Is it acceptable to declare the enemy dead when you get bored of combat as a GM?

Is it acceptable to declare the enemy dead when you get bored of combat as a GM?

Depending on when you get bored of combat, you should probably declare the game dead instead.

As the GM, you control how much HP the enemy has. So, sure.

If combat is slogging along, and you feel like it should have been over by now, you can go ahead and describe it dying.

It's not like the party is gonna call you out on not giving the enemy the proper amount of HP.

Yes, the point of playing is to have fun, hopefully you can rebalance future enemies so that that sort of thing happens less frequently.

I've been in many a lively game that had combat drag.
An unfortunate side effect of games that have too much rule bloat when it comes to combat.

Keeping a hand on pacing is important. If the interesting part of the fight is over, the players have clearly won and all that's left is whittling away some remaining HP or mook enemies, I don't think there's anything wrong with calling the fight there. Let people roll off for who gets the finishing blow and/or let the group decide if think one PC getting it is more fitting.

Then declare the game dead and switch system or declare the rules dead and homebrew it.

man, you sure are fond of dramatic declarations.

If you utilize your monsters right, you won't have to.

I think he meant a single instance of combat, not combat as a whole.

As for your question OP, I've done this before. If you're growing bored of a combat, have it last two more hits on the enemy (if there's just one), and then have him fall or run away. If there's multiple enemies, they bail when one more comrade falls. 90% of the time your party won't be the wiser.

M8, I dont even track hp on my stuff, just wait for things to feel right. Sometimes I do on big stuff, but only rarely.

Hell somethimes I have decide the outcome of a skill check, and roll the dice so my players think I am rolling

user, I am going to find you.

I am going to track you down, rape your dog, kill your family and skin you alive.

I know this is just me complaining that someone is having fun in a way I don't like, but I do not even care. I hate you THAT much. Your existence offends me on a molecular level!

Stop doing this shit, you obnoxious cunt!

>M8, I dont even track hp on my stuff, just wait for things to feel right. Sometimes I do on big stuff, but only rarely.
Same here.

Players always love it. They don't realize what's happening, but they know that they enjoy these combats more than combats with other GMs.

My god, you are hilariously mad.

As long as you can keep things feeling consistent, whatever works for you and your group. I don't trust myself to keep all those balls in the air and just fudge my way through all of it, so I keep track of HP and so on for the most part, even if I'll fudge the numbers to keep the combat well paced.

Do you still have them roll for damage, though?

Imagine them finding out after dozens of sessions that their carefully crafted characters with their DMG output skills and abilities aren't really doing as much of a difference as they think. It's like finding out your SO is cheating on you.

I wouldn't say it's like finding out your SO is cheating on you. More like discovering your accountant has been eyeballing your tax return forms.

That is NOT acceptable. There is a listed amount of HP for an enemy, if the players have not knocked that down to -10 then the enemy is still ALIVE. Stop being that bag of dicks DM who doesn't follow the rules that your players have to follow, it isn't fair.

The GM is not and has never been constrained by the rules. They are guidelines to support you and guide you, not restrict you. The rules only apply at the whim of the GM.

>if the players have not knocked that down to -10 then the enemy is still ALIVE

Actually when an enemy hits 0 HP a player decides if it's dead or unconscious.

>HP

Must be 18 to browse Veeky Forums kiddo

if the players are about to get bored too, yes.

>HP
D&D out pls

OP is right, sometimes enemies are just HP sponges, so it is likely that someone at the table might get bored of hacking a bitch endlessly.

This is a good thread for suggestions to spice combat up, rev up those almonds, user. It's time to activate them.

user, HP is older than Veeky Forums.
Are you having a guffaw good sir?

>"I roll to grapple"
>"OK, everything dies"

wut

Grapple rules can bore anyone. If the GM ends the fight when they get bored, entering into a grapple first thing is an instant win.

I dunno, I've had fun with them.

Good thread to ask, what system has the best grappling mechanics?

GURPS?

Good question, no fucking idea.
I have fun with grappling despite rules.

I too have played 4E

Yes but probably not the way you read it

DnD 3.5 when you actually read through them.

Try it with the MM3/MV math. HP bloat sucked, but they fixed it and the tactical combat is fucking great now. It's actually the system where I've had this problem the least.

too bad you can't consistently grapple anything other than children in 3.5e unless you specialize as a hyper-obese gargantuan tentacle-kin with 35 str.

Do I really only get 3 (You)s for my autismal rant?

why would you expect to grapple a bear? Come on bruh, be real

I recall one having it be very simple, and being able to end the grapple with judo flips and such. I forget the system though, I think it started with an M.

...

To this image's credit, I'm actually struggling to think of a system I've played other than D&D where OP's problem was actually an issue.

most of the time, no. this kills all the player`s fun because you rob them of victory by their own hands.

Man have you PLAYED shadowrun.
It takes fucking forever. And you get to choose if you spend that time planning or fighting because you didn't plan, and each takes goddamn hours.

Just have them run away.

>cue players chasing the poor sod down because "we already blew half spell slots and several potions withering it down, there's not way in hell we're walking away without any XP now"

See, I just give xp at the ends of sessions.

It probably helps that I only ever played SR with veterans who knew the system like the back of their hands, but fights never lasted that long.

Then again, fights were either well planned curbstomps or unplanned total panicks where we tried to run away as fast as possible.

Still, I can see how that clunky as fuck system would get annoying if you actually tried to do a normal fight with it.

basically the only way shadowrun fights are fast is if it is a well planned execution, or if you are able to run away immediately.

Actually beating someone is going to take you a while.

Dark Heresy can be.
>Ok, I use a full action for all out attack
>Cool, I actually hit once...and he parried
>Ok, this hit finally went through without being dodged, aaaand his armor absorbed basically all of it.

I do this too. I only ever really keep track of bosses or other super important characters.

>Imagine them finding out after dozens of sessions that their carefully crafted characters with their DMG output skills and abilities aren't really doing as much of a difference as they think. It's like finding out your SO is cheating on you.

Honestly, whatever gives them the illusion of control is fine for me. I doubt there's any way they could ever find out since none of them have read the rulebooks.
I still make sure that they feel as if they're getting more powerful as they more often will one-hit kill minions or do more damage to tougher opponents.

The only time I ever have issues is when it's damage spread out to multiple members of the party, so I have to keep that in mind.

This sounds horrible and more complicated than just running HP honestly.

I'm not even sure why you'd play a game with intricate rules for resolving combat and flat out ignore them and make shit up instead. Just play some freeform if you want to do that. As a player in this kind of game, if I didn't clock it immediately because it wouldn't be hard to spot as soon as I did find out I'd leave. Being lied to isn't a pleasant experience and when you lose a players trust you've lost them from your game for good.

yes, you can also make him run, surrender, teleport, allah ackbar, or threaten litigation.

>that black mage
What the fuck.

To that image's discredit: OSR is D&D

If you're getting bored of combat as a GM the combat is clearly going on for too long, but declaring them dead I would avoid. Sounding the retreat is better.

Honestly though if this is a common problem, play lower CR monsters and instead just make them clever. Tucker's Kobolds are a good example of this. Just be sure to give XP and such if applicable, or have an excuse like a critical hit table.

>Being this mad over a group having fun

He is right, the other guy is autistic

Either make a good combat, or don't run combat.

>when you get bored of combat as a GM

It's literally your job to make the game interesting for everyone as well as yourself, including the combat, so you've failed on a fundamental level if this ever happens.

Not only do I not track go, I don't even use stat blocks. I pretend to roll dice and then just kill my players

Oh fuck off already.

This is more of a gms fault. Only a handful of npcs have parry or dodge, while they should be spending full around actions to attack pcs.

Then make combat more exciting by adding in "You wing the creature in the shoulder with your blade, it stumbles", or "Your fireball blasts the creature, scorching its skin and burning the hair off it, and it recoils in pain and fear".

Quit making everyone so annoyingly tied to formula. You're not trying to get people home from orbit after their engines died, you're not trying to win an international competition, you're playing a fucking game based on imagination that's as interesting as you make it. So make it interesting.

Well, actually, every single one if you follow the rules to a T.

Combat should be role-played just like every other part of the game. It seems like autists have the biggest problem with this when combat begins, and I don't know why.

While what you say is true, and roleplaying in combat is a lot of the fun, if combat is mechanically boring the ability to RP doesn't always close the gap.

Not OP but me as a player kinda get bored of that.

My GM once described a whole attack like if it was an anime scene, or a videogame "special attack cutscene". My only reply was "How much damage?", like I couldn't give less of a shit about how he gets angry and makes a shockwave with his fists and then charges at me.

Just tell me the numbers.

Pacing is your job, but just declaring it dead doesn't really help with that because it falls so flat. My first personal recommendations are to either have your enemies cut-and-run when it's obvious how stomped they are.

My second is to have your players narrate out the end of fights, cut scene style, until they're used to you just prompting them with "how do you finish it?" to end fights. Then you can use that to wrap up the ones that outstay their welcome without just saying "okay, we're done."

I can see this being a problem if the game is text only. Otherwise, maybe it's because I'm an impressionable newbie but I'd really like something more than "roll full attack, roll damage" rinse and repeat.

>playing some Gurps like the subhuman trash I am
>GM described the game as a 60's era diesel punk in a very urban sprawl city. Think noir New York with low magic
>it's actually really fun, gritty low magic setting with occasional super science and your standard fantasy races
>all of the other players go completely ham on fantasy shit, edgy glaive gauntlets, plate armor, a fucking weaboo monk
>playing a WW2 vet who became a super science engineer after getting home
>stick to my engineering role 90% of the time, let the murder hobos deal with combat
>two hours into the first fight I finally decide that I've had enough of seeing the melee character dealing 2 damage a turn and mag dump a BAR on every enemy in the room, wounding five enemies, killing 3 outright.
>get called a powergamer
>game gets canceled because I "hog the spotlight"
You don't even have to be GM to declare combat over

Can't speak to 2e, but 1E DH doesn't have Parry as a discrete skill, so you're looking at like a 20%+ parry chance for almost anything and even untrained Dodge is going to be like 15%+.

>while they should be spending full around actions
Why? Half action aim and swing, sure, but Defensive Fighting or retreat to cover are both totally viable moves in 40k RPG's.

Funnily enough, end level 40k RPG's have almost the opposite problem.
>Did you Dodge the attack?
>No.
>Did your force field block it?
>No.
>Burn a Fate/Infamy point or die.

>As the GM, you control how much HP the enemy has. So, sure.
>If combat is slogging along, and you feel like it should have been over by now, you can go ahead and describe it dying.
this is probably the best way to do it

I'd rather deal with unfaithful SO than IRS, to be honest.

Probably because combat takes significantly bigger portion of book than everything else, so it looks like it is super important.

Since you're playing all the opponents, you can decide they don't want to continue the fight, and either have them attempt to disengage, or just break and run.