Just so people are aware: While DnD 5e combat can take long due to different player and DM problems, 5e has a pretty streamlined system compared to some other ttrpgs out there.
Before I played 5e I was in a group that played DSA (a german TTRPG that has a lot - A !LOT! of rules and tries to be as realistic as possible) and a normal combat - mind you not even a particularly special bossfight, just some goons - would take a whole session of multiple hours. (That game had a block mechanic that I see as a big problem, but let's not get into this)
5e is pretty straight forward in that case.
My very first rpg! Back in the Eighties. Every edition seemed to add rules to an already rules heavy combat system.
90% of the time it’s player speed. As a dm we often run 4-10 creatures at a time. Some with varying abilities and bonuses. And often we are done before some players who have a single turn.
Overcrowded tables also slow things down too. 4-5 players is the sweet spot imho. And playing in games with 7 or more really does make things slower. If even a single person isn’t ready things grind to a halt. If it takes half an hour between your turns you mentally check out, and that slows your turn down.
I am developing a mass combat table to address the occasional need for DMs to roll for a handful of minions that attack with the same weapon and the same proficiency. This table can be used to roll for Town Guards that are helping the players as easily as it may be used for the goblin horde.
On the second point, crowded games, this creates two problems. First, as you stated, it means that many more players with their wide array of abilities have to act each round. It also means the DM often throws in a horde of enemies instead of four or five. The battles are more prone to develop into a front line and a protected rear area, which ends up making combat same-ish every time.
It sounds like the general consensus is it is on the players to bring their A-game.
The DMG already has this in Chapter 8. It's a pretty simple table for running mob combat. If you're running 15+ monsters, running all 15 individually is going to be cumbersome. It's also going to swing stuff against the PCs. There are definitely times and places for that, but as a player, no one wants to sit there and watch the DM roll 15 D20s to see what hits.
I didn't find anything in Chapter 8 of the DMG that addressed this. Can you be more specific or look up where the information is if it is not in the DMG?
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Overall, if the excessive time in combat is pretty much all on the players, there is little point in my developing DM tools to speed up the management of mob groups.
It sounds like the only real method of speeding up things is limiting the party size, which in turn limits encounter size and drives up variability.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I mean DnD combat can take a long time I agree with the rest of you, but what TTRPG has combat alot shorter than DnD 5E?
Lady Blackbird has fights you can resolve in as little as one roll. Kids on Brooms is the same way. Basically the DM decides how complex it'll be, based on how important it is. As I understand it, Blades in the Dark basically has a "fight" skill check. Mutants and Masterminds gives everybody like 5 hit points, IIRC. Dungeon World doesn't use hit points at all, instead relying on narrative positioning or something.
I'm sure fans of these games would cringe at my abbreviations of these systems, but I'm not that familiar with them and I don't have the books on hand right now. But there's plenty of games with faster combat. And plenty with slower!
I play in a group with several newer players and I have a feeling they might think it's actually rude to plan your turn while someone else is going. Like, my sister-in-law will make sure to watch what everyone is doing with undivided attention, whether or not it effects her, and then when it gets to her turn she then looks down at her character sheet for the first time that round and goes "ok, let me thiiiink....." and the combat will stall out for multiple minutes while she weighs the pros and cons of her various spells.
I don't know for sure if that's why she does it that way, but it makes a certain kind of sense. Like, in a conversation it's generally considered to be rude to just think about what you're going to say next rather than giving your full attention to whoever's speaking. I wonder if that's the mentality newer players are often bringing to combat? And when I say newer, they've still been playing dnd for like 2-3 years, they know rules and mechanics, but with this group in particular like a medium difficulty encounter can take up an entire 3 hour session.
If that is the case, people just need to be aware that in order to respect people's time at the table, they need to make sure they're not monopolizing on the group's collective time to plan their turns. Regardless of how counterintuitive it seems on the surface to respect someone by thinking about what you're going to do on your turn while they're going.
Planning your next turn in advance doesn't necessarily mean ignoring the game completly. You can keep your attention on what's going on, while also thinking about your next move, perhaps looking up your spell, feat or feature etc. First time i see it being called as rude. It's only rude if a player starts talking to other off turn and plan ahead causing disruption. Keeping an eye on the play and another on your sheet is okay.
Generally, I'm formulating a rough plan for my next turn as soon as I finish resolving the previous one. Before the next person has finished, I've got my plan in place. I then catch up with what's happened, and just reasses the plan as each person moves. It's rare that I have to radically alter it - most if the tone it is fine, occasionally I'll change targets because the original target gas either taken a beating or died. It's rare that I have to do a whole new plan.
It's easy to stay in the game while planning ahead - people are just not used to that mentality. We often approach new tadks with thr "one thing at a time" mentality. Once you can persuade them to drop that way if thinking, it gets much more involved. I don't spend 5 minutes waiting for the opportunity to do something, I spend 5 minutes planning, anticipating and adjusting. Most of my work us done outside of my turn - and that makes it more engaging.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Lots of things have been well said. At our table, as a caster, I know what is going on in the encounter, I know if I am casting a spell or entering melee and have my dice ready to roll before it is my turn. My turns generally take 30 seconds to a minute including movement, save or attack and damage, callouts (or other quick comments) and any bonus actions... unless the main thing we were fighting throws a massive curveball right before my turn. At the same table we have a guy who always wants to play a caster but never knows what all of his spells do, he agonizes over every decision and usually just does some AOE because he is feeling time pressure (as it is a constant topic and the DM is not a fan of how long his turns are) without looking at the consequences. I can't tell you how many times he has damaged my cleric with ice knife or fireball or any other number of spells because he was just trying to damage the enemy and forgot about all the other bad things. Luckily, he's only killed me once out of all those times. His turns probably average 3 to 5 minutes. All that may sound like the guy is a slacker (ok, he probably is), but it's also his first real campaign and we've made it to level 15 (and I've been playing since the mid 80s). I think if we were in person we could help it go faster, but we're all dealing with remote play with frequent disconnects from some people (totally beyond their control), accidental muting, people caught up in discord gif wars instead of paying attention to roll20, etc (usually that's the other guys, not our aoe-disaster). Of late we've had less maps on roll20 and a lot of theater of the mind and that also slows down some people as they are having a harder time visualizing the combat. We'll cut our DM some slack there as end of year has a lot of job pressure to finish all current casework. I'm sure in my first campaign, I took a LOT more time than I do now... and in time, I think our newest player will get faster on his turns. Not to mention some people are able to remember a lot more of the detailed things that make combat faster, and some have to refresh themselves a lot.
Oh... and I forgot. In general, our combat has been helped a lot by playing online. Using the Beyond20 extension with DNDBeyond has shaved off a lot of time on every single player's turns by clicking what you want to do, everything is calculated and rolled and everything is printed into Roll20. We still miss playing in person (before we all moved towards the four corners of the wind), but using real dice at a table would slow us back down again even if we do enjoy the dice. My giant bag of dice hoarding my wife bought me just sits on the shelf with hundreds of dice that I rarely use... and mostly I'm ok with that as long as I get to use them for one-shots and the like...
Overall, if the excessive time in combat is pretty much all on the players, there is little point in my developing DM tools to speed up the management of mob groups.
It sounds like the only real method of speeding up things is limiting the party size, which in turn limits encounter size and drives up variability.
Correct, on both statements I think.
Players are slow because they're distracted, or because they're thinking through the different options. The first case can't be helped aside from some out of game conversations, and will have variable levels of success. Some players play the game mainly for social reasons and don't see side conversations as a bug. Limiting distractions might also be limiting their reasons to show up at all. If it's the second case, they players should speed up over time as they develop some system mastery. That's more or less what's happened at my table over the past two years.
Once the players are no longer your bottleneck, you can start looking at actual mechanical tricks to speed things up (I pre-roll monster init, for example).
Overall, if the excessive time in combat is pretty much all on the players, there is little point in my developing DM tools to speed up the management of mob groups.
It sounds like the only real method of speeding up things is limiting the party size, which in turn limits encounter size and drives up variability.
Correct, on both statements I think.
Players are slow because they're distracted, or because they're thinking through the different options. The first case can't be helped aside from some out of game conversations, and will have variable levels of success. Some players play the game mainly for social reasons and don't see side conversations as a bug. Limiting distractions might also be limiting their reasons to show up at all. If it's the second case, they players should speed up over time as they develop some system mastery. That's more or less what's happened at my table over the past two years.
Once the players are no longer your bottleneck, you can start looking at actual mechanical tricks to speed things up (I pre-roll monster init, for example).
Not 100%. I do agree that, yes, players must be prepared and bring their A-Game. They need to know their classes (this alone will solve 99% of your problems) and know how to manage their time. The load is not entirely off of you as the DM, however. If Ajax the Jacked, barbarian lord is taking too long on his turn, remind him to speed it up, or help him with what he needs. Some turns are just long because of the way 5e works. It's not always the player's fault. So help if they ask and readily accept it. Also, manage time across the board. Take initiative and write it down so you don't forget. That way as soon as Ajax finishes his turn you know that Mirt the Magnificent and slightly Malnourished has his turn. This speeds it up very well. Never really agreed with or understood the sentiment of punishing long turns or using an egg timer or something. The wizard is going to take longer to cast the spell than the barbarian who just has to roll a multiattack. Understand the player's position, and help them play. However, if you have a problem player that is different, but based on the question you're posing I don't think you do.
There are many reasons why combat can take a long time and there are tons of resources on the web that discuss these. Besides large battles or large PC groups being the cause. The primary cause is usually indecisive and / or distracted players.
While I don't set a timer on each player. If one is dragging their feet or are distracted. I will immediately impose a time limit, or defer / skip their turn.
For instance, if the player is away. They get skipped in the combat order and depending on why (or has often they do this) they were away. I will let them take their turn when they are ready. If they are always a problem. They just flat out get skipped.
I've seen GMs use this tactic before and the player that gets skipped thinks the DM is being aggressive towards them and doesn't like them, but that is garbage. The DM is there to adjudicate the game. They aren't playing chess, they are partaking in a mortal combat and the rules are the same for all players. If you are in combat and are face to face with some beast and you fail to swing your battleaxe in a timely manor. I promise you, that beast isn't going to wait until you do.
This isn't just about physics either. Does the rest of the group want to spend all night on a single combat sequence? I'll bet not. They would prefer to get on with things. The DM is adjudicating the game for the other players also. Enforcing that one person doesn't take it upon themselves to slow the process of the game down to a crawl.
Besides, action is more fun than standing around debating every possible response and it's effect.
Tell the player to act quickly or miss their chance to act.
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Info, Inflow, Overload. Knowledge Black Hole Imminent!
I learned the other day that players can take longer the more their PCs are threatened. My players are generally very quick, but in a boss fight the other night, they knew the PCs could die, and they played their turns a LOT slower.
I learned the other day that players can take longer the more their PCs are threatened. My players are generally very quick, but in a boss fight the other night, they knew the PCs could die, and they played their turns a LOT slower.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Having the occasional slow combat can build tension. Give them that real “oh god this could Go bad I need to be careful” feeling
If you reeeeaaalllyyy want to speed up combat, you could bring out a chess clock, or some kind of auto-resetting timer. The player can have as much time as they want, but every time the timer reaches 0, the enemy gets a free action.
Players will learn very quickly that it is better to do something, anything, than to let their allies suffer from sucker punches.
90% of the time it’s player speed. As a dm we often run 4-10 creatures at a time. Some with varying abilities and bonuses. And often we are done before some players who have a single turn.
Overcrowded tables also slow things down too. 4-5 players is the sweet spot imho. And playing in games with 7 or more really does make things slower. If even a single person isn’t ready things grind to a halt. If it takes half an hour between your turns you mentally check out, and that slows your turn down.
I am developing a mass combat table to address the occasional need for DMs to roll for a handful of minions that attack with the same weapon and the same proficiency. This table can be used to roll for Town Guards that are helping the players as easily as it may be used for the goblin horde.
On the second point, crowded games, this creates two problems. First, as you stated, it means that many more players with their wide array of abilities have to act each round. It also means the DM often throws in a horde of enemies instead of four or five. The battles are more prone to develop into a front line and a protected rear area, which ends up making combat same-ish every time.
It sounds like the general consensus is it is on the players to bring their A-game.
The DMG already has this in Chapter 8. It's a pretty simple table for running mob combat. If you're running 15+ monsters, running all 15 individually is going to be cumbersome. It's also going to swing stuff against the PCs. There are definitely times and places for that, but as a player, no one wants to sit there and watch the DM roll 15 D20s to see what hits.
I didn't find anything in Chapter 8 of the DMG that addressed this. Can you be more specific or look up where the information is if it is not in the DMG?
You also might want to use the Cleaving through enemies rules in Chapter 9 under combat options, or take the "minions" rules from a prior edition if it's not an important combat ... I think they were in 4e, a lot of other games use similar rules (where the combat stats of the "bad guys" is determines by how important the combat is to the story, so like SWRPG has like minion, adversary/rival and nemesis rankings I think ... it's a rough analogy).
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
90% of the time it’s player speed. As a dm we often run 4-10 creatures at a time. Some with varying abilities and bonuses. And often we are done before some players who have a single turn.
it’s a combination of indecision, not paying attention, not knowing your character, and some other factors. Even when you have a metric tonne of stuff at like 20th level it doesn’t take that long to do a thing. A wizard casts a spell. Maybe a bonus action. Sure maybe they need to do some maths to add up dice but provided they thought about their turn beforehand it’s just a matter of picking a spell and a target.
I want to push back on this a bit as it speaks to what I often see as an oversight in DMs frustrations with what the DM perceives as player deficits. DM has to realize they have a massive orientation advantage in the game over the PCs exploration of the game. The players are literally set up by the DM, of course the DM is going to roll and role like they own the place, they do. DM is also less risk averse because they're not playing player characters.
Yes, I believe a lot of players could better study the action economy ... I also think a lot of DMs and peer players could be better tutors.
I feel good DMs meet the players "where they are" and build up to the game they all want to play from there. You recognize that, and you play on an adaptation of the "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" mindset. Baby step early combats giving players time to recognize what they're doing and let it sink in through repetition, tempo builds up as the the understanding smooths out. I mean, it's how IRL combat is taught in professions where combat is a real thing.
DMs are the "master" of the game and there's a certain degree of authority that goes with that, a great DM IMHO makes the effort to not simply owning that mastery but sharing it out as an MC, so to speak.
That's why many regard levels 3-10 as the sweet spot.
Personally I say 5-11. At 5th level everyone who’s sposta have Extra Attacks does combat cantrips go up to 2dX, and everyone’s PC really starts to gel. At 11th level, fighters get their 3rd attack, cantrips get their next bump up, and combats only really just start to drag excessively, but it gives them a level to be bad 455 heroes with their extra specials before it gets really slow.
Because second longest part is the RP, and that’s really the only other part of the game. (Judging by the rules and how useless everyone says Rangers are, it’s fairly obvious that the Exploration part apparently gets skipped at most tables.)
My very first rpg! Back in the Eighties. Every edition seemed to add rules to an already rules heavy combat system.
I didn't find anything in Chapter 8 of the DMG that addressed this. Can you be more specific or look up where the information is if it is not in the DMG?
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Overall, if the excessive time in combat is pretty much all on the players, there is little point in my developing DM tools to speed up the management of mob groups.
It sounds like the only real method of speeding up things is limiting the party size, which in turn limits encounter size and drives up variability.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I mean DnD combat can take a long time I agree with the rest of you, but what TTRPG has combat alot shorter than DnD 5E?
1 shot dungeon master
1 - People overthink things. Frankly, most combat encounters don't demand that much analysis, but gamers love to optimize play.
2 - DMs like to roll damage. Stop doing that! Use averages!
The game is largely combat focused though. Spending a lot of time in combat is playing the game as intended.
Lady Blackbird has fights you can resolve in as little as one roll. Kids on Brooms is the same way. Basically the DM decides how complex it'll be, based on how important it is. As I understand it, Blades in the Dark basically has a "fight" skill check. Mutants and Masterminds gives everybody like 5 hit points, IIRC. Dungeon World doesn't use hit points at all, instead relying on narrative positioning or something.
I'm sure fans of these games would cringe at my abbreviations of these systems, but I'm not that familiar with them and I don't have the books on hand right now. But there's plenty of games with faster combat. And plenty with slower!
I play in a group with several newer players and I have a feeling they might think it's actually rude to plan your turn while someone else is going. Like, my sister-in-law will make sure to watch what everyone is doing with undivided attention, whether or not it effects her, and then when it gets to her turn she then looks down at her character sheet for the first time that round and goes "ok, let me thiiiink....." and the combat will stall out for multiple minutes while she weighs the pros and cons of her various spells.
I don't know for sure if that's why she does it that way, but it makes a certain kind of sense. Like, in a conversation it's generally considered to be rude to just think about what you're going to say next rather than giving your full attention to whoever's speaking. I wonder if that's the mentality newer players are often bringing to combat? And when I say newer, they've still been playing dnd for like 2-3 years, they know rules and mechanics, but with this group in particular like a medium difficulty encounter can take up an entire 3 hour session.
If that is the case, people just need to be aware that in order to respect people's time at the table, they need to make sure they're not monopolizing on the group's collective time to plan their turns. Regardless of how counterintuitive it seems on the surface to respect someone by thinking about what you're going to do on your turn while they're going.
Planning your next turn in advance doesn't necessarily mean ignoring the game completly. You can keep your attention on what's going on, while also thinking about your next move, perhaps looking up your spell, feat or feature etc. First time i see it being called as rude. It's only rude if a player starts talking to other off turn and plan ahead causing disruption. Keeping an eye on the play and another on your sheet is okay.
Generally, I'm formulating a rough plan for my next turn as soon as I finish resolving the previous one. Before the next person has finished, I've got my plan in place. I then catch up with what's happened, and just reasses the plan as each person moves. It's rare that I have to radically alter it - most if the tone it is fine, occasionally I'll change targets because the original target gas either taken a beating or died. It's rare that I have to do a whole new plan.
It's easy to stay in the game while planning ahead - people are just not used to that mentality. We often approach new tadks with thr "one thing at a time" mentality. Once you can persuade them to drop that way if thinking, it gets much more involved. I don't spend 5 minutes waiting for the opportunity to do something, I spend 5 minutes planning, anticipating and adjusting. Most of my work us done outside of my turn - and that makes it more engaging.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Lots of things have been well said. At our table, as a caster, I know what is going on in the encounter, I know if I am casting a spell or entering melee and have my dice ready to roll before it is my turn. My turns generally take 30 seconds to a minute including movement, save or attack and damage, callouts (or other quick comments) and any bonus actions... unless the main thing we were fighting throws a massive curveball right before my turn.
At the same table we have a guy who always wants to play a caster but never knows what all of his spells do, he agonizes over every decision and usually just does some AOE because he is feeling time pressure (as it is a constant topic and the DM is not a fan of how long his turns are) without looking at the consequences. I can't tell you how many times he has damaged my cleric with ice knife or fireball or any other number of spells because he was just trying to damage the enemy and forgot about all the other bad things. Luckily, he's only killed me once out of all those times. His turns probably average 3 to 5 minutes.
All that may sound like the guy is a slacker (ok, he probably is), but it's also his first real campaign and we've made it to level 15 (and I've been playing since the mid 80s). I think if we were in person we could help it go faster, but we're all dealing with remote play with frequent disconnects from some people (totally beyond their control), accidental muting, people caught up in discord gif wars instead of paying attention to roll20, etc (usually that's the other guys, not our aoe-disaster). Of late we've had less maps on roll20 and a lot of theater of the mind and that also slows down some people as they are having a harder time visualizing the combat. We'll cut our DM some slack there as end of year has a lot of job pressure to finish all current casework. I'm sure in my first campaign, I took a LOT more time than I do now... and in time, I think our newest player will get faster on his turns. Not to mention some people are able to remember a lot more of the detailed things that make combat faster, and some have to refresh themselves a lot.
Oh... and I forgot. In general, our combat has been helped a lot by playing online. Using the Beyond20 extension with DNDBeyond has shaved off a lot of time on every single player's turns by clicking what you want to do, everything is calculated and rolled and everything is printed into Roll20. We still miss playing in person (before we all moved towards the four corners of the wind), but using real dice at a table would slow us back down again even if we do enjoy the dice. My giant bag of dice hoarding my wife bought me just sits on the shelf with hundreds of dice that I rarely use... and mostly I'm ok with that as long as I get to use them for one-shots and the like...
Correct, on both statements I think.
Players are slow because they're distracted, or because they're thinking through the different options. The first case can't be helped aside from some out of game conversations, and will have variable levels of success. Some players play the game mainly for social reasons and don't see side conversations as a bug. Limiting distractions might also be limiting their reasons to show up at all. If it's the second case, they players should speed up over time as they develop some system mastery. That's more or less what's happened at my table over the past two years.
Once the players are no longer your bottleneck, you can start looking at actual mechanical tricks to speed things up (I pre-roll monster init, for example).
Not 100%. I do agree that, yes, players must be prepared and bring their A-Game. They need to know their classes (this alone will solve 99% of your problems) and know how to manage their time. The load is not entirely off of you as the DM, however. If Ajax the Jacked, barbarian lord is taking too long on his turn, remind him to speed it up, or help him with what he needs. Some turns are just long because of the way 5e works. It's not always the player's fault. So help if they ask and readily accept it. Also, manage time across the board. Take initiative and write it down so you don't forget. That way as soon as Ajax finishes his turn you know that Mirt the Magnificent and slightly Malnourished has his turn. This speeds it up very well. Never really agreed with or understood the sentiment of punishing long turns or using an egg timer or something. The wizard is going to take longer to cast the spell than the barbarian who just has to roll a multiattack. Understand the player's position, and help them play. However, if you have a problem player that is different, but based on the question you're posing I don't think you do.
Updog
There are many reasons why combat can take a long time and there are tons of resources on the web that discuss these. Besides large battles or large PC groups being the cause. The primary cause is usually indecisive and / or distracted players.
While I don't set a timer on each player. If one is dragging their feet or are distracted. I will immediately impose a time limit, or defer / skip their turn.
For instance, if the player is away. They get skipped in the combat order and depending on why (or has often they do this) they were away. I will let them take their turn when they are ready. If they are always a problem. They just flat out get skipped.
I've seen GMs use this tactic before and the player that gets skipped thinks the DM is being aggressive towards them and doesn't like them, but that is garbage. The DM is there to adjudicate the game. They aren't playing chess, they are partaking in a mortal combat and the rules are the same for all players. If you are in combat and are face to face with some beast and you fail to swing your battleaxe in a timely manor. I promise you, that beast isn't going to wait until you do.
This isn't just about physics either. Does the rest of the group want to spend all night on a single combat sequence? I'll bet not. They would prefer to get on with things. The DM is adjudicating the game for the other players also. Enforcing that one person doesn't take it upon themselves to slow the process of the game down to a crawl.
Besides, action is more fun than standing around debating every possible response and it's effect.
Tell the player to act quickly or miss their chance to act.
Info, Inflow, Overload. Knowledge Black Hole Imminent!
I learned the other day that players can take longer the more their PCs are threatened. My players are generally very quick, but in a boss fight the other night, they knew the PCs could die, and they played their turns a LOT slower.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Having the occasional slow combat can build tension. Give them that real “oh god this could Go bad I need to be careful” feeling
If you reeeeaaalllyyy want to speed up combat, you could bring out a chess clock, or some kind of auto-resetting timer. The player can have as much time as they want, but every time the timer reaches 0, the enemy gets a free action.
Players will learn very quickly that it is better to do something, anything, than to let their allies suffer from sucker punches.
Handling Mobs
You also might want to use the Cleaving through enemies rules in Chapter 9 under combat options, or take the "minions" rules from a prior edition if it's not an important combat ... I think they were in 4e, a lot of other games use similar rules (where the combat stats of the "bad guys" is determines by how important the combat is to the story, so like SWRPG has like minion, adversary/rival and nemesis rankings I think ... it's a rough analogy).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I want to push back on this a bit as it speaks to what I often see as an oversight in DMs frustrations with what the DM perceives as player deficits. DM has to realize they have a massive orientation advantage in the game over the PCs exploration of the game. The players are literally set up by the DM, of course the DM is going to roll and role like they own the place, they do. DM is also less risk averse because they're not playing player characters.
Yes, I believe a lot of players could better study the action economy ... I also think a lot of DMs and peer players could be better tutors.
I feel good DMs meet the players "where they are" and build up to the game they all want to play from there. You recognize that, and you play on an adaptation of the "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" mindset. Baby step early combats giving players time to recognize what they're doing and let it sink in through repetition, tempo builds up as the the understanding smooths out. I mean, it's how IRL combat is taught in professions where combat is a real thing.
DMs are the "master" of the game and there's a certain degree of authority that goes with that, a great DM IMHO makes the effort to not simply owning that mastery but sharing it out as an MC, so to speak.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Personally I say 5-11. At 5th level everyone who’s sposta have Extra Attacks does combat cantrips go up to 2dX, and everyone’s PC really starts to gel. At 11th level, fighters get their 3rd attack, cantrips get their next bump up, and combats only really just start to drag excessively, but it gives them a level to be bad 455 heroes with their extra specials before it gets really slow.
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Because second longest part is the RP, and that’s really the only other part of the game. (Judging by the rules and how useless everyone says Rangers are, it’s fairly obvious that the Exploration part apparently gets skipped at most tables.)
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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