D&D is definitely trash, but water is not wet.
Wet is a state of relative saturation, while water is always a liquid. It is not saturated with itself.
Don't be a moron.
I touched some water and it felt pretty wet, anon. You're full of shit and just trying to sound smart. Go touch some fricking grass and tell us if it feels grassy.
It's better than BESM3e Combat, which barely has any rules for actual combat at all and breaks immediately if anyone has any interesting abilities at all or built anything other than the most bland, generic, boring character ever and even then all the "rules" are just suggestions.
At least 5e tells you how to measure distance, has cover rules, and actually lets players know what they can and can't do on their turns!
If your combat is just "lol whatever the GM feels like lmao" you are no longer playing a game, you are now just doing forum RP where your sword of infinity billlion can cut through anything except the enemy's shield of infinity billion plus one.
BESM3e just says "yeah range is whatever you as the GM think is okay so is movement, it's all whatever" and the few parts that do actually have mechanics are so broken, so non-functional, that it makes 5e look like the best game ever designed.
If your combat is a lazy non-game, you aren't playing/running an RPG you're playing/running a larp.
I agree that games need rules, but equating solid rules with spacial positioning is like being a spast about chess pieces not having hit points. Wargames are not the only type of combat system. But I’m not surprised you don’t realise that because
Yes, as I said I ran BESM3e. It's the worst system I've ever run and makes DND look like a shining example of good game design in comparison.
by the sheer amount of rageposting you’re doing about besm it sounds like it’s your first non-d&d game. Play more, and play less shit games. Like Shinobigami or Dracorouge, seeing as you’re into weeb shit.
[...]
You're both wrong.
FRPG is RPG nontheless.
DnD 5e combat is solid, with well-defined powers and not tremendously overblown rules, and it's a good thing for a roleplaying game where combat is present.
RPG, of course, should not be a wargame, and DnD has enough space to not make it a wargame, although DnD has a whole lot of issues of its own, and quite a few broken abilities and builds.
[...]
Risus
It’s solid, sure, like a huge log you need to squeeze out. It’s not a particularly fun experience unless you put in the effort to make it run smooth and interesting. More activity than game.
Also wtf is frpg. Freeform? I disagree, there’s no game in forum posting.
If your combat is just "lol whatever the GM feels like lmao" you are no longer playing a game, you are now just doing forum RP where your sword of infinity billlion can cut through anything except the enemy's shield of infinity billion plus one.
BESM3e just says "yeah range is whatever you as the GM think is okay so is movement, it's all whatever" and the few parts that do actually have mechanics are so broken, so non-functional, that it makes 5e look like the best game ever designed.
If your combat is a lazy non-game, you aren't playing/running an RPG you're playing/running a larp.
You're both wrong.
FRPG is RPG nontheless.
DnD 5e combat is solid, with well-defined powers and not tremendously overblown rules, and it's a good thing for a roleplaying game where combat is present.
RPG, of course, should not be a wargame, and DnD has enough space to not make it a wargame, although DnD has a whole lot of issues of its own, and quite a few broken abilities and builds.
Actually, having played Solasta in the past week, 5e combat is surprisingly OK. What it fails at is the verisimilitude of actual roleplaying in relation to the combat.
I could never imagine playing this shit at the actual table, for that very reason. But at its base, the combat itself and just the combat? Actually works fine.
That said, if you really do hate D&D combat, have you considered trying to not play D&D?
Solasta also showcases the problem of HP bloate i the later tiers of play, aswell as homebrewing quite a bit to adjust the rules.
It works, it's not as bad as most people claim it to be, but it's also true it's too basic too.
I hated Solasta's combat. The only things it did interestingly were elevation and lighting and it would have been improved if it was using nearly anything else instead of fricking 5E.
Every CRPG's elevation feels horrible after Divinity one. The thing solasta did well was climbing, but I hate this fixation a lot of TTRPGs and derivatives of it of making battlemaps and zones that are just open, empty fields or square rooms in dungeons, barely if anything to block line of sight, play with elevation or interact with the enviroment.
Spam attack, martial man.
It still sucks complete ass. Hp bloat isn't the main issue with the system and editing the system to work still means the system is hot shit.
How do you make a combat centric system and have combat so shitty?
Its just as easy to hit an unarmoured 0 level peasant as it is to hit an unarmoured 20th level fighter. You would think that an experienced fighter would be a bit better at dodging or parrying, instead we have a system where the fighter just stands there and takes every blow on the chin.
>You would think that an experienced fighter would be a bit better at dodging or parrying
He is. That's what his hp represents. A fighter with 100+ hp doesn't have a body stronger than that of a rhinoceros. It shows how hard to kill he is, always finding a way to survive.
I'm not saying that hp is that great as a concept, but as an abstraction it works. Things like Parry works in Stormbringer/Runequest because the character doesn't get more hp: so even a master swordman can get killed easily by a few archers if he doesn't don some armor. You cannot have both things like big hp and higher parry because they serve the same purpose in game and you would become ridiculously hard to kill (100 hp and 50% of parry would be the same as having 200 hp).
If hp represents the ability to dodge or otherwise avoid damage, what, exactly, do you think armor class represents, and why do you think it goes up with your dexterity
11 months ago
Anonymous
Another piece of the puzzle you're clearly too moronic to solve. Which is saying much, since I get it and I have down's snydrome.
NTA and this is also a wild tangent from the rest of the thread but subjectively I hate the explanation of abstraction for HP and AC in 5e.
HP and AC are abstracted as being a multitude of different aspects being bundled together under a single stat to simplify the mechanics and reduce the amount of work being done per round in combat. However this simplified abstraction has the consequence of making weird reductive dissonances between what is happening mechanically and what is happening "in reality (the game)."
For instance, HP represents things like stamina, luck, and mental fortitude pushing someone to keep fighting as their wounds accumulate, and the wounds themselves are supposed to be minor enough until someone lands a fatal blow when the character hits 0 HP. However, the system represents things like stamina, luck, and mental fortitude in other aspects that don't interact with HP at all.
For example the exhaustion system, which is supposed to represent how far a character's body has been pushed, relates to almost nothing for HP, with a character only gaining exhaustion if they drop to 0 and get healed back up in the same combat encounter too many times. Given the wear on someone's stamina usual gives a more gradual reduction in effectiveness over time I feel that HP representing stamina would be better represented if the exhaustion system was implemented partially into HP thresholds, giving a slight death spiral and perhaps even encouraging someone to back off in combat rather than slug it out to the end, which I tend to see a lot in fights since positioning (usually) matters little due to the simplified cover and line of sight system in 5e. It would also encourage healing mid battle rather than afterwards since healing mid combat at the moment is usually a waste of action economy and a potential lifeline to get someone back up if they drop to 0.
I'd also give examples for luck and mental fortitude but this is already getting longer than I thought.
>Falls down 200 feet >Damn, Im just really lucky and just did a frame perfect dodge to negate all the damage, but that was really exhausting >Better let a Cleric use Cure Wounds on me, even though I perfectly avoided that blow and am just a little bit exhausted >I managed to raise my shield towards the poisoned sword attack, I still take poison damage
DnD 5e is stupid for trying to not make HP meat points. Because thats what it is, meat points.
11 months ago
Anonymous
To be fair it's not like poison damage is different from any other damage type, it's not like it actually poisons you
[...]
The fact that you even DISCUSS HP bloat means that you have no clue.
HP bloat is Wizards' solution to the actual problem that D&D has always had, which is stagnation at medium/high character level.
Just cut player hp gain at 3rd level and cut monster hp in half. Problem solved.
As long as you cut hp bloat its fine. Fast, simple and chaotic. Oh and also use group initiative and dont play wotc editions.
3rd level is awfully early to cut it. AD&D cut it at 10 iirc and only back to 1hp per level plus con modifier. Cutting it at 3rd would be very very deadly, dragons would instantly kill anyone they hit with their breath weapons for example.
Still, going back to a lower HP standard could be the beginning of revitalizing combat. I would say that the actual complaint is that combat takes too long. It's valid but in my experience is much more a result of people playing characters they're not familiar with. Reducing HP bloat could make combat shorter and more dynamic but just implementing a house rule turn timer would shorten combat considerably.
The next time you play, just for your own reference see how quickly you can get through your turn. Plan ahead, including having the dice for each of your actions pre-grouped and click it. You'll see that even a fairly complex turn can be completed in about a minute to two minutes. Then clock how long it takes the other players to complete their turns. You'll quickly see that the biggest drag on combat is one or more players who try to RP in combat (for reasons other than to shorten the combat overall) and/or who aren't familiar with their characters.
I experienced players should not create and play high level characters. This has come to be common and it's a problem, especially when incompetence doesn't lead to quick death and assumption of creating a more "survivable" character.
It still sucks complete ass. Hp bloat isn't the main issue with the system and editing the system to work still means the system is hot shit.
How do you make a combat centric system and have combat so shitty?
The fact that you even DISCUSS HP bloat means that you have no clue.
I agree with you which is why i only play nongame RPGs where fighting is just story telling and a few rolls, with some made up resource management at most.
I hear this often, but I never see anything that works better.
RoS is lauded for its accuracy, but in practice it's overly clunky and quickly becomes very boring. Storyteller systems tend to have a similar problem of extreme clunkiness and slowdown, as does WHFPG. Stuff like GURPS and other more vague systems like Forbodden Lands lack any kind of real tactical engagement. SotDL is good, but to be honest, it lacks the tactical depth that well designed D&D fights can gave, due to its characters and monsters being mostly very simple.
Once I start playing games without combat specific rules I can't go back, rpgs really are shit at it and even trying is useless...if you want some big shootout to finish a campaign, just pick some period appropriate squad-based rules
You're not supposed to play that game past level 10, sorry you didn't get the memo. 1st level 4e combat was comparable to 3rd or 4th level 3e/AD&D combat, 9th level 4e is like high level 3e/AD&D combat, I can see going into low paragon as a kind of big finish for the campaign but eventually you realize that all the players are just sitting around pondering their deck of powers.
BECMI. You can run campaigns at high level with a quarter of the usual issues. Yes, your PC will be overpowered because above level 10 you'll have things like Thieves reading from Scrolls or Paladins casting spells. Yes, they will feel like superheroes at time, especially with how easily they can ressurect the deads. However it runs fine, fights actually go faster at high levels because the PC either annihilate the monsters or suffer immensely themselves. No such thing as "hp bloat" issue when insta-death is on the daily menu.
its kinda funny how DnD combat has this weird horseshoe of lethality where combats at very low and very high levels are extremely fricking brutal with only the low-mid levels really having tactical depth where you can experiment with different approaches to a combat encounter or make a mistake and be punished without just instant game over
any remotely hard hitting enemy rolling a crit at level 1 or 2 is basically instant death for most characters
Then play Pathfinder 2e. Though I disagree. The combat sucks ass because the players or the DM hasn't taken the time to imagine and describe what is actually happening in the moment. In short, this is a skill issue. You suck.
Frick it I've always wanted to ask such a question but never really wanted to make a whole thread to ask it and this thread falls in line
So DnD combat since its mostly resource based which tends to be really frantic near the start of an encounter then becomes very simple as it goes on with the combatants either running out of stuff or conserving their stuff for later, which is a reasonable feel as combat exhausts.
However in some anime, card games, and video gamesmostly the video game picking related is from and mtg comes to mind for card games the longer a battle goes on the more intense and complex it can get as both parties effectively powering up through the battle and get more resources to play with per turn until it hits climax where the ramp plateaus at a certain point based on the current level/capacity of the combatants for that encounter/battle and of course resets for the next encounter
What I'm basically asking is there any ttrpgs that has a reverse curve in things available to player and enemy throughout the encounter compared to DnD?
Warhammer Fantasy 4e kind of works like this with its momentum, so does Dogs in the Vineyard. There is an RPG that works exactly like you're describing, I can't recall what it's named because I'm drunk, but each round in combat you just do more damage and so does the enemy.
5e has great combat. Problem is players are kept artificially weak because moronic troony DMs screech at wotc going >AAAAAAA OH NO THE WIZARD KILLED A BUNCH OF GOBLINS WITH FIREBALL NERF NERF NERF
not realizing that you're supposed to be plowing through 6 encounters or more a day in a dungeon.
So wotc slashes damage slowly or weakens features and then everything feels more sluggish.
all problems with 5e are a direct result of shitty control freak DMs having a meltie over players having power or agency
short rest classes like warlocks/fighters/monks vs long rest classes causes a lot of balance problems for 5e because of the unrealistic expectation of 6-8 combat encounters per day with multiple short rests. paladins and wizards and bards are much more reasonable when they can't just comfortably dump half of their spell slots into a single encounter knowing there will only be 1 or 2 more before a long rest. 90% of the campaigns I have played in are much closer to 2-4 combats a day with one short rest
it also doesn't help that some classes are seemingly forbidden from having decent subclasses and spells just being significantly better at problem solving than skills or tools. feat design and frequency is also a huge fricking issue for 5e, the game would benefit from just a generic power attack option so weapon choices aren't so limited and letting players get both a feat and ASI at the same time makes characters more unique and lets MAD classes more tolerable to play without stale workarounds like hexblade dips.
DnD stories suck ass
Combat sucks ass
Any class system sucks ass and is saturated with bullshit for powergamers and rules lawyers to worry about.
I've already told my good friend and our resident GM how much I hate D&D and he really doesn't get that....I'm willing to walk away from gaming altogether over it. There is just this horrid obsession he has with running ONLY this game.
We branch out every once in a while but that is for 2 or 3 games and then it's back to 5 fricking months of D&D only sessions.
dnd is popular because it's good, fact is you're just another moron with shit taste seething that your dogshit rpg isn't fun
crying about dnd is like crying about fortnite, all you do is dig your own grave by showing everyone that you're a sad, out of touch boomer. I'd tell you to have a nice day but at your age you're one foot in the grave as it is
It's not the class system because older editions of D&D don't have this problem with power gamers and rules lawyers. Older editions give total power and control to the DM. You only have these problems when you start to have more and more player facing rules. The solution is simple. The DM needs to put his foot down. This is his game. You're playing in it. If you don't agree, you'll always have shitty games.
WotC D&D tries to flatten out a card game into a pen and paper RPG, while also trying to do the kind of rigid balancing and fine tuning that wargames deal with, but not actually committing to that as much as they should. The CR system is pretty much just a dumber way of doing the point values on an army list, for instance... and the math on it isn't even right. Lot of 5es problems comes from the way the DMG feels like it's written for a different, incomplete game, while the Phb is dumbed down and stripped clean like they intended to finish the rest of the game in a follow-up book that they never got around to writing.
Meanwhile, the monster manual is full of bloated meatsack enemies who have a single gimmick: Attack several times a turn, which means the only real strategy for playing D&D 5e is to kill everything as fast as possible by overwhelming the action economy... only you can't always do that because the enemies are bloated meatsacks, because Mearls unironically thought dragging out fights so you could roll more dice was "fun" and that locking everyone into a strict power curve was "balanced" and what it leaves you with, in reality, is a boring, slow, clunky game where you're trying to combo together whatever powers and feats and shit you can get to achieve better than average damage, because the only guaranteed way to survive the absurd amount of battles you're meant to do in a day is to hope you roll better initiative and then rushdown anything in your path by spamming as many attacks as possible in as few turns as possible.
Combat is there to inspire you to actually roleplay. The dice will tell you how to act and you react to it showing other players what your character feels like. Then it will hopefully rouse more reactions from the other players who will breath life into their own characters. The characters come alive and become brothers in arms.
>the dice tell you how to act and you react to it >do you miss or hit, while tending completely still locked together like fricking magnets? >hmm should I use a slot and maybe deal slightly more damage now, or save it for later? Wow I really truly do feel like a wizard >oh boy! I hit four times this round! My character REALLY clobbers their HPsack I mean opponent, who is also going to stand there clobbering me over the head on its own turn. Isn’t this fun?!
Combat is there to inspire you to actually roleplay. The dice will tell you how to act and you react to it showing other players what your character feels like. Then it will hopefully rouse more reactions from the other players who will breath life into their own characters. The characters come alive and become brothers in arms.
My dude, I’m not saying this to be mean, I’m saying this because you’re quite ill: you need to play more games. Bust out Spellbound Kingdoms, the dynamic combat system there will blow your 5e-clogged mind.
>Ho ho! >Looks as if my Ranger has missed his attack! >I shall roleplay that as if he is sad and having a bad day! >perhaps my friend will see this and play off my bad role and make a decision on his turn to console my character! >truly the dice have informed our reactions and filled this game with LIFE! >through our dice rolls, we will become the truest of brothes!
Acting is the fun part. system is just the base onto which we build the real fun that is social imaginative story with lots of dialogue and emotion.
If I want logic, optimization or gamey games I'd play vidya. Chess is pure logic and no imagination, go play that shit.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Broadway is that-a-way.
11 months ago
Anonymous
Yeah, but we're talking about 5e, which is a brainless skirmish combat game, not a dramatic emotional rollercoaster where roleplaying opportunities spontaneously arise. The only thing happening is some 1-dimensional adventurers are killing the things that are trying to kill them. That's the story. Stop pretending that the hypothetical possibility for storytelling is the same thing as the game purposefully opening itself up for grand, dramatic moments, informed by random dice rolls, you fricking moron.
Yes, but you didn't need an entire thread just to say that.
Jokes on him, we play DnD just to b***h about combat.
hytnpdnd
I would suck her ass
Please do not suck asses.
Have you tried playing 4th ed?
OP hasn't played any games at all.
In other news, water is wet.
D&D is definitely trash, but water is not wet.
Wet is a state of relative saturation, while water is always a liquid. It is not saturated with itself.
Don't be a moron.
I touched some water and it felt pretty wet, anon. You're full of shit and just trying to sound smart. Go touch some fricking grass and tell us if it feels grassy.
good one
>is instructed to not be a moron
>is a moron anyway
You had one job.
>It is not saturated with itself.
Yes it is.
>A thing isn’t saturated by itself
Yes it is.
Wet - noun - a liquid that can make something damp.
Water is wet.
Good post, Prof. Satan.
What system has good combat?
Mythras
soulbound
Full contact LARP
It's better than BESM3e Combat, which barely has any rules for actual combat at all and breaks immediately if anyone has any interesting abilities at all or built anything other than the most bland, generic, boring character ever and even then all the "rules" are just suggestions.
At least 5e tells you how to measure distance, has cover rules, and actually lets players know what they can and can't do on their turns!
>my RPG has to be a wargame
You’re playing it wrong
If your combat is just "lol whatever the GM feels like lmao" you are no longer playing a game, you are now just doing forum RP where your sword of infinity billlion can cut through anything except the enemy's shield of infinity billion plus one.
BESM3e just says "yeah range is whatever you as the GM think is okay so is movement, it's all whatever" and the few parts that do actually have mechanics are so broken, so non-functional, that it makes 5e look like the best game ever designed.
If your combat is a lazy non-game, you aren't playing/running an RPG you're playing/running a larp.
have you tried not playing dndogshit?
Yes, as I said I ran BESM3e. It's the worst system I've ever run and makes DND look like a shining example of good game design in comparison.
I agree that games need rules, but equating solid rules with spacial positioning is like being a spast about chess pieces not having hit points. Wargames are not the only type of combat system. But I’m not surprised you don’t realise that because
by the sheer amount of rageposting you’re doing about besm it sounds like it’s your first non-d&d game. Play more, and play less shit games. Like Shinobigami or Dracorouge, seeing as you’re into weeb shit.
It’s solid, sure, like a huge log you need to squeeze out. It’s not a particularly fun experience unless you put in the effort to make it run smooth and interesting. More activity than game.
Also wtf is frpg. Freeform? I disagree, there’s no game in forum posting.
You're both wrong.
FRPG is RPG nontheless.
DnD 5e combat is solid, with well-defined powers and not tremendously overblown rules, and it's a good thing for a roleplaying game where combat is present.
RPG, of course, should not be a wargame, and DnD has enough space to not make it a wargame, although DnD has a whole lot of issues of its own, and quite a few broken abilities and builds.
Risus
5E's combat fricking sucks.
5th eds combat is the best combat system for D&D, with the exception of every other edition of D&D that has been tried.
Actually, having played Solasta in the past week, 5e combat is surprisingly OK. What it fails at is the verisimilitude of actual roleplaying in relation to the combat.
I could never imagine playing this shit at the actual table, for that very reason. But at its base, the combat itself and just the combat? Actually works fine.
That said, if you really do hate D&D combat, have you considered trying to not play D&D?
Solasta also showcases the problem of HP bloate i the later tiers of play, aswell as homebrewing quite a bit to adjust the rules.
It works, it's not as bad as most people claim it to be, but it's also true it's too basic too.
I hated Solasta's combat. The only things it did interestingly were elevation and lighting and it would have been improved if it was using nearly anything else instead of fricking 5E.
Every CRPG's elevation feels horrible after Divinity one. The thing solasta did well was climbing, but I hate this fixation a lot of TTRPGs and derivatives of it of making battlemaps and zones that are just open, empty fields or square rooms in dungeons, barely if anything to block line of sight, play with elevation or interact with the enviroment.
Spam attack, martial man.
KotC 2 didn't have that problem but every single goddamn time it came up the environment was designed to be a detriment to you.
Just cut player hp gain at 3rd level and cut monster hp in half. Problem solved.
It still sucks complete ass. Hp bloat isn't the main issue with the system and editing the system to work still means the system is hot shit.
How do you make a combat centric system and have combat so shitty?
how is it shitty?
Its just as easy to hit an unarmoured 0 level peasant as it is to hit an unarmoured 20th level fighter. You would think that an experienced fighter would be a bit better at dodging or parrying, instead we have a system where the fighter just stands there and takes every blow on the chin.
>You would think that an experienced fighter would be a bit better at dodging or parrying
He is. That's what his hp represents. A fighter with 100+ hp doesn't have a body stronger than that of a rhinoceros. It shows how hard to kill he is, always finding a way to survive.
I'm not saying that hp is that great as a concept, but as an abstraction it works. Things like Parry works in Stormbringer/Runequest because the character doesn't get more hp: so even a master swordman can get killed easily by a few archers if he doesn't don some armor. You cannot have both things like big hp and higher parry because they serve the same purpose in game and you would become ridiculously hard to kill (100 hp and 50% of parry would be the same as having 200 hp).
Sure you can. https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm
It needs slight reworking but it doesn't break the game.
If hp represents the ability to dodge or otherwise avoid damage, what, exactly, do you think armor class represents, and why do you think it goes up with your dexterity
Another piece of the puzzle you're clearly too moronic to solve. Which is saying much, since I get it and I have down's snydrome.
NTA and this is also a wild tangent from the rest of the thread but subjectively I hate the explanation of abstraction for HP and AC in 5e.
HP and AC are abstracted as being a multitude of different aspects being bundled together under a single stat to simplify the mechanics and reduce the amount of work being done per round in combat. However this simplified abstraction has the consequence of making weird reductive dissonances between what is happening mechanically and what is happening "in reality (the game)."
For instance, HP represents things like stamina, luck, and mental fortitude pushing someone to keep fighting as their wounds accumulate, and the wounds themselves are supposed to be minor enough until someone lands a fatal blow when the character hits 0 HP. However, the system represents things like stamina, luck, and mental fortitude in other aspects that don't interact with HP at all.
For example the exhaustion system, which is supposed to represent how far a character's body has been pushed, relates to almost nothing for HP, with a character only gaining exhaustion if they drop to 0 and get healed back up in the same combat encounter too many times. Given the wear on someone's stamina usual gives a more gradual reduction in effectiveness over time I feel that HP representing stamina would be better represented if the exhaustion system was implemented partially into HP thresholds, giving a slight death spiral and perhaps even encouraging someone to back off in combat rather than slug it out to the end, which I tend to see a lot in fights since positioning (usually) matters little due to the simplified cover and line of sight system in 5e. It would also encourage healing mid battle rather than afterwards since healing mid combat at the moment is usually a waste of action economy and a potential lifeline to get someone back up if they drop to 0.
I'd also give examples for luck and mental fortitude but this is already getting longer than I thought.
>Falls down 200 feet
>Damn, Im just really lucky and just did a frame perfect dodge to negate all the damage, but that was really exhausting
>Better let a Cleric use Cure Wounds on me, even though I perfectly avoided that blow and am just a little bit exhausted
>I managed to raise my shield towards the poisoned sword attack, I still take poison damage
DnD 5e is stupid for trying to not make HP meat points. Because thats what it is, meat points.
To be fair it's not like poison damage is different from any other damage type, it's not like it actually poisons you
As long as you cut hp bloat its fine. Fast, simple and chaotic. Oh and also use group initiative and dont play wotc editions.
HP bloat is Wizards' solution to the actual problem that D&D has always had, which is stagnation at medium/high character level.
3rd level is awfully early to cut it. AD&D cut it at 10 iirc and only back to 1hp per level plus con modifier. Cutting it at 3rd would be very very deadly, dragons would instantly kill anyone they hit with their breath weapons for example.
Still, going back to a lower HP standard could be the beginning of revitalizing combat. I would say that the actual complaint is that combat takes too long. It's valid but in my experience is much more a result of people playing characters they're not familiar with. Reducing HP bloat could make combat shorter and more dynamic but just implementing a house rule turn timer would shorten combat considerably.
The next time you play, just for your own reference see how quickly you can get through your turn. Plan ahead, including having the dice for each of your actions pre-grouped and click it. You'll see that even a fairly complex turn can be completed in about a minute to two minutes. Then clock how long it takes the other players to complete their turns. You'll quickly see that the biggest drag on combat is one or more players who try to RP in combat (for reasons other than to shorten the combat overall) and/or who aren't familiar with their characters.
I experienced players should not create and play high level characters. This has come to be common and it's a problem, especially when incompetence doesn't lead to quick death and assumption of creating a more "survivable" character.
>dragons would instantly kill anyone they hit with their breath weapons
Good. That shit should hurt.
The fact that you even DISCUSS HP bloat means that you have no clue.
So what os it then. Like I know there's other issues but HO bloat is definetly one of them.
I agree with you which is why i only play nongame RPGs where fighting is just story telling and a few rolls, with some made up resource management at most.
I hear this often, but I never see anything that works better.
RoS is lauded for its accuracy, but in practice it's overly clunky and quickly becomes very boring. Storyteller systems tend to have a similar problem of extreme clunkiness and slowdown, as does WHFPG. Stuff like GURPS and other more vague systems like Forbodden Lands lack any kind of real tactical engagement. SotDL is good, but to be honest, it lacks the tactical depth that well designed D&D fights can gave, due to its characters and monsters being mostly very simple.
>GURPS lacks tactical combat
>GURPS combat is vague
Lmao, what a dumb troony you are. Shut up about things you have no idea on.
Why?
The sky is blue
Have you tried playing 4e?
Have you tried killing yourself, 4rrie?
I've transcended thinking it sucks to a state of "It's probably fine for whatever it's trying to be, I just happen to despise whatever that is."
>DnD fricking sucks ass
FTFY. There is very little good that can be said about DnD 5e.
DnD anything sucks ass
I want a girl to make that face while having sex with me.
>DnD combat fricking sucks ass
But is that always a bad thing?
I am no longer afraid of clowns.
Switch to Savage Worlds. It even has the fantasy companion or the Savage Worlds adaption rule book if you want to run swords and sorcery.
Playing pretend is escapism, Anon. It's not healthy.
Once I start playing games without combat specific rules I can't go back, rpgs really are shit at it and even trying is useless...if you want some big shootout to finish a campaign, just pick some period appropriate squad-based rules
How do you feel about combat in osr games?
4e is the only edition of d&d with good combat.
Frick off, Ben
4e actually felt fair and gritty but the combats could fricking take forever, even if the players knew what they were doing
Yeah. It really started to slow down from mid paragon onward.
You're not supposed to play that game past level 10, sorry you didn't get the memo. 1st level 4e combat was comparable to 3rd or 4th level 3e/AD&D combat, 9th level 4e is like high level 3e/AD&D combat, I can see going into low paragon as a kind of big finish for the campaign but eventually you realize that all the players are just sitting around pondering their deck of powers.
To be fair, name me an edition of D&D that doesn't completely fall apart past level 10.
BECMI. You can run campaigns at high level with a quarter of the usual issues. Yes, your PC will be overpowered because above level 10 you'll have things like Thieves reading from Scrolls or Paladins casting spells. Yes, they will feel like superheroes at time, especially with how easily they can ressurect the deads. However it runs fine, fights actually go faster at high levels because the PC either annihilate the monsters or suffer immensely themselves. No such thing as "hp bloat" issue when insta-death is on the daily menu.
its kinda funny how DnD combat has this weird horseshoe of lethality where combats at very low and very high levels are extremely fricking brutal with only the low-mid levels really having tactical depth where you can experiment with different approaches to a combat encounter or make a mistake and be punished without just instant game over
any remotely hard hitting enemy rolling a crit at level 1 or 2 is basically instant death for most characters
>4e is the only edition of d&d with good combat
Oh hey it's my turn, neat
Yeah, and 90% of the game is rules for mechanically supporting it.
Then play Pathfinder 2e. Though I disagree. The combat sucks ass because the players or the DM hasn't taken the time to imagine and describe what is actually happening in the moment. In short, this is a skill issue. You suck.
Frick it I've always wanted to ask such a question but never really wanted to make a whole thread to ask it and this thread falls in line
So DnD combat since its mostly resource based which tends to be really frantic near the start of an encounter then becomes very simple as it goes on with the combatants either running out of stuff or conserving their stuff for later, which is a reasonable feel as combat exhausts.
However in some anime, card games, and video gamesmostly the video game picking related is from and mtg comes to mind for card games the longer a battle goes on the more intense and complex it can get as both parties effectively powering up through the battle and get more resources to play with per turn until it hits climax where the ramp plateaus at a certain point based on the current level/capacity of the combatants for that encounter/battle and of course resets for the next encounter
What I'm basically asking is there any ttrpgs that has a reverse curve in things available to player and enemy throughout the encounter compared to DnD?
Warhammer Fantasy 4e kind of works like this with its momentum, so does Dogs in the Vineyard. There is an RPG that works exactly like you're describing, I can't recall what it's named because I'm drunk, but each round in combat you just do more damage and so does the enemy.
13th Age. Characters get more accurate with each round due to the escalation die.
5e has great combat. Problem is players are kept artificially weak because moronic troony DMs screech at wotc going
>AAAAAAA OH NO THE WIZARD KILLED A BUNCH OF GOBLINS WITH FIREBALL NERF NERF NERF
not realizing that you're supposed to be plowing through 6 encounters or more a day in a dungeon.
So wotc slashes damage slowly or weakens features and then everything feels more sluggish.
all problems with 5e are a direct result of shitty control freak DMs having a meltie over players having power or agency
>implying most 5e campaigns even have dungeons
short rest classes like warlocks/fighters/monks vs long rest classes causes a lot of balance problems for 5e because of the unrealistic expectation of 6-8 combat encounters per day with multiple short rests. paladins and wizards and bards are much more reasonable when they can't just comfortably dump half of their spell slots into a single encounter knowing there will only be 1 or 2 more before a long rest. 90% of the campaigns I have played in are much closer to 2-4 combats a day with one short rest
it also doesn't help that some classes are seemingly forbidden from having decent subclasses and spells just being significantly better at problem solving than skills or tools. feat design and frequency is also a huge fricking issue for 5e, the game would benefit from just a generic power attack option so weapon choices aren't so limited and letting players get both a feat and ASI at the same time makes characters more unique and lets MAD classes more tolerable to play without stale workarounds like hexblade dips.
Feats at level 2, 6, 10, 14 and 18 would probably feel better than feat+ASI every four levels
DnD stories suck ass
Combat sucks ass
Any class system sucks ass and is saturated with bullshit for powergamers and rules lawyers to worry about.
I've already told my good friend and our resident GM how much I hate D&D and he really doesn't get that....I'm willing to walk away from gaming altogether over it. There is just this horrid obsession he has with running ONLY this game.
We branch out every once in a while but that is for 2 or 3 games and then it's back to 5 fricking months of D&D only sessions.
dnd is popular because it's good, fact is you're just another moron with shit taste seething that your dogshit rpg isn't fun
crying about dnd is like crying about fortnite, all you do is dig your own grave by showing everyone that you're a sad, out of touch boomer. I'd tell you to have a nice day but at your age you're one foot in the grave as it is
>dnd is popular because it's good
Why are they like this?
SEETHING out of touch boomers, your games are dogshit which is why nobody plays them
I’m embarrassed to be in the same generation as you
You must be over 18 to post here.
>crying about dnd is like crying about fortnite
Completely justified because they're both shit games?
It's not the class system because older editions of D&D don't have this problem with power gamers and rules lawyers. Older editions give total power and control to the DM. You only have these problems when you start to have more and more player facing rules. The solution is simple. The DM needs to put his foot down. This is his game. You're playing in it. If you don't agree, you'll always have shitty games.
I want to lick the Eldar Maid.
She is probably aware of this, hence her expression.
WotC D&D tries to flatten out a card game into a pen and paper RPG, while also trying to do the kind of rigid balancing and fine tuning that wargames deal with, but not actually committing to that as much as they should. The CR system is pretty much just a dumber way of doing the point values on an army list, for instance... and the math on it isn't even right. Lot of 5es problems comes from the way the DMG feels like it's written for a different, incomplete game, while the Phb is dumbed down and stripped clean like they intended to finish the rest of the game in a follow-up book that they never got around to writing.
Meanwhile, the monster manual is full of bloated meatsack enemies who have a single gimmick: Attack several times a turn, which means the only real strategy for playing D&D 5e is to kill everything as fast as possible by overwhelming the action economy... only you can't always do that because the enemies are bloated meatsacks, because Mearls unironically thought dragging out fights so you could roll more dice was "fun" and that locking everyone into a strict power curve was "balanced" and what it leaves you with, in reality, is a boring, slow, clunky game where you're trying to combo together whatever powers and feats and shit you can get to achieve better than average damage, because the only guaranteed way to survive the absurd amount of battles you're meant to do in a day is to hope you roll better initiative and then rushdown anything in your path by spamming as many attacks as possible in as few turns as possible.
Combat is there to inspire you to actually roleplay. The dice will tell you how to act and you react to it showing other players what your character feels like. Then it will hopefully rouse more reactions from the other players who will breath life into their own characters. The characters come alive and become brothers in arms.
>Combat is there to inspire you to actually roleplay.
This is the dumbest thing anyone on /tg/ has ever said about 5e's combat.
>the dice tell you how to act and you react to it
>do you miss or hit, while tending completely still locked together like fricking magnets?
>hmm should I use a slot and maybe deal slightly more damage now, or save it for later? Wow I really truly do feel like a wizard
>oh boy! I hit four times this round! My character REALLY clobbers their HPsack I mean opponent, who is also going to stand there clobbering me over the head on its own turn. Isn’t this fun?!
My dude, I’m not saying this to be mean, I’m saying this because you’re quite ill: you need to play more games. Bust out Spellbound Kingdoms, the dynamic combat system there will blow your 5e-clogged mind.
>Ho ho!
>Looks as if my Ranger has missed his attack!
>I shall roleplay that as if he is sad and having a bad day!
>perhaps my friend will see this and play off my bad role and make a decision on his turn to console my character!
>truly the dice have informed our reactions and filled this game with LIFE!
>through our dice rolls, we will become the truest of brothes!
>every combat is a wild bipolar ride
Acting is the fun part. system is just the base onto which we build the real fun that is social imaginative story with lots of dialogue and emotion.
If I want logic, optimization or gamey games I'd play vidya. Chess is pure logic and no imagination, go play that shit.
Broadway is that-a-way.
Yeah, but we're talking about 5e, which is a brainless skirmish combat game, not a dramatic emotional rollercoaster where roleplaying opportunities spontaneously arise. The only thing happening is some 1-dimensional adventurers are killing the things that are trying to kill them. That's the story. Stop pretending that the hypothetical possibility for storytelling is the same thing as the game purposefully opening itself up for grand, dramatic moments, informed by random dice rolls, you fricking moron.
There is no amount of roleplaying that will make 5E's shitty fricking combat entertaining and it strongly discourages roleplay. Frick off.
It's not a wrong statement, though. It just doesn't apply to 5e combat, because 5e combat is almost always just tedious paper-pushing.
True. What of it? Play something better.
>tfw we use Amber diceless when playing D&D combats and you can't do a thing about it
dice+2d6