How to make combat in DND more fun

the base rules of DnD have their fair share of flaws and I have a bunch of home rules that try and address them specifically I'm going to talk about combat in this segment but I may very well do more in the future if people want to see them now if you've dm'd or played in a game for any length of time it's quite possible you've experienced conducts that evolve pretty quickly into boring hack and slash encounters that really lack the exhilarating feeling that fighting for your life should evoke often it becomes an exceedingly simple numbers game of who can do more flat damage to each other over the course of way too many rounds there's no need to strategize movement not much in the order of attacks and nothing in the rules that incentivizes players to do anything other than saying I walk up and make an attack with my long sword or icast Elders blast and that problem is especially exacerbated for low-level plays such as one to four or a high level play like anything about 14. God forbid you play Fighters only options are to hit something over and over and over again or use your one use ability to do that again unfortunately that lacks flavor and that's a big problem the way that I have always engaged my players in combat is through descriptions of their crazy Maneuvers and gruesome murderings and whomever is stupid enough to get in the way of their swords but and anyone has dm'd before knows exactly what I'm talking about there's always those moments when the players set up this cool series of attacks that would cut their enemies heels disarm them and poke out one of his eyes and they hit they don't do enough damage to kill him and I'm forced to say yeah all those hits land blood is spraying everywhere but he's still standing up holding his weapon and glaring at you with both eyes and three hit points frankly that's unfulfilling it pulls people out of the Cinematic narrative and forces them back into the mindset of simple boring abstract damage numbers it makes sense that that would make the game feel slow and boring because we're motivated by agency when that's boiled down to the optimal sword stab every turn our brains turn off and we stop having fun so what do we do well about a year ago I was struggling with that and I figured let's just give incentives for narrating attacks so I sat down I wrote up a paragraph on what I called Dynamic fighting let me apologize in advance if this is an idea that exists elsewhere I really haven't done any research on this topic regardless Dynamic fighting assigns each attack an Associated saving throw or dynamic fighting save DFS equals 8 plus the stat modifier associated with the attack plus your proficiency bonus if you have Proficiency in the attack as an example the level 1 fighter attacks the long sword the DFS for the attack is eight plus the strength modifier plus proficiency bonus if the fighter has a plus three in strength their save is eight plus three plus two which equals 13. now the important bit once per turn when you hit with an attack you can specify an intended effect that attack might logically have through a description of the DM the DM makes a quick decision on exactly what that effect would be usually a little extra damage knocking them prone jumping them back Etc and what stat the enemy should use to save your enemy then rules they're saving through against your DFS and upon a failure your intentions succeed if the attack is a crit the enemy Auto Fails they're safe that's it I promise and play this is exceptionally simple so let me illustrate in our example the aforementioned fighter could hit with his long sword and say I lunge forward with my long sword cutting at my opponent's sword arm to disarm them the DM decides both that this is reasonable and that the save is probably dexterity because the enemy is Wheeling a dexterity weapon a raper and this is a question of contested weapon skills the DM role is a deck save against the fighters DFS of 13 and fails so the fighter slashes at his opponent forcing his blade past the enemy's cross guard and cutting in his arms sending the Rapier scattering across the ground 10 feet away he rolls as damaged like normal and combat continues now the enemy has to decide whether he draws his dagger and fights for the less than ideal weapon or if he Braves the opportunity attack to retrieve his Rapier maybe he tries to disarm the fighter in return you let's kind of see how this goes I've played with this system for over a year now and only and I've only found it to be additive in practice there's a sort of beauty to it because it accomplishes exactly what I needed especially in my traditionally low level games without making combat any longer so let me explain my reasoning Dynamic fighting gives players an effectively infinite amount of choice in even their basic melee attacks and provides numerical benefits for the most fun part of combat narration letting the enemies also utilize this system means the players are incentivized to narrate their attacks or else risk giving the enemies a natural upper hand a form of extra damage or abilities it also automatically increases tension by quickly changing the landscape of fights mid combat rewards players for working together in a more nuanced and balanced way than a flanking bonus which I don't use anymore by the way it doesn't add any extra time to fights because that's one person is rolling damage is making a save both parties are rolling at the same time so it remains streamlined and finally it also makes armed fighting fun which only sucks in D because it's a set amount of damage if this sounds like something you want to incorporate in your game I absolutely encourage you to it's worked great for me as led to a bunch of super fun encounters fantastic bar fights if not that's the beauty of d d it's kind of a mediocre jack of all trades system you are free to modify in whichever way you like found this helpful cool I'll make more of these if people are interested in the meantime we stream on Twitch on Saturday every other week including this one February 25th starting at 5 PM normally we start at six but this is a long one so tune in for that if you have the urge that's all for now cheers

Channel: The UnProfessionals

Views: 12,069

Keywords:

Id: 4BiK6uz7kaE

Length: 5min 49sec (349 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2023