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Post by jonas on May 18, 2015 1:40:51 GMT -8
Hi. How slow would you say combats are in 5e?
I'm a guy that is used to 4e and actually enjoyed the system (if you had no more than four players, everyone were well-versed with the rules and you halved the hit points for all the monsters), but I'm more of a Savage Worlds- and GURPS guy deep down in my black husk of a heart.
So how slow is 5e compared to 4e, GURPS and Savage Worlds? My first impression was that it was rather fast, but battles really seemed to drag on in the Eldemy podcast. But that maybe was because you only were a spectator rather than a participant.
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Post by uselesstriviaman on May 18, 2015 5:33:17 GMT -8
From my (somewhat limited) experience, I'd compare 5E combat to 3E/Pathfinder combat as far as real-time length. Never played GURPS yet, but I'd say fights in Savage Worlds tend to go far faster than D&D, regardless of edition.
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nanoboy
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 142
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Post by nanoboy on May 18, 2015 10:29:20 GMT -8
It's generally pretty fast. I can run GURPS combats faster than most people, so I won't compare it to that. It's certainly faster than Pathfinder, though. Importantly, it always feels like stuff has impact every turn.
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Post by lowkeyoh on May 18, 2015 11:02:20 GMT -8
Our table's 5e combats go really fast, where as our Savage Worlds combats dragged on forever. One of the big things is you're not fiddling with bonuses you have to keep track of in your head. Concentration is the biggest part of toning the system down from 3.P as well as the Advantage/Disadvantage system. Less math only means faster resolutions if everyone knows what they're doing. We just got one of our players to DM for the first time in a decade and combat has slowed down, but that's to be expected. Looking up what abilities (grapple, shove, spell details, class features) also can also bog things down.
Ultimately, you are resolving one action per turn and once you smooth out what every player can do things speed up.
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Post by rickno7 on May 18, 2015 18:15:42 GMT -8
Feels the same to me as 3.X/Pathfinder fights.
There are some things that speed up little places here and there in the rules(some optional in the books), like fixed creature damage on attacks to reduce rolling, group based initiative(like SW). The biggest time saver at higher levels is the reduction of all the maths, replaced mostly by Advantage/Disadvantage. Since Adv/Dis scales with level without actually needing to adjust it, the game gets rid of all the +2's, +4's, +6's and so on to a lot of the game. What I'm saying is, with 3.X you'd get a +2 on something, but that +2 sucks at level 12. So each level it gets boosted, well do that with practically every part of an action and you have a line of admittedly simple, but time consuming math(multiply it all by 4+ players, and then the time to make sure you have all the modifiers etc).
So its about the same levels 1-6, but after 6 you start feeling the quickening of the book keeping. This is the first time since 2nd Ed that I don't feel like GM'ing past level 10 is too cumbersome for me to enjoy.
Oh and its VASTLY quicker than 4th. You will not have to plan the entire night around "talk for 5 minutes, fight for 3 hours, have an end-night epilogue of 5 minutes and call it a day". Multiple fights in a 3 hour session! I know! CRAZY
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Post by squeatus on May 19, 2015 10:16:14 GMT -8
Feels the same to me as 3.X/Pathfinder fights. The biggest time saver at higher levels is the reduction of all the maths, replaced mostly by Advantage/Disadvantage. Since Adv/Dis scales with level without actually needing to adjust it, the game gets rid of all the +2's, +4's, +6's and so on to a lot of the game. What I'm saying is, with 3.X you'd get a +2 on something, but that +2 sucks at level 12. So each level it gets boosted, well do that with practically every part of an action and you have a line of admittedly simple, but time consuming math(multiply it all by 4+ players, and then the time to make sure you have all the modifiers etc). So its about the same levels 1-6, but after 6 you start feeling the quickening of the book keeping... I just re-read the player's handbook after checking it out late last year through the inexpensive basic set and basic rules pdf, and without running it, I've come to the same conclusion. The things that get me thinking this should scale really well, all the way up: - Ad/Disad system rids you of cumbersome math, and as mentioned earlier, it scales well.
- No bonus stacking as a rule. Take the best one and quietly sob to your munchkin self between your turns.
- Proficiency bonus ranges are smaller, keeping content challenging longer.
- With a slower, linear power progression, rather than an exponential or quadratic power curve, it makes throwing random challenges/encounters out a little less nerve-wracking. Under- or over-powered encounters won't be as likely to result in rolling for 20 minutes for the inevitable slaughter or a one-round TPK. Eyeball some stats and go.
- Move and act. Maybe a bonus attack for some. Dead simple, and keeps everyone rolling frequently instead of fuckbag and his multiattack/manyshot/rapidfire/arrow-typhoon/blot-out-the-sun feats spending six hours rolling each turn.
- Spell system revamp: Limited number of spells memorized or available. I love this most of all. Outside of a few ritual castings (which would be out of combat anyway) you've got a small subset of spells to work with every day, meaning less paralyzing deliberation by your wizard.
- Drawing swords or getting a potion out doesn't waste your round. More rolling twenties, less empty actions.
- Grapple is a str vs str (or dex) to win or break free. It's DnD, not UFC Simulation. You only need to hold it long enough to kill it.
All in all I think 5E really hits the sweet spot between the two most popular styles of DnD: You get the modern blingy feel with some sort of cool ability every round (cantrips for inexhaustible blasting, first level spells that ramp up with level and wreck shit, sneak attack dice all over, ragey barbarians and smitey paladins) but mechanically simple. Simple enough at least not get in the way of a more old school, deliberately spartan ruleset that doesn't have eighteen subsystems for corner cases.
Until the splat books stack up over the next few years, anyway, things look pretty good.
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Post by Stu Venable on May 19, 2015 12:38:04 GMT -8
In order to challenge the players I *am* having to come up with encounters that are higher than suggested, which means higher HP.
I have noticed that the fights are taking longer.
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Post by squeatus on May 19, 2015 15:45:05 GMT -8
In order to challenge the players I *am* having to come up with encounters that are higher than suggested, which means higher HP. I have noticed that the fights are taking longer. Haven't got to the Monster Manual yet. Is there trouble with higher CR monsters being basically bigger HP pools and that's it? It's cool to have leaner monster stat blocks but the one worry I have is that they'll pay for simplicity by too-often going to the "more hp = more challenging" well. :/ When you notice the fights are taking longer, is that a bad thing, like you're finding yourself bored in another roll, miss, roll, hit, roll hit slog-fest? Or are they still relatively engaging, but they're just taking a while longer (due to more actions/options/whatever)? I think that's the thing for me. I don't mind an hour long combat if it doesn't totally suck and it's not the norm. I guess I'll know more after this week. I've got another 40-60 hours to kill at work, and I got the real plays queued up this week.
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Post by Stu Venable on May 19, 2015 15:49:55 GMT -8
HP increases with challenge, yes. But not nearly as much as it did in 4E. I haven't seen any 1200HP bosses yet, for instance.
I *don't* like long combats, so for me, it's a negative. YMMV
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Post by squeatus on May 19, 2015 16:14:09 GMT -8
I *don't* like long combats, so for me, it's a negative. YMMV Me either. To clarify, I was speaking in relative terms, and right now Pathfinder is the system played most in my circles. Hour-long combat would be considered "decent" and I prefer them to be much shorter. At least, I think that's how long they take. I tend to get up and have a lot of smoke breaks when a lot of minis hit the mat. I like brief, evocative combat in most other RPG's, where it's measured in minutes and not hours. I've just come to accept that 3.x/Pathfinder is played mostly as a wargame with some RP breaks.
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Post by rickno7 on May 19, 2015 17:50:48 GMT -8
The Monster Manual CR's are all over the place, its my biggest complaint. I pretty much make up whatever HP/AC Resistance combo makes it challenging for my group at the time and slap a "greater" or "Alpha" title to it, then use the normal ones as trash mobs. 3rd's CR's weren't perfect, but it was at least ballpark.
CR 3 in particular was just way off, the monsters began getting some neat unique abilities, but wouldn't last past the first round so they could actually do them. Level 3 is a HUGE level for basically every class, and it doesn't look like they upped the monsters enough for that big boost. By CR5 things got closer to "right" though.
As for 3.X/pathfinder being a wargame, I think that system is very different depending on the way you GM. I never did a session as a GM where a combat took hours unless I was specifically taking a MMO raid boss approach to something(I play with alot of MMO players, so sometimes they like that). Now if you want to play a game where it seems no matter how you GM, combats just last forever and take over the game, that's 4th ed D&D.
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nanoboy
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 142
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Post by nanoboy on May 19, 2015 20:24:16 GMT -8
My experience jives with some of the challenge rating comments. I've found that instead of increasing HP, add more offensive abilities to the villains. Make them actually dangerous. You can really scare the piss out of players when you throw something like a banshee in there. Her powers are nasty for her CR.
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Post by squeatus on May 20, 2015 5:31:51 GMT -8
As for 3.X/pathfinder being a wargame, I think that system is very different depending on the way you GM. I never did a session as a GM where a combat took hours unless I was specifically taking a MMO raid boss approach to something(I play with alot of MMO players, so sometimes they like that). Now if you want to play a game where it seems no matter how you GM, combats just last forever and take over the game, that's 4th ed D&D. Yeah, I got my primary group into Pathfinder because I followed the fluff, really. The adventures and world-building were inspirational at a time when a lot of WotC stuff was just hot garbage. It's just that as the additional hardcover rules came out, it somehow became more and more a wargame and less and less about the interesting worlds/adventure ideas for my group. That's fine as long as I come to the table with the right mindset, which is more like we're playing poker and drinking/talking/insulting one another. Still, I'd like to steer everyone back in the direction of less/no maps, fewer rules, more imagination. As for 4E, I'd written it off from the beginning, once playtesters started reporting about how they "kited a mob" in combat. Taking one of the most imaginatively dissonant features of MMO's and adding it IN to a tabletop ruleset just killed any interest I had in looking at it. I didn't see how that was going to translate into a faster or more interesting game at all. That being said, I think the guys on Nerd Poker did 4E right, at least for the first ten episodes I listened to. They jumped into 4E by just playing it like older editions, without maps or heavy combat. The mantra at the time was just "I don't really want to read any books really just tell me what happens." It was at really low levels, though, and I think they were starting to get pressure to "play the game as written" from listeners, so I don't know if that changed much as the series went on.
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Post by rickno7 on May 20, 2015 19:00:33 GMT -8
There's your problem right there.
Additional rule books always seem to add more and more crunch to a game. I had a stint with the "Complete Book of..." series with 2nd Ed in my teens and swore off additional rule books past "vanilla". There was an interview around the time 5th Ed D&D came out where Mearles said he was genuinely surprised by the backlash of 4th Ed because essentially 3.5 had evolved into 4th Ed through additional supplements and official magazine content. It was then that I realized that they fully assume EVERYONE uses ALL the "optional" rule supplements. He said the cry for "more simple, more streamline" was counter to his previous years of feedback while in the business with WOTC.
Made a lot of things very clear to me once I read that, showed how out of touch they were with the general populace, almost every playing group I've known played with vanilla rules.
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Post by squeatus on May 22, 2015 11:34:55 GMT -8
There's your problem right there. Additional rule books always seem to add more and more crunch to a game. The Complete X series taught me the same lesson, but I promptly forgot it after Pathfinder started rolling along. I resisted for a few years, then got comfortable with the Advanced Player's Guide and permitted a few classes. Next thing I know, we've become the douchebags with the "Dual-Shieldmaster/TechnoWitch/Quad-Crossblooded Half-God VikingMonk (slash Order of The Extra-Smite Paladin for self-heals)" and I kind of just want to burn all my books. I think I'm going to enjoy just using the Inner Sea World Guide for inspirational or drop-in world ideas and just abandoning the rule system. I understand why they more or less had to stick with it, and it was a huge improvement over the existing rulebase--but it's just not something I can overlook anymore.
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