I'm not extremely new to DMing, but probably pretty green in comparison since ive only had around 35 sessions of me DMing and 2 campaigns. Ive only participated in one other campaign and it was combat heavy, and completely missing RP. Not my cup of tea. I only learned combat from the other campaign and how it functions, but even there it was boring.
Is there any way to make fights and combat less draggy and more entertaining? Im sure there is, but I have never experienced it. Is there a way to make it go faster or be more entertaining without sacrificing my PCs lovely talents and ambitions in times of war?
All advice is welcome, and after Ill discuss with my PCs about their advice as well.
I am not sure this will be exactly what you are asking, but here goes. I have been DMing for over 15 years. In the past 4 years I have made it a point to have both a verbal and visual component that lets the players know who is currently acting and who is "on deck". I will tell them who's turn it is as well as alerting the next player in the combat order. Having a visual que as well can help. I have a homemade wood base with a dowel in the center. I use clothes pins with the character names on them. I just clip them to the dowel in the order that they roll. The other big thing that I have learned is "time allowed to act". Basically let the players know that since you have 2 ways to tell who is next in line, you will not have several minutes to decide on your actions. Set a time limit for the players turns. Have ramifications if they exceed that time. Just be sure that you balance it out. Don't make the players feel forced. A sense of urgency is fine. I hope that helps. Sorry for the rambling.
It is helpful, i was thinking of a time limit to assist but I wasn't sure, but knowing you are seasoned and use something along those lines makes me more comfortable with the idea and less like Im rushing everyone. It would help keep pace as well, as I have one player that only starts thinking once its his turn. Thank you, Sir, all input is helpful
Funny how you think there are no solutions when theres already one posted on this forum. Thank you for your lack of input, and maybe you'll realize combat can be improved on if you don't just accept its a dead horse and instead try to work with the mechanics to improve gameplay. Hopefully you'll learn to discuss with other people to improve your game, I recommend using this forum to ask questions to improve.
As has been discussed, there are some things you can do to make combat proceed efficiently. When a player has their turn, make sure to tell the next player they are on deck so they will be ready on their turn. If you have a bunch of monsters, you can combine them into groups to speed up gameplay. Likewise, you can speed things up by using average damage from monsters so you don't have to roll for it each time.
One of the biggest ways I have found to make combat more interesting to the players and to me as the DM is to have a more interesting battlefield. Litter it with objects, structures, and/or terrain variations that not only sound interesting (the ground is torn up into long trenches that have filled up with a foul brownish liquid over time) but that encourage the players to make use of the environments as part of combat. James Haeck wrote an article a while back about Cinematic Combat Stunts that you can have your NPCs perform during combat to keep the story moving and you can encourage your players to do so as well.
Sly Flourish is a game developer that focuses a lot on what they call fantastic locations and how to make the most of the environments in which your encounters take place.
Thank you very much! I like those ideas a lot, I think using more decorated and 'busy' areas would actually help out and help inspire more creative actions. I appreciate your input and your links sir!
My first question is how long it's actually taking for you. D&D5e is pretty fast at combat resolution by RPG standards.
The main ways of making combat flow faster are just organizational. Make sure the stats you need are on hand. Make sure you understand the rules well enough that you don't need to look stuff up at the table. Make sure the players do the same thing. Setting up maps takes a while, so for trivial fights, don't use a map.
The ways of making combat more interesting tend to make it slower, though, because they involve tactics beyond "I hit it". Use terrain. Use multiple enemies. Use triggered events.
Right now I think it is slowed down by PCs who have limitless time to make decisions (timers likely to be implemented) followed by the blandness of combat. The overall time isnt too bad usually, unless someone takes 5 minutes to read all their abilities which is an occassional issue. I think a combination of slightly more interesting combined with less time for individual PCs to make decisions are the two best improvements because together they will keep the combat roughly as long as it is now but could add a little more flavor to help it go down better.
I keep well organized for my little brutes, including copying down all stats on paper to prevent Meta load screens. Its mainly an issue of how jarring it is to go from the Rp aspects to slow paced, slow decision making bland combat. I do use a map and minis when needed but otherwise for small situations or combat that stretches over larger distances (like from sneaking through a city being ravaged) we board the imagination station.
I dont think its necessarily the game that results in this all the time, I feel more like it is my fault as DM for either not forcing people to be more prepared with decisions and for not creating a more inspiring environment for the combat.
This is when Player 2 should be reading over the details of the spell they are considering casting or the ability they are considering using. By the time they come up, all they will need to do is look at what Player 1 has done and decide if they need to modify their decision based on that.
You can even be kind of cinematic in the way you push your players to hurry up. "The battle is raging all around you and you know you have to act quickly. You feel the pressure of knowing you have to do something right now, even if it's not the most perfect course of action." If a player has had 20-40 seconds to consider what they are doing, they have already eliminated mot of their choices down to just two or three. It's ok to gently prod them to pick between two or three reasonable candidate choices. If a player is really struggling to understand the rules or the way combat is supposed to work, then certainly I would be more forgiving for the first few sessions. After all, the point is for everyone to have fun. But if a guy is obviously stalling to mentally calculate whether he should cast booming blade or go with two-weapon fighting, then i'm going to push them to make the call sooner instead of later.
1: I'm going to second(third?) Add props, I put down some markers for trees when my low lvl players fought some goblins and it added meaningful decisions (do I get as close as I can so they can't run away, or do I go half my movement for cover)
2: You could try secondary objectives, would you wait to free hostages until combat is over and it's safe? Or would you release them to distract your opponents? Not a great example but my players only play moderately ok people ;-)
I dont think its necessarily the game that results in this all the time, I feel more like it is my fault as DM for either not forcing people to be more prepared with decisions and for not creating a more inspiring environment for the combat.
D&D has its roots in tactical wargaming; it generally assumes that the people playing the game like spending a bit of time on combat. It's actually faster than many because it wants to be fast enough paced that you can run intermediate scale tactical battles with 20+ combatants, or run multiple small skirmishes per session (plenty of RPGs average multiple hours for any meaningful combat). That said, a round is six seconds, it's totally justified to limit players to 30-60s for decision making, and a similar amount for resolving their actions. It does mean people will make occasional bad decisions, but hey, people make bad decisions in actual combat too.
As a DM I try to be descriptive of what is actually happening during combat besides the usual "Okay that hits roll damage".
For example "your sword cuts through the orc's suspenders. As his pants fall down to his knees he stumbles." This is a pretty clean example. As you may know combat can get messy and I try to be as descriptive as I feel the players are comfortable with.
All the above suggestions are really good ways to speed up combat, speed isn’t always interesting. Using miniatures helps my game. My group is more engaged when they can study the battlefield and choose tactics.
Also. Describe the combat. Player-I attack I rolled 17 to hit. DM- that hits. Roll damage. Player- 11 damage. DM-ok anything else? Next player.
OR
Player-I move in and fake a slash high while really going low. 17 to hit. DM-He lifts his shield to block your swing. You fool him and your attack lands hard. Roll damage. Player-11 damage. DM- your sword slams into his side. He looks surprised and you see blood leaking down his leg. Next player.
In my experience, combat becomes draggy when the players aren't threatened. When you're going through an area that's a barrage of "two skeletons in this room," combat gets old fast. So, I try to have fewer but larger encounters.
I have been blessed with a group of 8 -10 (if they all show up) players ranging in age from 13 to 40 something. Combat was getting very cumbersome. I worked out a solution with a couple of the players. I had initiate rolled out for the monsters, characters would roll and I would write their names in on my sheet where they fell in between the monsters.
1. have all your monster stats organized and ready before you come. I have them all laid out on paper with AC, HP, Attacks, DMG etc...
2. I have everyone in the group roll initiative against each other. Whoever wins goes first. I then have that person roll initiate against the monsters.
3. If the PC goes first we go clockwise around the group. When the last person goes the monsters go. Then back to the first person.
The next combat we roll again and it goes counter clockwise.
Also, I trained them to be ready. Very frustrating with combat is someone who sits there for the duration waiting to go and then they start looking at their sheet and take time to figure it out.
So I started off being patient and giving them a warning that if they don't know what they are going to do after a reasonable amount of time when it is there turn (reasonable being 2 or 3 seconds but no more than 5) they take a dodge action. After that happened a few times (7) people started being ready. It actually heightened the experience because it made people nervous to have to make up their mind under pressure.
I like individual initiative for monsters and players. But this has dramatically sped up combat.
To try and help with some specific examples of terrain: areas of difficult and/or impassible terrain, different elevations and corners, trees and other obstacles that can give cover, bridges across chasms that they might be able to jump if they rolled well enough, but do they risk it, or run across the bridge? Narrow corridors that can make positioning challenging, and negate numerical advantages. Archers or ranged casters who are on a platform that's near impossible for a melee character to reach. Flying enemies. Ruined walls with windows in them. Basically things that block line of sight and make movement tricky, they can force the players to think more tactically about where they are standing relative to their enemies, which can go a long way to making things more interesting. (This might have the side effect of slowing them down, unfortunately, but the interest level could help make up for the time)
There's other hazards you can throw in, but you can't really use every time. Like have a fight in a crowd of bystanders who are moving around randomly so it becomes almost impossible to use AoE effects. Fight in a burning building where if they finish their turn next to the fire, they take damage, and the fire spreads every round (bonus if they have to save a person or object from the building). Have some magical effect that goes off every round and dings them for a little bit of hp (like a d6 save for half, or whatever depending on level) It can keep them motivated to win quickly, but throws in the choice to try and smash the thing causing the small but persistent effect or hit a monster who won't hit them every time, but will do more damage when it does.
As far as the turns, I'd suggest an out of character talk letting them know you'd like them to pick up the pace with their character deciding on their actions. You have to know what every monster can do, its not a lot to ask them to know their own, single character (if the guilt angle will work with your group). Tell them you'd like them to try and decide quicker and if they really can't manage, you'll have to start implementing a hard timer, but you really don't want to go that route. Sometimes just pointing out the issue can go a long way to fixing it. I should note if they are new players, you should probably be more forgiving, combat is generally the most complicated part of the game.
In my experience, combat becomes draggy when the players aren't threatened. When you're going through an area that's a barrage of "two skeletons in this room," combat gets old fast. So, I try to have fewer but larger encounters.
I'm imagining the DM suddenly pulling out a meat cleaver and waving it around the gaming table so that the players feel threatened.
I think there is some great advice here already, and more specifics would be tricky without knowing your exact situation. Here’s some stuff that may help:
• Variation - instead of 6 orcs, it’s 2 orcs, a shaman and a pair of bugbears with their pet worg.
• A big change after 2/3 rounds if the combat is still going on - the fire bolt you shot two rounds ago is burning down the library, another ogre arrives, drawn in by all the noise, the ice underfoot cracks, plunging you into the water, stuff like that.
• if everyone is bored or doesn’t want to continue trying to kill that last zombie after a string of misses, wrap up the fight with some hand waving. The last two orcs turn tail and run, or are cut down with a volley of arrows as the city guard finally show up to help the players.
• go off script - make it so the enemies do a different thing each turn, give them more or different abilities if that will keep the players guessing. Maybe they have poisoned blades, flaming arrows or are going to capture them in nets.
Be creative. Tell the players what happens in detail and also let the players get creative with their actions, as well as let them be descriptive with what their character is doing. You can also toss in various skill checks, obviously have a reason for them. If you minis, still incorporate theater of the mind as much as you can. Sit down and think of interesting encounters that will work where you need them to. Also come up with random that you can toss in if needed. This way your not just tossing static encounters at the players. You can force them into an interesting without them realizing it. A chase for example.
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I'm not extremely new to DMing, but probably pretty green in comparison since ive only had around 35 sessions of me DMing and 2 campaigns. Ive only participated in one other campaign and it was combat heavy, and completely missing RP. Not my cup of tea. I only learned combat from the other campaign and how it functions, but even there it was boring.
Is there any way to make fights and combat less draggy and more entertaining? Im sure there is, but I have never experienced it. Is there a way to make it go faster or be more entertaining without sacrificing my PCs lovely talents and ambitions in times of war?
All advice is welcome, and after Ill discuss with my PCs about their advice as well.
I am not sure this will be exactly what you are asking, but here goes. I have been DMing for over 15 years. In the past 4 years I have made it a point to have both a verbal and visual component that lets the players know who is currently acting and who is "on deck". I will tell them who's turn it is as well as alerting the next player in the combat order. Having a visual que as well can help. I have a homemade wood base with a dowel in the center. I use clothes pins with the character names on them. I just clip them to the dowel in the order that they roll. The other big thing that I have learned is "time allowed to act". Basically let the players know that since you have 2 ways to tell who is next in line, you will not have several minutes to decide on your actions. Set a time limit for the players turns. Have ramifications if they exceed that time. Just be sure that you balance it out. Don't make the players feel forced. A sense of urgency is fine. I hope that helps. Sorry for the rambling.
It is helpful, i was thinking of a time limit to assist but I wasn't sure, but knowing you are seasoned and use something along those lines makes me more comfortable with the idea and less like Im rushing everyone. It would help keep pace as well, as I have one player that only starts thinking once its his turn. Thank you, Sir, all input is helpful
Yes, it can be slow : that's how an RPG turn-based ii works.
It can also be boring : That's the reason there should be another GM telling the players to Calm their emotions......
¿¿¿¿ PAINFUL ????? Are you trying to tell me you apply masoquist tecniques on your Campaigns ?????????
My Ready-to-rock&roll chars:
Dertinus Tristany // Amilcar Barca // Vicenç Sacrarius // Oriol Deulofeu // Grovtuk
Funny how you think there are no solutions when theres already one posted on this forum. Thank you for your lack of input, and maybe you'll realize combat can be improved on if you don't just accept its a dead horse and instead try to work with the mechanics to improve gameplay. Hopefully you'll learn to discuss with other people to improve your game, I recommend using this forum to ask questions to improve.
As has been discussed, there are some things you can do to make combat proceed efficiently. When a player has their turn, make sure to tell the next player they are on deck so they will be ready on their turn. If you have a bunch of monsters, you can combine them into groups to speed up gameplay. Likewise, you can speed things up by using average damage from monsters so you don't have to roll for it each time.
One of the biggest ways I have found to make combat more interesting to the players and to me as the DM is to have a more interesting battlefield. Litter it with objects, structures, and/or terrain variations that not only sound interesting (the ground is torn up into long trenches that have filled up with a foul brownish liquid over time) but that encourage the players to make use of the environments as part of combat. James Haeck wrote an article a while back about Cinematic Combat Stunts that you can have your NPCs perform during combat to keep the story moving and you can encourage your players to do so as well.
Sly Flourish is a game developer that focuses a lot on what they call fantastic locations and how to make the most of the environments in which your encounters take place.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Thank you very much! I like those ideas a lot, I think using more decorated and 'busy' areas would actually help out and help inspire more creative actions. I appreciate your input and your links sir!
My first question is how long it's actually taking for you. D&D5e is pretty fast at combat resolution by RPG standards.
The main ways of making combat flow faster are just organizational. Make sure the stats you need are on hand. Make sure you understand the rules well enough that you don't need to look stuff up at the table. Make sure the players do the same thing. Setting up maps takes a while, so for trivial fights, don't use a map.
The ways of making combat more interesting tend to make it slower, though, because they involve tactics beyond "I hit it". Use terrain. Use multiple enemies. Use triggered events.
Right now I think it is slowed down by PCs who have limitless time to make decisions (timers likely to be implemented) followed by the blandness of combat. The overall time isnt too bad usually, unless someone takes 5 minutes to read all their abilities which is an occassional issue. I think a combination of slightly more interesting combined with less time for individual PCs to make decisions are the two best improvements because together they will keep the combat roughly as long as it is now but could add a little more flavor to help it go down better.
I keep well organized for my little brutes, including copying down all stats on paper to prevent Meta load screens. Its mainly an issue of how jarring it is to go from the Rp aspects to slow paced, slow decision making bland combat. I do use a map and minis when needed but otherwise for small situations or combat that stretches over larger distances (like from sneaking through a city being ravaged) we board the imagination station.
I dont think its necessarily the game that results in this all the time, I feel more like it is my fault as DM for either not forcing people to be more prepared with decisions and for not creating a more inspiring environment for the combat.
"Player 1 you're up. Player 2, you're on deck."
This is when Player 2 should be reading over the details of the spell they are considering casting or the ability they are considering using. By the time they come up, all they will need to do is look at what Player 1 has done and decide if they need to modify their decision based on that.
You can even be kind of cinematic in the way you push your players to hurry up. "The battle is raging all around you and you know you have to act quickly. You feel the pressure of knowing you have to do something right now, even if it's not the most perfect course of action." If a player has had 20-40 seconds to consider what they are doing, they have already eliminated mot of their choices down to just two or three. It's ok to gently prod them to pick between two or three reasonable candidate choices. If a player is really struggling to understand the rules or the way combat is supposed to work, then certainly I would be more forgiving for the first few sessions. After all, the point is for everyone to have fun. But if a guy is obviously stalling to mentally calculate whether he should cast booming blade or go with two-weapon fighting, then i'm going to push them to make the call sooner instead of later.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
1: I'm going to second(third?) Add props, I put down some markers for trees when my low lvl players fought some goblins and it added meaningful decisions (do I get as close as I can so they can't run away, or do I go half my movement for cover)
2: You could try secondary objectives, would you wait to free hostages until combat is over and it's safe? Or would you release them to distract your opponents? Not a great example but my players only play moderately ok people ;-)
D&D has its roots in tactical wargaming; it generally assumes that the people playing the game like spending a bit of time on combat. It's actually faster than many because it wants to be fast enough paced that you can run intermediate scale tactical battles with 20+ combatants, or run multiple small skirmishes per session (plenty of RPGs average multiple hours for any meaningful combat). That said, a round is six seconds, it's totally justified to limit players to 30-60s for decision making, and a similar amount for resolving their actions. It does mean people will make occasional bad decisions, but hey, people make bad decisions in actual combat too.
As a DM I try to be descriptive of what is actually happening during combat besides the usual "Okay that hits roll damage".
For example "your sword cuts through the orc's suspenders. As his pants fall down to his knees he stumbles." This is a pretty clean example. As you may know combat can get messy and I try to be as descriptive as I feel the players are comfortable with.
GOOD LUCK!
All the above suggestions are really good ways to speed up combat, speed isn’t always interesting. Using miniatures helps my game. My group is more engaged when they can study the battlefield and choose tactics.
Also. Describe the combat.
Player-I attack I rolled 17 to hit.
DM- that hits. Roll damage.
Player- 11 damage.
DM-ok anything else? Next player.
OR
Player-I move in and fake a slash high while really going low. 17 to hit.
DM-He lifts his shield to block your swing. You fool him and your attack lands hard. Roll damage.
Player-11 damage.
DM- your sword slams into his side. He looks surprised and you see blood leaking down his leg. Next player.
Which is more exciting?
In my experience, combat becomes draggy when the players aren't threatened. When you're going through an area that's a barrage of "two skeletons in this room," combat gets old fast. So, I try to have fewer but larger encounters.
I have been blessed with a group of 8 -10 (if they all show up) players ranging in age from 13 to 40 something. Combat was getting very cumbersome. I worked out a solution with a couple of the players. I had initiate rolled out for the monsters, characters would roll and I would write their names in on my sheet where they fell in between the monsters.
1. have all your monster stats organized and ready before you come. I have them all laid out on paper with AC, HP, Attacks, DMG etc...
2. I have everyone in the group roll initiative against each other. Whoever wins goes first. I then have that person roll initiate against the monsters.
3. If the PC goes first we go clockwise around the group. When the last person goes the monsters go. Then back to the first person.
The next combat we roll again and it goes counter clockwise.
Also, I trained them to be ready. Very frustrating with combat is someone who sits there for the duration waiting to go and then they start looking at their sheet and take time to figure it out.
So I started off being patient and giving them a warning that if they don't know what they are going to do after a reasonable amount of time when it is there turn (reasonable being 2 or 3 seconds but no more than 5) they take a dodge action. After that happened a few times (7) people started being ready. It actually heightened the experience because it made people nervous to have to make up their mind under pressure.
I like individual initiative for monsters and players. But this has dramatically sped up combat.
To try and help with some specific examples of terrain: areas of difficult and/or impassible terrain, different elevations and corners, trees and other obstacles that can give cover, bridges across chasms that they might be able to jump if they rolled well enough, but do they risk it, or run across the bridge? Narrow corridors that can make positioning challenging, and negate numerical advantages. Archers or ranged casters who are on a platform that's near impossible for a melee character to reach. Flying enemies. Ruined walls with windows in them. Basically things that block line of sight and make movement tricky, they can force the players to think more tactically about where they are standing relative to their enemies, which can go a long way to making things more interesting. (This might have the side effect of slowing them down, unfortunately, but the interest level could help make up for the time)
There's other hazards you can throw in, but you can't really use every time. Like have a fight in a crowd of bystanders who are moving around randomly so it becomes almost impossible to use AoE effects. Fight in a burning building where if they finish their turn next to the fire, they take damage, and the fire spreads every round (bonus if they have to save a person or object from the building). Have some magical effect that goes off every round and dings them for a little bit of hp (like a d6 save for half, or whatever depending on level) It can keep them motivated to win quickly, but throws in the choice to try and smash the thing causing the small but persistent effect or hit a monster who won't hit them every time, but will do more damage when it does.
As far as the turns, I'd suggest an out of character talk letting them know you'd like them to pick up the pace with their character deciding on their actions. You have to know what every monster can do, its not a lot to ask them to know their own, single character (if the guilt angle will work with your group). Tell them you'd like them to try and decide quicker and if they really can't manage, you'll have to start implementing a hard timer, but you really don't want to go that route. Sometimes just pointing out the issue can go a long way to fixing it. I should note if they are new players, you should probably be more forgiving, combat is generally the most complicated part of the game.
I'm imagining the DM suddenly pulling out a meat cleaver and waving it around the gaming table so that the players feel threatened.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I think there is some great advice here already, and more specifics would be tricky without knowing your exact situation. Here’s some stuff that may help:
• Variation - instead of 6 orcs, it’s 2 orcs, a shaman and a pair of bugbears with their pet worg.
• A big change after 2/3 rounds if the combat is still going on - the fire bolt you shot two rounds ago is burning down the library, another ogre arrives, drawn in by all the noise, the ice underfoot cracks, plunging you into the water, stuff like that.
• if everyone is bored or doesn’t want to continue trying to kill that last zombie after a string of misses, wrap up the fight with some hand waving. The last two orcs turn tail and run, or are cut down with a volley of arrows as the city guard finally show up to help the players.
• go off script - make it so the enemies do a different thing each turn, give them more or different abilities if that will keep the players guessing. Maybe they have poisoned blades, flaming arrows or are going to capture them in nets.
good luck making combat more fun!
Be creative. Tell the players what happens in detail and also let the players get creative with their actions, as well as let them be descriptive with what their character is doing. You can also toss in various skill checks, obviously have a reason for them. If you minis, still incorporate theater of the mind as much as you can. Sit down and think of interesting encounters that will work where you need them to. Also come up with random that you can toss in if needed. This way your not just tossing static encounters at the players. You can force them into an interesting without them realizing it. A chase for example.