with thanks to The Angry DM, and Ron Perlman.

OK, I ran across this article by the Angry GM - F$&% CR, There’s a Better Way (Part 1) - and something leaped out at me.

That is, the concept of the "Statistical Treadmill", and how combat in D&D never changes, it just gets a little fancier.

The idea here is that if GMs are trying to balance their encounters ( and that's not a bad thing ), it  means a Level 1 combat, and a Level 15 combat are roughly the same kind of experience for the Players. They are roughly 3 rounds of single person level tactical combat gameplay, that's expected to deplete X% of the Party's resources based of the difficulty rating of the Combat. Rinse, repeat, Rest.

High level combat just differs in the level of elaboration. The higher level combat will have more in tactical possibilities, and new neat tricks ( like Legendary Actions & Legendary Resistance ),  and more impressive spells on either side of the combat, but essentially it's the same type of experience.

Now - I'm not dissing the standard Combat. It's a staple of adventure fiction, and it's a lot of fun. I don't want to scrap it, or give it up.

But if it's all the Players ever can do in Combat, then it seems a little ... same-old-same-old? 

To quote The Angry GM:

On the one hand, it’s terrible for the players because they never feel like they are actually getting more powerful in play. I mean, yes, they get excited when they unlock that second attack at 5th level and their cantrips do more damage and all that stuff. But once they start actually playing with them, the combats don’t feel quicker and easier. They feel like the same amount of slog.

On the other hand, it’s terrible for the pace of the game because the game never feels like tension is really rising. Things just aren’t really getting more difficult. Sure, the party is fighting balrogs instead of imps when they hit 15th level, but the balrog still sticks around for five rounds and takes them down to 50% of their maximum hit points. Just like the imp did. They sweat the same amount no matter what.

Like I said, I like the standard Combat model. It's fun. But does it have to be the only Combat experience that the Players can have?

At low levels, I'd say "yes". At low levels, they're grunts; front line soldiers, out in the trenches. That's all they can do. 

But what about higher levels? A 13th level Cleric can raise the dead, and yet we still have them whacking on creatures with a mace, or a spell. Yes - those weapons are now high level artifacts not regular gear, those spells are truly world changing instead of parlor ticks, and the creature they are whacking on are now Arch-Devils not Imps - but it's still whacking on a creatures with a mace, or a spell.

What other experiences related to Combat could we give higher level Characters? I'm not saying take good old fashioned low-level Combat away from those Characters, but maybe it should be one option amongst many, with higher levels of achievement comes the unlocking of new types of Combat experience.

But what?

Taking a page from real life organizations, like Businesses, Military, or the Church - increased ability leads to increased organizational power, and the acquisition of Authority. Maybe there comes a point where your Party starts to accrue an organization of vassals and retainers? Maybe the Party can not only go toe-to-toe is a slug it out with the BBEG, but direct their followers and retainers to engage the forces of the Villain. I mean, the Villain has an organization, minions, and even leftentents, right? Why can't the Party? When the climax of the Story hits - maybe it's not a final showdown between the Party and the Dragon, but the confrontation between the Party's army, and the Dragons minions, as a prelude to that showdown, or even during?

And the Party doesn't have to go designing these followers, or hiring them - although they absolutely could - but powerful people naturally attract followers. Maybe the Paladin wakes up one day, and finds that a handful of soldiers who venerate the same God as she does have gathered voluntarily in her service ( yeah, I know - old school take on Paladins; just roll with it for now, OK? ). Maybe an unscrupulous, or even evil Party, attract soldiers of fortunes, opportunists, and "camp followers", who are along for the ride and their own personal gain. 

I think that's where Matt Colville's Strongholds & Followers supplement, and the upcoming Kingdoms & Warfare supplement are meant to take the game. That's also a very old school approach to the game. In early editions, you were just expected that you'd found a Keep, or a settlement - that you'd become a political power in the world commensurate with your personal power. 

I'm not sure that's a style of play everyone would embrace, however.  Still - it gives us two options: squad level combat and/or unit level combat, with the later only unlocking when the Party becomes powerful enough to command the respect to be gathering followers.

Other models that suggest themselves to me are The Specialist - where high level Characters, or the whole Party, are expected to perform one crucial task to allow the Army to succeed against the Hordes of Evil - but that's kind of just an Adventure, isn't it? It's an Adventure taking place in-and-around Combat, but it's not really a different kind of Combat experience, because the Combat doesn't involve the Characters.

The Spy model is also a possibility, but that - again - seems to be a variant of the Specialist, and it seems to be an Adventure out adjacent to the Combat, not a part of it, or a new level of engagement with it. Same with the Assassin.

I don't have answers here. I'm just spitballing ideas.

I'd love to see what other possibilities any of you can suggest.

In summary, yes to your general suggestions. The gameplay doesn't change but the stakes in the bigger picture do.

In detail: My favorite campaigns to witness are those where players' actions in combat start having greater effects to the environment outside of combat. When it's all just cantrips at level 1, the most one can accomplish is soot on the ornamental rugs and a Scooby-Doo mystery. At level 3, a party can cause a devastating explosion at the docks and be driven out of town. At level 5, a party might destroy an entire regional religion. Reputations for good or ill grow and change at faster rates.

The combat itself doesn't change, but permanently affecting the world with combat becomes a greater and greater risk... or reward. Players start having to think about consequences (or leverage-able angles) during the thick chaos of battle.

(Short-sighted Good-aligned people are awesome. I remember a DM describing townsfolk at a new place with some LVL5s: "People look generally pleased to see you... which is unusual in your experience." In certain regions of that country, they're infamous for causing more problems than they solve — most often due to fallout from combat.)

EDIT: (Wrong kind of forum formatting. Whoops!)

Thanks for the feedback.

I understand how Combat currently works - and that the Combats are supposed to be more significant in the grand scheme of things at higher levels.

But that's only one kind of Combat experience - and it seems like there can/should be more options open for more powerful Characters.

Clearly, there's at least one additional option: the idea of the Party commanding units, or armies, or some other form of followers.

I'm curious as to whether there are others - which is why I'm asking if anyone can think of any, since I'm struggling to find others, even though I'm trying to draw in analogies to real world leaders, or real world hyper-capable people. These really either seem to break down to either the Military Commander model - or they just become standard high-level Adventures, just with a war/political/social conflict background.

The Military Commander model might be literal battlefield combat, but I think it would be roughly the same kind of experience to be commanding groups of spies, or saboteurs, or infiltrators ( just a lot slower, and with less visibility ). That makes me wonder if I should looking at conflict models, not just pure combat - although Combat seems to be the pillar with the least amount of variability in its experiences.

Can anyone think of other models?

I have played other games that modeled units and armies, and at the end of the day it was the same thing as a D&D party fighting a monster or another party.  All your players have to be engaged, so you give them 'roles' in the army and they each attack with their roles.  They fight other armies that also attack with their 'roles'.  

It's like vehicle combat.  One person navigates, on person mans the engine, one person mans the weapons, one person repairs, one person leads the crew, etc...

The map ends up looking the same, it is just implied to have a larger scale.  The 5 foot square becomes a 100 foot square.  Your HP becomes the size of your army.  And so on.

You're not going to significantly change the model of combat in 5e without significantly changing the rules.  Eighty percent of the game is its tactical combat engine.  Virtually every class feature is built around the Small Unit Battle, and classes which aren't built around the Small Unit Battle - i.e. Ranger - are very poorly received.  As Kerrec pointed out, the more tightly you hook a new combat experience into the core 5e rules, the more it ends up being a reskinning of the Small Unit Battle, because that's just about the only thing Wizards designed 5e to do well.

The point of Angry's article is less about giving the players a Different Experience as it is arguing that the statistical treadmill sucks for a few different reasons, after which he moves on to promising to actually rewrite encounter design.  Unwritten-but-assumed is that the treadmill's also largely unavoidable - players have to continually meet challenges within their effective level range or the game works a lot worse than it otherwise does.  Yeah, you can occasionally do setpieces where the characters have to work around a threat much, much higher level than they are - the whole 'Defend the Castle" bit against the adult dragon at the start of Tyranny of Dragons comes to mind - and occasionally you can and should let the party slum it and deal with a low-level threat they might've struggled with at level 3 but which they breeze through without a care in the world at level 9.  The former type of encounter shows how far the party has to go; the latter shows how far they've come.  But you can't build an entire campaign around either type of encounter without making it a fundamentally different game.

Not everybody wants a Fresh New Combat Experience.  I hate dealing with large-scale army shit and War of Nations-style play.  I'm a powerful adventurer worth twenty regular soldiers in a fight by the time I hit fifth freaking level and with capabilities beyond anything any number of grunts could accomplish - what the **** are you doing saddling me with command authority over a batch of CR 1/8 militia goobers, General Guy?  That's why God invented lieutenants, and then sergeants to make sure the lieutenants got their boots on the right feet in the morning.  I should be out there Adventuring, making sure that the ancient eldritch evils of the world die in their tombs instead of breaking free to bathe the world in blood and darkness, not spending my turns telling twenty or thirty CR 1/8 militia goobers how to best try and avoid dying pointlessly in a border skirmish.  You do not pin down your special forces with basic bizznatch army grunt boss work.

You make combat different by changing the circumstances of it, not the model of it.  Change the stakes, change the victory condition, change how you attain said victory condition.  The ancient lich can't be harmed until its phylactery is destroyed; the adventure stops being "find the BBEG, punch it until it stops twitching" and instead becomes "avoid the invulnerable spellcasting monster until we find its secret weakness".  A low-level party simply doesn't have the reserves or tools to pull that off, but your higher-level one just might. 

THAT is how you change the game properly at higher levels.  The players have more tools and more fortitude; ensure they have a need to use both.

They directly commanded a team of 60 skeletons they found in a crypt... and ended up squashing 15 orphans unintentionally - something they've yet to live down and it's already come back on them in a minor way (and likely in a bigger way due to the fallout of dealing with the fallout).

Then, there's the peripheral effects that affect not just the environment but encounters: They created a cult to an Old God off the shore of a frequent town they haven't (yet) destroyed just to prevent the BBEG from getting any help. (Like that's not going to come back and bite them in the rears.)

It still comes back to having a bigger part in the bigger world and bigger risk with rolling those dice. It changes the tenor of combat so it's not the same anymore. The mechanics don't need changing. They're made to be versatile while keeping out of the way of the core experience - the story. The meaning behind the encounters just need more weight.

People keep coming back to "should" and "properly" and "I don't want to" and "I'd hate".

That's fine - but I'm not debating the desirability of new models of experience here. Debating desirability of an experience or style of play in an RPG is like trying to debate the objective merits of Italian food. Some people love it, some people can't stand it, some people like it only occasionally, some people have never tried it. 

What I'm trying to work out are the possibilities .

We can work on the desirability later - or rather, you can for your Table & Players, and I'll do it for mine.

Yes - it's likely to need new mechanics. Matt Colville is working on a whole book on that front. There's nothing sacred about the set of mechanics we have now. Mechanics are tools to an end; means to modelling a particular Player experience and a particular type of game-play. If you're not getting the results you want, you change you tools. If you're happy with what you've got, there's no need to change anything. But there's no harm in knowing what the possibilities are outside of what you want - if for no other reason than identifying that you don't want to do that.

I don't misunderstand the current model and assumptions, and the ( to my mind mostly artificial ) "scaling of the stakes" - EricHVela - I get it. I've been playing that way for decades; got it down. Likewise, I've got the small units combat model down pat. I already identified the small units combat view as an alternative, and that a lot of real-world examples of the behavior of people in authority, or are recognized leaders in their fields, map onto that model

However, I disagree that those models must be the only possibilities - and am trying to work out what the other possibilities could be. I might be wrong; there may not be other possibilities. New models might not work for your Table. Hell, they might not even work for mine, but I'd like to figure out what they are before deciding whether my Players and I would find value in playing in and with those models.

If that's not something you see value in for you, or you don't want to apply different models of game experience to your Table, that's completely fine - I in no way have been saying that we need to change the models of Combat experience. I'm wondering only if we can expand the possibilities - and decide if those possibilities have any value, later.

If that's something you don't want to pursue, that's completely fine - but I still think it's a valid topic of exploration.

"People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it." - Attribution unclear

My DM setup an elaborate combat involving armies at several locations attacking each other. They were to weaken the BBEG’s forces which affected our ability to get into where we needed to go. He basically used Risk combined in D&D, which was pretty darn cool although it wasn’t a huge part of that adventure. 

I do like the idea of structuring encounters so that the Players overcome a past failure: concretely demonstrate their own growth as heroes to them.

That's classic adventure - the heroes fail, then they go through some form of personal growth, then they overcome it. Isn't that part of the Campbell-ian "heroes journey"?

Setting up the Players in a situation where they are likely to fail is tricky, however. Not saying you can't do it - just that you want to handle it delicately so the Players don't feel persecuted by the GM.

OK - ran across an interesting article here: https://www.raphkoster.com/2007/04/23/the-game-without-treadmills/

I'll have to digest it more fully - but it presents an interesting reason to keep the treadmill, but it also points out that you need new ways of interacting with the treadmill to keep it interesting. Giving the Player a 3d6 damage spell, instead of a 2d6 damage spell - even if the narration is different - isn't ( IMHO ) a different way of interacting with the treadmill model. Giving them totally different means of interaction is what's needed, I think. 

Off the top of my head? A combat setting with teleportation discs which have an unknown, but consistent pattern of translation, where each position has some advantage of every other position in the theater. This allows the Players ( or maybe even the Characters with appropriate Intelligence rolls ) to be able to leverage puzzle solving skills to give them a tactical advantage, in a way not open to them before.

I'm not saying that's a good example :p It's just the first one that comes to mind.

Ideally the ability to move rapidly around the combat arena should be an unlocked Character ability, not a inherent property of the combat arena. But Players might not think of that, so designing clues into the Encounter, where the opponent demonstrates the ability, and the Players go "hey! I could do that as well!" might be needed. 

I wasn't trying to so much state that your fun is wrong - or at least not solely state that your fun is wrong, even though anyone who does War of Nations in D&D is funning wrong :P - as more get across the idea that this game is built from the ground up as a small-unit tactical engine.  Anything else is going against the grain of the core rules and will be harder to make work.  Try and closely align it with the core rules and you're not really changing anything - you're just changing out "I attack with my axe" for "I send my dragoons" and providing the same combat experience as always with a different skin.

Try and invent entirely new modes of play to make these alternative means of combat Come Alive(C), and you're basically inventing a new game with D&D-esque trappings which you are bolting onto the flank of D&D.  That's fine, but you have to realize that's what you're doing.  You're not discovering a new expression of the core rules, because the core rules are monumentally oversimplified and ruthleesly pared down and optimized to do ONE THING - small-unit tactical combat - well.  Every other aspect of D&D is "ehh, figure out some checks and roll for it, see what happens."

The treadmill is the way it is because small-unit tactics don't alter dramatically.  What you can alter is the objective and the restrictions on achieving that objective, which is how you vary the experience.  Oboe's absolutely right - giving your players the rush of overcoming challenges they explicitly struggled with before is an excellent way to liven up your game, as is presenting them with situations that are not just race-to-zero-HP.

I don't disagree that this is pushing out way past the edge of the current engine; no arguments there.

I agree totally that re-skinning a sword attack as a dragon attack, or a 2d6 fire damage spell as a 2d6 acid damage spell is changing nothing.

But as I said, I view mechanics as a means to an end - nothing more, and certainly nothing sacred.

I'm not looking to find a new expression of the core rules of D&D, I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to find/build new expressions of Combat inside Fantasy RPG, beyond small unit tactical combat, or even unit-level tactical combat, which we've already identified.

I'm totally OK bolting on additional mechanics - or at least I'm OK playing with the idea and then evaluating whether the benefits are worth the overhead or not. I may decide that answer is "no".

Matt Colville's supplements - after all -  are totally all about bolt on mechanics. 

Edit: yes, I'm aware that new mechanics futz around with Player expectations, and comfort levels, and knowledge of what they should or even can do ( and how the GM needs to bake in clues for that into the Encounter design ), etc. - it's one reason why I'm skeptical whether it is worth doing, but I'd like to map out the possibilities before evaluating that.

I agree 100%

I'm throwing this conversation a little more open, because I quickly realized that this isn't about Combat, because what's true there is also true for Exploration, and Social Encounters - this is really about how to scale, or alter, general Encounter design. 

From what I'm reading about RPG advancement systems, in and out of D&D, I'm coming away with the following working ideas:

1. Players love Character advancement (duh).
2. Players like being able to see continuous advancement and improvement.
3. Advancement is most prized, when it unlocks new abilities and new tools for interacting with the world. This is why Level 3, and Level 5 are typically really special level-ups, when Level 2 might not be that great.
4. Advancement systems can be intrinsic  to the Character - this is the model that D&D mostly uses (HP, proficiency bonuses, new Class abilities, new Feats) - or extrinsic to the Character. This later model is used in RPGs like Traveller  - where the advantages and tools accrued by mostly intrinsically static Characters are resources, contacts, knowledge, and influence. To a certain extent D&D does this as well, with the awarding of Magic Items. In Xanathar Guide to Everything, there's even a chart in Chapter 2 giving an optional guideline for how many magic items should be awarded by adventuring tier. This seems to imply that there is an expected accrual of Magic Items by a Character than maps - roughly - to their level, and thus there's a certain expectation of extrinsic advancement as well. 
5. While this is only an opinion, grinding the same pattern of Encounters over and over is boring. A toe-to-toe slugfest with a pack of Kobolds at Level 1, and a toe-to-toe slugfest with a Purple Worm at Level 10 with no other complication or nuance - are just the same experience: a toe-to-toe slugfest.
6. Encounters are exciting when they're new problems, which the Party has to find interesting ways of overcoming. This doesn't have to happen all the time. Sometimes the old favorites deserve a repeat. Sometimes a toe-to-toe heroic slugfest is just what you want. Just don't serve the same thing every time.
7. New problems are the ones that require the Party to employ their new abilities (intrinsic Class abilities, or extrinsic resources ) to solve. 
8. These new Encounters can be an elaboration on an old pattern, but with an added complication. That toe-to-toe slugfest? Maybe the Adventure requires coordinated attacks, and thus the Party can't pull it off well enough, until the Mage learns Sending. Maybe trying to Persuade the Baron to commit troops to protect the northern border is nigh impossible, unless you have the backing the House of Fell, and you just so happen to have done a service for that noble house last adventure, and gained the backing of the Duke as an extrinsic ability/resource.

I think I like this Encounter type progression better than trying to find completely new models for Encounters. Looking at the break between first tier squad level combat, and higher tier small unit combat that we've been discussing - this can still be handled using the tactical combat engine in 5e. Still conduct the combat at a Character level. The experience needs to be personal to the Characters/Players - but now the Party might be coordinating across a larger battlefield. The Paladin is leading her knights to charge the left flank, while the Assassin is darting through the chaos making a beeline for the enemy commander's tent, while the Mage is scrying on the same commander - and the entire Party is coordinating their efforts via magical communication. It's not unit level combat, as it's really a 3-way-Party-split combat encounter. You describe the combat situation to the Paladin and the Assassin as if it were a regular Level 1 combat scenario, locally to their conditions, switching the spotlight around all three Characters.  But the overall problem is one that the Party must use new abilities ( presumably their ability to communicate and coordinate ) to solve.

This means that the possible avenues of Character advancement are a lot broader than XP or Levels. Anything that increases the abilities of the Party is still advancement, and opens up new types of problems as potentially solvable. However,  XP and Levels those are right-up-in-your-face indications of Character advancement to Players, while resources, influence, and reputation are a bit more nebulous or viscerally satisfying. It might take a little bit of Player sophistication to recognize those as advancement, or a skilled GM to subtly make the value of those apparent to the Party. 

In the case of the Cleric now being able to carve through the undead, I think you tie into point #2, and it's a great point to illustrate to your Players. I might make that part of a larger Encounter which still touches on point #7 - but I'm mean and don't mind making my Players work for their victories ;)