrows too!) who's still shooting at you like he has been since you killed his buddy.


Hmm, wouldnt be terribly hard to draw up a chart for this kind of thing. A column for trivial, easy and medium encounters (hard and deadly you would presumably want to do properly?) and rows from levels 1 through 20. Scale HP and spell slots with other reaources (bm maneuvers, ki, channel, etc) being optional that the PCs can choose to burn to save them a certain amount of those lost HP and spell slots. Throw in some conditions (with saves), let them use consumables before and after and that’s that.

Dumb question: why do you feel the need for a chart? What's wrong with eyeballing it?

I'm a big believer in skipping over things that don't matter, unless they matter to a player. If an 8th level party stumbles across some footpads (a half-dozen Bandits) accosting Lady Sarlana, an NPC whom I want to introduce, I will totally ask the players for their intentions, but if they say they want to kill the bandits I am perfectly comfortable with just saying, "We can play this out in detail using the combat rules if you want, or you can choose two PCs to each take 2d6 damage or expend one spell slot, and then you get to narrate what happened during the fight. Which do you guys prefer?"

I try to pick numbers which are realistic but also slightly advantageous to the players (e.g. maybe I think three PCs taking damage is more realistic but I offer two) so that they won't feel compelled to play things out in detail. I want to skip over boring stuff and get back to roleplaying.

I don't see how a chart would help that. It would just be piling assumptions about difficulty on top of other assumptions about party composition and usual tactics and magic items and player intelligence, and it wouldn't result in happier players.

If the problem is about not enjoying running the easy fight, but the players enjoy it, you could always designate one player to act as the monster advocate (responsible for seeing through the monster's eyes and declaring their actions from their perspective) while the DM takes a break during the fight and/or plans what's going to happen after the fight. The DM doesn't have to be the monster advocate, he just needs to be the ultimate authority.

One of my hobbies is CRPG-izing 5E precisely so I can make the computer act as a monster advocate and rules arbiter during these kinds of boring-to-DM-but-fun-for-some-players fight scenes. I want to just say, "Okay computer, put a coach on a city street with noncombatant Lady Sarlana inside, two noncombatants outside the coach, and six Bandit hostiles surrounding the coach. PCs are coming up the cross-street. Run the fight, please." Then I want the computer to guide players through their actions if necessary ("you are attacking the bandit. Roll 1d20+7 for your attack please. What is the result?", "you still have 20' movement and a bonus action left, do you want to do anything else like cast Spiritual Weapon or use your Cunning Action to Hide?"). I have a long ways to go though to make this work, and in the meantime trying to tempt the players into skipping the boring fights instead keeps me sane.

[Keltest]

I could go with having advantage against _surprised_ targets, but not with advantage for the invisible man (whose location is obvious because his footprints are clear visible, and arrows too!) who's still shooting at you like he has been since you killed his buddy.

Knowing where they are and knowing what the incoming attack looks like are different things.

[MaxWilson]

to add to this, how challenging an individual encounter is and how deadly it is are two entirely different metrics.
I think a lot of DM could benefit from designing encounters that are purposely not deadly but are considered challenging. I don't think the solving the entire portion of the world revolving around combat are necessary to do this but it's possible.

Can you elaborate on your meaning here? Do you mean "something other than life and death is at stake", like "the assassin might get away and then we'll never know who did it"? Or do you mean something more like "the players may feel mentally stressed by a new situation", e.g. "these wraiths keep phasing back through the walls every after turn, so on your turn there's nothing to immediately attack--what are you gonna do about it?"

Or do you mean a third thing that is neither?

[Kane0]

-Snip-

Someone requested it, and so I do my best to accomodate what was requested whether or not I personally consider it appropriate or necessary. Otherwise it would be a thread full of things that weren’t asked for, and even if it contains thoughtful and helpful discussion I know I hate when that happens to one of my threads.

That said, a chart probably wouldnt be necessary; it could be a relatively simple equation.

Trivial encounters cost 1d8 HP per level per character and one spell level per three levels per character (rounded up)
Easy encounters cost 1d10 HP per level per character and one spell level per two levels per character (rounded up)
Medium encounters cost 1d12 HP per level per character and one spell level per level per character (rounded up)

A short rest resource is worth a number of HP equal to one of the characters Hit Die x Proficiency bonus, with resources that use a value rather than charges (such as Ki) draining a number equal to proficiency bonus.
A long rest resource operates the same way and is worth triple the amount of HP.
A spell slot is worth 5 HP per spell level x proficiency bonus.

I havent researched or cross referenced those numbers yet, thats an initial eyeball.

A level 1 party of 4 taking on a straightforward easy encounter should drain about 22 HP split however the party likes, maybe being reduced by the dragonborn’s breath (about 12) or a 1st level slot from the wizard (10)

The same party at level 7 slogging through a boring medium encounter drains a total of 182 on average but the monk can burn 3 ki to prevent about 20 HP, the sorcerer 3 Sorcery points for about 50 and a 3rd level slot for a further 45.

Amd once the party is level 13 a trivial time-waster is worth around 234 HP, but they can afford to throw an action surge, channel, 5 ki and two 2nd level slots to reduce that number by around 34 + 26 + 26 + 80 = 166. If the fighter wanted to also burn an indomitable that would be worth a further 42 or so HP

So some race and class resources would obviously be more efficient than others, but if it saves you game time that might be an acceptable trade.

[stoutstien]

Can you elaborate on your meaning here? Do you mean "something other than life and death is at stake", like "the assassin might get away and then we'll never know who did it"? Or do you mean something more like "the players may feel mentally stressed by a new situation", e.g. "these wraiths keep phasing back through the walls every after turn, so on your turn there's nothing to immediately attack--what are you gonna do about it?"

Or do you mean a third thing that is neither?

Anything more than the race to 0 HP. Alternative stakes are fun as are the puzzle encounters of figuring out how what is even happing.
Trying to not die is ok for tension every once in a while but if it's constant it loses its charms.

[HappyDaze]

Someone requested it, and so I do my best to accomodate what was requested whether or not I personally consider it appropriate or necessary. Otherwise it would be a thread full of things that weren’t asked for, and even if it contains thoughtful and helpful discussion I know I hate when that happens to one of my threads.

That said, a chart probably wouldnt be necessary; it could be a relatively simple equation.

Trivial encounters cost 1d8 HP per level per character and one spell level per three levels per character (rounded up)
Easy encounters cost 1d10 HP per level per character and one spell level per two levels per character (rounded up)
Medium encounters cost 1d12 HP per level per character and one spell level per level per character (rounded up)

A short rest resource is worth a number of HP equal to one of the characters Hit Die x Proficiency bonus, with resources that use a value rather than charges (such as Ki) draining a number equal to proficiency bonus.
A long rest resource operates the same way and is worth triple the amount of HP.
A spell slot is worth 5 HP per spell level x proficiency bonus.

I havent researched or cross referenced those numbers yet, thats an initial eyeball.

A level 1 party of 4 taking on a straightforward easy encounter should drain about 22 HP split however the party likes, maybe being reduced by the dragonborn’s breath (about 12) or a 1st level slot from the wizard (10)

The same party at level 7 slogging through a boring medium encounter drains a total of 182 on average but the monk can burn 3 ki to prevent about 20 HP, the sorcerer 3 Sorcery points for about 50 and a 3rd level slot for a further 45.

Amd once the party is level 13 a trivial time-waster is worth around 234 HP, but they can afford to throw an action surge, channel, 5 ki and two 2nd level slots to reduce that number by around 34 + 26 + 26 + 80 = 166. If the fighter wanted to also burn an indomitable that would be worth a further 42 or so HP

So some race and class resources would obviously be more efficient than others, but if it saves you game time that might be an acceptable trade.

This looks great so far. It reminds me of the auto-resolve options on some video games. I'd love to see you flesh it out further.

[MaxWilson]

Someone requested it, and so I do my best to accomodate what was requested whether or not I personally consider it appropriate or necessary. Otherwise it would be a thread full of things that weren’t asked for, and even if it contains thoughtful and helpful discussion I know I hate when that happens to one of my threads.

...

So some race and class resources would obviously be more efficient than others, but if it saves you game time that might be an acceptable trade.

I think the numbers are essentially beside the point. This approach will live or die based on the experience it offers to the players, not the details of how many HP/spells/ki you lose in the notional fight. I think it therefore very relevant to discuss the game procedures you will use with the actual human players (in my case, telling them the price it would cost them to simply narrate the outcome) before discussing what numbers go into your formula/chart.

After all, the players won't care what the difficulty rating is on your encounter, they'll only care what choices they have. If skipping combat is mandatory and numeric, then the players have no reason to care why or how the DM came up with 8d8 HP per PC as the price for killing her. Computing her challenge rating based on her stats and then plugging that into a formula to calculate the difficulty of that CR for the players and then plugging that difficulty into a formula to calculate the number of HP each PC loses... fine-tuning that formula seems far less important than ensuring that your players will be happy with abstract combat that treats a slowly oozing Black Pudding and a flying Banshee as equally threatening to a Tabaxi Rogue.


Anything more than the race to 0 HP. Alternative stakes are fun as are the puzzle encounters of figuring out how what is even happing.
Trying to not die is ok for tension every once in a while but if it's constant it loses its charms.

Interesting. I prefer information games where you don't necessarily know the odds or the stakes, where you might be 95-99% sure that you're not about to die but you're still a little bit tense anyway in case there's something you've overlooked either about the immediate situation or the bigger picture.

For example, a dungeon where every room apparently has a Programmed Illusion of a mind flayer in it who attacks shortly after they enter the room. Of course the players know it's just an illusion because they have not been mind blasted or otherwise harmed. They open another door, and there's a pool of water with a lever sticking out. When they pull the lever, there's a grinding sound from below and a Black Pudding emerges from the pool of water and attacks them. One round into the fight, a doorknob turns and a mind flayer walks in the door.

Are the PCs about to die or not?

[Dark.Revenant]

If you're looking for a non-fantasy original-IP system that you could get into quickly, have you looked at Stars Without Number? It's mechanically a d20 system, so there's some familiarity with D&D, but it's a well-rounded system with truly deadly combat and material for handling a wide variety of non-combat encounters.

[stoutstien]

Interesting. I prefer information games where you don't necessarily know the odds or the stakes, where you might be 95-99% sure that you're not about to die but you're still a little bit tense anyway in case there's something you've overlooked either about the immediate situation or the bigger picture.

Definitely. Unknown factors are amazing tools and every encounter needs something unsure to make it worthwhile.

I wish there were more DMs locally who puts as much effort into the game experience that you do. I want to play in an engaging game so badly.

[Kane0]

I think the numbers are essentially beside the point. This approach will live or die based on the experience it offers to the players, not the details of how many HP/spells/ki you lose in the notional fight. I think it therefore very relevant to discuss the game procedures you will use with the actual human players (in my case, telling them the price it would cost them to simply narrate the outcome) before discussing what numbers go into your formula/chart.

After all, the players won't care what the difficulty rating is on your encounter, they'll only care what choices they have. If skipping combat is mandatory and numeric, then the players have no reason to care why or how the DM came up with 8d8 HP per PC as the price for killing her. Computing her challenge rating based on her stats and then plugging that into a formula to calculate the difficulty of that CR for the players and then plugging that difficulty into a formula to calculate the number of HP each PC loses... fine-tuning that formula seems far less important than ensuring that your players will be happy with abstract combat that treats a slowly oozing Black Pudding and a flying Banshee as equally threatening to a Tabaxi Rogue.

I assume if these mechanics are brought in they would be transparent to the PCs. There would be a known cost to auto-resolve an encounter, and there are still decisions to be made by the players in terms of resource management and attrition.
I'm not the DM and i'm not at the table, so I don't know what encounters will and won't be mandatory in this manner. There is also no formula for fun, so I won't bother trying to factor that in.


This looks great so far. It reminds me of the auto-resolve options on some video games. I'd love to see you flesh it out further.
First thought upon re-reading is that spell slots appear twice, so that's the first thing i'm going to have another look at. Not everyone has them, so I'll probably remove them from the initial HP loss and just leave them as a mitigation expenditure.
I'm honestly not sure if covering individual resources is worth it, i'll probably just categorise a bit.

[MaxWilson]

First thought upon re-reading is that spell slots appear twice, so that's the first thing i'm going to have another look at. Not everyone has them, so I'll probably remove them from the initial HP loss and just leave them as a mitigation expenditure.
I'm honestly not sure if covering individual resources is worth it, i'll probably just categorise a bit.

An interesting thing about the formula you've proposed is that a large number of trivial encounters favors spellcasters (spell slots are cheaper than HP), and a small number of harder encounters favors fighters (spell slots are three times as expensive in medium encounters but HP are only 50% more expenive). This is the opposite of normal play where at-will classes like fighters can handle trivial encounters trivially but need help from spells on harder encounters.

[HappyDaze]

I think the numbers are essentially beside the point. This approach will live or die based on the experience it offers to the players, not the details of how many HP/spells/ki you lose in the notional fight. I think it therefore very relevant to discuss the game procedures you will use with the actual human players (in my case, telling them the price it would cost them to simply narrate the outcome) before discussing what numbers go into your formula/chart.

After all, the players won't care what the difficulty rating is on your encounter, they'll only care what choices they have. If skipping combat is mandatory and numeric, then the players have no reason to care why or how the DM came up with 8d8 HP per PC as the price for killing her. Computing her challenge rating based on her stats and then plugging that into a formula to calculate the difficulty of that CR for the players and then plugging that difficulty into a formula to calculate the number of HP each PC loses... fine-tuning that formula seems far less important than ensuring that your players will be happy with abstract combat that treats a slowly oozing Black Pudding and a flying Banshee as equally threatening to a Tabaxi Rogue.




The whole purpose is to be able to play out 1-3 encounter adventuring days while maintaining the same overall challenge. Everyone knows that if adventures only hit a small number of encounters, they will blast right through them, and everyone knows that large numbers of encounters can take too long to set-up & play out. That's why some way of sucking away resources to allow fewer played out encounters at the same relative difficulty is a goal. The unimportant fights are just background filler.

[MaxWilson]

The whole purpose is to be able to play out 1-3 encounter adventuring days while maintaining the same overall challenge. (A) Everyone knows that if adventures only hit a small number of encounters, they will blast right through them, and everyone knows that large numbers of encounters can take too long to set-up & play out. That's why some way of sucking away resources to allow fewer played out encounters at the same relative difficulty is a goal. The unimportant fights are just background filler.

(A) So you are interested in combat, just not easy combat? I sympathize. For climaxes I aim for Deadly x3 to x4 (after Tier 1 anyway), sometimes Deadly x10. For intelligent enemies like hobgoblins and mind flayers I use less "difficulty" and more intelligent tactics. (In particular, more counterplay against common tactics, e.g. stealth, avoiding Fireball formation, picketing, use of ranged weapons and cover. A limited amount of counter-counter-counterplay for exceptionally intelligent enemies.)

Whoever told you that players blast right through a small number of hyper-Deadly encounters misled you. I would instead recommend setting up a small number of Deadly encounters as the climax of your adventure, and give players opportunities to improve their odds in the climax by initiating other preparatory encounters (defeating enemies in detail, recon to determine enemy battle plans and force dispositions, recruiting willing or unwilling allies) which cost them time, effort, and resources.

In other words, you can hit a group of 10th level PCs with a Githyanki occupation of a stronghold (1 Githyanki, Gish, 1 Kithrak, 2 Young Red Dragons, 20 Githyani Warriors: Deadly x15 if you fight them all at once). If they choose to just walk up and fight, well, they might win or lose. But if you make sure there are Purple Worms nearby, the PCs can kill some and milk them for poison, or Polymorph one into a Purple Worm bomb (like a frog) to throw at the Githyanki. If you make sure the Githyanki have a culture that values single combat, maybe they can win status and infiltrate the Githyanki or kill some of their leaders in advance. Maybe they can create a diversion like a wildfire that diverts the Red Dragons into flying off to laugh at it for a while. Maybe they can save a traveling knight from bandits and recruit the knight and/or the bandits to assist in ending the occupation. Maybe they can do something else you didn't even think of but which still helps them end the occupation.

At the end of the day it's still a tough fight, and the PCs will inevitably overlook some of their own opportunities (some of my players never do recon, sigh) but if the things you do beforehand reduce it e.g. to only a Kith'rak, twelve warriors, and zero dragons against the PCs and a 5th level Knight, suddenly that fight is only quadruple-Deadly even _before_ you count the poisoned weapons and Purple Worm bomb that the Chainlock's sprite is going to plant on the Kith'rak.

Show them an obstacle and then show them they have options for overcoming it.

[HappyDaze]

(A) So you are interested in combat, just not easy combat? I sympathize.


Easy/moderate combats often require just as much time to prep for and resolve (especially when the players recognize it is easy and conserve their boom) as key fights, but they are ultimately just speedbumps. There's really not much risk in them, and they often exist only to deplete resources. So, with that in mind, I'd like a system that can just tell me what to expend to bypass playing out such encounters.

If the encounter is one that has a greater purpose, then play it out, but it's a total lie to deny that many D&D combats are not merely resource-eating speedbumps.

[Merudo]

In 5e right now can look at your character sheet and get a pretty good idea about how you'd fare in battle against a medusa--and more importantly, so can the GM. They don't have to decide how they want the encounter to go, because the rules provide the framework to step back and run the encounter as a referee more than a puppetmaster. But if my players want to persuade a guard to help them, the system doesn't even give me a starting place. Should it be an easy check? Hard? Impossible? What kind of leverage do the players need to have to make it happen?


In the DMG (p.245), there is a table of charisma checks DCs that depends on the creature's initial attitude:

https://i.imgur.com/A5GkfJA.jpg

The whole section is about 1 page long. I do wish it was more fleshed out, but it is a start.

[MaxWilson]

Easy/moderate combats often require just as much time to prep for and resolve (especially when the players recognize it is easy and conserve their boom) as key fights, but they are ultimately just speedbumps. There's really not much risk in them, and they often exist only to deplete resources. So, with that in mind, I'd like a system that can just tell me what to expend to bypass playing out such encounters.

If the encounter is one that has a greater purpose, then play it out, but it's a total lie to deny that many D&D combats are not merely resource-eating speedbumps.

You're not wrong.

It sounds like you want a combat simulator.

[Merudo]

Easy/moderate combats often require just as much time to prep for and resolve (especially when the players recognize it is easy and conserve their boom) as key fights, but they are ultimately just speedbumps. There's really not much risk in them, and they often exist only to deplete resources. So, with that in mind, I'd like a system that can just tell me what to expend to bypass playing out such encounters.

If the encounter is one that has a greater purpose, then play it out, but it's a total lie to deny that many D&D combats are not merely resource-eating speedbumps.

And that's why as a DM I typically design my encounters so that PCs usually have at most one fight per day, for which I crank up the difficulty. Easy/moderate combats bore me as they don't answer interesting narrative questions - so why should I run them? It's better to have a single well-designed, interesting epic fight on unique terrain, and spend the rest of the session on role-play or exploration.

This does make the Fighter, Rogue, Monk, & Warlock sort of weak, so I discourage their use for my campaigns.

The current party in my game is a Paladin, Druid, Cleric and Wizard - and it's so refreshing to have 5 minute adventuring days and have every character remain balanced.

[MaxWilson]

And that's why as I DM I typically design my encounters so that PCs usual have at most one fight per day, for which I crank up the difficulty. Easy/moderate combats bore me as they don't answer interesting narrative questions - so why should I run them? It's better to have a single well-designed, interesting epic fight on unique terrain, and spend the rest of the session on role-play or exploration.

This does make the Fighter, Rogue, Monk, & Warlock sort of weak, so I discourage their use for my campaigns.

Good solution.

I wish people didn't buy so readily into the "5E expects you to have 6-8 combat encounters per day" conventional wisdom, especially when the DMG outright tells you the opposite.

[EggKookoo]

Easy/moderate combats often require just as much time to prep for and resolve (especially when the players recognize it is easy and conserve their boom) as key fights, but they are ultimately just speedbumps. There's really not much risk in them, and they often exist only to deplete resources. So, with that in mind, I'd like a system that can just tell me what to expend to bypass playing out such encounters.

If the encounter is one that has a greater purpose, then play it out, but it's a total lie to deny that many D&D combats are not merely resource-eating speedbumps.

I struggled DMing for a while until I learned to understand exactly this. You could look at it like a baseball game. The first 8 innings are just resource-eating speedbumps. The game is really decided in the 9th. Yet those earlier innings aren't without meaning or value. That's where the momentum is built. Everything that happens in the first 8 innings shape the 9th.

The trick, I think, is not to think of those earlier encounters as mere speedbumps. Don't even really think of them as chains in a link. I mean narratively. Give each one its own life and purpose, just with the understanding that -- mechanically -- they are part of a progression. If you view them with the mindset that they only exist as a way to suck resources, you'll put less energy into making them unique or applying clever tactics or characteristics. They're only pit stops if you make them pit stops.

[Forechosen]

I'm not sure if anybody has mentioned this so far, but doesn't Vampire the Masquerade (at least, the newest edition of it) - have a fairly abstract/very simplified combat system?

To be honest, I've only more-or-less glanced over the VtM rules, but it might be something worth looking in to and attempting to translate to DnD.

That is, unless I'm not completely mistaken about all this xD

[MaxWilson]

I struggled DMing for a while until I learned to understand exactly this. You could look at it like a baseball game. The first 8 innings are just resource-eating speedbumps. The game is really decided in the 9th. Yet those earlier innings aren't without meaning or value. That's where the momentum is built. Everything that happens in the first 8 innings shape the 9th.

Only if there's a reasonable chance of losing the 9th inning. On the other hand, 8 innings of watching someone build up an insurmountable lead followed by a 9th inning culminating in victory is quite boring, especially for the guy managing the other team. It's not surprising when DMs burn out on playing the permanent punching bag.

(Also, murder isn't baseball. If those 8 innings involve intelligent creatures and not just zombies/sorrowsworn/black puddings/etc., those deaths are even more fatiguing to DM.)

But playing the punching bag is optional. You can crank up the difficulty and it's still okay--just don't become adversarial and don't forget that your intent is to make the game more fun for everyone through occasional player defeats, not less. (And defeat need not always equate to TPK, sometimes its giving up and retreating, sometimes it's the introduction of new complications like a compelled suicide mission while one PC is held hostage and the player temporarily plays a monster NPC like a Glabrezu.)

[Kyutaru]

Good solution.

I wish people didn't buy so readily into the "5E expects you to have 6-8 combat encounters per day" conventional wisdom, especially when the DMG outright tells you the opposite.
What?! Do you doubt the Grod?

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?617528-Class-Rest-Modifications

The DMG tells you it's 6-8 medium to hard combat encounters per day on page 84 under the title "The Adventuring Day". Sure it's merely a suggestion of what the party can handle but so is everything else. If they're easy encounters it even says you can have more of them and deadly encounters you'd have fewer. If you don't feel like stressing your team out then you can run less just to make them breathe easy. If you feel like forcing them to flee from battles that take too many resources then you can add more.

But the wisdom is there that "assuming typical adventuring conditions, most adventuring parties can handle six to eight medium or hard combat encounters in a day."


An interesting thing about the formula you've proposed is that a large number of trivial encounters favors spellcasters (spell slots are cheaper than HP), and a small number of harder encounters favors fighters (spell slots are three times as expensive in medium encounters but HP are only 50% more expenive). This is the opposite of normal play where at-will classes like fighters can handle trivial encounters trivially but need help from spells on harder encounters.
I usually see the opposite effect. Spells are great for trivial encounters because they ARE cheaper than HP and reduce the amount of health lost slogging through menial challenges. They let the fighter conserve his hitpoints instead of losing them to something easy to kill. But on tough fights the fighter can really open up and maximize his every swing while the caster has half his spells rendered useless because they're either immune to the effect or their saves are too high. Casters have to play the backup and support the fighter.

[MaxWilson]

What?! Do you doubt the Grod?

*Snip*

... deadly encounters you'd have fewer.

Exactly.

-Max

[KorvinStarmast]

Of course, if the player asks a relevant question to clear up confusion, he gets answer for free. That is what my two or three questions are all about.

I wish people didn't buy so readily into the "5E expects you to have 6-8 combat encounters per day" conventional wisdom, especially when the DMG outright tells you the opposite. But that's the design model, whereas I use the 'daily xp budget" and make from four to one encounters per Adventure Day.

I will not turn it up to 11 each day. I like to vary the challenge. But here's how the math works out.

You get less xp per adventure day if you do what I do, and thus your level progression slows down. The more "bonuses" you give to CR/XP values to make an encounter hard +, the party just gets the raw XP at the end, and thus the fewer XP per adventure day each PC gets.

For three of my tables, that's fine. For one, they got itchy that they had not leveled up yet with some frequency. My solution? More harder encounters.
"At K.Starmast, we make level the old fashioned way. We earn it!"
Weirdly, it worked. But we also had two PC deaths, and thankfully, they didn't kvetch about it.

[EggKookoo]

Only if there's a reasonable chance of losing the 9th inning. On the other hand, 8 innings of watching someone build up an insurmountable lead followed by a 9th inning culminating in victory is quite boring, especially for the guy managing the other team. It's not surprising when DMs burn out on playing the permanent punching bag.

Not disagreeing about DM burnout. But the baseball metaphor doesn't really extend that much into the gameplay. It is, in fact, the PCs that are "losing" encounter after encounter, as they start to run low on hit dice and stuff. The victories of earlier encounters don't add up to a greater chance of winning in the 9th -- in fact quite the opposite.

The DM has to set their own expectations. The goal of the "speedbump" encounters isn't to beat the PCs. It's to make their victory as expensive as possible. That's the victory condition the DM sets for themselves. When I create an encounter, I want the PCs to win. I'm happy they do. But I want them to pay for it. I want them bruised and sore and tired. That's victory for me as DM.

[MaxWilson]

That is what my two or three questions are all about.
But that's the design model, whereas I use the 'daily xp budget" and make from four to one encounters per Adventure Day.

I will not turn it up to 11 each day. I like to vary the challenge. But here's how the math works out.

(A) You get less xp per adventure day if you do what I do, and thus your level progression slows down. The more "bonuses" you give to CR/XP values to make an encounter hard +, the party just gets the raw XP at the end, and thus the fewer XP per adventure day each PC gets.

For three of my tables, that's fine. For one, they got itchy that they had not leveled up yet with some frequency. My solution? More harder encounters.
"At K.Starmast, we make level the old fashioned way. We earn it!"
Weirdly, it worked. But we also had two PC deaths, and thankfully, they didn't kvetch about it.

I don't follow (A). Whether it's an Easy or a Deadly encounter, the ratio of earned experience to adjusted XP is based entirely on the number of monsters in the encounter, not the overall difficulty. Six vampire spawns in a Deadly encounter gives players twice as much XP as the equivalent adjusted XP of Goblins and Giant Spiders in three Medium encounters.

Your conclusions would make sense to me only if in assume that you also avoid high-CR monsters, e.g. wouldn't let a 7th level party fight an Iron Golem or a Balor. Then your Deadly fights run into a level cap and you wind up using multiple monsters instead, which yield less earned XP while ironically often being deadlier than high-CR alternative. I'd rather fight an Iron Golem than four Star Spawn Manglers, but the Iron Golem yields twice as much XP. :) Is that how you do it?


Not disagreeing about DM burnout. But the baseball metaphor doesn't really extend that much into the gameplay. It is, in fact, the PCs that are "losing" encounter after encounter, as they start to run low on hit dice and stuff. The victories of earlier encounters don't add up to a greater chance of winning in the 9th -- in fact quite the opposite.


You misunderstand. The insurmountable lead is how well the PCs are doing relative to the DMG baseline as they clear encounter after encounter without significant resource depletion (because that's how Medium encounters often turn out if the players know what they're doing). If they've gotten through 85% of the DM's adventuring day XP budget while only burning a handful of spell slots (including healing any damage sustained), a DM can reasonably ask himself, "is the ninth inning going to be any different?" and look for different approaches, one of which can reasonably be "crank up the difficulty", another of which could be "skip straight to the 9th inning next time if the players don't mind."

[Kane0]

Okay quick and dirty rules:

Combat Encounter 'auto-resolve'
When faced with an encounter the DM or party agrees to be skippable (straightforward, boring, waste of time, narratively inconsequential, etc) the combat encounter can be resolved as if the party were victorious with some damage taken.

Auto-resolving an encounter incurs an amount of HP damage to the party equal to one die per level per character, the result of which is split however the party chooses (until the full amount is dealt or all PCs are reduced to 0 HP, no shenanigans piling all of it on one PC then casting Revivify). The die size varies depending on the difficulty of the encounter (as described in the DMG and/or Kobold Fight Club). The DM should attempt to account for as many variables as possible beyond XP value and CR.
Trivial: d6
Easy: d8
Medium: d10
Hard: d12
Deadly: N/A (do not auto-resolve)

Players can decide to expend the resources of their characters to reduce the damage total to be taken before the roll is made. Character resources are either [long] or [short] rest based and either [charges] or [pools], with the exception of spell slots and consumable items.

A short rest resource negates encounter damage by an amount equal to a Hit Die (including Con bonus) of the character multiplied by their proficiency bonus.
A long rest resource negates encounter damage by an amount equal to three Hit Die (including Con bonus) of the character multiplied by their proficiency bonus.
Pool based resources operate identically to charge based resources but require the expenditure of a number of that pool equal to the character's proficiency bonus.
Spell slots negate encounter damage equal to 5 per spell level multiplied by the character's proficiency bonus.

Consumables
The DM decides what consumables may be used in an auto-resolve encounter and how many, if any. Consumable items that mimic spells are treated as spell slots above, otherwise negating damage depending on its rarity. Use of an item that has charges drains a number of charges equal to half the proficiency bonus of the user, similar to pool based resources.
Common: 1d12
Uncommon: 2d12
Rare: 3d12
Very Rare: 6d12
Legendary: 12d12

Now I fully expect to have missed something and numbers are subject to change, but this should be plenty good enough to try out and see how it runs.

[HappyDaze]

Okay quick and dirty rules:

Combat Encounter 'auto-resolve'
When faced with an encounter the DM or party agrees to be skippable (straightforward, boring, waste of time, narratively inconsequential, etc) the combat encounter can be resolved as if the party were victorious with some damage taken.

Auto-resolving an encounter incurs an amount of HP damage to the party equal to one die per level per character, the result of which is split however the party chooses (until the full amount is dealt or all PCs are reduced to 0 HP, no shenanigans piling all of it on one PC then casting Revivify). The die size varies depending on the difficulty of the encounter (as described in the DMG and/or Kobold Fight Club). The DM should attempt to account for as many variables as possible beyond XP value and CR.
Trivial: d6
Easy: d8
Medium: d10
Hard: d12
Deadly: N/A (do not auto-resolve)

Players can decide to expend the resources of their characters to reduce the damage total to be taken before the roll is made. Character resources are either [long] or [short] rest based and either [charges] or [pools], with the exception of spell slots and consumable items.

A short rest resource negates encounter damage by an amount equal to a Hit Die (including Con bonus) of the character multiplied by their proficiency bonus.
A long rest resource negates encounter damage by an amount equal to three Hit Die (including Con bonus) of the character multiplied by their proficiency bonus.
Pool based resources operate identically to charge based resources but require the expenditure of a number of that pool equal to the character's proficiency bonus.
Spell slots negate encounter damage equal to 5 per spell level multiplied by the character's proficiency bonus.

Consumables
The DM decides what consumables may be used in an auto-resolve encounter and how many, if any. Consumable items that mimic spells are treated as spell slots above, otherwise negating damage depending on its rarity. Use of an item that has charges drains a number of charges equal to half the proficiency bonus of the user, similar to pool based resources.
Common: 1d12
Uncommon: 2d12
Rare: 3d12
Very Rare: 6d12
Legendary: 12d12

Now I fully expect to have missed something and numbers are subject to change, but this should be plenty good enough to try out and see how it runs.

The part I'm not sure about is having a dice pool that is not rolled before it is reduced and resources that reduce by the same die code as the encounter. I think I'd like to roll the dice for the encounter and let the players roll the dice for their resources, subtracting the latter from the former. I'd also have different abilities have different values (for example, instead of a spell scaling from 5d6 in a Trivial to 5d12 for a Hard, perhaps have it just do 5d8 all the time regardless of encounter level). Thoughts?

EDIT: I see that I read that wrong. Spells reduce by (5 x Level x Prof Bonus). I think I'd prefer that to be a random number (instead of 5) as sometimes spells pop and sometimes they fizzle.

When using abilities bound to a character's Hit Die, what about multiclass characters that have varying dice types? Which do they use? For example a Paladin/Sorcerer has d10s and d6s.

I think perhaps replacing the Prof Bonus flat multiplier by a random multiplier (e.g., +2 = d4, +3 = d6, +4 = d8, +5 = d10, and +6 = d12) might be interesting too.

[EggKookoo]

You misunderstand. The insurmountable lead is how well the PCs are doing relative to the DMG baseline as they clear encounter after encounter without significant resource deletion (because that's how Medium encounters often turn out if the players know what they're doing). If they've gotten through 85% of the DM's adventuring day XP budget while only burning a handful of spell slots (including healing any damage sustained), a DM can reasonably ask himself, "is the ninth inning going to be any different?" and look for different approaches, one of which can reasonably be "crank up the difficulty", another of which could be "skip straight to the 9th inning next time if the players don't mind."

Oh, I see. But that's the (separate) issue of encounter difficulty. That's easy to tweak in aggregate. I think that's why so many encounters are encouraged -- it's not so easy to guarantee that any given encounter is going to be X hard, even if you're applying smart monster tactics. Dice impact the outcome too much. But you'll have more success tuning the average difficulty of a series of encounters, where dice results cancel each other out.


When faced with an encounter the DM or party agrees to be skippable (straightforward, boring, waste of time, narratively inconsequential, etc) the combat encounter can be resolved as if the party were victorious with some damage taken.

I have never had players opt to skip a combat encounter because they expect it to be too easy. Players like rolling dice. A fight is a chance for them to take the spotlight away from the DM. And if all else fails, it's free XP. Sure, you could grant them the XP anyway, but players come to the table to play. They like smashing things in fights, and as far as I've seen as a DM (and honestly, when I do play as a player), it being too easy isn't a problem.

It may be a problem for the DM, but then you have a situation where the DM deliberately sets up a "too easy" encounter only to tell the players that it's too easy and they're going to skip it. It's kinda weird.

[Sol0botmate]

The biggest drawback in combat in 5e that drags everything for me is measuring every single thing and how movement and reach became so important.

Measuring if you will get there with 30 feet movement, measuring if you can get to ally in 30feet movement, measuring if you can get there with 60 feet dash, but there is 15 feet "difficulty terrain" there. Measuring where is 10 feet reach when you have reach weapon. Measuring 120 feet when you are range character and want to keep distance. Every enemy on map moved. Measuring again if everyone are still on 120 feet. Someone not? Measuring 15 feet in, shoot, 15 feet out.

You have Spirit Guardians on you? Measuring 15 feet around you when you move, see if any enemy square if affeced. Measure every enemy movement once again when inside because difficulty terrain.

Fieball, measure 20 feet reach. Measure to affect maximum enemy squares.

Cubes, can be placed on "lines" to affect multiple squares, meassure.

Healing Word bonus action. Meassure if friend is in reach.

Cone, meassure. etc.

Sometimes 5e battles look more like Warhammer Battle than Pen-n-Paper RPG.




I couple of times played "abstract" encounters with players, where we didn't have any square maps, just some enemy positions etc. and we didn't meassure anything, I was just going with how I as DM see it. "If I throw fireball here, will I reach them all". "No, this one is out of reach and your friend here will get caught". "Ok, so I shoot it here".

Now, it needs system tweaking because of how currently 5e works.

But believe me - not meassure every single thing on battle map made combat much faster and much more "dynamic".

So I recommend to try to get rid off this one first.

[Kane0]

I have never had players opt to skip a combat encounter because they expect it to be too easy. Players like rolling dice.

It may be a problem for the DM, but then you have a situation where the DM deliberately sets up a "too easy" encounter only to tell the players that it's too easy and they're going to skip it.
I imagine that would be a Session 0 topic for the table, largely dependant on the style and pace of the game.



The part I'm not sure about is having a dice pool that is not rolled before it is reduced and resources that reduce by the same die code as the encounter. I think I'd like to roll the dice for the encounter and let the players roll the dice for their resources, subtracting the latter from the former. I'd also have different abilities have different values (for example, instead of a spell scaling from 5d6 in a Trivial to 5d12 for a Hard, perhaps have it just do 5d8 all the time regardless of encounter level). Thoughts?
Thats basically the idea, the DM knows the exact total damage value but the players dont until after theyve decided what resources to burn in an attempt to mitigate it. This is to retain that little bit of uncertainty and inefficiency even if we’re abstracting away the nitty gritty of the fight.
Mind you they will still have a rough number to wirk with by knowing the calculation and the DM stating the encounter difficulty, that is expected but not mandatory if you prefer to keep those sorts of details behind the screen as DM.



EDIT: I see that I read that wrong. Spells reduce by (5 x Level x Prof Bonus). I think I'd prefer that to be a random number (instead of 5) as sometimes spells pop and sometimes they fizzle.

When using abilities bound to a character's Hit Die, what about multiclass characters that have varying dice types? Which do they use? For example a Paladin/Sorcerer has d10s and d6s.

I think perhaps replacing the Prof Bonus flat multiplier by a random multiplier (e.g., +2 = d4, +3 = d6, +4 = d8, +5 = d10, and +6 = d12) might be interesting too


Sure, 1d8 substitutes for 5 pretty well.

Whatever they have more of. If they have an equal number then i’d just err on the larger side.

No reason you couldnt, Proficiency Dice is an optional rule that already exists. But to me the numbers are plenty swingy enough as is really.

[Willie the Duck]

The biggest drawback in combat in 5e that drags everything for me is measuring every single thing and how movement and reach became so important.<snip>

Compared to which other edition or other game? I seem to recall movement and distance being pretty important in 3e and 4e, and anyone whose magic user didn't eyeball the size of the room before casting Fireball knows how important these things were in the TSR era.

[Kyutaru]

Compared to which other edition or other game? I seem to recall movement and distance being pretty important in 3e and 4e, and anyone whose magic user didn't eyeball the size of the room before casting Fireball knows how important these things were in the TSR era.
Likewise with reach. Maybe not for players so much as there weren't many of them but it was quite important for monsters. The Grid was even optional back then with many people still doing it the tabletop way of measuring with rulers.

[Skylivedk]

Just as long as you don't tempt Fate. Fate has no impulse control.
I've done plenty of that. Some would say my habit of jumping out of planes is an ongoing Mantis Mating Dance (and not even close to the most fate-tempting decision I've made). Thank you though, I'll convey the advice to the me that lives in a parallel universe where I'm risk adverse.


I assume if these mechanics are brought in they would be transparent to the PCs. There would be a known cost to auto-resolve an encounter, and there are still decisions to be made by the players in terms of resource management and attrition.
I'm not the DM and i'm not at the table, so I don't know what encounters will and won't be mandatory in this manner. There is also no formula for fun, so I won't bother trying to factor that in.


First thought upon re-reading is that spell slots appear twice, so that's the first thing i'm going to have another look at. Not everyone has them, so I'll probably remove them from the initial HP loss and just leave them as a mitigation expenditure.
I'm honestly not sure if covering individual resources is worth it, i'll probably just categorise a bit.
As a minimum it's worth considering that:
A) not all short rest resources are equal (channel divinity vs battle master's manoeuvre die Vs Arcane Archers ditto).

B) the at-will classes get shafted (swashbuckler, champion - scratch that -, swashbuckler and scout)


And that's why as a DM I typically design my encounters so that PCs usually have at most one fight per day, for which I crank up the difficulty. Easy/moderate combats bore me as they don't answer interesting narrative questions - so why should I run them? It's better to have a single well-designed, interesting epic fight on unique terrain, and spend the rest of the session on role-play or exploration.

This does make the Fighter, Rogue, Monk, & Warlock sort of weak, so I discourage their use for my campaigns.

The current party in my game is a Paladin, Druid, Cleric and Wizard - and it's so refreshing to have 5 minute adventuring days and have every character remain balanced.

I recommend you to simply 3x the short rest classes' resources and turn them to long rest classes. I did that after reading through SKT as DM and noticing that there was barely any good SR map designs.

You might want to cap how much they want to spend in one fight. Test it.


Okay quick and dirty rules:

Combat Encounter 'auto-resolve'
When faced with an encounter the DM or party agrees to be skippable (straightforward, boring, waste of time, narratively inconsequential, etc) the combat encounter can be resolved as if the party were victorious with some damage taken.

Auto-resolving an encounter incurs an amount of HP damage to the party equal to one die per level per character, the result of which is split however the party chooses (until the full amount is dealt or all PCs are reduced to 0 HP, no shenanigans piling all of it on one PC then casting Revivify). The die size varies depending on the difficulty of the encounter (as described in the DMG and/or Kobold Fight Club). The DM should attempt to account for as many variables as possible beyond XP value and CR.
Trivial: d6
Easy: d8
Medium: d10
Hard: d12
Deadly: N/A (do not auto-resolve)

Players can decide to expend the resources of their characters to reduce the damage total to be taken before the roll is made. Character resources are either [long] or [short] rest based and either [charges] or [pools], with the exception of spell slots and consumable items.

A short rest resource negates encounter damage by an amount equal to a Hit Die (including Con bonus) of the character multiplied by their proficiency bonus.
A long rest resource negates encounter damage by an amount equal to three Hit Die (including Con bonus) of the character multiplied by their proficiency bonus.
Pool based resources operate identically to charge based resources but require the expenditure of a number of that pool equal to the character's proficiency bonus.
Spell slots negate encounter damage equal to 5 per spell level multiplied by the character's proficiency bonus.

Consumables
The DM decides what consumables may be used in an auto-resolve encounter and how many, if any. Consumable items that mimic spells are treated as spell slots above, otherwise negating damage depending on its rarity. Use of an item that has charges drains a number of charges equal to half the proficiency bonus of the user, similar to pool based resources.
Common: 1d12
Uncommon: 2d12
Rare: 3d12
Very Rare: 6d12
Legendary: 12d12

Now I fully expect to have missed something and numbers are subject to change, but this should be plenty good enough to try out and see how it runs.
Examples? And what would you do with champions, aren't you punishing Warlocks taking at-will invocations, aren't Wizards worse than Sorcerers in this system and bards way too strong?


Oh, I see. But that's the (separate) issue of encounter difficulty. That's easy to tweak in aggregate. I think that's why so many encounters are encouraged -- it's not so easy to guarantee that any given encounter is going to be X hard, even if you're applying smart monster tactics. Dice impact the outcome too much. But you'll have more success tuning the average difficulty of a series of encounters, where dice results cancel each other out.



I have never had players opt to skip a combat encounter because they expect it to be too easy. Players like rolling dice. A fight is a chance for them to take the spotlight away from the DM. And if all else fails, it's free XP. Sure, you could grant them the XP anyway, but players come to the table to play. They like smashing things in fights, and as far as I've seen as a DM (and honestly, when I do play as a player), it being too easy isn't a problem.

It may be a problem for the DM, but then you have a situation where the DM deliberately sets up a "too easy" encounter only to tell the players that it's too easy and they're going to skip it. It's kinda weird.
I/we have fast forwarded a lot. Especially while hex crawling in Tomb of Annihilation. Doubly so once we had shown the DM that we could do a bunch of the random encounters without losing any hp/barely any.

I would definitely like and appreciate a good great forward mechanic so thank you to all of you for trying to come up with one.

PS. @MaxWilson: point taken/conceded with ranged invisible creatures - especially above a certain distance (30 ft?), I agree it wouldn't matter that the shooter is invisible if you can see the shot coming

[KorvinStarmast]

Then your Deadly fights run into a level cap and you wind up using multiple monsters instead, which yield less earned XP while ironically often being deadlier than high-CR alternative.
That's mostly what I am talking about. (the latter point that you make earn less xp but is deadlier and there are more attack rolls against the characters ....).
I only rarely drop in that single, CR much higher than party level Deadly + encounter. That's what I refer to as turning it up to 11.
I tend to make the hard-to-deadly-to-deadly plus mixed monster encounters of different kinds of monsters and I've lately been tossing in at least one, if not multiple, spell casting abilities or spell like effects. When one uses the DMG table the "adjusted" gets multiplied based on how many monsters, but the actual XP accrued isn't so multiplied. Five monsters doubles adjusted xp, 8 ups the multiple more, etc ...

For a party of third levels, having a blood demon (CR 3) mounted on a chuul confront them as the earthquake / volcano that they are fleeing goes off in the background was a deadly+ encounter. (They had burned a good number of resources before this encounter).
They just got through it. (And it was not the only encounter of the day).
As they rolled initiative, I did warn them that "we may lose a PC here if you are not in top form ..." because I wanted them to both "feel" the threat of "what the hell is that thing?" (well those things) and I wanted all of the players to pay attention.
I'd had a couple of them sort of tuning out as they'd run the gauntlet of the crumbling building (which caused some damage to those who missed their dex saves).

[MaxWilson]

Oh, I see. But that's the (separate) issue of encounter difficulty. That's easy to tweak in aggregate. I think that's why so many encounters are encouraged -- it's not so easy to guarantee that any given encounter is going to be X hard, even if you're applying smart monster tactics. Dice impact the outcome too much. But you'll have more success tuning the average difficulty of a series of encounters, where dice results cancel each other out.

I'm already talking about the average difficulty. Once you prove that a given group of PCs can beat three or four Medium/Hard encounters with trivial expenditure of resources (e.g. one Aura of Vitality, ten bags of caltrops, and a Conjure Animals spell), it's not about dice impacting the outcome: the encounters are just plain too easy.

Crank up the difficulty or skip over the encounters.


I have never had players opt to skip a combat encounter because they expect it to be too easy. Players like rolling dice. A fight is a chance for them to take the spotlight away from the DM. And if all else fails, it's free XP. Sure, you could grant them the XP anyway, but players come to the table to play. They like smashing things in fights, and as far as I've seen as a DM (and honestly, when I do play as a player), it being too easy isn't a problem.

It may be a problem for the DM, but then you have a situation where the DM deliberately sets up a "too easy" encounter only to tell the players that it's too easy and they're going to skip it. It's kinda weird.

Yeah, this is why I think it's important for the "cost" of skipping to be in the player's favor. By undercharging slightly, I'm basically bribing the players with extra HP (which are then convertible to extra XP/treasure via stretch goals in the dungeon) to skip fights that I don't want to run.

You shouldn't skip fights that the players don't want to skip, so figuring out how you're going to make them want it is important.

I remember one time when the players were clearing territory for their space colony on an aerial island infested with Ropers and Phase Spiders. I knew that killing Ropers and Phase Spiders is relatively easy, and I wanted to DM something more interesting than a curb stomp, so I offered the players a deal: every time you do a fight with every roll at disadvantage and the enemies making every roll at advantage, we'll call that a proxy for your unluckiest fight of the week, and assume that you had ten other fights of similar magnitude but better luck, and you'll get ten times the XP and clear out ten times as many monsters. They took that deal, and it led to some awesome and memorable moments like phase spiders dropping their spelljamming ship out of the sky by paralyzing the pilot (but someone else made the necessary rolls to take control in time before it hit the ground), and the players earned a TON of XP, and I was happy because we got the awesome memories and a fairly realistic outcome without taking ten times as long to do it.

[EggKookoo]

Crank up the difficulty or skip over the encounters.

Why wouldn't you crank up the difficulty? I mean, assuming you like running or playing those encounters? You can do quite a bit without blowing your XP budget, unfortunately though at the cost of making combat take longer. Maybe that's the reason?

[MaxWilson]

Why wouldn't you crank up the difficulty? I mean, assuming you like running or playing those encounters? You can do quite a bit without blowing your XP budget, unfortunately though at the cost of making combat take longer. Maybe that's the reason?

You should crank up the difficulty (although I see no reason to stick to the XP budget--you might as well reward the players with more XP for overcoming more difficulty instead of trying to game the XP system), and you should entice your players to go along with it. That's what this whole "skip to the 9th inning" thing is about. I thought you were disagreeing with that before, since that's where your 9 innings analogy came into the thread, but if we're on the same page that cranking up the difficulty until it's interesting to DM is fine, then good. There's nothing wrong with an adventure that looks like:

https://i.postimg.cc/G2rvzdWc/Adventure.png (https://postimg.cc/hJyJtW4w)

Players enjoy easy encounters but I feel that it contributes to DM burnout. You have to find a balance that satisfies everyone at the table.

An alternative to cranking up the difficulty could be to run dungeon crawls without a DM, using oracle dice or random tables or a rotating responsibility among the players to determine what the monsters do.

==================================


For a party of third levels, having a blood demon (CR 3) mounted on a chuul confront them as the earthquake / volcano that they are fleeing goes off in the background was a deadly+ encounter. (They had burned a good number of resources before this encounter).
They just got through it. (And it was not the only encounter of the day).
As they rolled initiative, I did warn them that "we may lose a PC here if you are not in top form ..." because I wanted them to both "feel" the threat of "what the ---- is that thing?" (well those things) and I wanted all of the players to pay attention.
I'd had a couple of them sort of tuning out as they'd run the gauntlet of the crumbling building (which caused some damage to those who missed their dex saves).

I haven't heard of a blood demon but I'll assume for the sake of argument that it's about as tough as a Githyanki Warrior.

See, I might have gone the other way and just made it a T-Rex. It's a similar level of difficulty once you account for the arrogant stupidity of the T-Rex (I would not have it melee kite, for example, even though it technically could, I would just have it pounce on someone, bite them, and roar fiercely while munching repeatedly on them and using its tail to lash out at anyone else who approached), but the players get twice as much XP.

It turns out that there's really not all that much difference between the various monster CRs once you get beyond CR 4 (e.g. CR 6 Young White Dragon and CR 8 Young Green Dragon are almost identical, and upscaling a CR 5 Air Elemental to CR 7 hardly buys you anything at all in stat improvements which BTW makes upcasting Conjure Elemental a fairly bad idea usually) so I don't hesitate to use high-CR monsters against a mid-level party.

[EggKookoo]

You _should_ crank up the difficulty, and you should entice your players to go along with it. That's what this whole "skip to the 9th inning" thing is about. I thought you were disagreeing with that before, since that's where your 9 innings analogy came into the thread, but if we're on the same page that cranking up the difficulty until it's interesting to DM is fine, then good.

Sorry, I'm responding in between meetings, so I apologize for any greater-than-normal scatterbrain-ness.


Players enjoy easy encounters but I feel that it contributes to DM burnout. You have to find a balance that satisfies everyone at the table.

It does if the DM views their role as an adversary to the players. I view myself as a player-advocate. I want them to win. I cheer their good rolls, and apologize when I get the good ones. I set my encounter goal to be "it cost them some resources" rather than "they feared for their lives." If the players are weighing if it's worth it to spend a spell slot, or a superiority die, or if the fight ends with the PCs on top, but the players check their HP and decide if they need a short rest to roll some hit dice, I feel good about the encounter. I'm energized and ready for the next one.

And it's not like the dice can't turn an easy encounter into a near-deadly one.

[MaxWilson]

Sorry, I'm responding in between meetings, so I apologize for any greater-than-normal scatterbrain-ness.

(A) It does if the DM views their role as an adversary to the players. I view myself as a player-advocate. I want them to win. I cheer their good rolls, and apologize when I get the good ones. I set my encounter goal to be "it cost them some resources" rather than "they feared for their lives." If the players are weighing if it's worth it to spend a spell slot, or a superiority die, or if the fight ends with the PCs on top, but the players check their HP and decide if they need a short rest to roll some hit dice, I feel good about the encounter. I'm energized and ready for the next one.

And it's not like the dice can't turn an easy encounter into a near-deadly one.

(A) Even if the DM doesn't view themselves as an adversary for the players, and wants them to win, it can still lead to burnout. Rolling dice when the outcome isn't in doubt is fundamentally boring. Even more so when the most likely outcome doesn't involve significant resource expenditure except the most important resource (table time and DM/player attention).

I seem to recall that you play in a school environment where players are inexperienced and often make foolish decisions, so it's not surprising that you haven't hit this issue.

I don't know if you saw my edit even though it was made before your reply, so I'll just reiterate that there's nothing wrong with adventures that look like this:

https://i.postimg.cc/G2rvzdWc/Adventure.png (https://postimg.cc/hJyJtW4w)

[KorvinStarmast]

==================================

I haven't heard of a blood demon but I'll assume for the sake of argument that it's about as tough as a Githyanki Warrior.
I think it's in Volo's, now I need to go and check to see if I named it correctly. Not at my usual PC ... OK, here is my notes from an email I sent to myself.

Chuul with a Bearded Devil riding it. Sorry, brain not working on previous post.

See, I might have gone the other way and just made it a T-Rex. It's a similar level of difficulty once you account for the arrogant stupidity of the T-Rex (I would not have it melee kite, for example, even though it technically could, I would just have it pounce on someone, bite them, and roar fiercely while munching repeatedly on them and using its tail to lash out at anyone else who approached), but the players get twice as much XP.
In this case, it would make no narrative sense for the situation at hand. Up in the cold mountains of the north: not TRex territory, really. (Also: focus fire is a thing). (And 3rd level isn't mid level. My brother is finding what you find, though, with our 7th level party that he DMs. We handle higher level monster OK most of the time, since we have more tools in the kit).

[MaxWilson]

I think it's in Volo's, now I need to go and check to see if I named it correctly. Not at my usual PC ... OK, here is my notes from an email I sent to myself.
Sorry, brain not working on previous post.

In this case, it would make no narrative sense for the situation at hand. Up in the cold mountains of the north: not TRex territory, really. (Also: focus fire is a thing). (And 3rd level isn't mid level. My brother is finding what you find, though, with our 7th level party that he DMs. We handle higher level monster OK most of the time, since we have more tools in the kit).

Ah, yeah, a Chuul + Bearded Devil is much, muuuuch weaker than Chuul + Githyanki Warrior (or T-Rex), despite being the same CR.

The exact details of which high-CR monster I might use to shovel more XP to the players while simultaneously challenging them aren't super important. T-Rex was just an example, but a Slaad might do just as well. A Red Slaad is similar in difficulty to a Chuul + Bearded Devil, does well in cold territory, and can potentially leave players with an interesting long-term problem in the form of chestburster eggs (story hook!). If the players have the means to fix the egg themselves (Lay On Hands or Lesser Restoration), great! They just saved a PC's life while gaining some interesting lore about the world.

Or, y'know, whatever. I'm just saying that Deadly can mean "bigger XP rewards" if you want it to, instead of "smaller XP rewards".

[KorvinStarmast]

If the players have the means to fix the egg themselves (Lay On Hands or Lesser Restoration), great! They just saved a PC's life while gaining some interesting lore about the world.

Or, y'know, whatever. I'm just saying that Deadly can mean "bigger XP rewards" if you want it to, instead of "smaller XP rewards". Yeah, the party has a paladin. Also, neat idea on the slaad. Might consider it. I see your point on "one big monster" and the biggest advantage to that is that it's a boat load less work for the DM: one monster to run, go! One initiative roll, one set of abilities to manage.

Of course, if that one monster is a medusa and two of the PCs are now statues and nobody has 5th level cleric spells ... which has happened ... I now have to make a new quest so that they can turn their stoned PCs back into flesh ... which I did. Two months later, the cleric again got turned to stone, this time by a Gorgon. The Player got a little peeved and decided to roll up a bard and have him meet the party. The statue is currently collecting pigeon poop in a deserted town.

[MaxWilson]

Yeah, the party has a paladin. Also, neat idea on the slaad. Might consider it. I see your point on "one big monster" and the biggest advantage to that is that it's a boat load less work for the DM: one monster to run, go! One initiative roll, one set of abilities to manage.

Of course, if that one monster is a medusa and two of the PCs are now statues and nobody has 5th level cleric spells ... which has happened ... I now have to make a new quest so that they can turn their stoned PCs back into flesh ... which I did. Two months later, the cleric again got turned to stone, this time by a Gorgon. The Player got a little peeved and decided to roll up a bard and have him meet the party. The statue is currently collecting pigeon poop in a deserted town.

Heh. Yeah, that can happen. (It can also happen with "Easy" encounters vs. Intellect Devourers. My players wound up tracking down a Couatl.)

That's D&D!

P.S. I might add that 5E Medusas are pretty trivial, since you aren't even required to look at them in the first place. All they can really do against PCs who know what they are is impose disadvantage on close-range attackers while granting themselves advantage. Gorgons of course are a different story--gotta keep your distance, even if that requires taking opportunity attacks.

And of course it's one thing for me to comment that "all you have to do is XYZ" and another thing to watch in morbid fascination as certain players proceed to do the exact opposite and turn themselves into statues. Which, again, is D&D in a nutshell, and not necessarily un-fun.

[Unoriginal]

I think it's in Volo's, now I need to go and check to see if I named it correctly. Not at my usual PC ... OK, here is my notes from an email I sent to myself.
Sorry, brain not working on previous post.

In this case, it would make no narrative sense for the situation at hand. Up in the cold mountains of the north: not TRex territory, really. (Also: focus fire is a thing). (And 3rd level isn't mid level. My brother is finding what you find, though, with our 7th level party that he DMs. We handle higher level monster OK most of the time, since we have more tools in the kit).

I thought you were talking about the Babau, who is a kind of blood Demon.

[KorvinStarmast]

I thought you were talking about the Babau, who is a kind of blood Demon. Nah, Bearded Devil it was, and I had never used one before so as I polled various monster combinations of stuff "erupting out of the underworld as the volcano/earthquake goes off" that appealed to me if only it was riding something strange ... something weird ... chuul fit my mental image of that nicely.

For Max: Well, the Cleric just ran into the room and they discovered that the hooded figure with a long bow ... had a nasty surprise for them. A passed save would have been nice at that point ... but the funny part is that the dwarf came running in after him and surprised me by failing the saves as well.
(It's not like I didn't telegraph a Greek Mythos/Legends themed set of encounters. We had minotaurs, two Lamia (who had a town under their control) and some Hoplyte/Myrmidon's who were reskinned Veterans ... all this well before the Theros book came out.

The dice are fickle.

They ended up finding a couatl as well, but it took some searching around and that whole 'nother side quest thing.

[EggKookoo]

I seem to recall that you play in a school environment where players are inexperienced and often make foolish decisions, so it's not surprising that you haven't hit this issue.

Not I. I play with family/friends. I do have a young player (9, my daughter) and none of my other players is particularly seasoned. Well, except that one guy, who never seems to be able to make it. He knows who he is...

I try to scale the difficulty so that the easier encounters can still pop a scare or two. It doesn't take more than one AoE that brings the entire party down by 1/5 of their total HP to get them a little panicky. Also, this campaign (my first full 5e one) is still at tier 1, so maybe the PCs are fragile compared to what others may be thinking of.

[HappyDaze]

An alternative to cranking up the difficulty could be to run dungeon crawls without a DM, using oracle dice or random tables or a rotating responsibility among the players to determine what the monsters do.


I proposed this early in the thread when I said I'd just show them the map and tell them what the bad guys are and then play video games or watch Netflix while they fought out the battle. This was considered bad form because apparently the DM is obligated to slog through even the most boring and uninteresting parts just so the players can feel mighty.

[MaxWilson]

I proposed this early in the thread (B) when I said I'd just show them the map and tell them what the bad guys are and then play video games or watch Netflix while they fought out the battle. (A) This was considered bad form because apparently the DM is obligated to slog through even the most boring and uninteresting parts just so the players can feel mighty.

(A) That's not what I see in the thread history. In post #12 for example, Unoriginal reacted to your suggestion of playing a video game while ignoring your players by suggesting that you make their wins less inevitable using more deadly combat.

(B) The difference between post #11 and what I'm proposing is that in the post #11 scenario, you're sitting on the couch angrily watching TV and trying to ignore your friends, and in my scenario you're killing monsters with your friends, and eagerly waiting to see whether what's behind the next door will be a Vorpal Sword or a TPK.

[Kyutaru]

I proposed this early in the thread when I said I'd just show them the map and tell them what the bad guys are and then play video games or watch Netflix while they fought out the battle. This was considered bad form because apparently the DM is obligated to slog through even the most boring and uninteresting parts just so the players can feel mighty.

Why are there any boring or uninteresting parts at all?

This is a roleplaying game. This isn't World of Warcraft. There should be no grinding for levels and loot. No downtime or daily quests. No boring parts at all. You can play completely like a movie and jump from action scene to action scene. There is no requirement to watch the characters get on the bus and travel to their next destination. They can simply be there.

I'll never understand why people feel it is necessary to do things that don't amount to being fun when the activity is literally about having fun. Games that promote tedium are cultivating an addiction, not fun. For all the criticism the game gets it's one that has no official servers, no singular rule system, no mandatory monster encounters, no dungeon boss fights. The entire play experience is decided by you. If it's boring, you chose boring.

[Lacco]

Why are there any boring or uninteresting parts at all?

This is a roleplaying game. This isn't World of Warcraft. There should be no grinding for levels and loot. No downtime or daily quests. No boring parts at all. You can play completely like a movie and jump from action scene to action scene. There is no requirement to watch the characters get on the bus and travel to their next destination. They can simply be there.

I'll never understand why people feel it is necessary to do things that don't amount to being fun when the activity is literally about having fun. Games that promote tedium are cultivating an addiction, not fun. For all the criticism the game gets it's one that has no official servers, no singular rule system, no mandatory monster encounters, no dungeon boss fights. The entire play experience is decided by you. If it's boring, you chose boring.

Because the GM chose a wrong system.

And I know there's this movement for "you can play anything in DnD", but in DnD there is grinding for levels and loot. And it's baked into the ruleset. And from what I read so far, the OP does not enjoy the action scene to action scene approach.

You are correct: there is no singular rule system for RPGs, even though some would think there is. You just have to switch to another channel and choose a game you want to play with your friends. Or acquiatances. Or whatever.

I know this is DnD 5e neighborhood - but why waste time trying to rebuild DnD to suit your needs when there are other systems that could work much better?

I agree with the notion that there shouldn't be boring or uninteresting part, but what's boring for one is fun for others. In my case: downtime's not boring. Grinds are. That's why I'm firmly planted outside DnD :smallsmile:

My advice would be simple: write into the general RP part of the forum your requirements/favourite parts of RP/mechanics you like and let the people suggest systems that fit. You'll find a better one this way.

[Merudo]

And I know there's this movement for "you can play anything in DnD", but in DnD there is grinding for levels and loot. And it's baked into the ruleset.

I define "grinding" as performing repetitive tasks for a gameplay advantage or loot.

Not sure where it's "baked into the ruleset" that D&D tasks ought to be repetitive.

In videogames, grinding is a way to reuse quests / battles / creatures to pad out the game by avoiding the creation of costly original content. In D&D, the DM can create brand new dungeons, battlefields, monsters, etc. on the spot, and so a creative DM can make every task unique and original for relatively low effort.

[Lacco]

I define "grinding" as performing repetitive tasks for a gameplay advantage or loot.

Not sure where it's "baked into the ruleset" that D&D tasks ought to be repetitive.

In videogames, grinding is a way to reuse quests / battles / creatures to pad out the game by avoid creating costly original content. In D&D, the DM can create brand new dungeons, battlefields, monsters, etc. on the spot, and so a creative DM can make every task unique and original for relatively low effort.

Your definition of grinding matches mine quite closely.

And I apologize: I have fallen into a trap I try to avoid - judging systems I have not played. So, for DnD5e I have no proof of it being into the ruleset.

In some of the previous iterations the ruleset basically did promote grinding via XP for monster killing & additional power for loot. Of course, it's mostly noticeable after playing games where you step out of this loop.

In most systems DM can create brand new dungeons, battlefields, monsters, etc. Creative DMs are not the issue here. Combat that feels worthwhile seems to be.

Based on what OP stated, the "relatively low effort" to make tasks unique is not as low for him. Thus: changing systems might help.

[Unoriginal]

I'm of the opinion that if an encounter, any encounter would be boring, either due to repetitiveness or uninteresting presentation, then it should be scrapped. Or reworked until the boring is gone.

As Merudo sadi, 5e isn't a video game, there shouldn't be an expectation of fighting the same group of enemies ten times between point A and point B as padding. Each encounter should *mean* something, either by letting the players discover new things about the plot, showcasing the personality and methods of the antagonists, making the world feel lived in, and the like.

If the PCs are fighting hobgoblins in their fortress, why not have an encounter be in the forge, where the smiths defend themselves with red-hot weapons and everyone has to manoeuvre around the molten metal vats, the pulley system and armors in production? Why not have another where the PCs interrupts the hobgoblin archery instructor's lessons and they decide to show their students what a *true* master archer should be able to do against live targets? Why not have the hobgoblin wizards trying to bind a yugoloth to a war machine as a power source, with the yugoloth helping the PCs if they break them out or attacking both the hobgoblins and the PCs if the PCs don't but they still manage to escape?

Nothing *has* to be boring, and such nothing should be prepared as being boring. If the players or the DM end up bored by an encounter, it's fine, can't succeed every time, but if an adventuring situation doesn't spark interest in the planning stage already, don't do it.

[EggKookoo]

I'm of the opinion that if an encounter, any encounter would be boring, either due to repetitiveness or uninteresting presentation, then it should be scrapped. Or reworked until the boring is gone.

I operate under the assumption that the PCs do all kinds of "boring" things all day long. We just don't play them out at the table.

If an encounter is inconsequential enough to be summarized after the fact, I have trouble swallowing that it should be worth any XP. Nearly any fight has a chance to go badly for the PCs, even one that is unquestionably easy (in the CR sense). If you don't want to take that chance, fine, but you don't (IMO) get to claim any rewards for it either.

[HappyDaze]

If nothing has to be boring, how do you balance "wilderness" encounters while traveling? Do you still cram in 6-8 in a day to keep the balance, or do these encounters just get steamrolled by PCs? Or do you go the other way and make them Deadly+++ and then they overshadow the big bads at the end (where, presumably the challenge accounts for the PCs having had several encounters to suck resources before reaching the big bads)?

[Unoriginal]

If nothing has to be boring, how do you balance "wilderness" encounters while traveling? Do you still cram in 6-8 in a day to keep the balance, or do these encounters just get steamrolled by PCs? Or do you go the other way and make them Deadly+++ and then they overshadow the big bads at the end (where, presumably the challenge accounts for the PCs having had several encounters to suck resources before reaching the big bads)?

I don't do wilderness encounters while traveling unless they're interesting.

Among those interesting encounters, some will be easy, some will be hard, some will be avoided by the PCs and some won't be combat encounters.

"6-8 Medium encounters" is a calculation of what a group of PCs *can* handle in an adventuring day before running out of ressources, on average. Not an indication of what they *should* or *must* do.

Running 6 encounters every adventuring and traveling days would be a complete nightmare. If you did that, I 100% understand why you hate DMing, and it has nothing to do with 5e.

To put that into perspective, the notorious meatgrinder Tomb of Annihilation has three potential encounters per traveling day. Not all of them will be actual encounters (you can roll a "notjing happens"), not all of them will include combat, though many will be very dangerous for the PCs. And that's from a module which is meant to treat PCs like a fox in a foxhunt.

[Kyutaru]

If nothing has to be boring, how do you balance "wilderness" encounters while traveling? Do you still cram in 6-8 in a day to keep the balance, or do these encounters just get steamrolled by PCs? Or do you go the other way and make them Deadly+++ and then they overshadow the big bads at the end (where, presumably the challenge accounts for the PCs having had several encounters to suck resources before reaching the big bads)?The same way some story-based video games do it. You don't just have random encounters between boss fights. You have staged encounters that progress the story. Not every fight needs to be against a named BBEG to be meaningful to the plot. Those encounters aren't wildly random and unrelated to what's happening. Generally if your PCs are running into someone hostile then there is a conflict happening for a reason, and not just because Owlbears are mad. Sometimes if it's a truly random encounter then it can also be viewed as side quest material and provide a quest hook. Every encounter is an opportunity for the DM to add to the story instead of detract from it.

This is where something called DM preparation comes in. I don't know why modern gamers have foregone this step but DMs often spent long hours preparing their campaigns in advance of the actual session. This includes store bought books, with the DM taking notes, creating encounter tables, becoming familiarized with the area, writing additional descriptions than the two sentences presented in the book, etc. All of this effort into making the world come alive is rewarded at the table when you know exactly what you're going to do and have responses to everything the PCs attempt or at least a pool of options to draw from. Some premade adventurers even have specific random encounters with plot-worthy figures.

Encounters also don't have to be Final Fantasy style in an empty clearing with a party and a monster. There are plenty of opportunities for puzzle-based encounters, challenging encounters, shortcut creating encounters, whatever. Play games like Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2 to see how overland fights can be atypical and not boring.

[Xervous]

If nothing has to be boring, how do you balance "wilderness" encounters while traveling? Do you still cram in 6-8 in a day to keep the balance, or do these encounters just get steamrolled by PCs? Or do you go the other way and make them Deadly+++ and then they overshadow the big bads at the end (where, presumably the challenge accounts for the PCs having had several encounters to suck resources before reaching the big bads)?

Rather than pad out the days with encounters to hit a quota you can just follow the guidelines for alternate resting rules. If your story pacing typically asks for the N interesting encounters to be occurring over a week, hey a week is now the new long rest. A day is the new short rest or whatever fits the bill. If at that point the players insist on sitting down for a week to get the full refresh they’re accustomed to you have a lot more narrative consequences you can drop on them for such a delay. Thumb twiddling for a week could see the armies of evil making great progress, they’ll fail to beat the army to Gnomesbreadth Pass. The bandits ransoming the baron’s daughter will execute her if nobody pays up in five days time.

Rests are one part of the pacing puzzle, use the time spans that make sense for the encounter pacing you want.

The wilderness encounter?
“You trivially slay a pack of Owlbears and can take their pelts. This region seems to be infested with them, you’ve got a feeling any longer term of encampment will be rudely interrupted.”

[MaxWilson]

If nothing has to be boring, how do you balance "wilderness" encounters while traveling? Do you still cram in 6-8 in a day to keep the balance, or do these encounters just get steamrolled by PCs? Or do you go the other way and make them Deadly+++ and then they overshadow the big bads at the end (where, presumably the challenge accounts for the PCs having had several encounters to suck resources before reaching the big bads)?

If I want dramatic tension while traveling, I make wilderness encounters highly variable. Historically in (A)D&D, dungeons are predictable and (ironically) relatively safe: you won't get attacked by a vampire or beholder on level 2 of a dungeon. But if you exit the dungeon and enter the wilderness, all bets are off and you might encounter anything, based purely on terrain and dice rolls (random encounter tables per terrain based purely on monster rarity, not dungeon level or PC level).

If you stumble across a band of vagrants who eye you hungrily, I don't want you necessarily knowing up front whether they are pitiful beggars thinking about stealing from you so they can buy food, or a dozen Death Slaads planning to transform and eat you as soon as your backs are turned. You have to talk to them or use Detect Evil or something in order to learn more. (You might want to cast Protection From Evil or something before you get too close though.)

(I run some games including hexcrawls like an outdoor dungeon though, with e.g. mana levels standing in for dungeon levels: the deeper you go, the bigger and more fantastic the monster ecologists get. It depends on the game and the play experience I intend to offer.)

[HappyDaze]

Rather than pad out the days with encounters to hit a quota you can just follow the guidelines for alternate resting rules. If your story pacing typically asks for the N interesting encounters to be occurring over a week, hey a week is now the new long rest. A day is the new short rest or whatever fits the bill. If at that point the players insist on sitting down for a week to get the full refresh they’re accustomed to you have a lot more narrative consequences you can drop on them for such a delay. Thumb twiddling for a week could see the armies of evil making great progress, they’ll fail to beat the army to Gnomesbreadth Pass. The bandits ransoming the baron’s daughter will execute her if nobody pays up in five days time.

Rests are one part of the pacing puzzle, use the time spans that make sense for the encounter pacing you want.

The wilderness encounter?
“You trivially slay a pack of Owlbears and can take their pelts. This region seems to be infested with them, you’ve got a feeling any longer term of encampment will be rudely interrupted.”

My players would never have accepted that resting in the wild takes 7-8 times as long as it does in dungeons just because of encounter balance. That would destroy verisimilitude.

[Xervous]

My players would never have accepted that resting in the wild takes 7-8 times as long as it does in dungeons just because of encounter balance. That would destroy verisimilitude.

Pardon my lack of elaboration. This wouldn’t be a change for just the travel, it would be campaign spanning.

[KorvinStarmast]

(I run some games including hexcrawls like an outdoor dungeon though, with e.g. mana levels standing in for dungeon levels: the deeper you go, the bigger and more fantastic the monster ecologists get. It depends on the game and the play experience I intend to offer.) As I have read through the Dreadwood's overarching characteristic in the Ghosts of Salt Marsh published adventure (mostly a set of loosely related one shots) I find that the BBEG of the area is deep in the woods, is a Night Hag with Spell Casting levels who has serving her three vampires!
Hell's Bells, I thought as DM, three?
A single one is a Tier 2 BBEG.

So what I have done rather by accident as the party tried to accomplish the second step of the three step "Saltmarsh" re treads is place in the local swamp a Green Hag, who as I worked out why the Lizardfolk were in the situation they were in became a coven. It was emergent world building like we used to do. And if fits. And the first hag was a random encounter to boot! :smallbiggrin:

Why was that giant crocodile running amok?
I finally had an answer.
The whole darned swamp is slowly falling under their influence. I let loose a few yeth hounds on the party to get an even stranger feel to things. And they have decided that "Hmm, once we help out these lizard folk, that suspected coven might be worth our serious attention."

[HappyDaze]

Pardon my lack of elaboration. This wouldn’t be a change for just the travel, it would be campaign spanning.

Then the pace that makes outdoors possible makes dungeons almost impossible

[EggKookoo]

My players would never have accepted that resting in the wild takes 7-8 times as long as it does in dungeons just because of encounter balance. That would destroy verisimilitude.

Depends on how you package it. It's not outrageous to say sleeping with a roof over your head is safer than out in the open. Sure, 7 times longer might be a stretch, but D&D has always been about abstractions over simulation detail.

Not necessarily advocating for Xervous' idea here, just saying it could be handled a certain way...

[Unoriginal]

Again, there is no need for 6+ encounters a day for traveling.

There is no need for even one encounter a day while traveling, if you don't like it.

[Kane0]

Then the pace that makes outdoors possible makes dungeons almost impossible

I think the implication is that the dungeon will be the full 6-8 encounters, then you spend a week or two recovering back in town. You might even have to leave the dungeon before you finish it in order to retreat and recouperate. A lot of older D&D followed that pattern.

[Kyutaru]

Again, there is no need for 6+ encounters a day for traveling.

There is no need for even one encounter a day while traveling, if you don't like it.

This. The game does not say there must be 6-8 encounters per day. It says that's what a party can survive. That's something you would do in a combat heavy zone like a dungeon. It's not something you need to enforce for overland travel or every merchant would need an armed military platoon.

Likewise, resting in dungeons should almost never be a thing. There are sometimes safe rooms where resting can take place but you can use those for the SHORT rest. If you want to rest and recover your spells then you need to take a trip outside and come back later.

[MaxWilson]

I think the implication is that the dungeon will be the full 6-8 encounters, then you spend a week or two recovering back in town. You might even have to leave the dungeon before you finish it in order to retreat and recouperate. A lot of older D&D followed that pattern.

If you wanted to go down this old-school road, you might even rework the classes a little bit to change how the resources work. Perhaps fighters only need an hour's rest and relaxation to get ready to do another Action Surge, but for a wizard to regain spell slots might require eight hours rest plus ten minutes per spell slot level regained, or even something more complex like ten minutes in sunshine, or ten minutes inhaling fumes from a Mana Fountain (found only in major cities), or eating 100 worth of mana crystals per spell slot level regained.

The latter especially would result in a gameworld quite different from the basic 5E gameworld, but actual gameplay during an adventure would be almost unchanged as long as the party gained enough treasure during the adventure to cover expenses.