How the fuck do you make combat not suck? Specifically in systems that don't focus solely on combat

Why does that curved sword user think he has a chance against plate armor?

Look at things like the new Hitman game. It's filled to the brim with alternate paths, options and tactics. In my experience, players will generally forgo standard attack rolls if they can kick someone off a cliff or pull a lever to rearm a trap they maneuvered someone on.
I like combat encounters on vehicles or rooms with lots of interactable things. If you have a fight on a boat, one player could gain control of the ship to mitigate the negative effects of the storm the ship was heading into and things like that.
As a player it's pretty much the same. If you watch an action movie, protagonists tend to grab objects from around the room a lot, kick people into giant barrels of acid or fight to reach a dropped gun on the other side of the room. You as a player should look for things in your environment to use if you think combat is bland.

Either use a system where combat is the meat of the system and a fun game in its own right, like the universally-beloved 4th edition of D&D, or play a game that makes it a priority to resolve a fight as quickly as possible with minimal rolls because all you're interested in is wins, losses and injuries.

I don't have a good example of the latter. Most RPGs are fucking awful at this.

The only excuse for the standard I-roll-you-roll combat where you play out every six seconds as a tedious exchange where someone loses a handful of hp, is if the characters involved are in fact fantastically overpowered wizards who need to constantly reshape the battlefield creatively to get around each other's defenses.

Actually that solution is much the same as 4e's... RPG combat can be fun if and only if everyone has a lot of viable options for things to do round-to-round.

What the fuck is this? Do you prepare a script for the ways to narrate people getting hit with a sword? I pity your players.

Learn about how fights work. You could add binds, be more specific with your attacks and defences (thrust or slash? Solid block or deflect?). Take range and exposed bodyparts into account.
Your fight doesn't have to be two dudes standing squarely infront of each other. Your ruleset may be turnbased, but nothing is stopping you from making making each turn influence the next.
And you can use more varied attacks, like pummeling the opponent, or bashing your opponent with the blunt of your spears.
You could even do this in narrative only. Keep the combat mechanics you have, but GM it as a fluid set of events.
Your fights are only as interesting (or indeed boring) as you make them.

CURVED

SWORDS

More importantly, READ GOOD COMBAT SCENES. IMITATE. FIX.
Learn lessons from filmmakers, comic artists, novelists, etc. You're not the first person in history to have trouble with "How should I describe combat"
It's been done, better than you've done it. Steal from those people.

Systems that aren't crunchy in combat open up way more possibilities with the description of combat. Let minor combatants flee, or die outright and get replaced by similar threats, let players take over narration when it's appropriate (Sometimes with very good rolls, I let my players decide the course they want the combat to take, whether it's a gritty fight to the last or there's a decisive turn where they offer the opponent surrender, season to what's appropriate for their characters and their enemies.)

Parts of this depend on your group, but don't let it bog you down. Get creative. And if you have trouble with that, spend time finding inspiration for what the possibilities are.

>He doesn't know the difference between scriptwriting and improv practice

This too.

>Steal from those people.
Got any recommendations for who, user? I've been having trouble making combat interesting and not just "He shoots, miss. He shoots, 4 damage..."

By extension the system should reward creative use of the environment. Improvised weapons are cool and all but if the optimal play is using my sword every round, I'll do that.

Not him, but I think he means that if you have practice in writing up good combat narration, then you will be able to improvise something at least halfway decent when the time comes at the table.

What if the problem is that the combat minigame is boring and no amount of inspired narration is going to change that? Because that's usually the problem.

The solution is very, very simple
>Stop running combat
or
>Use another system

I don't know about that. Sure we've been swinging and whiffing and rolling for damage for ten minutes here, but I think it'll become fun if I can just spice up the way I describe the same thing happening again and again..

yea, failing at it too. Which is why I've come to mine the depths of your immaculate knowledge.

but combat WILL happen with my players. They all prefer the more social aspect of roleplaying ,sure, but they still like the option to stab an asshole when necessary. And there's only so many times that guys friends don't want to fight before it gets stupid.

>Use another system
Solution's already there senpai. If you're using a system where it's literally impossible to make combat fun and your players insist on combat anyways, then it's time to switch systems. Or groups.

But if OP is as shit at running combat as he sais, would changing systems really help him much?

Every character in every combat gets to trip, disarm, throw sand in people's eyes, etc. You don't need feats or special powers for this, you just do it. The enemy gets to make a save to *avoid* it, there's no chance of failure to do this.

Make these debuffs strong and very real. Disarming your weapon means you have to switch to another one. Shattering your shield means you don't get its protection. Getting sand in your eyes means you have a random chance to hit an ally up close, or you have to give up a round to make an attack.

Give every character class/archetype useful AND fun things to do in combat. Rogues should fight like the sniper or spy from TF2, constantly fading into the background and picking off key targets. Fighters should be powerful up close, tanky, maybe even focused on tanking. Mages should have debuff and buff abilities that are better then or equal to their damage output.

Make monsters interesting. You can dissuade any monster from attacking by dumping your rations and running, but you lose rations. This monster only cares about protecting its nest, this monster hates the color red. Manipulating these behaviors allows you to trick or just avoid the monster.

Use morale and morale mechanics, and let players manipulate it. Enemies who run before the combat is over help make it much shorter and less boring. Fighters with multiple attacks per round or barbarians with rage shouldn't think it's unreasonable to do a warcry or something to intimidate enemies. Illusions of powerful creatures can also help scare enemies away.

Make weapons not boring. Nobody cares if a sword does slashing damage and a mace does blunt damage. That's fine, but there needs to be more to it. Maces dent armor and stun enemies when max damage is rolled. Swords deal bonus damage from bleeding. Axes can sever limbs of monsters with many limbs. Spears always hit first and so on.

Combat should reinforce the theme of the game. It should never be a chore.

combat becomes exciting when something is at stake. if the players like their characters and combat means they might be about to lose their characters, it will become much more interesting.

but if they sense that you're a limp-wristed candyman GM who is not willing to let chips fall where they may, then yeah... nothing is truly at stake and your combats are boring slogfests, no matter what flourish you put on in your descriptions.

Yes, if it has a good combat system.

What running combat well in a game with shitty combat means, in practice, is engaging with the system as little as possible and glossing over it with jokes and breezy narration.

Run a game with good combat and what you need to worry about is building interesting encounters, which isn't the easiest thing in the world but there's usually a structure in place so you at least know where to start.

Maybe he thinks he can tired him out or grapple him and get the tip in somewhere.
I don't think holding his shield back and to the side is going to help very much with that plan though.

Learn a martial art, demonstrate to your players when they don't understand.

A good combat has a story. This means a beginning, a middle, and an end - three act structure. Act 1 establishes the characters engaging in it, the setting it takes place in, and why it is taking place. Your overall story up to this point will take care of most of this. Act 2 is the interplay of the PCs and NPCs as they struggle to attain their goals. Make the combat take twists and turns and let the PCs do the same through their actions. Let new developments occur that complicate matters. Act 3 is the conclusion of the combat and the aftermath one way or another. Consider some of the possibilities in your GM prep so that you have ideas on where to take the game following the combat.

In addition to having a story give your combats emotional resonance. Make the PCs care and more importantly make the players care. Don't let combat be a mindless exercise. Make the players want it and make them role play their characters wanting it in order to attain a goal within the game.

So if you tell a story that your players care about the last thing you need to do is know your system. A fast game system can let more things happen within the story. A slow game system should either keep the story simple or else make things happen more quickly in an action economy sense.

So in summary, tell a story that your game system can tell and which your players will care about.

Exalted 3e

The unfortunate thing about this is that D&D has trained an entire generation of roleplayers to always default on the most boring, practical, and efficient means of dispatching foes and anything that isn't listed in the book or on your sheet isn't valid and/or too risky to attempt.

So even if you give players the ability to do this shit, they'll still default to "I hit him with my [weapon], I rolled a [result], does it hit? It does? I roll XdY for damage...I got [result]...is he dead yet?" because that's what it boils down to in D&D and if they wanted to play a character with actual options, they'd play a caster instead.

It blows, but that's the hurdle you have to overcome if you're playing with "veterans" and it's generally why I generally run games for either friends or newbies who have never played tabletop before.

Best advice I've seen. Combat should never (or only rarely) be a HP race where the first side to run out loses.

Most notably, have enemies surrender if they can't run and don't think they can fight. Suddenly a whole new approach opens up: how do we convince these guys we aren't worth the effort?

What this means is that undead enemies and mindless constructs gain a whole new dynamic. Goblins? Scare them with fire. Wolves? Drop a handful of jerky. Bandits? One-turn kill the biggest guy and watch the rest run. Orcs or undead... they won't stop coming after you as long as they have limbs left to hold a weapon.

In order for combat to not suck, you need to be able to maintain the flow of battle for as long as possible.

The issue I find with a lot of DM's nowadays is that they do unnecessary pauses in the middle of combat, whether it's to thumb through an entry in the PHB, reacting to OoC conversation that derails the campaign, or even getting too bogged down by the minutia without taking into account that the focus should be on what's happening during combat.

What I generally do is, if there's a weird sort of question that I'm not 100% sure on, I'll come up with a ruling while letting the player know that this will only apply until the end of the session, at which point I'll look at the rules and see if there's mention of it and if not, I'll keep the house rule for future sessions with mild tweaks should it prove to be imbalanced in some way.

It might not be perfect but it really gets players into the habit of thinking outside the box without unnecessarily focusing on rules.

And what do you find entertaining and enjoyable about combat in other systems?

You can't.
This is why highly abstract, rules light, narrativist systems will become the norm.

Its all about describing it nicely and trying to make your players join you in roleplaying the combat scenes.
You should try to make your players visualize the battle, as if you're describing it to a blind person.
Reading fantasy novels with good melee combat helps a lot in giving you ideas on how to describe your combat scenes, having a good vocabulary is important in combat or it will get boring really, really fast.
Try checking out the "recommended reading" pages - it exists for a very good reason, there's some really good shit in there.
Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and Dune are good starting points.

But none of that has anything to do with the system.

Exactly.
Having a good combat has nothing to do with the system and everything to do with the DM's creativity and how he interacts with the players.
You guys worry too much about the system. You're treating TTRPGs as tabletop videogames, and not the cooperative storytelling that it is supposed to be.

But OP's question strongly implies they've noticed a difference between systems.
It's reasonable to conclude that thus he needs system specific advice and is a retard for not mentioning what exactly he's running.

Don't Rest Your Head resolves conflicts in a couple of opposed dice rolls. Combat in that system is quick and simple.

From Comics? Read Luther Strode with artist Tradd Moore, plus Master of Kung Fu and some of the GI-JOE runs.

Invincible, too, If you're into the good ol' ultraviolence.

>like the universally-beloved 4th edition of D&D

Haha, nicely memed user-kun!

It hurts so much inside.

Unrelated, may I interest you in a bit of Strike! mayhaps?

Well for one, don't let combat last too long. Most enemies should go down in one hit. A lot of them should run or surrender when things go wrong on them. Combat should be fast and decisive, and that avoids a lot of the boredom of repetition.

Good fucking choices my man.
You have some serious taste.

Don't compliment my taste too fast, I also Unironically like ABBA, so take my recs with a grain of salt.

Well nobody's perfect.
If you shit all over everyone for a single choice they make and ignore everything else they do then you're basically just a judgemental asshole and I try awfully hard not to be that.
So I'm just gonna go with "good taste user".

As long as it's not Mamma Mia, I think we are ok.

Does anyone else have to go through 6 captchas to post? It's fucking ridiculous.

Sure cool thanks.

Except if he pulls out a magical backflip or something, he's fucked in the pick, a killing / crippling blow is coming to him and he's in the worst position possible to deflect / block it

Just happened to me, so no it's not you.
Addendum: Just happened to me as I responded to you, just to prove the point.

Let's be real, it's not like every warrior goes into battle prepared to counter their opponent. Sometimes you have to make do.

"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

Learn to love the dice.

Dice are what make the games fun, and learning how to tap into the primitive joys of gambling are essential to making combat exciting.

>universally-beloved 4th edition of D&D
So that's why 4e's mechanics were abandoned in favor of a return to the way that 3.PF did things.

Don't try to rewrite history, please.

5e uses 4e's skill system, and uses 4e's essentials classes as base for the martials. 4e Slayer and 5e Battlemaster are as close as possible in their respective systems. It even has second wind and Action points (action surge).

Not to mention the whole hit-dice system.

What they did return to was the natural language and the (less and less faithful version of) vancian casting.

You are basically fooled into thinking it's 3.5 because powers are not in colorful boxes anymore.

So a handful of abilities possessed by a single class and a single archetype of that class is an indicator that 5e is 4e in everything but name? Not all martials are fighters and not all fighters are battlemasters.

I don't know if you are a troll or just stupid, but 5e is its own unique system that ironed out a lot of the failings of 4e by simply looking back to older editions. And, by older editions, I mean that 5e shares more in common in terms of base math and scale with AD&D than it does any later edition.

Generally, 4e was disliked for having clunkly, cumbersome, and slow battles, even after people started to add blanket math fixes in order to try and speed up the game.

I'm saying 4e is still in 5e. Mechanics weren't abandoned, they were renamed and tweaked to not trigger autism.

You think all the short/long rest recharges aren't just encounter/daily powers without the red/black boxes?

> And, by older editions, I mean that 5e shares more in common in terms of base math and scale with AD&D than it does any later edition.

And that's cool. It takes a little bit from everywhere, so everyone willing can see into it whatever he wants, whichever edition was his favorite. I like the lower numbers as well.

>even after people started to add blanket math fixes in order to try and speed up the game.
>people

You mean WotC with MM3 and on.

>Don't try to rewrite history, please.

Alright, but you have to work on detecting sarcasm. Deal?

>You think all the short/long rest recharges aren't just encounter/daily powers without the red/black boxes?

Considering they made them take 1 hour, short rests are not really something you can do every encounter. Hit dice are also what people accused healing surges of being rather than what they actually were.

>And, by older editions, I mean that 5e shares more in common in terms of base math and scale with AD&D than it does any later edition.

It's kinda funny, I've seen the same argument made for 4e having more in common with AD&D than 3.5 did.

Robert E. Howard's Conan series has good combat descriptions.

Everything the Darkest Dungeon narrator says. They aren't descriptions as such, but they are great mood setters.

Hey, tg, how can we make this thing I don't like so I like it?

Happy summer, folks.

see

>fancy narration
still as hollow as putting on a spiderman skin in a first person shooter and pretending your playing a superhero game. it's just window dressing.

>individual circumstances and tactics
work only if the players care to begin with

>muh tripping and pushing
see tactics

>speed
doesnt make combat more interesting, just shortens any boredom

>banter
haha

>stakes
correct

If you mean by scale of numbers?

AD&D's main characteristic is that its numbers start low and stay low. 4e never gets anywhere near the full scale of 3.5, but it also never really starts at the same low level.

Low level 3.5 and AD&D share much more in common than AD&D and just about any tier of 4e.

The size of the numbers is an illusion.

4e characters start with higher numbers, sure; but so do their enemies.

Plus, if you really want classic D&D "rusty dagger shanktown" experience, level 0 rules do exist.

Stop shilling Strike!

Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?

>doesnt make combat more interesting, just shortens any boredom
Wouldn't that technically make combat more interesting though? I mean, boredom is caused when there's nothing happening for long stretches of time.

The basic thing to understand is that in 2e and 3.5, low level enemies and PCs have rather swingy results, where a few bad rolls can dramatically change the outcome of the battle.

In 4e, they decided to keep things more "safe". Higher HP, and more consistent damage rather than explosive damage, which generally favors PCs more than enemies since consistency is more important to those who have to endure more battles.

Which lead to it being considered a dull game with tedious combat.

It was later improved by altering the combat math dramatically, but it still lacks much of the visceral excitement of previous editions. Sadly, 5e also occasionally falls into the realm of trying to play it safe and consistent, but it's nowhere near as bad as 4e had it, and people have already begun to push 5e to have more explosive rounds by utilizing Unearthed Arcana and generally just building and playing smarter.

>The basic thing to understand is that in 2e and 3.5, low level enemies and PCs have rather swingy results, where a few bad rolls can dramatically change the outcome of the battle.

This is what I mean by "rusty dagger shanktown". This is only a thing at low levels in any edition, and 4e can do it with the level 0 rules (or just always using higher level, striking focused monsters).

>It was later improved by altering the combat math dramatically

They slightly nerfed monster health/defense, and made the mandatory expertise feats something extra on the side. It was a change of around +1/-1 per tier plus an extra 2 or so at best.

> Sadly, 5e also occasionally falls into the realm of trying to play it safe and consistent, but it's nowhere near as bad as 4e had it

5e has the same/similar inflated HP values, but doesn't have the tactical combat options, or design of 4e to make the ~3-4 turns of combat actually exciting. It also has actual limitless healing, both in and out of combat, missing the entire point of healing surges. I had combats where the barbarian stood up 3-4 times thanks to just spamming 1st level holy words, and this was at what, level 3-4?

But 5e is even more boring than 2/3/4e ever was. It's almost painful to endure combat.

Be creative and colorful with descriptions. Make the death of a npc brutal AF. Add banter to the mix occasionally from the npcs.

It's seriously not hard to make a combat flow and be fun just try to be creative in any way

>They slightly nerfed monster health/defense

You mean they cut HP by about half, and other similarly dramatic changes.

>5e has the same/similar inflated HP values, but doesn't have the tactical combat options,

That's actually verifiably false. The first part is pretty easy to simply check, and you can see that 5e battles are mechanically designed to end far faster. Secondly, one neat thing that 5e did was introduce simple abilities with multiple uses, allowing an exponential growth of potential combat options and foregoing the heavy restrictions of 4e's powers system. 5e uses a much more organic and intuitive system that rewards players for learning its ins-and-outs, while still being largely accessible to new players in a way that allows them to think outside the box, rather than literally inside the boxes as 4e was designed.

Take for example the rogue's cunning action. It's only a few lines of text, but opens up hundreds of potential strategies.

>You mean they cut HP by about half
This is wrong. I don't know why people keep parroting it. the most drastic change was dropping hp by 1/3 for some monsters, but most only changed by a couple points. What changed was monster damage went up, defenses went slightly down, monsters got better designed attacks/reactions/special defenses, and PCs had several years of feats/powers/supplements to draw from. The game overall just got fuller; it was the build up of an evolving game, not a few drastic changes.

why?

You make it not suck by playing Song of Swords.

>Secondly, one neat thing that 5e did was introduce simple abilities with multiple uses
This has led to redundancy. Advantage/disadvantage being the result of almost every special action ends up weeding out the less efficient ways to achieve the same result, and bonus action overlap restricts one's action choices at any given moment, again weeding out less efficient uses of the action. It's difficult to come up with varied strategies in 5e because everything just tends to blend together because there isn't much differentiating your choices.

5e is the odd game where brand new players often grasp how the system works faster than people who've played previous editions. It might have been just that you had to rethink your approach to how combat works in 5e to make it work for you, because if you try to play it like 4e or 3.5, you're going to encounter some difficulties in keeping the game dynamic.

I'd actually recommend playing 5e with brand new players a few times, because they are often able to think creatively with the system in ways that can be rather inspiring.

That's not odd at all, that happens pretty much every time anyone is introduced to a new system that ears some resemblance to something he already knows. It's why people with a video game background pick up 4E so quickly.

You're missing the point of 5E, buddy. 5E is all about the environment options. If your combats consist of characters using only character options and monsters using only monster options, you're DMing wrong.

>Advantage/disadvantage being the result

There's a lot of abilities that either depend on advantage/disadvantage or otherwise make use of it, and this provides a measure of diversity especially when there's often other benefits/restrictions at play. You're right in that it leads to redundancy, but that redundancy does help players keep focused on the broader picture, without having to worry about things like eking out every possible potential point of advantage while organizing your attack routine or carefully layering a sequence of thirteen or more buffs for maximum efficiency. Some people still try to do that, but 5e has a number of "walls" put in place to keep things from getting out of hand like they did in 4e and 3.5.

While 5e is considerably simpler than 4e and 3.5 in regards to combat, that simplicity actually can work to enable both the players and the GM to act and react more intuitively. It's a bit of a process to get into this mindset, kind of like switching from using a grid to instead keeping track of things mentally, but I've found that 5e did a fair job at cutting out the less interesting and more finnicky parts of combat and instead allows players to focus on finessing the broad strokes.

>You're missing the point of 5E, buddy. 5E is all about the environment options.
This dumb meme again.

>implement mechanic that makes ruling environmental advantage/disadvantage incredibly fast and easy
>free interactions in each combat round, very unrestricted movement

How is it a meme? I agree they could have emphasized it more explicitly but the design-intent is clear.

>It's just window dresssing

You do realize that table top rpgs are primarily fueled by narrative description right? If you can't be entertained by a good description of events in the game then maybe you should just go play video games

Well, life as a martial is largely boring. You have few tactical options available and hard limits on what you can creatively spit out, ironically due to the feats and class features covering fairly mundane options, so what happens is you're barred from an action because "well you didn't pick that feat/feature so it wouldn't be fair"

Then there's how short combat is. Due to the limited action economy there's little you can do a turn, but you can set up things. Problem is they take so long to set up the fight is over by the time you're ready to pull off whatever crazy shit you were trying to build up to.

Spellcasting has the same issues it's always had in ever non4e edition. It continuosly baffles me how they make restrictions and solvable problems in the game design, then make a spell that circumvents the whole issue. Short rests take an hour? Well I guess we need to figure out how to set up safe camps-oh wait the wizard just casts rope trick.

Most groups I'm in are mostly new players. It's agony playing with these people. It seems like they have difficulty grasping the concept of an rpg altogether. They're largely baffled by action economy and try to do way more than is legally allowed, or they don't quite get rules interactions so they try to do things that are outright impossible or have no advantage, like say doing two things that grant advantage and expecting an added bonus. That's to say nothing of their difficulty with basic calculations and record keeping; figuring out modifiers or attack rolls/saves seems to be a continuous issue with them, they often forget the skills system exists altogether, and god help you if you ask them what spells they know. These people just seem dumb

Playing with newbies is the least fun experience in 5e I've had. At least with veterans I can have some inkling of fun when someone tries to concoct some crazy scheme out of a bizarre spell interaction or a "creative" reading of an ability's rules

Admittedly, it's a little hard for people used to older editions to get used to, especially when the DM just assumes to run the game like they might have in the past without actually reading the DM's guide.

But, go ahead and read the DM's guide. It might help you move past this whole "call it a meme" business.

A reliance on GM fiat does not make for a good combat system.

>I can't run combat in this system like it all happens in a featureless white void, that means it is shit!

The only intent they had in design was to make the game as bland and inoffensive as possible. Anything else is an unintentional byproduct.

Here's a tip for life, kiddo: If you present actual arguments, you wouldn't be viewed as a total retard anytime you try to argue a point.

There are systems where I can run combat like it all happens in a featureless white void and still have them be exciting. I can then add environmental shit to make it even better if I feel the need to.

Yes, it does mean your system is shit if it has to rely on GM fiat for players to derive any enjoyment from it.

You come off as a person who only understands games in the context of a min-maxing munchkin, which puts you at odds with the more modern approach that games have come to embrace.

It's also unsurprising you have difficulty teaching new players, because you generally have to understand something if you want to try teaching it.

> I can then add environmental shit to make it even better
That's what I doubt.

Literally irrelevant to the point you're trying to make.