• 6 Posts
  • 132 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: September 10th, 2023
  • Shyfer@ttrpg.networktottrpg•Making combat interesting
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    6 days ago

    I'll try to add to the conversation with 5e rather than suggest another game like everyone else (although I will say I've gotten into 4e recently and it's surprisingly fun with very tactical, engaging combats lol). I agree with a lot of what you said about sprinkling in descriptions and dialogue throughout the combat. I also think better designed enemies can help a lot. I highly recommend the Flee Mortals book by MCDM. I used it a lot in 5e campaigns now. More interesting enemies can make comabt more interesting.

    I also think more interesting environments can also help. Put in lots of cover, spots of difficult terrain, maybe a trap, things like that.

    Uninteresting combats should be fast, and one thing that helps that out is low health, high damage enemies, which for me means every now and then I lower enemy health if they already got a few good hits in or an enemy blew a spell slot to take care of them, since the point of this combat is to make players lose resources, not really for the story. This is less of a problem for low level combat, but more for higher level combat when health totals increase. Also, for these don't be afraid to make them some run to warn other allies, or run in fear if they get low health (unless they're mindless undead or constructs), or some run when their boss dies, things like that.

    On the other hand, interesting or story important combats I'm okay with being long as long as they're also compelling and fun to play. After all, D&D has a lot of fun combat options in classes and players want to use them. That's where I recommend things like villain actions in that Flee Mortals book or the other stuff I recommend above.

    Oh and the last thing I did is I am very liberal with consumable magic items or temporary buffs as awards for quests and stuff. I like the latter because players aren't encouraged to hoard it and it in fact encourages pushing ahead more to take advantage of the buff while they have it so the opposite mentality of hoarding, but the former has the nice advantage of being an additional option for a player to use in combat, which can make it more interesting, especially for those without spells. But to prevent hoarding, you have to make combat harder and have the kinds of players that look at everything on their sheet, as well as give enough rewards they know they'll get more in the future.

  • Shyfer@ttrpg.networktorpg@ttrpg.network•Luke Crane bought Dungeon World and is going to make a 2nd Edition
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    5 months ago

    I don't think it sounds stupid at all. PBTA requires a shift in how you think of rpg's unless you started with that system. I've always been told that, and it seems to be true. I'm still kind of wrapping my head around it, myself. I've always loved the idea of it, even if I haven't gotten it down yet, though. I bought Dungeon World, Blades in the Dark, Monster Hearts, and the Avatar rpg Kickstarter with all the extras. I wonder if I need someone else to DM me with other players around who can play it right before I can DM others, because I don't feel like I've quite gotten it down despite all that lol.

  • Shyfer@ttrpg.networktorpg@ttrpg.network•D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax was Sexist. Talking about it is Key to Preserving His Legacy.
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    6 months ago

    Yet apparently a bunch of people need to learn that, because according to the author when they brought up his flaws in a book, people were falling over themselves to say he was besmirching his good name or slandering Gygax and stuff like that. People need to learn their heroes aren't perfect, even now, and that's why I think it's good this article is spread and read. Not everyone knows to separate the author and their work.

    I would blame social media for encouraging parasocial relations, but this is the kind of stuff that existed before the internet, with other musicians and artists and authors, and it's brought up in academic courses on similar work, so I guess it's just a human thing that people need to be aware of.