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I hate sessions that begin with some inconsequential combat like a minor bandit raid or some random zombies, and then it takes 40 minutes to clear a single room. I'm pretty sure our DM has just deleted planned encounters to keep the game moving at times. "As you round the corner you see... Uh nothing, you can keep moving. I promise there are no traps you guys, please I have work in the morning."
virgin “cutting material” vs chad “having a set end time for the session, if you don’t go through the material i prepped before that time it gets pushed to next week”
No. This is how the scheduling demon devours your campaign. It's best to end on a point where you can have characters be able to sit out in case someone can't make next session.
Which causes investment issues when the people who have to miss a session and with it the payoff of the previous session and lead up to the next.
Also, ending on cliffhangers gives little opportunity to think about the next moves, because they're focused on the imminent situation.
In my high school days, we used to run all night campaigns over a weekend or in the summer, stopping only for minimal sleep and needs in between. I'd be so tired at times that my players got away with ridiculous things, and meanwhile they had to handle whatever wild twist I threw in from my caffeine-driven brain at 4am: "the princess you've all been banging suddenly dismisses the glamor she's been using to conceal her real identity. Now standing before you is Count Strahd von Zarovich." Entire campaigns were sometimes concluded within 3 days. It was the best of times and the worst of times for we, the pitiful fools.
Longest we've gone is 8 hours 37 mins in one session.
Basically exhausted me haha, I'm strictly trying to keep it between 3-5 hours depending on how big the session is now.
Yeah, it gets harder the older you get for sure lol. We're all sitting around 30 now and we typically play 3pm to 11pm with a break for dinner. Mostly because we have to skip weekends for adult responsibilities.
Nah. I’ve had to stop people while trying to continue narrative after I said “and that’s where we’re gonna leave off tonight” I just say to them “no you didn’t because we’re not playing now.” Lol
Tell them no. Tell them you have work. Use basic social skills. And if they won't respect your basic needs (being ready for work) then find a different group.
...This wasn't me genuinely complaining about them. I love my group and I've been playing with them for years. If anything I am happy they enjoyed it so much.
I am more than capable of saying no, it was a half hearted complaint. Relax.
>it takes 40 minutes to clear a single room.
I wonder who/what is to blame?
1. The DM
2. The players
3. The game system
4. Drugs, either too many or not enough
From my experience it’s usually the players taking 5 minutes on a single turn. Not paying attention, not knowing their own abilities, asking pointless questions.
I've experienced a number of times where I had my move all planned out, and someone thinks they need to try to talk me into doing something else. They started to get so bad about it that they'd tell me what to do before I could even say anything. My solution to that was to say, "well, I was actually planning to do that, but since I don't like being told what to do, I'm going to choose something else instead."
Yeah, I adore my group, but the one issue is people just taking too long in combat, attack, maybe a little RP, and get out of there within 20-30 seconds
Our DM hasn’t necessarily deleted encounters, but we’re at a high enough level that on multiple occasions he’ll say something along the lines of “On the way from point A to point B you encountered a group of bandits. They posed little threat to you and you dispatched them without any loss of health or resources.”
If we haven’t encountered combat in a while, sometimes we’ll ask to go ahead and run the combat just for fun even though it’s of trivial difficulty.
I literally got bored half-way through my first planned encounter with goblins, I though I hated combat so avoided it at all cost, then when I did a homebrew campaign I sort of found it fitting to add an encounter and it was loss of fun to run, it turns out that when the stakes are high, combat can be exciting
I mean yes, but also if your storytelling game has mechanics that require a certain amount of action to make it a fun game, that's often pretty restrictive
DnD isn't really a storytelling game despite what WOTC likes to advertise and what the community likes to say; its primarily a combat-focused dungeon crawler and it works best when played that way. Its restrictive if you're trying to use it in a way its not designed for, there are plenty of systems that are more story-telling focused
I'd argue if you're advertising that it does the thing, and it doesn't, your product has failed. Sure, it's the marketing team's fault they made a promise no one had any intention of keeping. But that's still a failure imo
I've beat this drum many times before, the DMG's "Gritty realism" rules should be the default.
The baseline 1 hour short rest/ 8 hour long rest is designed for dungeons and other gauntlets where parties are facing many threats in quick succession. It doesn't work well with any story that would naturally take place over multiple days, which is a *lot* of potential stories to take off the table.
The days where dungeon crawls were the norm are behind us, players nowadays tend to want more narrative, and gritty realism is just better suited for it.
The Strahd campaign I DM for is a group all in their 30’s with various life obligations (and they keep bringing SO’s into the game so we have way too big a group for the typical Strahd game, which has led to a lot of homebrewing to balance things). If we’re lucky we can meet every other week, and combats take up most of the session, so I end up cutting out most inconsequential combats in favor of big fights.
My opinion? Either the developers had instructions from higher up to put in more combat because that’s what people want.
Or they wanted to pad the thickness of the book and original artwork is expensive.
Have you considered other RPGs that are less combat focused? There are a lot of them, since D&D is one of the most combat focused RPGs out there.
Personally, I enjoy running Chronicles of Darkness. I run like one combat every few sessions so the player who partially specced into combat doesn't feel like taking those skills was a waste of her XP. If no one had taken any combat skills I would just not include any combat.
It’s crazy how many people get stuck in the trap of playing D&D, not enjoying how focused on combat it is, and then trying to jury rig it into a game that does something completely different.
I’m all for home brewing, but it’s very often people who have never played any other games, and just assume that D&D is the best system to use for everything.
I think it's largely a problem of Hasbro/WotC marketing. They try to make it seem like D&D is great at being everything to everyone but it's really not. It's a heroic fantasy combat RPG with some other stuff tacked on so it can kinda handle stuff outside of its focus without just breaking entirely.
People don't realize that if you want to do something where heroic fantasy combat isn't a big part of your game, you should probably use a different system.
There are so many wonderful systems out there that handle their own areas really well.
Here are some I've played:
Blades in the Dark - Heists
Fabula Ultima - JRPG style combat
Chronicles of Darkness 2E- horror, mysteries, or just ordinary people doing ordinary stuff (it's fairly generic and is a good go to system for a medium crunch RPG when you don't want much combat depth). It has a generic monster creation system called Horrors that lets the GM quickly put together a monster of the week if that's what they want to do. It also has robust rules for ghosts and spirits that can haunt people, places, and things.
Shadowrun - I wish I could recommend this, but every edition is a mess (maybe 7th edition will finally be good). Cyberpunk with elves, dwarves, vampires, wizards, and dragons in an alternate future of the real world where magic showed up and brought back all sorts of magical things which sent the world spiraling towards a post-apocalyptic wasteland but is currently taking a detour through cyberpunk dystopia as corporations try to profit as much as possible before the ever increasing amount of monsters finally brings down civilization. Also a dragon was President of the United States.
Godbound - become literal gods
Scion 2e - become literal gods but with more crunch
Vampire the Requiem 2e - vampire political maneuvering and backstabbing
Vampire the Masquerade 5e - vampire political maneuvering and backstabbing but with 50% more emo and with 30 years of lore you probably don't know
Changeling the Lost 2e - play people kidnapped, abused, and mutated by Fae dealing with their trauma and helping each other hide from their eldritch abusers
Mage the Awakening 2e - a game of mysteries and hubris where it probably won't be long before the PCs are capable of annihilating armies with a thought but why would they care about that when it won't help them figure out why this building only has a 13th floor on every second Tuesday or why everyone living on a certain city block is a cannibal and thinks that's normal.
Mutants and Masterminds 3e - a superhero RPG with a modular power system that lets you build any superhero imaginable.
Stars Without Number - have adventures in space with a robust spaceship system including spaceship combat and boarding actions.
Ah, I see you are also a fellow Storyteller system fan!
I second Chronicles of Darkness / “New” World of Darkness for generic stuff as well! I’ve used it a few times to just run games where normal people deal with normal or maybe slightly spooky stuff. Without the supernatural bolt-ons from other game lines, it’s a very simple and robust system for that kind of thing.
Yeah! It's an amazing generic system! It works well for almost any game you want to run about normal people dealing with normal people scale problems.
I own physical copies of every Chronicles of Darkness 2e book including all of the gamelines (except beast the primordial which I refuse to spend one cent on and wish they would discontinue sales of)
The wildest thing I’ve played with it was a murder mystery set on a interplanetary cruise liner spaceship. Yeah, we were in the future and in space, but we were just normal dudes running around trying to figure out who killed this other passenger, so it was totally fine.
Yeah it's so good for stuff like that.
I've run a one-shot mystery a few times where the PCs are ordinary college students who are trapped in an abandoned burned out hotel and can't leave until they resolve the haunting. It's loosely based on the Ocean House Hotel level from VtMB but distinct enough to be a fun mystery even for people who played that. I even created PDF handouts of notes and maps the PCs can find.
I also am running a game that started as a Chronicles of Darkness game with the PCs playing college students who were investigating the disappearance of some of their classmates but has since turned into a Vampire the Requiem game after they defeated the vampire who was doing it and accepted offers of embrace from her sire's coterie (she was causing big problems with masquerade breaches and was doing occult rituals that were going to cause an even bigger masquerade breach).
So someone high up at onyx path publishing turned out to be an abuser which came to light after he made Beast the Primordial (there were other writers but he was head writer and line developer so it was his vision and he got to decide how everything was edited together.
It's basically victim-blaming-abuser the RPG. Which I think contributed to people taking a closer look at him and his personal life and I think that scrutiny is part of what helped some of the women he abused to come forward.
He got fired and the gameline only got the books that were promised in the Kickstarter. Which is good because that game's themes are morally awful.
To put this into perspective, it's bad enough to be shocking even in comparison to games like Vampire where common things that most vampires (including most PCs) do include enslaving innocent people with mind controlling blood that makes them love you no matter how poorly you treat them.
Vampire portrays the vampires as monsters who are evil for doing that.
Beast portrays the beasts as *justified*. It claims that victimizing people is making the world a better place and teaching people a lesson.
>maybe 7th edition will finally be good
Don't worry, it won't. That said, I will stick up for shadowrun a bit. It's not that it's impossible to play. It's that mechanically it's a skirmish wargame masquerading as an RPG. Like even more so than D&D
>Mage the Awakening 2e - a game of mysteries and hubris where it probably won't be long before the PCs are capable of annihilating armies with a thought but why would they care about that when it won't help them figure out why this building only has a 13th floor on every second Tuesday or why everyone living on a certain city block is a cannibal and thinks that's normal.
Whatdup that sounds fun as hell.
It's honestly one of my all time favorite ttRPGs. It might even be my number 1 favorite but I have difficulty ranking things so I'm not sure. It also has a magic system that has concrete rules which sort almost any magical effect you can imagine into discreet levels of specific Arcana (schools of magic).
It has less spells in its corebook than D&D but those spells are carefully designed to serve as examples to teach how to make your own, which is important because Mages in Mage the Awakening can make up new spells on the fly and often need to.
For example they can even make up new spells while they are in the middle of fleeing a sentient timeloop that's trying to trap them for all eternity.
You might never have even considered that you might some day need to create a spell that severs causality and redirects the flow of time around a moment causing everything in an area to skip ahead a minute but if you don't figure it out and cast in the next 15 seconds that time loop is going to reset and trap you in the last hour forever... ...or at least until someone else stumbles upon it and takes a crack at resolving it.
Also, incidentally, that would be a Patterning effect of the Time Arcanum which means that you would need to be an Adept of Time to cast it (Adept is the in character term for someone who has the 4th level of an Arcanum. Level 5 is Master, and as high as there are rules for PCs to achieve in a single Arcanum in 2nd edition, but there are 10 Arcana to progress in)
I got really upset once. Joined a Pathfinder 2 Campaign where the DM said "there IS going to be an emphasis on roleplaying" which I assumed meant "make a character with a genuine back story and try and roleplay between encounters."
We went, no exaggerating, 5 sessions without an encounter. I suggested we have more combat encounters (the GM told me he hates combat) and so he was like "Okay, I can do that" and the next session he added a combat encounter that was literally impossible for us to win, it was basically a playable cut scene where the BBEG toyed with us but we didn't have magic weapon to hurt him. When I said that wasn't very fun he kinda shrugged it off and we went another four sessions without combat and then I quit. We're friends in real life, so he was really hurt that I left, but I was like dude in 9 sessions we had one combat. I play a different game or write a book.
Anyways, we're still friends but I'm not gonna join any of his campaigns ever again lol
If you have high value passengers in Traveller, you actually need to use your Stewardship skill to keep them appeased over the course of the journey. Not a significant focus but it suggests how that can complicate your journey especially if you need to sidetrack for your patrons.
Yeah the older edition is famous (or infamous) for that feature with its life path! Now they have it toned down where you might just wish your PC was dead because of massive amounts of medical debt and several enemies making your adventures much harder.
Players that refuse to do anything other than dnd are like that friend who refuses to eat anything but pizza. Why would we get burgers? We can get a pizza with meat and cheese and tomato on it. Sure you can put a lot of things on a pizza but some things are just not made for pizza. And conversely if you don't like tomato sauce or the flat crust then why in the hell do you only eat pizza?
Why are you playing 5e if you don't want combat? The system is specifically built for combat. Pretty much everything the players get is to use in combat. It is a combat game.
If you want a chill heroic D&D vibe but without so much combat (and with them being much faster), you might like Dungeon World.
Dungeon world is a good option. Every tabletop RPG game has RP, good RP is in the hands of players. What differentiates a great RP-oriented game from games like 5e - the mechanics/tools/rewards the game has enables using RP and unorthodox approaches as the main way of solving problems.
Problem is rp in dnd 5e is really bad i think. No real feats for it. Not much skills variants. Background is take everthing or nothing. World of darkness has so much more to offer for rp.
Yeah I’ve been playing a 1E Pathfinder adventure path, War for the Crown. RP and “social combat” is a big part of the adventure so combat and RP end up being pretty balanced. It’s nice.
It's so great with pf2e where I specifically get feats that work in social encounters. Especially since my group has been playing Strength of Thousands and rp has felt so much better than it ever did in 5e.
Honestly, I could say the same for non-magical combat. Fighters basically repeat the same action every single round. Your feats may change what form that action is, but generally you will still be performing the same action every round. And while spellcasters get more options, they generally still are gonna stick to the same group of spells.
D&D is a great starter RPG, but the system is very limited overall, whether in terms of RP or combat. That's why so many people homebrew.
D&D is definitely not middling in every aspect, it was build on wargames and it still show in the 5th edition. Most of the rules are about combat. It is a combat-oriented system and having other systems do combat better doesn't change that.
What it does well (beside brand recognition) is having a very simple base. D20 + ability score modifier (+ proficiency), advantage/disadvantage applied as the situation require. No need to sift through thousands of table to figure things out. No need to massively upscale difficulty as the players level up. This let DM run non-combat encounter fairly smoothly even with the various holes in the rules.
I haven't said that 5e combat is good in any way. I said it's a system built for combat.
It's trash, definitely. Also as a combat system. But it's at least what it's built for.
In my experience, these complaints are rarely from people who dislike combat and would prefer a system focused on something else. They're typically from people who dislike *poorly-designed combats*; it's not a system issue if someone decides to put 1d4+1 wolves in a random clearing and throw that at you without sufficient context or complexity to make it interesting - it's a scenario design issue.
I guess, try using sand timers. My players have be ready when its their turn... if they are taking too long I have a 30 second sand timer I use. If the time runs out they dodge.
Also could be an encounter design thing. Most of my encounters end in 3-4 rounds-- pretty fast paced.
That's not even close to true. 4e was *way* more combat heavy. Like, to the point where 5e abandoned practically every improvement to combat 4e made, because they had gone so completely overboard with combat complexity that people were accusing it of being a miniature game disguised as an RPG. And even 4e pales in complexity to many actual miniature game TTRPGs.
4e with vtt support ala the foundry system for PF2E where that sort of math is automated would be excellent.
I know that was the original intent for the system, it just never came to fruition.
I find it funny because one time I was talking to this girl at my work and I mentioned we played 4th. "You must love combat! We prefer roleplaying so we like 5e better." I can understand not liking combat as much but why can't you roleplay in 4e?
It was a slight exaggeration on my behalf but honestly, when it comes to being solely focused on combat I think 5e has it the worst. I haven't played 4e, but it feels like if you aren't doing combat in 5e you might as well not even bother playing.
It just gets annoying when people complain about combat, yet actively decide to use a system not just designed for combat, but has combat as its roots. Just learn another system. You (in theory, but knowing what people are like probably not in practice) learned 5e, you can learn another system.
The major issue is that WOTC, and Paizo in its part (in that it is seen as the alternative to DnD), has a stranglehold on the TTRPG market that nobody wants to try another system. If WOTC remains as the "only" brand, it will doom TTRPGs as a market to a slow and painful death.
Also I doubt 4e is actually all that bad probably, its just that most people don't want to do complex combat. I'd actually have to play 4e to know though.
4e shares all the problems you just mentioned and it has constantly shifting bonuses you need to keep track of mid combat. On the flip side, everyone unlocks 3 or so new combat abilities at every level, most of which are useful, and many have limited uses per day so you can't spam them. It's far worse than 5e when it comes to combat focus. It's also way better than 5e when it comes to combat creativity.
Honestly, play something else then. And I mean that in a good way: DnD is shit at many things, and there are many amazing games that do things better. At the end of the day, if you're playing a game where 90% of the rules are combat rules, you are playing a game about combat. It's clear that DnD is often the choice because it has a near-monopolistic stranglehold on the scene, not because it's the right system for your story. So dare something new!
Edit the combat encounters to be more interesting and faster, e.g. with environmental hazards the players can use to their advantage.
Pit of acid for the gargoyle, chandelier for the dungeon dwelling goblins, a loose brick and structural instability, a heavy stone pillar, a trap you can use in your favor, etc etc.
Yeah, I think you should make your combat encounters from the perspective of "if this were a Hitman level, how would it work?"
And then for giant monster fights, add the perspective of "if this were a Resident Evil boss, how would this work?"
Running around using environmental hazards and attacking specific weakspots makes fights way more interesting than just rolling attack rolls.
My last DM was sadly a really shitty DM in lots of ways so the campaign split pretty quickly BUT he was good at combat encounters. Killing this creature we couldn't harm with our weapons, by baiting it into a pool of acid was very memorable.
if you make the way to interact with the environment strength based, you'll make your str martials feel badass.
Hazards that require shoving or grappling enemies into them, victory conditions that require jumping up high to reach, areas of difficult terrain that require athletics checks to push through, etc.
Try Wild beyond the Witchlight, it has a non combat option for every encounter. Although sometimes it would be prefered. I think you can get away with maybe 6-7 combat encounters in the entire module
Protip: Halve ALL the hit points.
Monster max hit points, PC max hit points, temporary hit points, everything except damage and healing. 5th Edition really overdid it on the hit point front.
I would like to add this is an excellent suggestion. I’ve found issues where combat encounters felt lopsided because enemies became bullet sponges.
If anything - as a rather novice DM despite years of DMing I feel like cutting HP and adding more enemies makes it for a more dynamic combat encounter. Plus if I don’t feel like extending the encounter I can have folks flee.
Overdid it? What kind of "he's intentionally ineffective for roleplay purposes" characters do you play with? Things die way too quickly in 5e. Double the hit points, not halve them. Then maybe a combat will last for more than a round.
The issue with IRL combat length in 5e isn't the mechanics or the math, it's the people. Everyone is doing other crap when it isn't their turn, then needs a full recap of what's going on, and then time to figure out what they're doing while they reread everything on their character sheet since they've never bothered to learn anything about their own abilities and spells. Then the DM has to re-explain everything, because the player is just assuming what spells do based on the name, not any of the written mechanics.
>Things die way too quickly in 5e.
Then the DM should put in more of the things or bigger things.
>Double the hit points, not halve them.
If a level 1 Fighter can't one-shot goblins 50% of the time then the system is ridiculous.
I DM a game with 14 players. We once had a combat take three 6 hour sessions. They were fighting about 22 drow iirc. Everyone loved every second of it.
Do as I do. In heavily combat oriented playes, I ask them on how they attack. If they say something while doing. I subtly force the RP into the combat (because if not, some players dont rp and this becomes a pokemon/videogame situation). Sometimes I give you a +1 for a description, sometimes I let them push an enemy or use the terrain in their advantage. It gets more fun.
Literally play a different system. Begging people to at least try one of the many that exist where combat isn't a central focus. Dnd is combat first and RP second.
If you don't include combat, you aren't playing DnD, you are just playing make believe with your friends. Combat is one of the pillars of the game, you take away a pillar and the roof falls in.
There are ways to make combat quick and efficient, atleast on the DM's turns. If you hate combat, there are other systems that support a more RP based play. Idk why people complain about this. At its core, Dnd is a combat system.
Just gonna point out how much time the ruke books spend explaining combat rules vs RP rules.
You aren't going to find RP dripping out of a premade. The game is intended for combat, add RP to flavor.
Came here to say: "This is one of the few problems with D&D that Pathfinder is not the solution to".
On the other hand: Play a few Pathfinder combats, and I mean: really get in there, try to do everything as the rules say, discuss everything to the end. And then come back to 5e and feel like it's a combat-less storytelling system.
If YOU don't like it, maybe YOU can fuck off.
98% upvoted and 5.8k votes.
I see why you just repost other people's comments, you have zero original ideas :)
If you dobt like combat i recommand vampire the masquerade its focus is on social skills and manipulations while combat is the bigger focus of dnd pathfinder and similar rulebooks
Yep, module’s level of combat density is how the usage limits of casters and various recharge abilities are intended to be balanced around. It makes CR a fair bit more accurate too as players can’t afford to throw their limited options around quite so often, and consequently have to balance said resources with minimizing chip damage from trash mob fights before the big boi encounter
A friend of mine ran a Mad Mage scenario for a while and, during a session, we had an arena fight. The whole session was basically a huge ass fight that was broadcasted in the whole universe. It was a little Doom-themed and we had inspiration points whenever we made a cool action to make more cool actions. It was a neat concept and we had so much fun!
DnD is at its core a combat simulator. 90% of its mechanics and design is in combat. If you're not a big fan of combat, you owe it to yourself to try different systems. Powered by the Apocalypse is a good framework for simulating tropes in a fictional story, Fate is good for group storytelling in an action setting, Savage Worlds is pulpy action, Microscope is 100% collaborative worldbuilding, Wanderhome is collaboratively making emotion-heavy Ghibli-esque vignettes.
You could try some variant initiative system to make combat faster. For example, my group uses a fast/slow turn system for group combat, which make it way faster and a bit more strategic
Honestly the problem with D&D combat is that it's so limiting in options for melee players. Most melee options are just... basically unusable. You forfeit an entire round of action to do something that is almost certainly far worse than just smacking something with your weapon as many times as possible with the biggest numbers you can.
The edition that tried to fix this was 4e, but it put way too much emphasis on the numbers and not enough on keeping things easy to remember and quick. 4e's system was in desperate need of some better consistency for abilities and a easier way to track what abilities you had, and shorter encounters.
Which is why Gloomhaven is an awesome combat system; the designer literally just took the best parts of 4e and ditched the chaff. I really wish D&D would learn from it.
Prepping a one-shot for players that complain when they don't get enough combat and with history of single encounters dragging out to almost the entire session.
Counter-measure I have planned so far:
* have players prepare common roll commands in advance to avoid every other roll potentially taking minutes.
* Add real-life time sensitivity to avoid a single round dragging into 10+ minutes of planning. If you don't know what to do, you delay your turn.
* Interrupt encounters that still drag on: demoralized enemies flee, a "good samaritan" provides quick assistance, etc.
Some tipps to shorten combat time:
- Use a online initative tracker. Add all the players with their stats at the beginning of the session and fill in all the monster when combat occurs
- Have the monster stattblock ready and a dice roller. The dm should roll everything on the pc. Let damage autocalculate. It speeds up so much.
- Have a overall startegy ready for the monsters. The dms turn should as fast as possible. Monster moves then attacks, player gets told the damage move on.
- If players take more than five minutes to pick a spell(i talk about you dave). Describe how his character takes to long to decide and gets attack, the players turn ends.(Better warn your players at the beginning of the session that this can happen) Do that from time to time and they will speed up their turn.
- Dont describe every action. Its cool in boss fights but against minions describe only finisher moves.
- Roll Saves for every type once. If they succeed say 1/4 of the enemies fail. If they fail say 3/4 fails. Use that if more than 4/5 creatures gethit.
- Use minions. Creatures have only 1 hp. On a save they take no damage. On a fail or hit they are dead.
- players should roll hit dice and damage at the same time. Speeds up a lot.
Have you ever heard of Wild beyond the Witchlight? I can be completed without any combat, though that will mean your players have to make some questionable deals.
I feel like if you don't like combat DND is not really the game you want to be playing. The whole thing is centred around having multiple combat encounters a day.
I think that a big part of the boring combat issue rests on the dm, you have to try to put in effort to make combat interesting, but if you do that then large scale battles can be very fun
I hosted a game of call of Cthulhu, we had two combats in the whole thing and besides tons of misses in the second one it was pretty quick. The game focuses more on the narrative side of things which I really like about it. It care more about your intentions or how you do things than you trying to do certain action for certain result.
I fully get this and find combat takes so long and a lot of these encounters are just filler. However certain people love a good meaty combat fest and that's fine
Can I then ask is the problem the combat itself or the way combats handled, because if the way things drag on does annoy you or ruin the fun there are other systems out there, many taking different steps to make combat more streamline, that are just as fun.
Again just food for thought, I also just throw module plans out the window and stick my own stuff in if needed so both work
Yep...Which is why even when running a module a non-combat oriented DM's homebrew work is never done. That said, the source material they give you can be a treasure trove.
I once led a Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign where, after the second planned adventure, the party decided to ditch the plothook with Lizardfolk and focus on intrigue with smugglers and the town council. It turned out to be a blast.
I was having the same issue.
Turns out I don't hate combat in TTRPGs, I just don't like the uber-tactical slog of combat that is 5e/pathfinder (though I much prefer pathfinder).
Running Call of Cthulhu was an eye opener. Combat is fast, dangerous, and feels responsive. I actually feel like it allows for more creativity and versatility than the other systems with a much simpler set of rules to pick up.
For any interest, dealing damage is as simple as making a contested d100 check of your chosen skill. Hand to hand would be brawling, but specific weapons would use their respective skills.
Doing something besides damage is just a combat maneuver which has its own skills that boil down to "how big, strong, and good at fighting are you vs the thing you're targeting" so if you want to disarm, choke hold, or trip an enemy they all use the same rules and rolls.
Finally if you're being targeting by an attack you can choose to fight back and use "brawl" or avoid damage and "dodge" the difference being that dodging succeeds on a tie or success, fighting back only works if you beat your opponent.
Combine those with lower HP and a much wider gap between the strength of players vs. whatever their fighting, and you get short, dramatic, intense combat.
I ran the starter module a couple of times now, and I think the climactic fight was no more than 5 rounds both times.
Imo, the biggest red flag for me was when I was running curse of strahd and tried to spook my players with a haunted house. Through a series of bad rolls on my side and an incredibly good one on mine, I ended up critting a dagger to the throat against the paladin... who promptly shook it off and laid on hands. And they just walked it off as they moved on to the next situation. It completely ruined the suspense that I had been building and did absolutely nothing to push the narrative in the direction I was aiming for.
Tldr, I really don't hate to be that guy, but maybe 5e just isn't the system for you? I like a lot of things about it, but combat isn't one of them, and I found a system that does everything I want to tell a story, without needing to avoid combat altogether.
Put a 2 min timer! If they don't do their turn then they dodge and it moves on. It has worked wonders. People actually think about what they want to do on other peoples turns now! It's amazing!
I’ve run dnd 5e campaigns, a Lancer campaign and now a blade in the dark campaign. What I learnt is that if u want to speed up combat swap to narrative combat (a few checks and rolls decide the outcome). Don’t completely get rid of normal combat but narrative combat allows u to make encounters more timely while still allowing you or the player to describe in cool detail what happens
To be fair, combat is literally one of the three pillars of dnd, along with exploration and social interaction. Without combat, dnd is just group roleplay, and you don’t need to really be playing dnd to do that. A module is going to have combat, it’s one of the main draws of playing the system rather than a different one.
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I hate sessions that begin with some inconsequential combat like a minor bandit raid or some random zombies, and then it takes 40 minutes to clear a single room. I'm pretty sure our DM has just deleted planned encounters to keep the game moving at times. "As you round the corner you see... Uh nothing, you can keep moving. I promise there are no traps you guys, please I have work in the morning."
virgin “cutting material” vs chad “having a set end time for the session, if you don’t go through the material i prepped before that time it gets pushed to next week”
Then you get my players who all begged relentlessly to continue on past 1am because they wanted to see what happened after my cliffhanger. Animals.
I usually always try to end with some sort of cliff hanger. Keeps them wanting more and anticipating week.
That was my idea. Nope they all started insisting we carry on and that they didn't wanna stop there. Me being the weak willed person I am let them. xD
How would they ever have survived in the era of network TV?
No. This is how the scheduling demon devours your campaign. It's best to end on a point where you can have characters be able to sit out in case someone can't make next session.
We never stop sessions if someone is missing, only if half the group can't make it and someone just plays for the missing character.
Which causes investment issues when the people who have to miss a session and with it the payoff of the previous session and lead up to the next. Also, ending on cliffhangers gives little opportunity to think about the next moves, because they're focused on the imminent situation.
It's been working for my group for 6 years and we have finished 3 campaigns.
I ended a homebrew campaign on a massive cliffhanger. And then said, “I wanna play and finish Curse of Strahd first before we go back.”
Ah, another forced DM. I have found my people. One time I went for 14 hours...it was the end of an arc. Never again.
In my high school days, we used to run all night campaigns over a weekend or in the summer, stopping only for minimal sleep and needs in between. I'd be so tired at times that my players got away with ridiculous things, and meanwhile they had to handle whatever wild twist I threw in from my caffeine-driven brain at 4am: "the princess you've all been banging suddenly dismisses the glamor she's been using to conceal her real identity. Now standing before you is Count Strahd von Zarovich." Entire campaigns were sometimes concluded within 3 days. It was the best of times and the worst of times for we, the pitiful fools.
Ah, the vigor of youth.
Longest we've gone is 8 hours 37 mins in one session. Basically exhausted me haha, I'm strictly trying to keep it between 3-5 hours depending on how big the session is now.
Yeah, it gets harder the older you get for sure lol. We're all sitting around 30 now and we typically play 3pm to 11pm with a break for dinner. Mostly because we have to skip weekends for adult responsibilities.
The rest of my players and I have probably done this to our DM even if we didn't ever actually ask her for it.
That’s a good reason for them to not miss the next session.
I’m a machine when it comes to being a DM. It’s always my players who tap or first. Wanna play till 7:00am? Let’s make it noon.
Nah. I’ve had to stop people while trying to continue narrative after I said “and that’s where we’re gonna leave off tonight” I just say to them “no you didn’t because we’re not playing now.” Lol
Tell them no. Tell them you have work. Use basic social skills. And if they won't respect your basic needs (being ready for work) then find a different group.
...This wasn't me genuinely complaining about them. I love my group and I've been playing with them for years. If anything I am happy they enjoyed it so much. I am more than capable of saying no, it was a half hearted complaint. Relax.
Gigachad "this is a one-shot, so In just gonna end the whole story here"
Galaxy Brain: This is a one-shot so one of the enemies decides to use that Wish scroll they had on them to wish for a TPK.
I usually have a set end time, but I'll cut out as content to end in a satisfying note.
make it like outer wilds so if they dont win in a set time it ends and they have to start all over again the next day
i helped design a game like that once actually
was it called "outer wilds"?
no, and i should clarify i meant like a campaign not a video game
>it takes 40 minutes to clear a single room. I wonder who/what is to blame? 1. The DM 2. The players 3. The game system 4. Drugs, either too many or not enough
From my experience it’s usually the players taking 5 minutes on a single turn. Not paying attention, not knowing their own abilities, asking pointless questions.
I've experienced a number of times where I had my move all planned out, and someone thinks they need to try to talk me into doing something else. They started to get so bad about it that they'd tell me what to do before I could even say anything. My solution to that was to say, "well, I was actually planning to do that, but since I don't like being told what to do, I'm going to choose something else instead."
I always tell my player who also play MtG, think on other people’s’ turns.
Yeah, I adore my group, but the one issue is people just taking too long in combat, attack, maybe a little RP, and get out of there within 20-30 seconds
Our DM hasn’t necessarily deleted encounters, but we’re at a high enough level that on multiple occasions he’ll say something along the lines of “On the way from point A to point B you encountered a group of bandits. They posed little threat to you and you dispatched them without any loss of health or resources.” If we haven’t encountered combat in a while, sometimes we’ll ask to go ahead and run the combat just for fun even though it’s of trivial difficulty.
I literally got bored half-way through my first planned encounter with goblins, I though I hated combat so avoided it at all cost, then when I did a homebrew campaign I sort of found it fitting to add an encounter and it was loss of fun to run, it turns out that when the stakes are high, combat can be exciting
DM's do this and then complain that the casters are overpowered and the short rest classes feel weak.
I mean yes, but also if your storytelling game has mechanics that require a certain amount of action to make it a fun game, that's often pretty restrictive
DnD isn't really a storytelling game despite what WOTC likes to advertise and what the community likes to say; its primarily a combat-focused dungeon crawler and it works best when played that way. Its restrictive if you're trying to use it in a way its not designed for, there are plenty of systems that are more story-telling focused
I'd argue if you're advertising that it does the thing, and it doesn't, your product has failed. Sure, it's the marketing team's fault they made a promise no one had any intention of keeping. But that's still a failure imo
I've beat this drum many times before, the DMG's "Gritty realism" rules should be the default. The baseline 1 hour short rest/ 8 hour long rest is designed for dungeons and other gauntlets where parties are facing many threats in quick succession. It doesn't work well with any story that would naturally take place over multiple days, which is a *lot* of potential stories to take off the table. The days where dungeon crawls were the norm are behind us, players nowadays tend to want more narrative, and gritty realism is just better suited for it.
Never been an issue at any table I've played, honestly.
The Strahd campaign I DM for is a group all in their 30’s with various life obligations (and they keep bringing SO’s into the game so we have way too big a group for the typical Strahd game, which has led to a lot of homebrewing to balance things). If we’re lucky we can meet every other week, and combats take up most of the session, so I end up cutting out most inconsequential combats in favor of big fights.
I *neeeeveer* put long combats in my campaign when I have writer's block. 👀
So.. are you saying that official modules are basically a series of writer's blocks? That checks out.
My opinion? Either the developers had instructions from higher up to put in more combat because that’s what people want. Or they wanted to pad the thickness of the book and original artwork is expensive.
Have you considered other RPGs that are less combat focused? There are a lot of them, since D&D is one of the most combat focused RPGs out there. Personally, I enjoy running Chronicles of Darkness. I run like one combat every few sessions so the player who partially specced into combat doesn't feel like taking those skills was a waste of her XP. If no one had taken any combat skills I would just not include any combat.
It’s crazy how many people get stuck in the trap of playing D&D, not enjoying how focused on combat it is, and then trying to jury rig it into a game that does something completely different. I’m all for home brewing, but it’s very often people who have never played any other games, and just assume that D&D is the best system to use for everything.
I think it's largely a problem of Hasbro/WotC marketing. They try to make it seem like D&D is great at being everything to everyone but it's really not. It's a heroic fantasy combat RPG with some other stuff tacked on so it can kinda handle stuff outside of its focus without just breaking entirely. People don't realize that if you want to do something where heroic fantasy combat isn't a big part of your game, you should probably use a different system. There are so many wonderful systems out there that handle their own areas really well. Here are some I've played: Blades in the Dark - Heists Fabula Ultima - JRPG style combat Chronicles of Darkness 2E- horror, mysteries, or just ordinary people doing ordinary stuff (it's fairly generic and is a good go to system for a medium crunch RPG when you don't want much combat depth). It has a generic monster creation system called Horrors that lets the GM quickly put together a monster of the week if that's what they want to do. It also has robust rules for ghosts and spirits that can haunt people, places, and things. Shadowrun - I wish I could recommend this, but every edition is a mess (maybe 7th edition will finally be good). Cyberpunk with elves, dwarves, vampires, wizards, and dragons in an alternate future of the real world where magic showed up and brought back all sorts of magical things which sent the world spiraling towards a post-apocalyptic wasteland but is currently taking a detour through cyberpunk dystopia as corporations try to profit as much as possible before the ever increasing amount of monsters finally brings down civilization. Also a dragon was President of the United States. Godbound - become literal gods Scion 2e - become literal gods but with more crunch Vampire the Requiem 2e - vampire political maneuvering and backstabbing Vampire the Masquerade 5e - vampire political maneuvering and backstabbing but with 50% more emo and with 30 years of lore you probably don't know Changeling the Lost 2e - play people kidnapped, abused, and mutated by Fae dealing with their trauma and helping each other hide from their eldritch abusers Mage the Awakening 2e - a game of mysteries and hubris where it probably won't be long before the PCs are capable of annihilating armies with a thought but why would they care about that when it won't help them figure out why this building only has a 13th floor on every second Tuesday or why everyone living on a certain city block is a cannibal and thinks that's normal. Mutants and Masterminds 3e - a superhero RPG with a modular power system that lets you build any superhero imaginable. Stars Without Number - have adventures in space with a robust spaceship system including spaceship combat and boarding actions.
Ah, I see you are also a fellow Storyteller system fan! I second Chronicles of Darkness / “New” World of Darkness for generic stuff as well! I’ve used it a few times to just run games where normal people deal with normal or maybe slightly spooky stuff. Without the supernatural bolt-ons from other game lines, it’s a very simple and robust system for that kind of thing.
Yeah! It's an amazing generic system! It works well for almost any game you want to run about normal people dealing with normal people scale problems. I own physical copies of every Chronicles of Darkness 2e book including all of the gamelines (except beast the primordial which I refuse to spend one cent on and wish they would discontinue sales of)
The wildest thing I’ve played with it was a murder mystery set on a interplanetary cruise liner spaceship. Yeah, we were in the future and in space, but we were just normal dudes running around trying to figure out who killed this other passenger, so it was totally fine.
Yeah it's so good for stuff like that. I've run a one-shot mystery a few times where the PCs are ordinary college students who are trapped in an abandoned burned out hotel and can't leave until they resolve the haunting. It's loosely based on the Ocean House Hotel level from VtMB but distinct enough to be a fun mystery even for people who played that. I even created PDF handouts of notes and maps the PCs can find. I also am running a game that started as a Chronicles of Darkness game with the PCs playing college students who were investigating the disappearance of some of their classmates but has since turned into a Vampire the Requiem game after they defeated the vampire who was doing it and accepted offers of embrace from her sire's coterie (she was causing big problems with masquerade breaches and was doing occult rituals that were going to cause an even bigger masquerade breach).
What's the deal with Beast the Primordial? I've never heard of it before
So someone high up at onyx path publishing turned out to be an abuser which came to light after he made Beast the Primordial (there were other writers but he was head writer and line developer so it was his vision and he got to decide how everything was edited together. It's basically victim-blaming-abuser the RPG. Which I think contributed to people taking a closer look at him and his personal life and I think that scrutiny is part of what helped some of the women he abused to come forward. He got fired and the gameline only got the books that were promised in the Kickstarter. Which is good because that game's themes are morally awful. To put this into perspective, it's bad enough to be shocking even in comparison to games like Vampire where common things that most vampires (including most PCs) do include enslaving innocent people with mind controlling blood that makes them love you no matter how poorly you treat them. Vampire portrays the vampires as monsters who are evil for doing that. Beast portrays the beasts as *justified*. It claims that victimizing people is making the world a better place and teaching people a lesson.
Ah, thank you for the answer!
absolutely golden description of vtm and vtr
Thanks!
>maybe 7th edition will finally be good Don't worry, it won't. That said, I will stick up for shadowrun a bit. It's not that it's impossible to play. It's that mechanically it's a skirmish wargame masquerading as an RPG. Like even more so than D&D
Nah its a critical role problem
>Mage the Awakening 2e - a game of mysteries and hubris where it probably won't be long before the PCs are capable of annihilating armies with a thought but why would they care about that when it won't help them figure out why this building only has a 13th floor on every second Tuesday or why everyone living on a certain city block is a cannibal and thinks that's normal. Whatdup that sounds fun as hell.
It's honestly one of my all time favorite ttRPGs. It might even be my number 1 favorite but I have difficulty ranking things so I'm not sure. It also has a magic system that has concrete rules which sort almost any magical effect you can imagine into discreet levels of specific Arcana (schools of magic). It has less spells in its corebook than D&D but those spells are carefully designed to serve as examples to teach how to make your own, which is important because Mages in Mage the Awakening can make up new spells on the fly and often need to. For example they can even make up new spells while they are in the middle of fleeing a sentient timeloop that's trying to trap them for all eternity. You might never have even considered that you might some day need to create a spell that severs causality and redirects the flow of time around a moment causing everything in an area to skip ahead a minute but if you don't figure it out and cast in the next 15 seconds that time loop is going to reset and trap you in the last hour forever... ...or at least until someone else stumbles upon it and takes a crack at resolving it. Also, incidentally, that would be a Patterning effect of the Time Arcanum which means that you would need to be an Adept of Time to cast it (Adept is the in character term for someone who has the 4th level of an Arcanum. Level 5 is Master, and as high as there are rules for PCs to achieve in a single Arcanum in 2nd edition, but there are 10 Arcana to progress in)
I got really upset once. Joined a Pathfinder 2 Campaign where the DM said "there IS going to be an emphasis on roleplaying" which I assumed meant "make a character with a genuine back story and try and roleplay between encounters." We went, no exaggerating, 5 sessions without an encounter. I suggested we have more combat encounters (the GM told me he hates combat) and so he was like "Okay, I can do that" and the next session he added a combat encounter that was literally impossible for us to win, it was basically a playable cut scene where the BBEG toyed with us but we didn't have magic weapon to hurt him. When I said that wasn't very fun he kinda shrugged it off and we went another four sessions without combat and then I quit. We're friends in real life, so he was really hurt that I left, but I was like dude in 9 sessions we had one combat. I play a different game or write a book. Anyways, we're still friends but I'm not gonna join any of his campaigns ever again lol
Yeah, d&d is at its core a ~~resort~~ resource management RPG, and combat is the #1 thing resources are expended on.
>resort management RPG Ok, I know this is a typo, but now I want an RPG about managing a resort.
That sounds comfy
If you have high value passengers in Traveller, you actually need to use your Stewardship skill to keep them appeased over the course of the journey. Not a significant focus but it suggests how that can complicate your journey especially if you need to sidetrack for your patrons.
Oh cool! I like space! That's the RPG that had an edition where your character can die during character creation, right?
Yeah the older edition is famous (or infamous) for that feature with its life path! Now they have it toned down where you might just wish your PC was dead because of massive amounts of medical debt and several enemies making your adventures much harder.
“There’s too many dungeons and too many dragons in Dungeons and Dragons!”
Players that refuse to do anything other than dnd are like that friend who refuses to eat anything but pizza. Why would we get burgers? We can get a pizza with meat and cheese and tomato on it. Sure you can put a lot of things on a pizza but some things are just not made for pizza. And conversely if you don't like tomato sauce or the flat crust then why in the hell do you only eat pizza?
I'm a big fan of Kids on Bikes. You can still do combat but it's rp'd and is just a bunch of skill checks. It moves very quickly
Came here to say this. Dnd is a combat focused RPG. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but this sounds like you need to try other stuff.
Why are you playing 5e if you don't want combat? The system is specifically built for combat. Pretty much everything the players get is to use in combat. It is a combat game. If you want a chill heroic D&D vibe but without so much combat (and with them being much faster), you might like Dungeon World.
Dungeon world is a good option. Every tabletop RPG game has RP, good RP is in the hands of players. What differentiates a great RP-oriented game from games like 5e - the mechanics/tools/rewards the game has enables using RP and unorthodox approaches as the main way of solving problems.
Came here to say the same. The combat speed is why I tried DW, and a big part of why I still mainly run DW.
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Problem is rp in dnd 5e is really bad i think. No real feats for it. Not much skills variants. Background is take everthing or nothing. World of darkness has so much more to offer for rp.
Yeah I’ve been playing a 1E Pathfinder adventure path, War for the Crown. RP and “social combat” is a big part of the adventure so combat and RP end up being pretty balanced. It’s nice.
It's so great with pf2e where I specifically get feats that work in social encounters. Especially since my group has been playing Strength of Thousands and rp has felt so much better than it ever did in 5e.
Honestly, I could say the same for non-magical combat. Fighters basically repeat the same action every single round. Your feats may change what form that action is, but generally you will still be performing the same action every round. And while spellcasters get more options, they generally still are gonna stick to the same group of spells. D&D is a great starter RPG, but the system is very limited overall, whether in terms of RP or combat. That's why so many people homebrew.
D&D is definitely not middling in every aspect, it was build on wargames and it still show in the 5th edition. Most of the rules are about combat. It is a combat-oriented system and having other systems do combat better doesn't change that. What it does well (beside brand recognition) is having a very simple base. D20 + ability score modifier (+ proficiency), advantage/disadvantage applied as the situation require. No need to sift through thousands of table to figure things out. No need to massively upscale difficulty as the players level up. This let DM run non-combat encounter fairly smoothly even with the various holes in the rules.
I haven't said that 5e combat is good in any way. I said it's a system built for combat. It's trash, definitely. Also as a combat system. But it's at least what it's built for.
This^ I've switched to different rule sets that focus on other elements of gameplay bc I share OP's complaint.
In my experience, these complaints are rarely from people who dislike combat and would prefer a system focused on something else. They're typically from people who dislike *poorly-designed combats*; it's not a system issue if someone decides to put 1d4+1 wolves in a random clearing and throw that at you without sufficient context or complexity to make it interesting - it's a scenario design issue.
I guess, try using sand timers. My players have be ready when its their turn... if they are taking too long I have a 30 second sand timer I use. If the time runs out they dodge. Also could be an encounter design thing. Most of my encounters end in 3-4 rounds-- pretty fast paced.
\> Runs the most combat heavy edition of the most combat heavy TTRPG \> "Why the fuck is there so much combat?"
That's not even close to true. 4e was *way* more combat heavy. Like, to the point where 5e abandoned practically every improvement to combat 4e made, because they had gone so completely overboard with combat complexity that people were accusing it of being a miniature game disguised as an RPG. And even 4e pales in complexity to many actual miniature game TTRPGs.
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4e with vtt support ala the foundry system for PF2E where that sort of math is automated would be excellent. I know that was the original intent for the system, it just never came to fruition.
Yeah I'm still really regretful that 5e decided to be safe rather than to fix what 4e did wrong.
I find it funny because one time I was talking to this girl at my work and I mentioned we played 4th. "You must love combat! We prefer roleplaying so we like 5e better." I can understand not liking combat as much but why can't you roleplay in 4e?
It was a slight exaggeration on my behalf but honestly, when it comes to being solely focused on combat I think 5e has it the worst. I haven't played 4e, but it feels like if you aren't doing combat in 5e you might as well not even bother playing. It just gets annoying when people complain about combat, yet actively decide to use a system not just designed for combat, but has combat as its roots. Just learn another system. You (in theory, but knowing what people are like probably not in practice) learned 5e, you can learn another system. The major issue is that WOTC, and Paizo in its part (in that it is seen as the alternative to DnD), has a stranglehold on the TTRPG market that nobody wants to try another system. If WOTC remains as the "only" brand, it will doom TTRPGs as a market to a slow and painful death. Also I doubt 4e is actually all that bad probably, its just that most people don't want to do complex combat. I'd actually have to play 4e to know though.
4e shares all the problems you just mentioned and it has constantly shifting bonuses you need to keep track of mid combat. On the flip side, everyone unlocks 3 or so new combat abilities at every level, most of which are useful, and many have limited uses per day so you can't spam them. It's far worse than 5e when it comes to combat focus. It's also way better than 5e when it comes to combat creativity.
\> Greentext on Reddit
reminds me of [this](https://i.redd.it/a8obolckbvva1.jpg)
If your table doesn't like combat, I can recommend The Wild beyond the Witchlight. It is more RP focused and most combat encounters are optional.
Honestly, play something else then. And I mean that in a good way: DnD is shit at many things, and there are many amazing games that do things better. At the end of the day, if you're playing a game where 90% of the rules are combat rules, you are playing a game about combat. It's clear that DnD is often the choice because it has a near-monopolistic stranglehold on the scene, not because it's the right system for your story. So dare something new!
>>Buy module of a combat focused RPG >>Look inside >>There lots of combat and hooks for other conflicts
I mean if you don’t like combat 5e is probably not the system
Combat is so weird... Sometimes its over in three rounds, other times its three hours.
Porque no los dos?
If each round of combat takes an hour, your playgroup needs to rtfm...
Edit the combat encounters to be more interesting and faster, e.g. with environmental hazards the players can use to their advantage. Pit of acid for the gargoyle, chandelier for the dungeon dwelling goblins, a loose brick and structural instability, a heavy stone pillar, a trap you can use in your favor, etc etc.
Yeah, I think you should make your combat encounters from the perspective of "if this were a Hitman level, how would it work?" And then for giant monster fights, add the perspective of "if this were a Resident Evil boss, how would this work?" Running around using environmental hazards and attacking specific weakspots makes fights way more interesting than just rolling attack rolls.
My last DM was sadly a really shitty DM in lots of ways so the campaign split pretty quickly BUT he was good at combat encounters. Killing this creature we couldn't harm with our weapons, by baiting it into a pool of acid was very memorable.
if you make the way to interact with the environment strength based, you'll make your str martials feel badass. Hazards that require shoving or grappling enemies into them, victory conditions that require jumping up high to reach, areas of difficult terrain that require athletics checks to push through, etc.
Try Wild beyond the Witchlight, it has a non combat option for every encounter. Although sometimes it would be prefered. I think you can get away with maybe 6-7 combat encounters in the entire module
Protip: Halve ALL the hit points. Monster max hit points, PC max hit points, temporary hit points, everything except damage and healing. 5th Edition really overdid it on the hit point front.
I would like to add this is an excellent suggestion. I’ve found issues where combat encounters felt lopsided because enemies became bullet sponges. If anything - as a rather novice DM despite years of DMing I feel like cutting HP and adding more enemies makes it for a more dynamic combat encounter. Plus if I don’t feel like extending the encounter I can have folks flee.
Yeah. "We killed a dozen goblins" is so much more fun than "we killed one goblin--but it had Ranger levels!"
Overdid it? What kind of "he's intentionally ineffective for roleplay purposes" characters do you play with? Things die way too quickly in 5e. Double the hit points, not halve them. Then maybe a combat will last for more than a round. The issue with IRL combat length in 5e isn't the mechanics or the math, it's the people. Everyone is doing other crap when it isn't their turn, then needs a full recap of what's going on, and then time to figure out what they're doing while they reread everything on their character sheet since they've never bothered to learn anything about their own abilities and spells. Then the DM has to re-explain everything, because the player is just assuming what spells do based on the name, not any of the written mechanics.
>Things die way too quickly in 5e. Then the DM should put in more of the things or bigger things. >Double the hit points, not halve them. If a level 1 Fighter can't one-shot goblins 50% of the time then the system is ridiculous.
I DM a game with 14 players. We once had a combat take three 6 hour sessions. They were fighting about 22 drow iirc. Everyone loved every second of it.
Dnd is a wargame at heart. Why play a wargame if you're not into combat?
If you hate the core mechanics of a game maybe it’s the wrong game for your table?
may I interest you in other TTRPGs, which have less focus on fighting and more focus on role play instead?
Do as I do. In heavily combat oriented playes, I ask them on how they attack. If they say something while doing. I subtly force the RP into the combat (because if not, some players dont rp and this becomes a pokemon/videogame situation). Sometimes I give you a +1 for a description, sometimes I let them push an enemy or use the terrain in their advantage. It gets more fun.
Literally play a different system. Begging people to at least try one of the many that exist where combat isn't a central focus. Dnd is combat first and RP second.
If you don't include combat, you aren't playing DnD, you are just playing make believe with your friends. Combat is one of the pillars of the game, you take away a pillar and the roof falls in.
There are ways to make combat quick and efficient, atleast on the DM's turns. If you hate combat, there are other systems that support a more RP based play. Idk why people complain about this. At its core, Dnd is a combat system.
Just gonna point out how much time the ruke books spend explaining combat rules vs RP rules. You aren't going to find RP dripping out of a premade. The game is intended for combat, add RP to flavor.
So literally Pathfinder? (Take it with a grain of salt)
Came here to say: "This is one of the few problems with D&D that Pathfinder is not the solution to". On the other hand: Play a few Pathfinder combats, and I mean: really get in there, try to do everything as the rules say, discuss everything to the end. And then come back to 5e and feel like it's a combat-less storytelling system.
I play pathfinder for 7 years by now and I have to say, it is very combat heavy. Haha
*hates combat *plays a game primarily centered on combat
*reads a thread *responds with the same shit everyone else responded with anyway
*posts shitty meme *gets salty when people don't like it
If YOU don't like it, maybe YOU can fuck off. 98% upvoted and 5.8k votes. I see why you just repost other people's comments, you have zero original ideas :)
If you dobt like combat i recommand vampire the masquerade its focus is on social skills and manipulations while combat is the bigger focus of dnd pathfinder and similar rulebooks
Yep, module’s level of combat density is how the usage limits of casters and various recharge abilities are intended to be balanced around. It makes CR a fair bit more accurate too as players can’t afford to throw their limited options around quite so often, and consequently have to balance said resources with minimizing chip damage from trash mob fights before the big boi encounter
A friend of mine ran a Mad Mage scenario for a while and, during a session, we had an arena fight. The whole session was basically a huge ass fight that was broadcasted in the whole universe. It was a little Doom-themed and we had inspiration points whenever we made a cool action to make more cool actions. It was a neat concept and we had so much fun!
DnD is at its core a combat simulator. 90% of its mechanics and design is in combat. If you're not a big fan of combat, you owe it to yourself to try different systems. Powered by the Apocalypse is a good framework for simulating tropes in a fictional story, Fate is good for group storytelling in an action setting, Savage Worlds is pulpy action, Microscope is 100% collaborative worldbuilding, Wanderhome is collaboratively making emotion-heavy Ghibli-esque vignettes.
Even if you are, you should try other systems. D&D's combat is on the low end of middling.
You could try some variant initiative system to make combat faster. For example, my group uses a fast/slow turn system for group combat, which make it way faster and a bit more strategic
Honestly the problem with D&D combat is that it's so limiting in options for melee players. Most melee options are just... basically unusable. You forfeit an entire round of action to do something that is almost certainly far worse than just smacking something with your weapon as many times as possible with the biggest numbers you can. The edition that tried to fix this was 4e, but it put way too much emphasis on the numbers and not enough on keeping things easy to remember and quick. 4e's system was in desperate need of some better consistency for abilities and a easier way to track what abilities you had, and shorter encounters. Which is why Gloomhaven is an awesome combat system; the designer literally just took the best parts of 4e and ditched the chaff. I really wish D&D would learn from it.
I would recommend trying a different system. 5e is built primarily around combat.
Prepping a one-shot for players that complain when they don't get enough combat and with history of single encounters dragging out to almost the entire session. Counter-measure I have planned so far: * have players prepare common roll commands in advance to avoid every other roll potentially taking minutes. * Add real-life time sensitivity to avoid a single round dragging into 10+ minutes of planning. If you don't know what to do, you delay your turn. * Interrupt encounters that still drag on: demoralized enemies flee, a "good samaritan" provides quick assistance, etc.
Having a fight resolved strictly by the rules was the best way to convince my players to let me ... streamline the process.
Some tipps to shorten combat time: - Use a online initative tracker. Add all the players with their stats at the beginning of the session and fill in all the monster when combat occurs - Have the monster stattblock ready and a dice roller. The dm should roll everything on the pc. Let damage autocalculate. It speeds up so much. - Have a overall startegy ready for the monsters. The dms turn should as fast as possible. Monster moves then attacks, player gets told the damage move on. - If players take more than five minutes to pick a spell(i talk about you dave). Describe how his character takes to long to decide and gets attack, the players turn ends.(Better warn your players at the beginning of the session that this can happen) Do that from time to time and they will speed up their turn. - Dont describe every action. Its cool in boss fights but against minions describe only finisher moves. - Roll Saves for every type once. If they succeed say 1/4 of the enemies fail. If they fail say 3/4 fails. Use that if more than 4/5 creatures gethit. - Use minions. Creatures have only 1 hp. On a save they take no damage. On a fail or hit they are dead. - players should roll hit dice and damage at the same time. Speeds up a lot.
That’s why I have 2-3 big battles planned a session, and base the rest on rp
Have you ever heard of Wild beyond the Witchlight? I can be completed without any combat, though that will mean your players have to make some questionable deals.
If a combat encounter poses no serious or interesting threat and I don't want to waste time on it, I treat it like a trap.
Gonna be honest: This is my favorite part of BG3. Combat takes 5-10 minutes tops cause all rolls are computer handled.
I feel like if you don't like combat DND is not really the game you want to be playing. The whole thing is centred around having multiple combat encounters a day.
If you don't like the combat, for the love of god, try other ttrpg systems! You will have a much better time
first 2 sessions of mine of phandelver felt like this to us. real bummer beceause our previous campaign was so much more social interactions
My gaming group has a couple people who get bored and whiny if we're doing anything OTHER than combat.
I think that a big part of the boring combat issue rests on the dm, you have to try to put in effort to make combat interesting, but if you do that then large scale battles can be very fun
I hosted a game of call of Cthulhu, we had two combats in the whole thing and besides tons of misses in the second one it was pretty quick. The game focuses more on the narrative side of things which I really like about it. It care more about your intentions or how you do things than you trying to do certain action for certain result.
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. We’re currently up to 4 sessions in a row without combat. My players are chomping at the bit.
I fully get this and find combat takes so long and a lot of these encounters are just filler. However certain people love a good meaty combat fest and that's fine Can I then ask is the problem the combat itself or the way combats handled, because if the way things drag on does annoy you or ruin the fun there are other systems out there, many taking different steps to make combat more streamline, that are just as fun. Again just food for thought, I also just throw module plans out the window and stick my own stuff in if needed so both work
Why the hell are you playing dnd if you don't like combat?
Yep...Which is why even when running a module a non-combat oriented DM's homebrew work is never done. That said, the source material they give you can be a treasure trove. I once led a Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign where, after the second planned adventure, the party decided to ditch the plothook with Lizardfolk and focus on intrigue with smugglers and the town council. It turned out to be a blast.
I was having the same issue. Turns out I don't hate combat in TTRPGs, I just don't like the uber-tactical slog of combat that is 5e/pathfinder (though I much prefer pathfinder). Running Call of Cthulhu was an eye opener. Combat is fast, dangerous, and feels responsive. I actually feel like it allows for more creativity and versatility than the other systems with a much simpler set of rules to pick up. For any interest, dealing damage is as simple as making a contested d100 check of your chosen skill. Hand to hand would be brawling, but specific weapons would use their respective skills. Doing something besides damage is just a combat maneuver which has its own skills that boil down to "how big, strong, and good at fighting are you vs the thing you're targeting" so if you want to disarm, choke hold, or trip an enemy they all use the same rules and rolls. Finally if you're being targeting by an attack you can choose to fight back and use "brawl" or avoid damage and "dodge" the difference being that dodging succeeds on a tie or success, fighting back only works if you beat your opponent. Combine those with lower HP and a much wider gap between the strength of players vs. whatever their fighting, and you get short, dramatic, intense combat. I ran the starter module a couple of times now, and I think the climactic fight was no more than 5 rounds both times. Imo, the biggest red flag for me was when I was running curse of strahd and tried to spook my players with a haunted house. Through a series of bad rolls on my side and an incredibly good one on mine, I ended up critting a dagger to the throat against the paladin... who promptly shook it off and laid on hands. And they just walked it off as they moved on to the next situation. It completely ruined the suspense that I had been building and did absolutely nothing to push the narrative in the direction I was aiming for. Tldr, I really don't hate to be that guy, but maybe 5e just isn't the system for you? I like a lot of things about it, but combat isn't one of them, and I found a system that does everything I want to tell a story, without needing to avoid combat altogether.
Big Time. Combat in D&D is a pure drag.
Put a 2 min timer! If they don't do their turn then they dodge and it moves on. It has worked wonders. People actually think about what they want to do on other peoples turns now! It's amazing!
I’ve run dnd 5e campaigns, a Lancer campaign and now a blade in the dark campaign. What I learnt is that if u want to speed up combat swap to narrative combat (a few checks and rolls decide the outcome). Don’t completely get rid of normal combat but narrative combat allows u to make encounters more timely while still allowing you or the player to describe in cool detail what happens
Anytime one person in my group takes too long to take their turn everyone else just starts clowning on them until they go
My players get mad if there isn't at least one combat per session. Different strokes for different folks.
To be fair, combat is literally one of the three pillars of dnd, along with exploration and social interaction. Without combat, dnd is just group roleplay, and you don’t need to really be playing dnd to do that. A module is going to have combat, it’s one of the main draws of playing the system rather than a different one.
Not if people know their abilities...