DnD Combat

If your DM is new then yes this is normal.
Theater of the Mind is good in paper but in practice D&D combat is literally built around the grid. So removing the grid entirely isn't an option, at best you have to deal with half-assed compromises like talking in "moves to reach", and you must constantly remind players of where they are and what's going on which is kind of a pain.

Making a combat interesting basically comes down to 3 things IMO:
-Abstract terrain. The DM must accept that not everything is represented on the grid. If it'd make sense for something to be there, then it probably is. This will open up a lot of creative options.
-Unpredictable enemies. If your orcs use PC tactics they will NOT be boring.
-Speed and narrative flow. It's supposed to be hectic. If the players are allowed to spend minutes picking their options then obviously combat is not going to be much more exciting than a puzzle.

It's only a crutch if you and your group treat it as one. It's a two way street to improving grid-based combat, but once you do improve it I believe it's a much clearer way to implement combat than theater of the mind where locations can become unclear and interpretations can be wrong.

What you need though is
>DM to draw lots of filler shit around the place, accurate to the location
>ie. cover/obstructions of varying sizes, things of note
>players to then use that filler stuff in interesting ways
>ie. thugs jump us in a cafe, one jumps on the table for a height advantage, I swing my mace at the stationary table leg instead of the dodging thug and send him crashing to the ground

Encourage your DM to be more descriptive with how they're portraying the violence. If your DM is not too great at descriptions, ask if you can sub in your own descriptions on attacks and see if your player will run with it. Players of mine are allowed to narrate their own attacks, then the dice shows how the results play out for them.
The grid is important, and it doesn't sound like you have a problem with it. It sounds like you more or less want some more exciting narration, and some more exciting things to do on the grid. Talk to your DM about upping the challenge by making monsters smarter. What's more thrilling and difficult, a group of Orcs who rush at you to attack head on? Or a group of Orcs who lures you into their turf and hunts you with arrows, camouflage, and guerilla tactics?
Encourage your DM not to just throw monsters in your face, have them think about the monsters would behave, how they fight, how they hunt, etc.

Oh also, I agree with Especially
>Abstract terrain. The DM must accept that not everything is represented on the grid. If it'd make sense for something to be there, then it probably is

>So removing the grid entirely isn't an option,

Why do idiots try to present themselves as experts?

5e combat is shit, especially at higher levels. It has 3.5/4e level health but without a.) the instant kill effects of 3.5 and b.) the tactical considerations and fun monster design of 4e that require 3-4 turns to be good.

This makes the baseline of combat a boring slog, especially if the damage dealers are not optimised.

You are better off either playing OSR if you prefer theater of mind style play and mechanical simplicity, or 4e if you like the tactical aspect and the complex character builds.

It's a holdover from 4th edition - they killed any creativity in play and had it turn into WoW the boardgame

Hopefully they'll remove that in 6th

Theater of the mind simply replaces a concrete grid of squares with an abstract grid of "moves". (Well okay, that's more like a graph, is that what you wanted to be pedantic about?)
Of course you COULD have combat where distance is never a factor, but then are you really playing D&D?

>If you can't arrange little GI Joe elves on a chessboard then distance isn't a factor in combat
okay

Can you go out and actually play a game before you run your mouth again?

Maybe you should read what I wrote, instead of replying to what strawman-user said in your head.

Ok
>grids (whether in the mind or on paper) are required for distance to be a factor in combat

You don't need a grid as long as you can give your players a good idea of where the enemies are in relation to them, how close together they are, what they are doing etc.

I think a grid just gets in the way and slows things down more than anything. In 4th edition it's kinda needed but 5th is designed to be a bit more chill about the rules. Some of you guys will hate me for saying this but you don't have to be exact with positioning. Leave it a little vague and you allow more room for your players to come up with cool stuff to happen.

That becomes really hard to track though and people can visualise things differently. Drawing up a map may halt things a bit but it really does bring clarity.

So I assume all the combats in your game happen in a corridor... ?

But what if, what if it was a fantasy game more about storytelling and back-and-forth between the players and the DM and everything didn't have to be calculated like a Jew doing taxes?

If you don't have a map of some sort you end up with the fuzziness where your backline never gets put at risk and the frontline takes a disproportionate amount of damage because that's what everything thinks is supposed to happen. Also arguments over whether or not someone is included inside the AoE attack that just happened.

I mean yeah, you could carefully specify exact position in relative terms, with everyone in back maintaining a careful ten foot separation and the tanks in front are holding a line twenty feet wide and the enemies are expending an additional fifteen feet of movement to try and move around them etc. but at that point why aren't you using a map to make clear and visible?

Clarity you don't really need. Like reading a book it's fine if people visualise things differently as long as everyone's on the same page. Think of it more like a dream everyone's having rather than a computer program. There are rules to follow but if they should flex a bit if something fun or interesting can happen.

If your wizard wants to get a group of enemies together in an AoE just tell him how many he can snag. If your rogue wants to get behind someone who's fighting the paladin just say if it's possible or tell them why if not so they can try to solve the problem.

If your players are being that careful and organised I'd be fine with that. Just have things like the occasional ambush or flying creature to threaten the back lines. Not to be that DM or anything, just give them something they didn't plan for and a problem to solve.

Does this require more prep work as the DM? And how do you deal with players who constantly ask for exact numbers and stuff?

No it requires less if anything. You don't have to draw maps to scale with grids for a start so you can have areas of any size or shape and ones that can change shape at any time you need. It's theatre of the mind.

Maybe we're just quite a chill group but my players seem to be satisfied with a general description of the enemy disposition. If they ask for more info they're usually just trying to figure out how many move actions it might take to get there or if they can do a certain spell or action involving the environment so I tend to tell them in those terms depending on the context.

>nice pasta user

Ditch the grid, just measure things in inches. Use an egg timer if player turns are taking too long.

Maybe you can do that in D&D where everything is whiffle bats hitting each other from a stationary position, but I would not do that in Shadowrun or Dark Heresy where shit like cover, angles and the difference of a meter is life and death when someone goes rock and roll on you.
I've seen repeatedly someone thinking they had cover only for the GM to disagree and turn them into a stain.

Its both. 5e is much closer to a tactical miniatures game than most editions (though less than 4e), so it removes some of the mystique. That said, the pace you describe is your fault. Get a thirty second timer and tell everyone they have that long to pick what they do.

This .... Jesus you ppl are retarded

Yeah going gridless can't work for all games. The OP asked about 5th edition D&D though. I play that so I thought I'd chime in with my opinion.

5e works perfectly fine without a grid, and in fact, uses theatre of the mind as base assumption. It's just that lot of people playing it are used to a grid from previous editions.

I mix both methods myself, depending on the situation. For many encounters, I skip the grid entirely, though that's easier if most enemies are of a single "type". If you use a mix of melee and ranged foes, especially if some have better mobility or there's a lot of AoE involved, or it's a battle with lot of enemies (smart enemies, not charging wall of zombies) or a more complex terrain, grid certainly helps.

I can't really imagine how would I run, to use one of my past encounters, battle against fast, teleporting enemies in a trap-filled maze without a drawn map (not necessarily gridded, though).. it would be just about impossible to keep 4 other people on the same page in regards to where everyone and everything is.

What some of my friends and I have tried with decent success is basically using inches and no grid. More fluid

revolution21days.blogspot.com/2012/01/why-d-has-lots-of-rules-for-combat.html

Interesting article thanks. In the same vein that we may be leaning on grids too much maybe we are leaning on combat overall and just bouncing between fights without spending time and energy on roleplay etc

Use 13th Age's positioning for Theater of the Mind in 5e.

To me this seems sufficient

That hedges on the idea you need "rules" for roleplay, rather than willing players and a savvy GM.
Games with hard rules for roleplay end up being abused almost all the time far worse than any diplomancer in D&D.

>I run up and attack him with my trusty sword!
>You can't reach him in this turn yet.

>...and you burn Gromgul with your fireball.
>YOU DIDN'T WARN ME THAT THIS ASSHOLE WAS THAT CLOSE TO THE PIGMAN
>...butbut I said that the sacrificial altar is 10ft from the column, the wight was standing behind it
etc

keep 256 little things in mind and awkwardly "mama may I" every time I try to do anything

okay this is alright

>and in fact, uses theatre of the mind as base assumption
Wait, what? Where does it say that?
It lists using a grid as a "variant" rule but I don't think it ever says anything about actually using theatre of the mind, and there are an awful lot of spell effect radii for "theatre of the mind" to be the real way of doing things.

>play theater of the mind style
>DM has a bit of graph paper that they use to keep track of distances and positioning
Done.

Your DM should be pushing you to play quickly, each turn is 6 seconds you shouldn't be allowed 2minutes to think things out

The thing about Theatre of the mind is that everyone percieves things in their own mind, and often this isn't the same image. You may mistakenly think the table is across the room, or too high jump over. There may in fact be a window you can look through or cover you can hide behind.

Play out the scenario as your character would play it out, but remember when deciding on tactics that your character is very likely to be an exceptional hero(ine) on the scale of the characters in Lord of the Rings. Their perception of time and space in the heat of battle is beyond what we generally conceive as being possible.

I mean how else does your Elven ranger hit the guy across the room in dim lighting four times, just happening to hit him in both eyes and the throat?

he's a bit of a rules lawyer and almost never just makes a call without something to back it up. I think he's afraid to let loose.

The ranger literally took 2 minutes to decide if he wanted to walk through a door or stay back and not attack during combat and eventually I (again, I'm not the DM) shouted "He's taking too long, he does nothing!" and lo and behold he made a call in about 2 seconds

What are range bands.

Not quite sure of your point. Are you saying the DM would underestimate characters and players would overestimate them?

How does this work with stuff like spell effect radii?

No, I'm saying the DM might describe a scene that he and the players all see differently in physical minutiae.

DM discretion maybe, but I was wondering myself