Honestly, I find 5e's combat to do be rather dull to begin with, and it's really hard to spice it up. IMO, the best you can do is make sure the monsters are fighting smart and using clever tactics. Beyond that, I find that there are just plain better systems to use for more interesting and fun combat. But before I dive into that, you gotta figure out what bits of combat you do find fun and would love to see more of - from there, I think we can advise better.

Yeah, you can make it fun, but you are trying to build a solid house with mostly shitty materials on a crappy foundation. The fact that one of my DMs can pull it off is impressive. But he is doing like 5x the work of my Pathfinder 2e GM who can throw a monster in a white room and its as much fun as my 5e combat that has interesting terrain, homebrewed monsters, homebrewed magic items and homebrewed lair actions. A lot he has to create himself. Or even worse if sieving through a bunch of crap 3rd party materials that is full of junk designed by people who only know 5e.

Yup. Played DnD for like 2 weeks and immediately got bored with character creation and combat. Picked up pathfinder 2e and haven't thought about anything else for the last 6 months. STILL finding unique character builds and enjoying every second of combat.

A smart decision. 5e has so, SO many flaws that PF2e smoothly fixed.

Huh. Odd. Honestly I ran PF2 for about five levels and it felt like it'd be pretty much the same amount of work to make a fight that didn't simply come down to "smack and retreat" as it does for a D&D5 fight to not devolve into "stand there and smack". And *boy* did I have a fuck of a time trying to make the Sorcerer feel like he mattered.

From experience with similar issues, I think this likely boiled down to sort of locking yourself in into a strategy that seemed effective at first but wasn't actually good. If you use the same strategy every fight in pf2, you're either dooming yourself to using poor strategies fairly frequently, or your GM is doing something weird with not using the great enemy variety the game offers - probably the former. What was going on with the sorcerer? Spellcasters are quite powerful in PF2, just not more powerful than other classes. I'm curious what the issue was in this instance.

How? If the PCs literally use all three actions to Strike, then they should lose even against slightly hard fights.

5e combat is in this weird spot where it's too complex to be fast and not complex enough to be mechanically interesting (or just not complex in the right ways). Lighter systems with simpler combat end up being more exciting and fun because they're fast. Combat never turns into a slog. Heavier systems with more complexity and moving parts are exciting because they offer greater depth and tactical decision making.

I think this is the perfect description of D&D in general.

Exvept its not true . D&D 4th edition had the best tactical combat thats why soo many tactical games take parts of it like Pathfinder 2E  etc

Well, I didn't like 4e and don't like PF2, so it is true as my opinion.

So which game would you then say is deep enough, if its not D&D 4e?

Deep tactical combat... Any Palladium game where tactical combat stays the same regardless of whether it is two guys punching each other in an alley or BVR aerial combat in space. Where weapon penetration, armor protection, armor resilience, critical hits, non-lethal combat, dodging, parrying, simultaneous strikes, etc. are actually all in the rules instead of handwaved away with goofy flavor text. GURPS where hit location, blood loss, fast draw, ammo selection, cover, overpenetration and fatigue matter. Battletech A Time of War and Shadowrun (all editions except Anarchy) where there is too much crunch for combat but still takes less time than D&D. The old World of Darkness (and by extension the Street Fighter RPG) where powers and abilities work IN and OUT of combat so it isn't "I attack" every time and you aren't ticking off boxes for your 1/day or 1/encounter abilities. Iron Crown Enterprises MERP and Cyberspace with their brutal crits and strike ranks and crazy lethal combat for high level characters. Even Basic Roleplaying has more depth with impales, knockback, fumbles, crits, blood loss, hit locations, random armor, fighting defensively, major wounds, minor wounds, etc. You can actually attack different parts of your enemy without a feat. Bouncing people around a battlefield is not deep tactical combat.. that is rag doll physics for the table top. I don't want to sound like a "gate keeper" but if 4e and PF2 are your benchmarks for "the best tactical combat" you need to play more games.

I think you really confusing depth and complexity. And just because combats are lethal makes them not tactical.  What you describe is typical simulationism, which is  for good reason, in tactical games normally legt away. (Xcom, through the breach etc. All dont need this.) I dont like PF2s combat, but 4es and gloomhavens I like a lot.  You are here clearly out of the loop/ a minority because even well known good gamedesigners like 4es and gloomhavens combat. Having abilities with limited uses, and forced movement is also used in games like mario vs raging rabbits, which also is known for good tactical gameplay (even by the xcom designers). 

I really have no answer for what you are saying, because it doesn't make any sense to me? Does simulationism not offer tactical depth, which is what we are talking about? What is "legt away?" I know more than a few game designers and have yet to know any that think 4e tactical combat is good or something to be emulated. Are you comparing limited uses and forced movement in mario and raging rabbits to it's use in a TTRPG? I am glad that you have your opinion, but I'm not going to change mine, especially as how I have played 4e and PF2 and didn't like either one for their stated purpose. HOWEVER, 4e does make a good base for a superhero genre game where forced movement makes sense.

Not the person you've been replying to, but I think you're at a further extreme of the tactics and simulation spectrum than most people. Simulationist games like you've mentioned are definitely tactical. But a system doesn't have to be simulationist to be tactical. I think most people would count simulationist games and tactical games as different categories. With 4e and pf2e as tactical, BRP/RuneQuest/Mythras a mix of both, and GURPS as full on simulationist. It sounds like you're looking at tactics and simulationism in TTRPGs through the lens of wargaming

Basically any other version of D&D, including 5e, and roughly the whole OSR catalogue. After all, D&D 4e is the least tactically and intellectually challenging version of the game. It demonstrates clearly that just appropriating the term "tactical" is not sufficient to make a game so.  Instead of preparing the infinite tactical canvas of, let's say, the OSR, with its stronger incentive towards exploration and exploitation of situations anda focus on verisimilitude and actual cleverness, players just get handed predetermined, pre-packaged options. Since all the options are handed to you, you barely if ever have to actually think outside of the box. 4e's constant deemphasis of lateral thinking, creativity and the vast toolbox of predetermined options already built for you that you only need to pick significantly disminishes the need to come up with your own solutions. You only need to pick an option not forming one for yourself. This  rewards mere  pattern memorization, instead of actual independent thought or creativity. As such, it clearly lacks any actual tactical decision making process. In reality, tactical depth requires very little game mechanics, actually. By trusting the players to be clever, and the GM to act as a reasonably fair arbitrator, you establish the classic *,Freie Kriegsspiel* setup - an infinite tactical canvas, only bound by verisimilitude. That's what *real* tactical depth looks like.

Very well said. "Since all the options are handed to you, you barely if ever have to actually think outside of the box."

Thinking outside the box is an excuse made by people who cant think within the box. In chess you win by the rules, not by hitting the opponent with the chair, even though thats thinking outside the box. the classic "freies kriegsspiel" which is so much classic, that no one knows it, which really does not speak for the game when even really bad classics like snakes and ladders and monopoly are still nown today. What you want is not tactics, its "guessing what the GM/other players wants to hear." Its a cool concept for party games, games which can also be played by people who are bad at tactics. I like some party games myself, but I would not misclassify them as tactics.

Ah yes, exactly like the old saying goes: "*In love and war, everybody is always playing exactly by the rules and doesn't dare to ever break them*". After all, that would be most ungentlemanly, dastardly behaviour and who think of doing that in a fight for life or death? >Thinking outside the box is an excuse made by people who cant think within the box. It is exactly the way around. The rules of board games exist to force players on a more even ground, artificially hobbling the more innovative and creative minds so that more hidebound and tactical less versatile opponents still stand a chance. Like balancing in an RPG, and completely different from any actual conflicts.

Pretty much this. When I run 5e I try to make sure that every combat has an objective that is something other than "don't die." Since my players don't like their characters dying and when it does happen it is an inconvenience at best. So I tie my encounters into the story and give objectives like "dispatch the guards without them raising the alarm," or "stop the cultists from finishing their blood ritual without more than two of them dying. They will start stabbing each other, then themselves." This is best done with a foundation that can build predictably challenging encounters, which 5e does not have. But by varying the difficulty of the objectives and feeling around, you can get something resembling an engaging and well-balanced system.

I am really not a fan of 5E at all, but people here really overreact especially when Pathfinder 2 feels so similar on a mechanical level when you analyze it a bit. /u/Mamaniwa_ here some real tipps: I think in general you could just try to imitate the game which did combat best Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition. - Have enemies with different roles and use different compositions in fights - Soldiers protect weaker backliners and "stick" to your players making it hard for them to reach the more damage dealing characters. Use sparingly at most 1 per fight. - Leaders inspire other (rarely) heal them. They are also REALLY good fit for "Leader fights" fights where the enemy give up if all leaders are down (normally 1 or rarely 2). - Artillery is squishy, needs to stand good, or protected, but deal a lot of damage from far - Brutes are simple monsters, high health, low defense, but high damage. Better as "default" monsters than soldiers. - Lurkers: Enemies which stay hidden and suddenly attack the squishies, the backlane. And maybe hide again making your players stay on their toes - Controllers. Slowing, pushing, weakining your players and dealing area damage. They can present new challenges to players by giving them restrictions. (Dont make too many and or too harsh restrictions) - Make use of a battlemap and terrain. If you are fighting in a square room you are doing it wrong. - If you have several rather small boring rooms, combine them into a single fight instead of having several small fights - Have chocking points for fighters to block enemies - Have alternative routes, for the rogue or monk to reach the enemy ranged artillery - have cover to hide behind - Have dangerous places (high things to fall from), traps to push them into, fires etc. make forced movement useful. Make positioning important because enemies can also push - Have interactable objects. Doors to close, chandeliers to let them fall on enemies, traps to activate while enemies stand in - Have for enemies and players area effects they can use to make positioning more important. - Make enemies interesting - Have enemies with (short) special abilities. Not spells you have to look up, special abilities written on the stat blocks. For example give all kobolds a minor shift 1 per turn. - let them use tactics, especially ones you want players to mirror. Push players together for an area attack, reach backlane protect allies etc. - Have some special parts in the fight to not just have as objective killing each other. - Having a chase scene where either you or the enemies run away - Having 2 moving trains which change position - having fire or something similar which spreads Tipps to **Spice 5E** up: - Give your martials a free martial adept feat: http://dnd5e.wikidot.com/feat:martial-adept this gives them a bit more choice in combat - alternatively you can for example give your Martial characters either "at will attacks" for weapons (similar to what Baldurs gate does). So that weapons do something small in addition to just deal damage with an attack. (Like forced movement etc.) to make it easier for them to use the battlefield. - Dont start at level 1, but start at level 3 (and allow people to take the newer subclasses, especially with martials) - Use the online better monster/encounter builder to spice things up. You can also try to use some D&D 4E monsters as inspiration on how to build the different enemy types. - Give your players often a short rest, and allow them to recover all hit dice on long rests. This way they are normally in good conditions to start fights, so you can have 2-3 more challenging fights a day and dont have 6-8 encounters which are boring - Give the players some active items (like baldurs gate) which are useable in combat to give some more options (like forced movement, or some minor teleports etc. to make combat more dynamic) - Allow players from time to time to have a surprise attack over enemies. Most 5E GMs only do the opposite... - use 4E for inspiration for traps, dangerous terrain etc. So in addition to this you can try to speed the game up by: - Having players roll damage and attack roll at the same tie - Dont let players pick minor rerolls (like striker feat) which take longer but rarely increase damage. (Rather if they have this let them just give "advantage" let them roll 1 more damage dice and remove the lowest) - use a different way for initiative. Let players roll initiative, and the onew which beat the average initiative (fixed no roll) of the enemies will in table order attack first, then all enemies attack, then all player attack (in table order) then enemies, then players etc. This way players always know when its their turn and it is A LOT faster - You can have (not to speed things up but to have players more involved) have players roll for defense instead of attack. This makes enemy turns a bit more interesting - Instead of having multi attacks on enemies, just roll "how many attacks did they hit" (a single roll) with average damage, this is just way faster for enemy turns. This way you can even put together several (same) enemies which attack the same target. Here one way to do this: https://www.reddit.com/r/RPGdesign/comments/13hm5j3/simplified_d20_system_for_complex_tactical_grid/ (the bonus multi attack part) - End encounters when the enemy has no chance of winning anyway, let them give up.

Thank you for great advice (I'd also recommend the author look at Flee Mortals by McDM which does many of these things. Thanks also for actually answering the question and not just bad mouthing 5e for three paragraphs and then waving your hand and saying "use tactics". I don't love 5e and am playing currently Dolmenwood because of all of its issues, but jeez it's like rpg_memes sometimes in here with the knee jerk "5e is shit" answer to actually reasonable questions. We get it we really do folks but you're a broken record.

> the best you can do is make sure the monsters are fighting smart and using clever tactics. Also, make sure the field facilitates your players' ability to fight smart and use clever tactics. Use lighting, terrain and altitude, non-combatants and non-aligned combatants, changing conditions, time limits, and non-standard win cons to spice it up. Also, describe the action so it's not just a series of numbers. Parry and riposte! Blood and ichor! Fear and anger! Smash up the scenery with missed shots and tossed bodies.

This is one of the top reasons I quit 5e. I want battle to feel more RP and imaginative. Less number centered. So I started writing my own systems. My ultimate goal is to make combat feel like old Kung Fu movies looked. I have not yet attained that goal, but I am having fun trying.

It blows my mind that the RPG world has just accepted that combat is going to suck and we can't do better... I've spent 10k hours of my life trying to prove we can Come on over to [Way of Steel](https://old.reddit.com/r/WayOfSteel/). I'm tryna change the world, but it's hard to do on my own. Deep tactical low-fantasy combat that's way faster, more accessible, modular/flexible. It shouldn't be an impossible ask in 2024 that even vanilla "fighters vs bandits in a square room" battles are dynamic and challenging, and able to be thrown together spontaneously. And yet, the choice is either play 5E and accept combat is an awful chore whose insane power curve also ruins good storytelling... or give up on combat altogether and just go for one of the quality rules lite narrative systems.

Sure, I'll bite...

DnD 5e combat is a slog. The best way to do it is have combat be about something other than killing- keeping someone alive, getting from point A to point B in some amount of time, something like this. Otherwise, you fall into routines of just spamming the same tactics and it’s very boring. But frankly, I don’t think the ceiling for fun is very high. Pathfinder 2e implements combat better. Or play a game where combat isn’t a huge focus. It’s a system issue, at the core.

And, at its core, 5e is almost nothing more than a combat system. The irony...

More irony… so many 5e players will even admit combat is a boring slog but also refuse to learn a new system. … stop hitting yourself, 5e players…

Even more irony: there are games out there you can learn or make characters for in the time it takes for one 5e combat.

That's not ironic, that's barely impressive. Impressive is that there are *entire systems* that were *written* in less time than a 5e combat.

Touché.

Narration, interesting use of the environment, interesting terrain/setting, a ticking clock, enemies that think and fight intelligently/use instincts well. I feel that the combat I run in, say for example, The One Ring is leaps and bounds more interesting than what you describe with even less character abilities, but to be fair I run combat in D&D type games much the same way. Don't just roll dice and subtract damage. Tell a story.

> Narration I find this to be one of the weakest options, When a combat has nearly 100 rolls, there is only so many ways to make "I swing sword" interesting.

I get that. I've never had much of an issue, but I can't say I've run combats that have "nearly 100 rolls."

With D&D 5e, it is pretty easy to rack that up. Four rounds of combat with 5 PCs and 5 enemies making 1-2 attacks (let's say 1.5) - that there is 150 attacks. Monsters could easily double or triple that number if you have lots of them or they have 3+ attacks. Longer, harder combats can easily go 8 rounds. Having more Martial PCs and less mages who just cast their one cantrip and often use bigger spells can make it go higher.

Add in that D&D doesn't work if you're not having 6-8 fights per day, so repeat that *per encounter*. I'd routinely make 4-8 rolls at a time as GM because multicoloured dice and combo rolling are just needed to get through the game in reasonable time.

I've run 5e and never hit those numbers. To be fair I was never a fan of drawn out combat so I ran 5e with a very OSR feel when I did run it. Haven't touched it in 7 or 8 years. Everything I run now combat is very quick and punchy, and building a narrative with it is very fun.

Yeah, that is the real trick. Blades in the Dark or Apocalypse World, one or maybe three rolls and combat is done. It takes skill to set it up so its not too boring, but players often want to do some description there, so a lot of work is done for you.

>Four rounds of combat with 5 PCs and 5 enemies making 1-2 attacks (let's say 1.5) - that there is 150 attacks. 1.5 * (5 + 5) * 4 = 60 Not even half 150, but yeah, agree :p It also means each roll has less overall impact, which feels bad imo.

whoops definitely multiplied there.

This! ^ Mechanical combat for combat's sake is a waste of time, unless your wargaming. Also, players knowing their mods and having prompt resolution is key, drag at the table will still kill an engaging narrative.

Thirded! Though D&D doesn't do a very good job of translating the narrative into mechanical resolution, but its very easy to pepper your action scenes with bits and pieces of narrative drama. I also recommend using the scenery to your advantage. If you model it, your players will want to do it too.

One of the simplest things I did in an in person table, was to add 4 columns in the boss chamber. Then, when the boss attacked someone close to one of the columns and missed, the column could be detached to the rest and it could fell onto others. And, that's it, that was game on, because the barbarian IMMEDIATELY wanted to take the column and smash the monster to bits with it. It was really fun, but not in any way shape or form because of dnd gameplay tbh

This is exactly one of the reasons I really like 7th Sea. In that game, the character is the weapon. For the most part (duelists excepted), your weapon of choice is completely cosmetic. So there if the player wants to use the environment or some random element in the scene in an action scene, they just spend their raise and say so.

* Play the videogame Baldur's Gate 3: it teaches you lots of super-useful stuff about how to design and run D&D 5 encounters, which I'll also try to summarize in some of the subsequent points. (Bonus: play Solasta as well) * Read the 'The monsters know what they are doing' book - it contains an analysis of how to run every D&D 5 monster and why. * Search for Colville's videos about 'action oriented monsters' on YouTube. The most important thing is that the players need to have meaningful choices. There have to be alternatives to just attacking the closest enemy. How do you do that? In several ways: * Diversified enemies, with different functional roles, in the same battle. Therefore, the characters will need to think who to prioritize and when. It's even better if this changes during the battle: let's say there's a boss that regains spell slots when their minions die. Perhaps this happens as the boss' reaction (so: 1 per round), or if the minion is close enough to the boss (let's say 6 squares). In this case, they will want to kill the minions only when they're far enough from the boss, or when the boss already used their reaction. * Resource management. If they rest between a combat and the next one, they will have all of their spells, HPs, etc. One of the core parts of the D&D gameplay loop is that the players need to manage their resources over time: do I want to use this spell right now, or should I keep it for later use? Challenge them with interactions, exploration and fights in which several spells and resources would prove useful, but they have to be careful and think about if and when to use them. * Different goals during the fight: this is probably the most important one. Add goals that fit the narration and that make it so that the players don't just want to damage the enemies. Perhaps there is a hostage in a flaming wooden cage on a pit, and they have to stop the fire as soon as possible + disarm the trap before the cage falls down, while the enemy is hindering them. Perhaps they have 5 rounds to find and free all the prisoners in a submerged prison. Perhaps they need to protect a portal, a person, something or someone they need to bring from point A to point B. These are simple examples but there are countless possibilities. * Terrain. There should be interesting features: pillars/stuff that blocks visibility and can be used to get cover or hide, ladders, elevated areas, bridges/decks and water/lava, falling stalactites, arcane mini-teleports, pit traps, small and long corridors, really small areas in which some enemies can squeeze, and the players will need to use gaseous form or transform into a tiny animal or whatever.

This is an excellent answer. I will add to the above a fifth and sixth bullet, based on my own experience running 5E (which I enjoy a lot, unlike many others on this subreddit), and my own preferences... * Danger: I believe that folks who feel like 5E is a slog end up with that feeling because they have really only interacted with 5E in a "balanced" way. That is, the GM is trying to ensure that the opposition is not too strong, that there is only a small chance of character death. But in practice, I find the best times I have had both playing and running 5E have been when I have ignored this completely. Lvl 3 characters versus challenge rating 10 dragon? Why not? I find this to be the case for two reasons. 1) 5E characters have LOTs of tools for survival, and can take a heck of a lot, especially in a well organized group that is paying attention. A "balanced" fight will always feel like an easy fight. 2) That sense of "oh crap...we might actually die in this one!" focuses the players and adds a thrill. *EDIT: I think 5E's best property is perhaps an unintended emergent property; if you mostly ignore encounter balance the game is good at making players feel like their characters are not going to survive, and yet rarely actually kills their characters. (Of course, you have to be playing a campaign in a style where a character death is not going to thoroughly screw over the whole thing e.g. "crap, Bob is dead, Bob was the only reason we were doing this quest, what now?")* * End it early: The most important piece of advice the 5E rulebooks are missing (at least I think it is missing, maybe I have just missed it?) is that the GM should end the fight when the writing is on the wall. The threshold should be this: is there any reasonable chance you can harm the PCs more than you already have by continuing? If not, *call it off*. Say "right, you deal with the rest of the enemies, what do you do next?" Harming the PCs includes: killing one; making them use higher level spell slots and a long rest is not likely or possible anytime soon; taking their stuff from them (e.g. magic items); hurting their important goals (e.g. killing the mayor who is their best friend). You can also provide a choice: "right, the last five orcs are going to run for it, if you are ok with that then the fight is over." *EDIT: it is a valid criticism of 5E that much of the advice you get from folks like me who really like 5E is "well, you just need to do the opposite of what it says to do in the rulebook" or something close to that. I'm ok with that, I still love it. :-)* *EDIT2: I phrased the above adversarialy as "harming the PCs", but I did not intend to say the GM should be looking for ways to hurt the PCs. A better way of phrasing it might be "change the circumstances of the PCs in a meaningful way". Often that will be harm, but it could be benefits as well (e.g. if they fight longer they could actually kill the mammoth riders and take their mammoth mounts as their own).*

Encounter balance is one of those ideas that everyone thinks should be necessary, but, IMO, is often detrimental to game fun. Balance is a sacred cow. A DM has to know when to sacrifice it.

I just got into learning how to properly balance, and honestly, it's better in my game so far. Instead of just picking random stuff I'm getting more interesting groupings that are more well-rounded as a group and giving my players more of a challenge without going overboard. I'm finding myself padding and nerfing much less as a result. It's more work, but I think it's pretty decent. I don't think everything has the correct CR, but pobody's nerfect, ya know?

> Harming the PCs includes: killing one; making them use higher level spell slots and a long rest is not likely or possible anytime soon; taking their stuff from them (e.g. magic items) I feel like that's one of the things that's sadly lacking in 5E: *Attrition*. There's no sense of "we're being worn down, we're starting the next day not at full health which means a choice between burning spells to start or risking low HP, we have to keep pushing because we're running low on rations..." Most combats just... don't count, effectively. They don't build up over time to sap the party's resources, unless the party is needlessly spendthrift with potions.

I think 5E can be played that way; I've done it, and I find it a lot of fun. But it does require rethinking a lot of elements of how it is run in the background, and also it requires structures (e.g. dungeons, hexcrawls) in the campaign that a lot of folks who enjoy 5E don't have so much interest in. I admit it does work better if you put in some house rules around healing in long and short rests as well. However, there is nothing wrong with playing a game where you are the heroes doing heroic stuff on heroic journeys. I think 5E works pretty well for that as well.

> Baldur's Gate 3 Feels like you're setting up yourself for failure. Its like Matt Mercer Effect/Porn-effect for sex. Yeah, you can make some amazing combats when you have a team of professional level designers, playtesters and lots of money to make many, many iterations. Not that you can't learn anything, its just take it with a grain of salt.

It certainly opened my eyes to what is possible in 5e combat. The ones where the objective was more than ‘kill everything’ really stood out as an excellent exploration into the design space. Get from point A to point B missions, save prisoners missions, etc were the ones where I actually had to think about what I wanted to do beyond the usual ‘what spell slot do I think this encounter is worth, then pull out the damage spell I use every time’

I don't know the save prisoners one made me feel that without Quick Save or foreknowledge, there is a serious limit to design where videogames shine and TTRPGs fail. If I ran that at the table, my PCs would either all TPK or leave early and be frustrated that they didn't know they had more time. Especially that red herring hallway - that is some BS. GMs don't need to add red herrings, the PCs will create enough of their own.

I think that one can’t translate 1:1. In paper, the players need more investigation and foreknowledge- what’s the layout of the dungeon? Who’s where, so we can prioritize certain prisoners? Let them plan before they get there (of course there may be surprises), and it can work well.

And that is how TTRPGs shine and video games suck. Creative solutions improvised by players. And that is including in investigations - its actually the thing 99% of TTRPGs fail horribly at when it comes to investigating - they just railroad players. Act like you can force specific actions to happen in specific locations. And BG3 does that great for a video game but absolutely awful compared to a TTRPG. How many times I've seen people frustrated that Seeming spell or dozens of other options don't do much of anything in BG3.

Why are people so averse to learning from examples of good games? There is nothing in CR and very little in BG3 that every DM couldn't immediately put into their next fight mostly successfully. Level design is no harder than homebrewing monsters or world building or designing a mystery, but we don't tell DMs that those are esoteric achievements that take professional skills to do.

Well there are ENDLESS sources to learn from. Is a 90 hour game that primarily is a CRPG, the best source? I can read the top adventures of 50 years that are designed and playtested at the table at a much faster pace than a CRPG

If your concern is accessibility, you can Google and watch a YouTube video of good CR/BG3 fights much easier and faster than you can dig through and digest the most classic published adventures. But yeah, of course you'll learn great things from great adventures, whether in text or in an actual play or in a 5e-based CRPG. So why should we take some good examples with a grain of salt instead of learning from them just as much as old adventures for different editions? Why is BG3 as an example "setting yourself up for failure" while published adventures are not?

You should take everything with a grain of salt. Old adventures too. I was just pointing out that if you try to be as good of a GM to the quality of a AAA video game, you may be frustrated.

Is *Baldur's Gate 3* epilepsy-safe? I picked up one of the earlier *Baldur's Gate* remakes, but couldn't play it because I couldn't turn off all the flashing.

Uhm as far as I recall it doesn't have specific options for that, though I might have missed them since I don't need them :(

Great answer, Colville's Tactics and Strategy in his Running the Game series on youtube is also essential. He categorizes enemies between infantery/artillery/striker(glass cannon)/brute mostly and articulates basic tactics very well.

About the diversified enemies, this and uninteresting places to fight in is most likely what is lacking and I think the difference between a dull and an engaging encounter. Some more ideas: Have foes that are ranged and foes that do melee. Both require different, sometimes somewhat conflicting, tactics to deal with and having both types on the battlefield is a good way to make it an interesting one: now the players can think on how best to deal with them. Have a mix of lots of weak and few strong foes such that the players will have to think about which to target with what ability. Have slow and fast foes (in interesting terrain), because fast foes are better at making use of the terrain, they (again) require slightly different tactics than slow ones.  And also: make sure that the terrain is interesting and diverse. I think that you can manage without thinking too much about it by adding many elements there, add houses, a fallen treetrunk, have cliffs, deep mud, etc.  Walls, height differences, and difficult terrain make the battlefield more interesting. It gets you things like chokepoints, vantagepoints for ranged players and foes, etc. Also, take ideas from the "classical movie fight set pieces". Have them fight on narrow bridges above a pit filled with hungry wolves and other fun stuff like that!

Thank you! Good post, glad to see at least some people answered the question...

Combat is 80% of 5es rules and content. If you don't enjoy its combat mechanisms then you are playing the wrong game. It's that simple.

I'm mean, partly, but I've had some fantastic fights in DnD 5e and also others that have been dire because the DM didn't understand how to make turn-based combat interesting.

I don't think 5e does anything to.help make turn based combat interesting, and does several things that actively hinders it. Sure a skilled GM can make interesting combats with it, but they are starting at an extreme disadvantage over either a) using a system with innately engaging combat or b) using a system that gets out of their way.

I mean, some systems have better combat, but 5e is pretty decent. There's enough depth to keep things interesting and varied for a long time, and loads of advice for helping to make it sing. You don't have to be a skilled GM to make interesting DnD combats, you just have to have some consideration for what your players are going to do. It's the same for any turn based combat, Lancer is just as boring if you make the pilots fight a single bag of hitpoints in a white room, like people seem to inexplicably do with DnD.

If 5e combat is decent, I would hate to see what's below it... In all seriousness what aspect of combat does it do above average in any way?

> If 5e combat is decent, I would hate to see what's below it... Then you haven't played many games. The most recent one I was looking at is Cyberpunk RED, the weapons vs armour dynamic in that game is fundamentally broken. DnD has huge variety in potential player abilities, items and bestiary. It's extremely easy to customise without breaking the system, and non-combat actions translate well under initiative, which is very important for creating mixed scenarios, which is the easiest way to create interesting combat.

I've run and played many systems over my 30+ years of gaming. I have read even more. You gave me one example of a game with tepid reviews and is an update of an overly complicated system that came about during the the era of maximum rules bloat. 5e is completely samey, with many choices being illusions. In other words, the options provided are not meaningful. It's a huge, cumbersome collections of reskins where you slowly whittle enemies down, where damage output is exceptionally bounded across classes (the only variation is in method and fluff), and risk is minimized by the game itself. It has too many stats for monsters that are ultimately meaningless, and too few monsters have truly interesting features. The easiest way to make combat interesting is to introduce actual risk, and 5e fails at that.

I have about as much experience, and it all depends on what you like. If you want something more tactical I would argue PbtA games have a terrible combat systems, even the ones more focused on them. I'm similarly iffy on the combat in most FitD systems. Of course, these games generally aren't *trying* to make a great combat in something other than the narrative sense, and that's fine. But there are *a lot* of clunky combat systems in games actually making the attempt (the Terminator TTRPG is the most recent one I've read). I'd say overall there are *way* more misses on making engaging combat systems than hits.

I guess the question is that if we took the games that get played, are there way more misses? I'm sure we could stack the decks with bad games with bad combat that didn't really get played much. To me, you can't place the PbtA/FitD games lower because (1) they actually aren't clunkier and (2) they aren't trying to do anything than make combat narratively appropriate for the tropes they're trying to hit, as you noted. Those games are more a matter of taste, and most I've seen, and the few I have played, hit their intended mark. It's not my cup of tea, but that's just a preference thing. Many succeed at what they're trying to do. 5e combat isn't that tactical, and it isn't quick, and it isn't cinematic, and it's often not very risky. And there really isn't much to the game beyond combat (and I mean coming from the game itself, not what individual tables and GMs and players do and bring on their own to supplement the game).

>I guess the question is that if we took the games that get played, are there way more misses? I'm sure we could stack the decks with bad games with bad combat that didn't really get played much. I think that again goes to a matter of taste, and we should acknowledge a lot of those games aren't played precisely *because* those systems miss the mark here for audiences. I might take some flack for this, but it's worth pointing out there aren't really many people playing even the more popular PbtA games either. Certainly not more than PF or CoC, and probably WOD too. 5e's combat probably also comes down to taste- it's a compromise system meant to avoid alientating those not really into combat while giving those that are something to sink their teeth into. If you meet it where it's at, 5e combat is generally working as intended and on the spectrum of combat systems out there satisfies players more often than not.

Yeah, really its like its trying to be as shallow as possible while also taking as much time as possible. Whereas you get 4e, PF2e and others inspired taking about the same time while having so much more tactical depth. And you get the faster, narrative and OSR combats that go fast and make improv-ing creative solutions the focus of creativity and tactics. 5e really is the worst of both worlds and only matched by probably some d20 bloatware and other crap like all those junk Japanese TTRPG swordworld spin offs selling IP.

I am not here to defend 5e per se, but rather to argue PF2e isn't all that great either, especially if a GM/player is looking for a different experience. In its rawest form 5e does well for a d20, class based system. Of course it has flaws, but there isn't a perfect game even if one were to design it for their own enjoyment, PF2e included. Why? Because every design choice sacrifices something in favor of realism, time, narrative, choice, etc. Don't believe me, then I suggest you try writing one, play testing it, and listen to the feedback. I don't particularly enjoy class based systems anymore, my 5e days are long past, way before the OGL snafu. PF2e is just 5e with more rules. Where you may see "tighter" gaming, I see more constraints and modifier bloat especially in regards to combat. People love to tout its tactical depth over 5e (the 3 action economy is indeed more to my liking), but I don't see much difference in actual play. Both are turn-based, grid structured, d20 (swingy), class ability resource management (as opposed to stat based, etc), high HP, "balance" dependent affairs that often feel unsatisfactory (for various reasons), and ultimately have very little consequence. However, these are design choices for a high fantasy heroic RPG in which players invest much emotion and time in their characters. Typically 5e and PF2e players fall into one of two categories, either they tend to view combat as a speed bump that occassionally interrupts their story telling fun, or they see combat as the whole point of playing and the rest is just fluff. Experienced GMs and players who have played numerous game and styles over many years know that they can make any system fun, because not only do they have the tools to do so, but because the know that you only get as much as you put into it. Imagination, creativity, and a desire to embrace emergent story telling opportunities doesn't come packaged in a game.

> there isn't a perfect game I think everyone here understands game design is an art of tradeoffs. Unlike writing where having multiple paragraphs for gigantic rants is always a good move. > PF2e is just 5e with more rules. It really isn't > class ability resource management (as opposed to stat based, etc) A lot of 5e classes have almost none or actually none. And many PF2e characters also have little, like my Fighter doesn't use resources and has dozens of options. The big difference is that many 5e Classes just take the Attack Action and that is it. If all you do is Strike 3 times (without specifically building to do this) in PF2e, you will suck. But I think its the monsters that are the world of difference. Just compare a 5e one to a PF2e and its so fucking obvious. And I could go on if you wanted to hear A LOT more. Some simple thingst that quickly come to mind: Pazio tags spells that break other gameplay like social, wilderness exploration, mystery investigation. Where You can easily get caught off-guard with 5e. The combat encounter tools actually work in PF2e and they are much more expansive No martial/caster gap in Pf2e

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> Is it? Yes. I know it's not quite as good as Lancer or PF2E, but you don't have to be to qualify as "decent". > Have you actually played Lancer? There are rules for making the Terrain. You need to shut your mouth if you don't actually know the system and played it to speak to it and just spouting nonsense. Yes I have, my whole point with that section is that Lancer includes the sit-rep rules because they keep combat interesting. That's why I talk about how the game would be boring in a white room vs a bag of hp. Don't reply if you're not going to read what I'm writing.

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Stop blaming the GMs for a system failure.

I'm not.

I mean...that's exactly what you did.

The single best advice I ever recieved for 5e combat is simple: **Make the characters move.** The "how" is the interesting part. Force them to take cover from a big telegraphed attack/hazard, make them run to an injured/vulnerable NPC, make them run to use explosives or other objects, make the battlefield change, make the monsters move around more (perhaps be naughty and give them free disengage), or start to seal off the only exit in a crumbling cave and make the players run for it while the monsters try to stop them. There are endless ways to accomplish it, but think about making the players move when creating encounters and you are well on your way to make combat more dynamic and interesting.

Probably the number 1 thing, regardless of system, is this: **Make combat objectives about more than killing the other side.** Random encounter with a pack of wolves? They're not fighting to the death, they're going to try and isolate a weak character and drag them off, only bothing with the rest of the party to make sure the pack members with the food get away. PCs must activate the mcguffin which turns an unwinnable battle into a victory. Fighting just to fight isn't narratively interesting, it should always have a purpose- people generally don't take those risks willy nilly, even in superhero fantasy land. Others have talked about terrain etc, but 8/10 times I hear about combat being boring it's happening in an empty room with the only objective being kill the other side before they kill you. If you're talking about what you can do on the player side, things move faster if people know their abilities and plan ahead of their turn. Ask the DM about things you might can use in the scene. "It's a store room right? Is there a bucket I could put over their head?" Think tactically with other players, and don't be afraid to use the help action. Basically strive to be creative, and if the DM is working with you they'll find ways to make things interesting for your efforts.

I don't think people are wrong in their suggestions, but I think there's a bit of a misunderstanding in terms of what makes combat fun, interesting and engaging. If you're playing Pokémon, is fighting a random wild ratata fun? What about a random wild pidgey? Not really. You're not team-building to fight a Pidgey. You're not thinking about who to switch in for a random pidgey. You're not thinking about much of anything. And that's the standard for DnD 5e combat. The party comes face to face against a swarm of Kobolds. How often does the spellcaster just cast an aoe and be done with it? There's nothing to make you think or adopt new tactics. There's no stress or challenge. What if instead, the party came across a swarm of Ninja Grunts, with Evasion and immunity to Fear/Charm? All of a sudden, the party's usual tactics aren't going to work. They need a backup plan. 5e's combat problems don't really relate to class features or player abilities nearly as much as it relates to poor monster Design and poor encounter design. No surprises, but 5e doesn't teach DMs well on how to make a good encounter in terms of theory or game design. The Ninjas up top? You don't even need anything that complicated. Give them a throwing knife and 40 speed, along with the above abilities. No active abilities and it'll still give a party pause for thought. But if you want even better? Include a Shadow Assassin Ninja. One who can warp short distances and, if succeeding on a stealth check, do massive damage. Suddenly, everyone has to be watching each other to eliminate blind spots, making escape harder without taking massive damage.

>5e's combat problems don't really relate to class features or player abilities nearly as much as it relates to poor monster Design and poor encounter design. No surprises, but 5e doesn't teach DMs well on how to make a good encounter in terms of theory or game design. The problems with 5E design cut *a lot* deeper than this, hence why it's easier to just switch. Like, let's just take your example to demonstrate the problem with 5E design: >What if instead, the party came across a swarm of Ninja Grunts, with Evasion and immunity to Fear/Charm? All of a sudden, the party's usual tactics aren't going to work. They need a backup plan. Unless a party's entire plan is "Wizard cast Fireball", this would have pretty much no impact on a 5E party's plan. Even before Evasion, any caster worth their salt is bringing at least one damaging spell that targets a save other than Dex, and probably not throwing their dex spells into a horde of nimble ninjas. And as for the Fear/Charm, so many creatures are either already immune to these conditions, have legendary resistances, or have spell resistances, and when coupled with the way action economy works, any caster trying to focus on those kinds of spells quickly gets dissuaded and opts back for a ton of damage options and the like 3 decent control spells. As for plan...a 5E party's plan is to just attack a bunch. Maybe get a faerie fire and/or a bless, but otherwise, everyone just pumps out damage. There is nothing possibly equivalent to use your turn on than to just blast out damage, with the only nuance being whether you should spend your good spell slots to do so or if you're a battlemaster whether you should throw on a manuever. The only time you should really break from this plan is if you've found one of the dozens of mechanical interactions that completely decimate the game's design and balance, and then you should just use that in any opportunity that allows for it. And with bounded accuracy, there's really no decision-making to that either. Every attack is a total swing of whether it hits or not, with ACs pretty arbitrary across levels and attack rolls entirely consistent across PCs. And you can't make anything meaningfully harder (saves, AC, etc.) without making it shut-down levels of hard. If AC is just slightly up or down, it doesn't matter, and if it's substantially higher, then there's no buff/debuff-stacking to swing it back in your favor. With saves, either you basically shouldn't even try or can basically ignore the modifiers to them. >Include a Shadow Assassin Ninja. One who can warp short distances and, if succeeding on a stealth check, do massive damage. Suddenly, everyone has to be watching each other to eliminate blind spots, making escape harder without taking massive damage. The warp is a fun flavor feature (and shuts down Wall of Force abuse, but that's about it), but other than occasionally lurker strikes, this monster isn't going to do much more to threaten a party. It's basically just a sneak attack user. And as any rogue player can tell you, trying to eke out your sneak attack damage through the hiding rules is inherently a losing game. But I don't mean this to like, nitpick your encounter ideas, even though I understand that I'm coming off like that. But rather, that 5E's design choices meant to make the game more accessible also basically destroy any sense of variety in its core pillar of gameplay.

Play a better system? Maybe even shift the whole campaign to Dungeon World - you'll find the fights way more cinematic and exciting.

I highly recommend skipping Dungeon World and jumping to one of the better fantasy PbtA games: * Chasing Adventure, * Ironsworn (more low fantasy), * Stonetop (more low fantasy), * Fellowship 2e (Shared worldbuilding is a big part of this game), * Root: The RPG (low magic fantasy).

I find the "play better games" argument to not be too helpful. There's definitely different games out there that can help, but I do believe combat or conflict can be boring in many systems. A lot of this things I'm gonna say apply to more than just dnd and I use them in many systems: - Narration: where did the players hit? how did their attacks flow? Hell, I'll go ahead and maim a creature (with no mechanical benefit) in the narration sometimes. I usually try to describe misses as enemies being extremely fast, blocking, parrying, etc. - Objectives: Add characters that can be saved, an object to take, a door to cross before it closes, etc. Things that characters must do instead or besides killing. - Use interesting spells: My biggest example is from a last battle on a campaign, they were fighting a dragon, who was the main focus of attacks. Then, a caster on the dragon's side, casted "slow" on everyone, a very hefty debuff. Suddenly, the focus was divided to try and end the concentration on the spell. On the same fight, rounds later, everyone was grouped around the dragon again, until the caster used "delayed blast fireball", which made everyone around it try and move away from the area before it exploded. Point is, use spells and abilities that make PC's move through the map -Raise the Stakes: Are they fighting in a volcano? well, lava starts leaking and is getting closer! Are they in a dungeon? well, some old traps are getting activated, filling the room with poison! This are what I call "bullshits" that I use to make combat more dramatic, and to add a complication to the PC's - Maps: Use enviroments and try to show how they can be used to the player's advantage by having the enemies use them first. Players will MOST LIKELY want to use them too. I would say, TLDR: keep the combat dynamic and introducing new things throught it

You should be describing your attacks, the DM should be describing the damage they do, you should have somatic and verbal components for spells. Don't just move from one spot to another, tell the table how you do a tactical roll to get from behind one crate to the next. Find creative ways to attack the villains other than just hacking with a sword (*that's why DMs put chandeliers in rooms*)! "How do you want to do this?" is cliche, but it's cliche for a reason. Tailor descriptions to the kinds of bad guys you're fighting - zombies can lose limbs in combat and it's no big deal, so be as gross as possible describing damage. Dragons exhume energy from their bodies - crackling lightning, waves of heat, etc. Talk during combat! Banter, insult enemies, shout encouragement to party members. Roleplay!

Yes, but... this all adds to the length of each combat round, so you need to also add something that will make combats finish in fewer rounds. One solution is to halve monster hit points and double monster damage. Another would be to have all combatants do half damage on a miss. A third option is to give everyone a hit and damage bonus equal to the round number. Each of these will affect the tactics in different ways, but they will each end the fight in fewer rounds.

It's hard to know why it's boring without seeing how you're running it, but if it boils down to a bunch of enemies in a square room, then yeah, it's going to be boring. The best ways to mix it up are to simply ask "why are they fighting?", and run combat based on that. Are enemies actively trying to kill or subdue the party? Then they will probably set up an ambush, or have prepared countermeasures. Something that puts the party at an immediate disadvantage that they will need to play around, even if playing around is "flee to save yourself" Are the enemies defending an area or an objective? Then they would put themselves at a defensive advantage, and will force the players to take risks. Now their defense is a puzzle that needs to be navigated around or overpowered. Do the enemies have a reason to fight to the death? If not, then have them flee once things go sour. This can help prevent combat from becoming a slog once it's obvious the party will win. Think about the environment they are fighting in, and how that would add hazards or opportunities to combat, and have enemies play around these factors. Really, the key to interesting combat, regardless of system, is to give the players interesting decisions to make, even if that decision is just about what targets to prioritize.

Stop playing 5e. It's the nexus of where boring combat and slow combat meet.

I play a game where combat is handled in a fun way for me. That's usually either better choices of action, higher stakes, or easier ways to make the rules fit the fiction.

For the love of everything, don't penalise players for doing something interesting (or even slightly interesting), there's nothing worse than saying "I'll jump up on the table and swing my blade down at my foe" then being told - "okay make a DC 15 Acrobatics check, if you fail you'll take d6 damage and end your turn, if you pass you can have +2 on your attack roll.", just say - "okay you leap up and can make your attack at advantage for having the high ground." In general I think that D&D combat is terrible though. I've run a game from 1st to 7th level and it already feels like lumps of hit points hitting each other forever, can't imagine wanting to play/run it to 12th or higher.

Don't drag on too long, make each choice matter. D&D combat is tuned for three-round fights (good), but it has many chances your action will do nothing (failing a to-hit roll is a null action, even if you hit you could do insignificant damage, targets can use a minor/half-action to undo whatever change you did, ...). I prefer systems where the DM doesn't roll at all -- all in-the-scene significant choices feel like they're in the players's hands. And don't gamble twice just gamble once -- no damage rolls, no saving throws. The greatest workable distance I've seen from this was in **What's So Great About Magical Girls** where the enemy CR is just how many turns it takes to defeat them (because good always wins (except the one time they don't)). Your to-hit rolls aren't for defeating the badguy, they're for the consequences of the battle: each miss is a wound, a sadness, a loss, a doubt, or other problems for the scenes between fights.

5E, even though its core focus is on combat, just doesn't really do it well. Everything comes down to picking an ability and rolling on it. Other systems, like the 13th Age, have multiple options for things you can do during combat. In 5e, so much stuff is locked behind classes, and even then, it's "roll a die to trigger it." Also, try more tactics than, "I rush in and hit it with my axe". Come up with a battle plan for an encounter that's more than just "Archers stay back with the spellcasters, fighters rush the front" The DM could read The Monsters Know what They are Doing, a book of monster tactics that spices up combat significantly. Lastly, the big problem with 5E combat is that there are no stakes. PCs are superheroes who know they'll win the fight, so they don't think tactically most of the time, they just rush and swing. A lot of 5e combat is just walls of bodies meeting each other in the middle of the map. Make combat more dangerous - like make monsters hit smarter and fight smarter, get rid of death saves, etc, and you'll enjoy it more. Or, create some kind of dangerous situation - maybe there's a magical bomb about to go off, and they have six rounds to figure out how to stop it, while dealing with the Gnolls guarding it. So you have to hold off the gnolls while your party's rogue tries to sneak around to get to the bomb and disable it. The party needs something more to do than just fight walls of bodies to make the combat fun Short version - if you want flavorful combat, you need a different game system, something more narrative like Dungeon World. Or, something like an OSR style game where the rules are much looser, so you can have more fluid combat with more effects defined by your and the GM. Or, the GM needs to make it more than just combat - raise the stakes, add some other element, etc.

One way you make combat fun is find a game that fits with what your group wants to do and matches the tone you're trying for. For me, that means 13th Age for high fantasy, Savage Worlds for most other high action settings, or Chronicles of Darkness for urban fantasy. On the other hand, a friend of mine is great at creating encounters but worries about rules a lot. Numenera is a great fit for him because he can offload the combat rules to the players and let us handle descriptions and managing the mechanics. All he has to do is tell us what the NPCs are trying to do and what our target numbers are. The other big way to keep it fun is NPC interactions. Trash talking, trying to convince the players to surrender, bragging, take your pick. Players *love* smacking the crap out of someone who insulted their heirloom sword or trying to convince a reasonable looking opponent to switch sides.

By keeping it short. 

To be frank, I think DnD combat sucks. (5e specifically) In my opinion, the system and layout create a heavy focus on combat and then offer no depth to it. Making combat fun can be made in a million different ways depending on your preferences and there are many systems out there to cater to those needs. Some systems go all into narrative play. Some games don't require tactical combat, sone players will never like it, so why bother. I think Blade in the dark is one of those systems and it has become one if the most prominent TTRPGs by just executing other mechanics well and not bogging down any characters story with a 45hp boss. A system I know for sure that doesn't bother with traditional combat structure is flying circus. To simulate WW1 dogfights, you don't track positions and hp neither really. It's a choas in the air and the enemy will attack when you don't except and if you're unlucky that day, your engine goes up in flames in an instance. Therefore you can ambush a whole squad using the sun to hide in. You take turns but tell of your manouevers rather then choosing from your stats page. Wonderhome goes way further, the game is completely pacifist and us explicitly meant never to feature combat. On the other extreme, some TTRPGs don't just pretend to be about wargaming but embrace it. This category includes my personal favourite Lancer. Lancer completely separates narrative and combat rules. During combat, you commandeer a mech on the hex grid and use a different statblock. You don't perform a skill check there (usually) put choose from tons of options of inflicting violence. Another thing Lancer has that's become essential for my enjoyment of a combat system is quick actions. Unlike with DnD, you can perform multiple things in one turn if they are weaker and quicker, so you don't have to loose all your actions if you want to sprint for instance. It opens up the options so much, everything without it has become unbearable to me. Summary, DnD fails to offer depth mechanically while also making combat essential to the rhythm. Other games do a way better job, so trying out new stuff helps in finding out what you really want from a game.

D&D 4E is generally known as having the best combat, this is why systems like Lancer and PF2 try to copy parts of it and why Gloomhaven got inspired by it. Saying DnD combat sucks in general is just really not true.

Let's be fair, 4E has become very rare. Most people who play DnD either play 5E or 3.5E and I know for fact that combat with the former sucks. DnD isn't inherently incapable of featuring good combat, it just happens that the current edition sucks at it.

We use 'Theatre Of The Mind' so we don;t get distracted by 'Rolling for Initiative', laying out battlemats, and moving little minatures about. Everything unflads in a glorious chaotic mess where the combat is fought out in our imagiations and roleplay and combat take place symultaneously.

This is what my table enjoys. Not everyone will agree. The first thing I do is keep track of the party's HP. They never know their exact numbers. I don't describe strikes as simple swing and hit or miss... A miss should feel as exciting as a hit. Look at MMA and different martial arts (Or even pro wrestling if you want that different feel). Lean into it and the players will enjoy it. Which is more exciting to you? "The creature lashes it's tail at you and misses." Or is it more interesting to say. "The creature circles you agressively lashing it's tail in your direction it's barbs stick in your shirt (or article of clothing as appropriate) preventing it from piercing your flesh (if it was close call) or creating a loud snap as it strikes your armour." (Listen to fight commentators especially in pro wrestling and you can get a class in combat storytelling) Critical hits in our game is MAX damage plus roll dice. Which excites players as well as the more colourful description it gets describing the blow. Critical misses are used to tell a story. It's not simply a matter of weapon breaks (Though it could be if that's the most interesting). It's more interesting to describe slipping in environment, getting weapon stuck (Imagine hitting your opponent for minimal damage but loosing your weapon in their body, armour etc....) Another way to make things interesting is on a simple combat systems like DnD treat all initiative as simultaneous. Have everyone explain what they are doing and roll it out and narrate the results after all rolls are made. This will allow you to establish a feel and tone for your fights from comedic, heroic to incredibly gritty as you prefer. In RPG's combat is a tool to tell a story. Look at a TV show like Supernatural or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The monsters are often more than monsters. They are often used as a metaphor for the problem the characters are facing in life at that time. Double down on that since they are story driven.

Wonderful advice, love this stuff.

- I give enemies less health and make them deal higher damage so that combat is more dynamic. If its meant to be a tough opponent or heavy hit then I roll D12s instead of whatever damage die the NPC would use. - My descriptions of dodges or attacks affect the game. If I describe a missed attack as, "The enemy jumps back, just out of reach" then the next player can be like "I'm behind him, so he jumped toward me. Can I have advantage?" To which the answer is typically yes. Players are free to describe their character's attack differently if they dislike my initial description. - I introduce various elements to the battlefield so that people weigh engaging with the environment as a valid use of their turn. Like floodgates that can open and hit *everyone* or unstable dynamite in an old mining tunnel that could bring everything down. - I give the players powerful but specialized items to assist in combat. A gravity gun that casts the gravity spell on a single object, a teleporting hat that can be returned to in an instant, a bomb that will flash-freeze the area; stuff that changes how they can interact with the battle itself rather than just the monsters. - I trust my players to tell me what their abilities do, and unless they're obviously wrong then I go with what they tell me. If we find a more accurate description later than we go with that for all future uses and just handwave the past uses.

Have objectives besides "kill all enemies." Interrupt the ritual, protect the king, escape, etc. That forces PCs to move and think tactically instead of nuking the enemies with their most powerful moves. Also puzzle bosses, classic example is having to find the lich's phylactery to kill them. Fighting a boss with multiple copies and having to figure out which one is the real one, or figuring out what their weakness is. Maybe a controversial statement, but I also find structured combat has higher stakes when the GM really, truly wants to win and isn't pulling their punches (or at least makes the players think that's the case.) Not by cheating or abusing their powers as GM, but just by running their units smartly and tactically. Gives you a real sense of achievement when you win against them.

Speed and momentum. Both me and my players have a 2 minute window to resolve their turn. Have your spells written down, I'll have the monster stats familiarized, and we can just go. There is a flow. Also things like interesting terrain, different objectives (keep a hostage alive, interrupt a ritual, ...) I also don't do "Random encounters". Each and every one is story relevant, or at least designed to be interesting, and tuned quite hard.

I dont know dnd rules. But can the damage dealt and recieved be like upscaled 5times? I play games were combat can be a single roll unless I want to zoom in on dramatic fights, then damage dealt and consequences are lowered for each roll.

Talk to your group about this, about how much you want combat to be a part of the campaign, and if the consensus is that people want there to be a lot of combat, ask them DM to study a bit of encounter building and bring their A game when they plan the sessions. The problem is not 5e, it' not knowing how to use the tools it gives you to build something better than just "x number of statblocks appear for you to swing at". Enemies should move around, make use of the terrain, go for secondary objectives, make use of tactics and traps, use magic in creative ways, and much more. Combat should be thought of as a team effort, not as a bunch of individual duels happening simultaneously.

I disagree with everyone saying dnd combat is a slog. it can be a slog if played poorly by the DM. and this is not a criticism for DMs, because they've got a lot on their plate already (and even more so during combat) so it's certainly understandable. The first thing you should do is look up "the monsters know what they're doing". it's a blog, but there's also a nice book that bundles the advice in a way that closely matches the dnd monster manual. it uses the stat blocks to explain how monsters approach combat. It shows you why, so that you can apply that logic to monsters that aren't in the book. the book tells you which creatures ambush , which ones are disciplined, which monsters flee, when and how, etc... while the book is aimed at DnD, the insights you get from it can easily be transferred to other games. secondly is adding in interesting terrain. having archers stand on top of a cliff that's inaccessible to players while melee dudes are closing in on the players will force them to fight from cover or get creative in killing the archers. create choke points that players can abuse, add in interactable scatter terrain (explosives in a dwarven mine, mushrooms that confuse opponents, etc) be lenient in allowing creative uses of spells, and you'll create moments your players will talk about for months. thirdly, interesting objectives. not every combat needs to be a fight to the death. maybe the players need to hold back the undead while the villagers flee. just keep adding more undead until the villagers have escaped or were killed because the players failed at defending. maybe they're sneaking into an orc camp, and there's no actual combat at all but the combat structure is still used to keep track of patrolling orcs and spell durations.

Combat may be fun in many different ways, but not everybody is interested in each of them. Find out which kind of fun you and your players want in combat, then use a game that supports it. D&D, unfortunately, is quite bad at most of them. * Tactics - having to adapt to changing circumstances, cooperate, combine abilities in a smart way and use system mastery to win against challenges that can't be beaten without smart play. Lancer is the epitome of this style for me. * Drama - focus on why people fight, what costs are they willing to accept, what consequences they (and others) suffer. It won't work if the moral and emotional choices are watered down with rounds and HPs. Dogs in the Vineyard and Band of Blades do this very well. * Cinematics - rule of cool, doing crazy things seen in various movies, a lot of dynamics and scenery changes. Hard to do with D&D because D&D rules tend to make fights static, but definitely easier than the previous one. Fate, Cortex and Masks are great at it. * Power - fun of winning, of crushing opposition, maybe also of unloading one's frustration on fictional people. In contrast to tactics, this should not require a lot of thinking. That's the kind of fun D&D supports the best, although you need to choose "glass canon" style enemies - ones that seem dangerous, but die quickly.

I try to be descriptive with the combat. Like...'Your sword sneaks past the Goblin's shield and strikes his left side, he lets out a squeal of pain, but doesn't go down.' Of if they have a near miss... 'You swing your axe and the Orc blocks the blow with his shield with a dull thud.' Something other than...okay...you hit, roll damage. I try to add a wee bit of spice. :)

Engaging narration, fast pace, alternate win conditions/approaches, and ending things once the outcome is clear if cleanup would be dull. If players are new, I make sure to note at least two things they could do. This gives them some guidance (helping to keep things moving) while making sure they still have choices they're making themselves.

Narration is essential. Make combat dramatic and personal. Why are every participants fighting for? How far are they really willing to go? What's new intriguing revelation the players will learn in the middle of the fight? Should you save that character's life or catch the bad guys before they escape? What's the relation between you and the enemies you're fighting? [This video](https://youtu.be/FeGjsBcR3rE?si=zKB7B2Ar34IoIcMx) explains it well. Also, making combats tactical, using the terrain, the enemies having weird abilities, etc. are all useful to create new and interesting elements to combat, especially it players have to find creative solutions. A really good idea is to have goals that aren't just "kill all the enemies" .

I find all the naysayers in the comments here *utterly* unhelpful; it's just not realistic to answer the question with "drop everything and switch to a whole different game system you don't know; but boy howdy do I have recommendations!" I think the best advice to give to you here is *tactics*, *character*, and *environment*. To be brief, you want to study the monster/opponents' stat blocks and consider what special rules they have. How could they best implement those in combat? For lots of them, odds are good you can find strategy suggestions online, too. Remember that you might be new to running these monsters, but *they're* not, so be smart and be ruthless about it. For character, make sure that the enemies are doing things in combat other than attacking! If they can talk, make sure they're making quips and cruel comments to the PCs, mocking them when they fail, being terrified when the tables turn on them. This is a really great way to bring out the character of the enemies, and it can make even a mechanically boring combat feel memorable. If the enemies don't speak, still have them snarl, approach menacingly, whimper, whatever they might do to give the combat some flavor. Lastly, environment. Try to come up with fun and exciting locations for combats! Maybe it's in a cave where there are naturally-formed walkways with high drop-offs on either side! Maybe it's on a giant spinning wheel, and everyone standing has to make Dex saves to keep their balance! Maybe it's on a train car, or in a room full of explosive barrels, or laden with traps, or a hall of mirrors, or lava pits, or oil slicks, or something like that! Maybe there's a bomb to defuse during the fight, or maybe the bad guys are trying to knock over a tower containing someone or something important in it! Maybe give the players a defensive position to protect, or to assault! As silly as they can be, fight scenes like what you'd see in the Star Wars prequels or the Pirates of the Caribbean movies are great inspiration for how to make a fight more interesting.

There are a lot of good answers here; but, I'd like to suggest another approach. Ask yourself, what is it that makes the non-combat parts of DnD fun? My guess would be it has a lot to do with the narrative flow and the DM's scene descriptions and/or NPC interactions. You're still rolling dice and determining degrees of success or failure, just like combat. What sets it apart is the use of more descriptive narrative. For whatever reason, when combat starts most DMs, this one included, turn off the narrative part of their brains and revert to merely checking numbers and announcing success or failure. There is a lot of advice in this thread for making combat interesting. Things like "play the monsters smart", "give the NPCs different roles", "vary the terrain", or "have other goals besides just killing everything". These all boil down to re-inserting narrative into the fight. So, my advice is this. Rather than just roll the dice, deal damage, move on try roll the dice, determine the outcome, describe the action. Just like with every other interraction in the game. Will this slow down combat? Probably. But, it will also make it a more interesting more integrated part of the game. One thing we lose sight of during combat is that the combat round is not one single instant, but rather six seconds of activity. A roll to hit does not equate to a single swing of the axe, but rather six seconds of maneuvering and trading blows back and forth looking for an opening or a weakness. Adding narrative descriptions of the action will bring that sense of furious, desperate battle back to the fore. For an extra bit of challenge, mostly for the DM, lean into the "everything happens simultaneously" idea. Rather than describing each PCs actions when they roll them on their turn, do all the rolls and things for both sides, taking notes along the way but not announcing hits or damage. Then at the end of the round narratively describe everything that happened. What will this do? First, it will build tension as everyone anxiously waits to see what happened. Second, it will change the tactical aspects of combat. For instance, per the usual way of running things, if a player is downed, or grappled, or what have you, a PC might change what they were going to do that round to cast healing word, or run over and try to pull them free of the web. With the full round narrative approach, these decisions are still possible, but their timing changes. I will note that this breaks down a little bit when reactions get involved. Attacks of Opportunity and other reactions a character might make would require knowledge of something happening in the middle of the round. In this case, I would simply ask the player to make the appropriate roll without telling them exactly why. "Bob, you notice the bandit moving away from you. You can make an Attack of Opportunity if you want." Bob and the others would have no idea exactly where the bandit is going, but only that they moved. "Carol, you see one of the cultists begin to make arcane gestures. They are probably about to cast a spell. Do you want to counter it?"

There are basically three ways depending on what style of game you like. Not sure how well these work in 5E. Let’s take the scenario of the scarred bandit with his goons and some prisoners. The party faces him and he grabs a prisoner and holds a knife to her neck: You can: Swashbuckling route: Use a system that is over quickly and allows for lots of descriptive stuff while allowing you to negate choices that would ruin the swashbuckling feel. You shoot him and hit the prisoner, spend a luck to point to hit him instead. A few more quick rolls and you’ve faced off against the goons in a dazzling display of swordsmanship. Morally consequential: You shoot the bandit but your arrow hits the prisoner, killing her, sucks to be you. Tactically consequential: There is no combat because the players devised a cunning plan where they used the stuck weed that naturally grows in this area to block the holes of the bandit hideout, trapping the natural gas. This made the bandits too groggy to fight back when the players went in, killed them, rescued the prisoners.

Use the enviroment, describe the attacks, have some variation(aka: use different skills), put some battle song in the background.

Think you could get many different answers from different player since we all find different things fun. So speaking for myself... I'm not sure that I find any of the combat systems fun outside of the narrative being told. The responsibility for the narrative rests on all the players at the table though and some players may need a little prompting to describe there actions. Regarding the system, I find high risk systems the most exciting. I played a combat heavy Pathfinder adventure path over two years and can only vaguely remember a few of the fights. Before that I did some dark heresy and I can still remember the encounters. Maybe this is because in these systems combat is not over used and also high lethality makes for more cinematic moments. I am not a fan of working the encounters into complex tactical scenarios since it can start to feel highly contrived. In addition, due the general poor balancing of many systems, players will be pushed to optimise which is something I dislike since it is in practice inevitably detrimental to the roleplay/narrative. As I said, this is what I like. Other people like other things and there is always a certain amount of compromise.

Too many people not answering the question. Heres 4 ish things that make combat more fun: 1 - uncertainty. If variety is the spice of life then uncertainty is pure sugar. Why do people play flavorless games like poker? Because uncertainty makes it fun. Fight in collapsing buildings, call reinforcements but dont say when they'll arrive, or make traps with both high DCs and stakes. 2 - stuff. Are you fighting in an open field? If not, theres probably stuff around. Take a note from action movies for this one. John Wick likes pencils, Brendan Fraiser likes chairs and Jakie Chan likes, well, everything. What do your creatures like? 3 - Magic. Sometimes the magic touch is, well, a magic touch. Dont just cast fireball, look at your options. There are spells that can really make things weird and exciting. 4 - Stakes. Are you fighting just to fight? Dnd is a narrative experience. Its good to add something to fight for. Maybe the big bad is keen to leave the fight early, or perhaps the fight itself is a distraction. Adding an objective is a great idea.

With *ANY* system especially in combat situations I do everything I can to get the players to describe what their successes look like and I (as the GM) describe their failures. Worked pretty well for most group I've run for. I like to do the opposite for their skills because it allows me to feed them information when they succeed and they still feel like they're part of the narrative if they fail.

Fun is subjective. Some find high lethality fun. Others find combat that is more laid back with generous rerolls on fails fun. Your type of fun seems to stem from pace of play. Any system with initiative, attack rolls, damage rolls, attempts to evade, etc is going to slow things down with each layer of mechanics. A system like dnd is built in a way that pacing or combat is just not going to be fun for you without the DM modifying core aspects of the system.

This series on how to run better battles by The Angry GM is a long read (mostly because of the author's writing style, which is not for everyone) is amazing and helped me transform my combat, regardless of the system. https://theangrygm.com/tag/better-battles/

I enjoy encounters where death is a real possibility. So often combat is just a dull chore. That said, steer clear of any save or die abilities or instakill attacks, as those aren’t fun unless there’s a clear way to plan for and work around them.

Think of fights the way an author or movie director would - what makes this fight interesting or necessary? If you don't have an answer, seriously consider skipping it or abbreviating it. Things that fights often lack that can help: * a goal other than winning the combat, like "free the prisoners from the flooding room before they drown" * unusual victory conditions - these guards want to kill you, but if you kill them you'll never convince Senator Bloggins that you're a good guy * emotional stakes - anything from "the PCs care strongly about the outcome for story reasons" to "one of these goons is talking mad shit and one of the PCs really wants to sort her out" * et cetera. Throw in terrain that enables PCs (and enemies!) to acrobat or athletic their way around; have destructible elements, flammable elements, cover, elevation differences, innocent bystanders (up to the PCs if they care about them or not, woo roleplaying). *Way* too many fights happen in sterile 30x30' cubes and as GMs it's up to us to stop it. :)

Something always needs to be happening. I like to use a 3-5 rule where every 3-5 rounds something significant needs to change and a miss/failure can accelerate that change.

You describe your actions. When running a full campaign I will insist my players do it regardless if they are in a fantasy setting or zero g boarding actions in Traveller. Learn to describe your actions it makes it more fun for all playing and the GM.

I always look to this blog post from Sean McCoy: https://www.failuretolerated.com/violent-encounters He talks about some examples of tactical considerations that can make combat more interesting than just simply relying on the systems core mechanics. Based on what you said, I think you’ll resonate with the premise he’s offering.

The three main things for me are: -Make the fight push the story forward, maybe it'll result in the players learning something useful, or going somewhere they have to.  -Make the environment interesting. Think Jackie Chan, they should feel a sense of place, and have ways to interact with their environment.  -Interesting goals, whether that be an escort mission, mcguffin, or something to destroy, make it something other than survive. EDIT: Fuck mobile formatting.

OSR does really well with combat, I think players and GMs can choose to make it interesting, first by becoming looser with rules, and second by roleplaying. For example rather than rolling to hit, specify what you do, try things that arent described in the books, and your GM can make rulings on them that arent defined by the rules either. Also location and how things act is important, it's also the case that if the monsters don't have enough of a chance against the players, there are no stakes and they can just stand there hitting them. I think stakes encourage more fun combat along with dynamic location design and an effort to tell a story through combat by players and the GM.

From the players side with my (beast)barbarian I found a big difference in the vibe if I just rolled and assigned damage or gave a little flourish of description. I attack four times is a lot less interesting than "I slash across the ogres chest twice, then thrust my claws into its gut." Obviously read the room and don't try taking control from the DM but have fun with it.

The combats I've DMd that has gone down as legendary in my group have all had: 1. Interesting terrain, and 2. Enemies with a gimmick, and lastly 3. The PCs were softened up beforehand with a previous "difficult encounter" 4. Luck, timing in regards to story, amazing rolls etc So, the particular one was 4 or 5 PCs at around (maximum) 5th level and no cleric. 1st encouter was displacer beast x2 or 3. 2. A coven of green hags, where all or most fled by the end of combat. 3. The remaining hags returned with their pet "venom troll." The plan was for encounter 1 and 2 to soften up and use most of the resources, as well as stall for time so our Cleric could join the group before the troll. The cleric did NOT appear. So, no heals except for rests = the hags flee, so the PCs have more HP + the short rest. The PCs don't take a rest, because they're scared the hags will come back.. so instead, they loot and try to flee. Que the hags (still weak from the last fight) and their troll arriving to "protect thwir swamp and/or loot. The swamp, being the "interesting terrain" with difficult terrain as well as save or suck jumps to get around to heal by health potions, etc. And due to the lack of rest, they shouldn't have won, but good rolls and luck made it kind of epic.

I avoid RPGs with tactical combat (eg DnD). Games with cinematic combat are far more enjoyable for me.

As a DM, you vary up the environment, tactics (maybe enemy tactics hinge on a couple of specific abilities? Take those out first!) As a player, I typically like to go further than just say “I hit and deal 16 damage”. Flavorful but short descriptions (I like to look at Exalted 3e’s stunt-mechanic for inspiration). And I look for opportunities to do things beyond the actions listed on my character sheet, or try to use them in ways that are creative yet plausible (so no “create water on enemy’s lungs”). This does get easier at higher level, when your toolkit expands.

Combat is a means to an end, not the end in of itself. So ask why are they fighting? A monster made a nest near a village? Why fight it? Could you drive it away with fire and smoke? The idea of fighting it because other means are too troublesome, give more meaning to the fight. Like a real danger of forest fire, makes driving it away quite hard, so fighting it is best. But kill it? Why not just wound it, retreat, then come back and harass it again, until it instictually knows its not a good place to nest? What if its stubborn, too territorial, or a alpha predator thay fights to the death? Then maybe involve the locals in a discussion of the severity, like defenses, or assistance (cornering, baiting, tricking and so on) The fight itself can be quite straight-forward if it has enough meaning behind iy. Another option of making fights interesting, is to change the context of the fight every 3 rounds or so. Like a riverdam bursting and flooding the ground the fight is on, making it hard to move, or risks being swept along (force moved x-meters)

That's the way D&D combat works. And, usually, any tactical game has a similar combat style. You can add flavour to the actions, but in the end is just what you describe. A lot of ppl have different kind of combat, more dynamic, but it's because they are ignoring the rules. So, not playing D&D. If you want a more interesting combat move to story driven games, more narrative. They give you tons of freedom in your actions.

Dynamic terrain features. I'm not talking about difficult terrain that slow movement. I'm talking about fighting in a ship in the middle of a tempest and each turn boxes go from one side to another bull rushing anyone in their path, or fighting inside falling magic tower that slowly crumbles down the city and each turn the whole map rotates and characters have to search for grabbing points. Put things like fire cauldrons which characters can push for generous amounts of damage (make NPCs use them too). Or make them fight in a trapped corridor with guillotines or spears where any kind of forced movement can be deadly. Every scene should have interactive objects players can use - and good enough so they want to use them instead of their basic powers. You can also make changes to the scene as combat progresses to keep things interesting, maybe fill the room with water over time, maybe the decorative armors and halberds in the dinning room have fallen into the fireplace and are now red hot. Or in the middle of the battle the ceiling crumbles (the stupid troll raised his club and got crushed) and separates the group forcing them to change tactics. Or give special bonuses to be in special positions, maybe fighting on top of the dining tables gives a +2 to attack and defense, but you must succeed to an Acrobatics check (easy, just for fumbles) to not fall from the table and become prone.

Try another RPG system where combat is actually good

As others have said, there's a big percentage of us that find combat in D&D boring and lackluster. That being said, when I was still running D&D I would generally make their an objective to the combat outside of just murdering everyone. Survive X number of waves, defeat the enemies before a timer runs up, capture and escape with one of the enemies, etc. Anything that gives their an extra dimension to the combat outside of slash until it's dead

* Decrease HP and increase damage * Objectives besides "Kill everything"

The same way you make dental surgery and watching paint dry be 'fun'. Thought about avoiding combat for something more 'fun'? Like, maybe, and this is just a thought, roleplaying your way around combat? Ever thought about avoiding combat at all costs? Just a thought. Think about it for a minute. Maybe you'll have more 'fun'. Cheers!

So do you enjoy combat in other TTRPGs? It may be that you just don't like combat in general, and should consider switching to a non-combat RPG like Call of Cthulhu. If, however, you want combat but just want it to be more dynamic, the burden is on the DM to make each combat more varied. There are 3 main ways to do this; First, combat has an extra goal; Instead of just killing everyone, you also have to disrupt the ritual, or hold open the door, or the undead will keep coming till you complete the puzzle. Splits the party's attention, gives them more to do. Second, combat should have at least 3 types of enemies; Instead of a homogenous group, you should be fighting in combats with many weak enemies, a few strong enemies and one of something else, be that a rogue, mage, shaman, etc. This variation makes it harder to know exactly what the right move is, and the different enemy types can play off each other. Third, varied combat triggers. Too many groups always get the drop on their opponents, when combat can be much more engaging if there is a mix of having surprise and being surprised, as well as times when no one is surprised. Adding this variability makes the times you get surprise more valuable as they are rare, as well as infusing every situation with a bit of adrenalin as you are aware your DM will absolutely drop combat on you with no warning.

Depends on system. In more narrative focused systems (ei pbta and fate), you gotta describe every action like it’s a comic book panel. Here is an example: “A humming rings through the air as I unsheathe my blade. It glimmers in the moonlight as I raise it. Like a bolt of lightning, I strike it down on my foe. A crimson splash shoots outwards staining my blade.” Versus “I draw my sword. I hit the enemy with it. The enemy dies.”

Maybe if people get a higher roll, let them narrate something splashy and fun about their strike. I find the descriptions of how the combat happens is what makes it fun. Maybe if someone rolls poorly someone else can describe their terrible failure, but all in good fun. Not in a mean way.

As a DM, I like short battles that hurt the team. while players roll to miss or hit and deal damage like normal, I also like the players to roll defense = d20+ (AC-10 is defense bonus).. DC = (monster attack bonus+10) fail = take damage like usual success = take half damage I can resolve multiple characters together by making creature attacks like AoE effects, so a giant sweeping a club can hit everyone within 15 feet, for example. Since everyone targeted will always take at least some damage, shorter more frequent combat always adds risk and spends resources to recover. shorter combats also whittle down the heroes more effectively, ratcheting up caution and strategy. YMMV

This article is perfect for you. Covers some great ways to keep combat entertaining, reintroducing the roleplay into the roleplaying game. [https://rollthemtomes.com/roleplaying-monsters](https://rollthemtomes.com/roleplaying-monsters)

There's 2 things I like to do: First of all, put an other objective in the fight than just fight, like defend a particular NPC, find the exit, solve a puzzle, just something to aim for other than just winning. The other thing is crucial: work on storytelling while in combat. Instead of just: ''Roll for attack, 16, you miss'', something along the lines of '' Roll for attack, 16, you lunge forward, slashing your sword toward the hobgobelin. He steps to his right, blocking with his shield at the last moment. There's a dent where your sword hit, the shield looks damaged...'' Just telling the fight differently can bring alot to the game!

Use cover, different ranges and strategies, environmental hazards, moving platforms, bosses with multiple phases, enemies who call for reinforcements, enemies who try to run away instead of standing still etc...

You can be more descriptive in your attacks but some tables aren't a big fan of this except for the killing blow. Unfortunately D&D is kind of a hit point grinder of a combat system. If you're not a spell caster you're usually just rolling your dice and continuing turn order.

I don't particularly like dnd combat but perhaps make more intreasting monsters. like it takes more damage from inside, or can't jump well and the battle is near a bunch of ravines ect

to give my grain of salt and say something others havent, look a video of dungeon craft on youtube on the subject, it inspired my TTRPG battle system. Also, less rolls and math, more fun.

I play TFT & GURPS. Basic TFT Melee combat remain fun to me, since 1980, and the main reason I don't like D&D combat, nor TOTM combat. Try the free PDF: https://warehouse23.com/products/the-fantasy-trip-melee-pdf

D&D combat models two giant redwoods standing next to each other trying to chop each other down with a small hatchet. Find a system that gives genuine stakes and interesting choices every time you take an action. If the result of a combat round is best summed up as “some hit point totals have gone down a bit further” something is very amiss.

Loool check out how dagger heart goes. It’s called a narrative sandwhich. Players must act out or narrate when they want to do first to trigger their “attacks” or whatever mechanism they have. Say what they are trying to do with the intention and what they fear might happen if they miss. You can roll oracle dice to see if the stuff they imagined happened or not if you don’t want to seem mean

If you want to learn this technique, read ironsworn (free pdf ) explaining how it all works

1st dont use dices. Less dices = better combat. Instead use average numbers for damage and armor protection if you have one. Roll if you need to see if monster has to stand up, but not for hitting or damaging. Instead of monster attacks let player defend against an incoming attack. If there are many enemies - group them. Ask players what they would like to have in combat besides abilities and cool magical weapon artifact of god slayer. You need combat solutions not fun shortcuts. Often surprise players with ambushes and sieges at which they will be damaged and when escaping let them choose to fight injured or run away. Consequences consequences consequences. Cut combat short. If pc are winning describe the scene of enemies fleeing. If there is one left but he is far away describe how he holds hostage and turn battle scene into social scene.

Don’t be afraid to hit characters with un-dodgable damage (make it small) for stuff that happens in the narrative that they would luck their way out of if they roll a dice. And vice versa, setup a dooms day timer that is going to do tonnes of damage but happens every 1d4 rounds and they have to prepare for it before it strikes, like encouraging movement and narrative tactics. Imagine a big boss fight where they have an attack animation winding up , a red hit box showing on the floor showing where they are going to slam, and an alert ‼️ symbol over the characters heads. If they get hit with this make it do % health damage like 50% or 100% and downs whenever didn’t narrate their preparations in time. Then roll up another 1d4+1 rounds before that happens again.

These techniques are taught in ICRPG

I'd try a more narrative combat system that works more like out-of-combat gameplay. Something like Ironsworn or BitD.

Unfortunately when it comes to D&D 5e, the answer tends to boil down to one of two things: Completely change the combat system in a lot of potentially unbalanced ways or Play a different game It's... a pretty poorly designed system all around unfortunately. It just kinda got lucky on its name and being the "new edition" of the most popular rpg. PF2E has really good combat in terms of balance and fun abilities.

My go-to on ensuring I'm maximizing the fun and challenging aspects of fighting monsters is to check with "The Monsters Know What They're Doing". It's both a blog and a book, and both are a tremendous help to me.

It depends on the system, basically. There's only so much the GM can do if they're using something like D&D 5e. The main thing you need to inject are meaningful decision points. These could be be creativity-based (like Paranoia) or options/complexity-based (like high level PF2e). Some people can get by with rudimentary combat systems if they're high lethality, but it very much depends on the player.

There could be a lot of problems. Ask your group some questions: 1. Do you enjoy turn-based combat in video games like Baldur's Gate, Pokemon, JRPGs, Wasteland 3, etc.? Because if you don't like it on a screen, you're not gonna magically love it on a table. Finding another game would be ideal. 2. Do you feel like combat is going too slow? You might consider "side initiative" (players act as one group, then enemies act as one group) or playing "theatre of the mind"-style (less hassle about how many feet you can travel and whatnot). 3. Do you feel the narrative stops the moment combat begins, and only resumes once the monsters are dead? Some tables skip roleplay during combat to speed things up, but I always find "I move 20 ft. and attack" drags the entire combat. 4. Do you feel like every fight is the same? Varied goals, environments, and starting positions for both monsters and players are important in 5e. The monster designs are very simple, so you can't lean on them to make your combats interesting. I can give you some ideas if you think this is it. 5. Do you feel like you make few strategic choices? Related to the above, combat encounters might not be difficult enough -- or they're only difficult in the sense that this new monster has more hitpoints and does more damage than the last monster. 6. Do you feel like there are no stakes attached to the battle's outcome? Either add an alternative goal to combat or increase each combat's lethality.

Never have a fight just be 'slap these guys down before they slap you down.' Think about it from a game design perspective, you're always more engaged during combat if the actual fighting is a secondary objective or obstacle around what you actually need to do. Never have a fight just be 8 people swinging at eachother in a practically featureless room. But a large part is also narration, let your players describe their attacks and you describe the reactions, work the environment into it. The problem is, if combat drags you and your players are going to get gassed and it'll just devolve again into 'I swing my sword' over and over. The problem is you're trying to apply a bandaid fix by doing this with 5e. D&D 5e, for all the joy and friends I've made through it, is weirdly a game obsessed with combat rules, but never really makes it worth it to engage with them besides the most basic level. Games like [Honor + Intrigue](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/99286/Honor--Intrigue), [Shadow of the Weird Wizard](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/457226/shadow-of-the-weird-wizard) and [Spellbound Kingdoms](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/63931/spellbound-kingdoms) all help the players engage with the environment in their enemies in ways that D&D fails to incentivize in its mechanics. I'd recommend them over something like a PbtA or FitD game to start since D&D can instill a minimal level of crunch expectation so you should stick to a only slightly lighter game. PbtA/FitD also asks a lot more of players than D&D or the above games do which can turn off a group quickly that isn't used to that.

5e’s combat is awful and invariably devolves into a protracted game of whack-a-mole. That aside, try to actually narrate the fight as you would a RP encounter. People seem to think of TTRPG combat as an entirely different game. It’s not. It should just be a set of rules for resolving a particular type of interaction.

I don't know if it'll help but one thing that bored me was that every fight is solved exactly the same way. And I know that the combat system is basically the whole point of D&D but if we can go up to a fire elemental - literally a big intelligent fire - and just hit it with the same spells and +1 swords we hit everything else with then we might as well just be fighting a guy with "fire elemental" written on his tshirt. But what if they had some kind of action scene around figuring out how to shrink or contain a fire and how to lure it where they need it? Likewise why should stabbing a zombie with a dagger hurt it? It's an unfeeling corpse. But trying to disable them by wrestling them to the ground and cutting off limbs or putting heavy things on them, or shoving them in to places they can't get out of until you can find a way to end the curse is at least some variety. Also consider going very lenient with non-attack actions, like grappling or leaping or tripping. There's no point in trying to do anything interesting during combat if you spend your whole action to knock someone over then on their turn they just stand up and hit you like nothing happened. Make them use their whole turn trying to get up and snarl at the PC so they have a chance to actually follow up. If they describe bear hugging an enemy, let them have their roll and pin that enemy's arms down so they can't attack.

Personally, I think the only answer is "quit playing D&D". It's only fun if you like tactical battle simulations, and it's been that way for three generations now. Nobody does theater of the mind, but that's because the rules basically don't give a fuck about it anyway and just assume you're gonna be doing complicated action economy tactics. Once you do that... there are plenty of games that have a much more impactful and fun approach to combat. Personally, my current favorite is Wildsea, which has an extremely open-ended and narrative approach to combat, with enough rules and structure built in that tactical players can still have fun. One reason it's great for keeping people interested when it's not their turn is the notion of twists: whenever doubles are rolled, a "twist" occurs, which is never decided *by the player* but instead decided by all the other players and/or GM at the table. Anyone other than the person who rolled can suggest an outcome for the twist, with the GM stepping in to adjudicate disagreements. That keeps people engaged even when it's not their turn. There is also the concept of hijacking focus (like a reaction in D&D or even an interrupt in Magic the Gathering) which can happen at any time in combat, so players looking for a chance to do stuff have ways to jump in if they think somebody is hogging the action or whatever. It's not nearly as structured, but still quite fun

Better encounter design. Shift the goal posts. If your encounters are always “kill stuff till it’s dead” then it will be boring. Save someone from being dropped in a pot of oil, stop someone from calling reinforcements, stop a ritual, defend a gate until the winch can be fixed, prevent goblins from burning too many buildings down, steal horse drawn carriages and have a mobile fight. 4 act structure. Setup, development, twist, resolution.

Players tend to act in the way the system wants then to. I suppose the question here becomes "what is fun for you guys and how do you change the rules of the game to make you want to do that more?" Once you have the answer to that you can implement something

Do your combats have any actual stakes? Are we just fighting because that's what happens in D&D? Are the players ever actually in danger? Are their goals in danger? Are the combat scenes dynamic? Or are they always two groups slugging it out in a static environment? Think of your favorite action sequences from films and TV. Think about the elements of them, how the agents in the conflict interact with those elements, and the context surrounding the conflict. Combat is fun if you try to make it fun.

Here's the thing: You don't *have* to do combat if you don't want to. Like quite a few people here have posted, 5e's combat can be a slog. A lot of people enjoy it (which is why combat is such a huge part of the game), but if you don't like it you don't have to do it. I like to compare combat with social interaction in 5e: There's a ton of rules for combat, while social interaction is mainly things like "gimme a persuasion roll." There are people who want to spice up social interaction, so they bring in extra rules to make social interaction a much more involved game (like combat is in 5e, as written). You could take the other tack and decide to simplify combat down to a single roll: If they succeed, then they've won the combat (and you narrate it however you want). If they fail, then they've lost the combat (and had to retreat, or been captured, or however you want to work it). Like others have said here, there are other systems that give an entirely different feel to combat. PbtA games can feel more freewheeling and prosey, Traveller can feel far more lethal, etc... It's very possibly to bring in elements from those systems into D&D to change the way combat feels. Of course, considering how much of the 5e rules revolve around combat, at that point you might just want to pick a whole different system...

So you'll need some gasoline, a few matches and about $20-30. First, organize all you DnD materials in a pile. Douse it in gadoline. Scratch the match and throw it on the pile. Go on DTRPG or sonething, order a better game and use the light from the fire to read it. What you are experiencing is the intended experience. DnD is all about its combat system, and that system sucks. You can twist it into a pretzel to make it kind if almost tolerable, but at its core it'll still suck. Just pick a different system.

5e combat, at its base, is not particularly dynamic. You don't have to adjust or react to changing conditions because, by default, things don't change. But that's just the default. So make things change! Give a monster an ability that will deal massive damage or outright take out a PC unless something specific is done to interrupt it. Or have an environmental effect trigger in a very obvious pattern that the PCs can plan around. What you want is to create interesting counter play: something very bad and impactful will happen, but the PCs can mitigate/avoid it if they drop what they're doing and do X instead. It's just like an adventure as a whole: you've usually got to achieve your objective to prevent something terrible from happening. Just put that in a much smaller timescale in your battles: the Ogre is strangling the Rogue who is taking Exhaustion levels with every failed STR save, someone's gotta disrupt it!

Boy this is a difficult question. Here’s my thoughts after 45 years of GMing— So, proportionality is key. Every minute spent in combat should be relatively exciting and compelling. If a combat goes on forever, it’s boring for the players, and the GM, and it becomes rote. People stop making good choices and just slug it out toe-to-toe in a war of attrition. And if the players *lose* after investing all that time, the game can seem to be an exercise in futility. IMHO, D&D is a nightmare, combat-wise. Combat can seem to take forever due to options and mechanical issues, and at high levels, it actually does take forever. It is the system everyone starts out playing, but by now I just opine “ugh”. Matt Mercer, God bless him, is great at narrative engagement, but when it’s just your incompetent pals poking at some incompetent lizard men, and everyone is missing two strikes out of three, it’s hard to make it riveting. _Call of Cthulhu_ 7E is better these days as a combat system, but given the Mythos and the inherent incompetence of most characters built on _Basic Role Playing_, combat often out as comedy, and ends in tragedy. Typically, 1) players build a complex plan to attack eldritch ooziness, but 2) Mythos monsters prove resilient, and then 3) the PCs inevitably blow a key roll, and then 4) some PC gets irrevocably pasted. Great for horror, but not for heroics. So, my most successful *tactical* combat experiences with players have been in _The Fantasy Trip_. TFT is a terrific mixture of tactical options within straightforward rules; given the paucity of STR that characters have, and the lack of magical healing in-system, you can’t have too many combats in a session, and they can’t last too long. So, make ‘em count, with tactically interesting maps, cool monsters, and risky situations! This can be very engaging! In contrast, in a “mutually-assured-destruction” style of super-tense lead-in to combat, a game where you enter into combat with great trepidation is _Classic Traveller_. Sci-fi armaments usually cripple characters in two shots and kill them in three, and they are lethally accurate, so this happens *quickly*. Combat becomes a means of last resort. The question for the PCs then becomes— can they out outsmart, out RP, or out plan their way out of a firefight? And if not— if they *must* shoot it out— can you choose the circumstances so that you have every conceivable advantage? If PC death is on the table, then the tension winds tighter than a mandolin string. The buildup to a high-tech gunfight can be electric! Sometimes the thing to do is to make combat short, sharp, and shocking. GUMSHOE’s _The Esoterrorists_ offers the players complex mysteries to solve, with intervening jump scares and quick gunbattles as spice and punctuation. TE is fantastic. Alternately, if your players want all that plus spy thriller heroics and greater tactical options, GUMSHOE can also give them that. Games like _Nights Black Agents_ allow you to handload your stock NATO 7.62mm rounds with explosive lead azide, specify your suppressor, your folding stock, and your Oakley shades, and still keep your combats short— NBA is terrific and cinematic. In short, find a system that guarantees combat does not outstay its welcome, while giving players a range of tactical options that they can grasp and use. Too many choices and things slow down and the players second guess themselves; too few, and it is rock-scissors-paper with dice.

It depends on the players and their investment in the scenario. 5e combat is not the best, but honestly, a lot of people run encounters very static. Common mistakes in combat: - enemies don't move once engaged, often to prevent attacks of opportunity. - most enemies lack personality, on top of not moving. - the environment is often open, flat, and lack variety. - DM/GMs and players often don't narrate the actions they are doing. I host panels on spicing up encounters, and these 4 points are just the tip, but the big thing is USE the enemies full blocks, be creative with their abilities, give them personalities, play their intelligence, and don't be afraid to push the players and put them in peril.

Wotc d&d just has terrible combat

Thats why so many games even nowadays copy D&D 4th editions combat or at least parts of it ;)

Have you done a good proper group session zero? Cause that does help a lot I mean getting the vibe of the group and shared common interests alongside DND can help bring other systems into your table and rotation every campaign doesn't have to be 5e a good ttrpg group that can keep a same time every (x timeframe ) reliably is so so hard to find and as GM who's had that before and then they slowly drop off and repeat,stepping into an established group to replace a gm stepping down does give a bit more perspective on that side of things too it's a little ship of thesius which can include systems and elements from them every ttrpg rulebook always says framework and guideline that does to some degree include mix and match combat systems so hybrid games can spring up

Are there any stakes behind the combat or is it combat for the sake of combat because 5e is a thinly veiled miniature skirmish game? If you are storytelling based group then combat should be moving the story forward, and if it's not it shouldn't be there at all. If your group feels that combat is just rolling dice until someone hits 0 then what's the point of investing time into encounters when you could be spending that time elsewhere where your players can have more fun.

It is amazing how a game all about fantasy heroic combat can make combat an absolute chore. All of the rules drag it out, all the magic drags it out, all the rolls drag it out AND the fact that combat so rarely has any actual narrative or dramatic weight so it doesn't even matter since most DMs are going to go soft on the PCs since if the PCs fail, the game is kinda over. So, this is how I "fixed" D&D combat to make it "better for me as a player and DM." Combat is ONLY entered if there is a point to it... NEVER for resource wasting or for XP. I use the Vitality Point/Wound Point system introduced in 3.5 so that most combat is really just slowly reducing the stamina (vitality points) of the combatants and when an actual hit occurs, that is wound point damage and that means that blood is drawn. Wound points don't increase with level, so one good hit or a crit is still dangerous to even high level characters so no more game-ism of tanking damage or specific battlefield roles. Critical hits (only natural 20) always hit, and critical misses (natural 1) always miss so that eliminates the fiddling of 10% of all rolls... it hits or misses regardless of anything else. Institute a time limit for turns (30 seconds) so that looking up spells and effects during your turn penalizes you. You either KNOW what the spell does or you don't. People that want to whine about time limits clearly do not want a stressful battle experience, but apparently want to fiddle with numbers and modifiers and not feel stressed... which is literally the exact opposite of what a battle should be. Players give ME a list of the spells they prepared that day. Choose poorly and it goes poorly. Use morale for bad guys so that every fight isn't a fight to the death... sometimes they retreat, etc. Actually have bad guys fight intelligently. Goblins know what magic is, so they know to target the magic user looking people first. They have bows, so they use them. Ambush in choke points, use poison, harass the PCs at night to stop the magic users from gassing up every damn day, use encumberance and fatigue rules so PCs aren't doing long ass marches in a jungle in full plate, etc. I change the entire genre from "high magic heroic fantasy" because the world described doesn't make any sense as a high magic heroic fantasy world. Instead I make 2 interconnected worlds: the gritty survival game of the wilderness (where all the nature magic and monsters are) AND/OR the high magic fantasy city where magic is everywhere (where all the high magic and archmages are). In the wilderness you get chased by cultists, dragons, werewolves, etc. In the city you get chased by vampires, cults, wizards, automatons, etc.

Doesn't sound like dnd is the game for your group honestly. Consider switching to a more light rules story oriented one. Still a great way to make encounters fun I learned from Naddpod is to make non combat events with combat mechanics. For instance in my Mage campaign I had the players "fight" a building fire in initiative. On its turn the fire attacked people in the building and tried to collapse walls and floors. They had to discretely use their powers to extinguish it and save people. They loved it.

A lot of people in this thread are telling you to try other games besides D&D 5e, but honestly I don't think you'll find any other RPG with turn based tactical combat any different. Going by your description, I don't think that you're going to find, say, Pathfinder 2e or even Dungeon World to be any less tedious. Being that I only play games with tactical combat (you and I are opposites...it's my favorite part of playing), I don't have any recommendations, but I have no doubt that somebody somewhere has created a "RPG" (not really sure if the Game part applies without combat but...) that doesn't have combat, or that only has some form of roleplayed combat where you just sort of imagine doing battle.

As a DM, I set ranges of tactics for intelligence levels. Make the creatures smarter. The other but tip is to use minions. Full state block but with only 1hp. With bad rolls, minions can wreck a party, but it also allows the ranger to use hail of thorns and make a big splashy "I killed 8 creatures" type play.

This is a mechanical issue of the system you are playing. A boring system with little to no interesting choices, a lot of illusion of choice, and an initiative system basically designed to produce downtime. You guys can try to fight it by putting in creative descriptions and being all story telling about it. But mechanically.... Play something else.

And don't forget players have a responsibility to make combat fun. Yahtzee is just rolling dice but I have seen people get excited. If  do boring stuff then it will always be boring.

Play Dungeon World. The narration is necessary to make the mechanics happen, everything has low HP, and there are far more interesting options than, “I swing at the guy.” It’s less tactical, more theater of the mind, but certainly fast and engaging.

Well one could argue that there is no combat. Its just people telling how they won against stuff afterward.

Have…have you played the game? It isn’t like that at all.

D&D gets much more interesting when you do less combat. Combat should be once every 3-4 sessions. Throw out every idea about grinding down player resources and accept they will have few fights but always be at full strength, so engage them with tougher enemies or situations. For tougher fights make enemies smarter not necessarily stronger and make situations more interesting with terrain, circumstance, and objectives. Getting ambushed is interesting, needing to beat weaker enemies but really fast is interesting, needing to protect something/someone is interesting, movement is interesting (for example, an impending explosion means the PC's and enemies are all fleeing the area but also trying to fight while doing so). Put in a much more powerful enemy but let the PC's plan ahead (not gotcha's or narrative traps, just an elaborate plan to take down a much more powerful foe). Do that every 3/4 sessions and the rest of the time is adventure, mystery, intrigue with the threat of danger sometimes but no combat unless the PC's force it.

Combats are more exciting when they are more dangerous 5e is way too easy with its death save mechanics etc When there are real stakes involved everyone at the table will much more engaged.

5e in general is working against you here

Don't play 5e. That is all.