Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[George Lucas]

I’ve had a lot of trouble with 5e, and I think it just comes down to simply growing out of tabletop. I’m not very interested in the roleplay aspects anymore. Clever ideas usually aren’t rewarded by the DMs, so we get into combat anyway. Combat goes very slowly, and people seem more interested in doing their own things than cooperating (which further lengthens the combat).

I’ve played in enough groups with enough people to realize it all pretty much ends up like this. It also seems to be a bit of a dead end. SJWs are on the rise. The scene is shrinking. Local game stores are non-existant. Nobody wants to even try other systems. The hobby does not look in good shape, IMO.

I’ve started to get more into cooperative and team vs. team board games. There are a lot of shitty board games, and they’re expensive, but being able to finish a game in less than three hours is very refreshing, and requires people to actually work together.

 

[Corn Flakes]

So, I definitely have my own thoughts on the matter but I'm curious as to what everybody else thinks:

We all heard about how 5e combat is so. damn. slow. Why do you guys think that is, exactly? HP bloat, something wrong with the action economy, too many save vs. half damage rolls, something else...?

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

So, I definitely have my own thoughts on the matter but I'm curious as to what everybody else thinks:

We all heard about how 5e combat is so. damn. slow. Why do you guys think that is, exactly? HP bloat, something wrong with the action economy, too many save vs. half damage rolls, something else...?

Players waffling over what action to take and being bad at math.

 

[Mr. Manchester]

Players waffling over what action to take and being bad at math.

I've found being a dick about making people take their turn helps a lot, can't quite fix the math problem though. I run pathfinder and the problem persists there too because of course it does. I have players who do math for a living and I'm still working to break the habit of them announcing the die roll before telling me the result. Being an asshole and telling them I don't care what they rolled seems to be working, slowly.

I don't know, maybe I should ease up. I guess they could just be doing math out loud. Then again I had to swat one of them for trying to use diplomacy for a very obvious bluff last night...

 

[Judge Dredd]

I’ve had a lot of trouble with 5e, and I think it just comes down to simply growing out of tabletop. I’m not very interested in the roleplay aspects anymore. Clever ideas usually aren’t rewarded by the DMs, so we get into combat anyway. Combat goes very slowly, and people seem more interested in doing their own things than cooperating (which further lengthens the combat).

I’ve played in enough groups with enough people to realize it all pretty much ends up like this.

5e, Pathfinder, and most modern RPGs are combat games where adventures are designed with a linear series of challenges. There is little room for RP to effect the outcome because the outcome is to funnel you into the next combat arena. Look at how slight the rules for social conflict are compared to combat. All those weapons, spells, and classes, but social skills comes down to rolling the persuade skill.

They are too complex rules wise, so the DM can't make up things on the fly if you jump the rails, so the DMs only real option is to force you back on the railroad.

People don't like to hear this, but most RPGs are skirmish games with a plot and redundant players. With some minor tweaking, you could run 40k Kill Team as a RPG.


Old games aren't much better.

I've come to the conclusion that no one actually plays OSR games. Shit like every other trap being "save or die" shows that there's no expectation that characters last more than a few sessions.

But the video that confirmed it was Questing Beast's review of Longwinter. Spoilers, but the plot is the PCs get trapped in a valley during an endless winter. The problem is the game expects you to start in summer and for the players to spend summer and autumn fucking around in the mountains visiting tourist destinations and the endless winter is a surprise the DM springs on them several sessions in. No one is going to do that. It's ridiculous to expect people to do that.


Your other option are story games that are basically grown ups playing pretend with the occasional die roll so they don't have to admit it.

We all heard about how 5e combat is so. damn. slow. Why do you guys think that is, exactly?

Maths is too complex with too many floating modifiers. Rules are too old and granular.

This formula is from Pathfinder, but it serves as a good example.

damage = weapon base damage + (Strength modifier + power attack bonus)*number_of_hands_modifier + magic weapon bonus

All that to work out what chip damage you do to the monster you're fighting.

It isn't helped by the rules being bogged down with archaic bullshit nobody needs or uses because grognards get mad if it's changed. Whatever issues people might have with PathFinder 2e, they at least made an attempt to cut the bullshit.

 

[Adamska]

So, I definitely have my own thoughts on the matter but I'm curious as to what everybody else thinks:

We all heard about how 5e combat is so. damn. slow. Why do you guys think that is, exactly? HP bloat, something wrong with the action economy, too many save vs. half damage rolls, something else...?

Mixture of action economy, HP bloat, and slow player reaction from what I can tell.

Swift and immediate counter actions to negate things slow down the pacing, and rather than just make things higher lethality both monster and player are HP sponges to avoid the rocket wizard tag of old.

Then factor in new players who don't remember what they can do, and they compile together IMO.

 

[Fagnacious D]

Computerizing the game would help immensely. Tracking HP, Spell slots, Damage, carry weight of each item and dice rolls with a program would make things go much quicker.

 

[Ghostse]

So, I definitely have my own thoughts on the matter but I'm curious as to what everybody else thinks:

We all heard about how 5e combat is so. damn. slow. Why do you guys think that is, exactly? HP bloat, something wrong with the action economy, too many save vs. half damage rolls, something else...?

Its not just HP bloat, its the "averaging"/balancing that goes on. Which is fine for big important battles but really drags out smaller encounters, and the rest/heal mechanics mean that small combats don't do enough to discourage players away from them (4e has many of the same problems, where 'random encounters' just drag things out another week, punishing the DM as much as the players).

The action economy is fine - Standard, Move, Bonus. But as @40 Year Old Boomer said, players waffle because there is too much to do with those actions, and trying to get everyone to coordinate, and 5e sort of outsizedly offering rewards for Sweaty-levels of coordination. Additionally, too much time to plan leads to planning take too much time. instead of just working on this turn, players will try to plan 2, 3, or 5 turns ahead. I have had some luck moving to "side based" initiative for 5e: Players go, monsters go. The issue is you still need to put a time limit, and that's hard because then you have magic with spell/counterspell and saves with modifiers for everything.

I think its a mix of people being bad at math and too much to keep track of in your head.

Or I guess: 5e combat isn't supposed to be fast. I just don't think its supposed to be as slow as it ends up being, and the only way to speed it up would be to force people to move faster and/or have the players 'practice'. which is what the feeder combats are supposed to be

I’ve had a lot of trouble with 5e, and I think it just comes down to simply growing out of tabletop. I’m not very interested in the roleplay aspects anymore. Clever ideas usually aren’t rewarded by the DMs, so we get into combat anyway. Combat goes very slowly, and people seem more interested in doing their own things than cooperating (which further lengthens the combat).

I’ve played in enough groups with enough people to realize it all pretty much ends up like this. It also seems to be a bit of a dead end. SJWs are on the rise. The scene is shrinking. Local game stores are non-existant. Nobody wants to even try other systems. The hobby does not look in good shape, IMO.

I’ve started to get more into cooperative and team vs. team board games. There are a lot of shitty board games, and they’re expensive, but being able to finish a game in less than three hours is very refreshing, and requires people to actually work together.

I think its mainly your group and the people 5e attracts, plus the fact 5e rewards coordination but not cooperation. (4e is guilty of that too). I think mainly its just you're dealing with the 5e crowd, though honestly if you're in the game to avoid combat, D&D is the wrong system - even the early editions that encourage you to avoid combat.

Also I will say four things about clever ideas:
Firstly, the players' clever ideas are never as clever as the player thinks they are.
Second, when an idea IS clever, it often comes too late.
Third, they never telegraph their ideas to the DM so they have some time to think.
Fourth, 5e really discourages the consequences (death/maiming) for the natural consequences of clever idea or when it doesn't work.

I've seen a lot of "clever" ideas that are often just meant to be funny or disruptive vs. actually innovative ways out of a situation a rational person would think of. And often the ideas come late in the process. Once the fighter has stabbed the dragon in the taint, its probably too late to negotiate, or if the party has been faffing off for 45 minutes avoiding the inevitable the DM is probably going to start shutting down anything that isn't "get on with it".

I can think of a couple times I'd have given my players more than they got for a good left-field idea if I'd had some time to mull it over instead of needing to be reactive because 4 other people are also trying to be clever.
Other times they have had a good idea with very bad consequences. Anything over 3e discourages the natural consequences of sounds-good-but-is-actually-bad ideas. One time my players had a technically good idea (smoke out the dungeon) that if it had worked like they wanted, would have just resulted in them having to fight an entire dungeon's worth of goblins at one time (and die). But since most underground areas blow out, I rolled with that instead of killing them immediately - and they were just as likely (arguably more so) to have been put at a disadvantage for hazy conditions.
(OTOH if it was a BX game, I'd have just let them probably die)

Computerizing the game would help immensely. Tracking HP, Spell slots, Damage, carry weight of each item and dice rolls with a program would make things go much quicker.

Personally doing that takes all the fun out of the game for me, because nothing really balances quite right.

 

[Spergetti]

From what I have seen, if a game is moving slowly it is most likely because the players struggle to pay attention to what is going on during a combat encounter when it isn't their turn. Obviously, they would all be more efficient if they planned out their turn while they were waiting on everyone else, but most if not all of them are going to distract themselves and turn their brain off from the moment their turn ends until the moment their next turn begins. When their turn comes around, they might spend a few minutes looking back and forth at the board and their character sheet, and then ask some questions they would know the answer to if they were paying attention. Finally, after a few minutes of wasted time, they will complete their turn assuming they don't realize they've made a mistake, roll back their actions and movement, and start over again. This wasted time compounds with every player who is ignoring the combat until the DM tells them to take their turn, which results in a slow and boring encounter.

One solution I think is pretty effective is to conscript the players into handling some of the minutiae of running the encounter. I've seen some good results from this at the table, both as a player and as a DM. Maybe one player is tasked with tracking damage on all of the monsters, one player is tasked with keeping track of the initiative order, one player is tasked with keeping track of when spell effects will expire, one player is tasked with moving the minis, and so on. The DM is juggling fewer balls in the air throughout the combat encounter, and the players are subjected to some mild social pressure to pay attention so the encounter goes smoothly. Hopefully, if you can keep the players' attention locked in on the game during the encounter, they will plan out their turns in advance and cut down on needless time-wasting.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Mixture of action economy, HP bloat, and slow player reaction from what I can tell.

I don't think HP bloat, action economy, or those kinds of rules are a factor. In terms of overall combat time, yes, but the problem with 5e combat is that it can take 20-30 minutes to go around the table once.

Before I played RPGs, I used to be appalled at the idea that people who sit on their phones watching YouTube videos during the game. That would be such a slap in the face to the other players. In 5e, having some kind of side distraction for that time is basically mandatory.

Computerizing the game would help immensely. Tracking HP, Spell slots, Damage, carry weight of each item and dice rolls with a program would make things go much quicker.

It doesn't really help. Where it does help is with rolls as the calculations are done for you, but it leads to people complaining about the digital dice roller screwing them over. Things like spell slots, inventory management, and hp tracking are replaced by wrestling with technical problems with the programs themselves, or trying to retcon things after someone mis-clicks.

I think its a mix of people being bad at math

It's not that they're bad at math. It's that the math is so awkward.

d20 + 2 is easy.

d8 + 2 + 1 - 2 + 3 + d4 + (d6 +2 / 2 rounded down) is awkward, and usually has to be done multiple times as it's common for people to miss a modifier.

Anything over 3e discourages the natural consequences of sounds-good-but-is-actually-bad ideas.

It's a case of extremes. There's little middle ground between "your character suffers no consequences" vs "your character is crippled and is basically useless". Of the two, I'll take little to no consequence over the save or die bullshit that plagues old DnD.

 

[Ghostse]

It's a case of extremes. There's little middle ground between "your character suffers no consequences" vs "your character is crippled and is basically useless". Of the two, I'll take little to no consequence over the save or die bullshit that plagues old DnD.

Save vs Death is a crutch of the weak, as is... permanent stat drains in a world where potions of strength don't exist.

Unless its a textually descriptive thing like "ceiling falls" or "walls close" and just a general "cloud of death spores"I use the alternative for poison/death of Xd6 spread over 6 rounds or 1d6+1 rounds. This is usually harmful enough to be a serious impediment, and the extra rounds give the player/party a chance to do something in response. For even a mid level party can usually counter a SvD.

And honestly, while I talk about OSR letting you kill characters, it shouldn't be every session that a player character dies, and should generally be preventable. Finding death traps is what hirelings and followers are for.

Also again, for 5e if you want to have a sub-quest to rimjob Pelor enough he'll res your thief, that's like two months of sessions. Its maybe a session or two in B/X.

 

[George Lucas]

AD&D is definitely much faster than 5e, but the math isn’t much simpler. I think it comes down to action economy, side-effects, and analysis paralysis. There are so many things that can be triggered during a single player’s turn (that don’t even have to be done by that player) compared to AD&D, and ironically AD&D’s turns are supposed to be ten times as long.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

It's not that they're bad at math. It's that the math is so awkward.

d20 + 2 is easy.

d8 + 2 + 1 - 2 + 3 + d4 + (d6 +2 / 2 rounded down) is awkward, and usually has to be done multiple times as it's common for people to miss a modifier.

Players are too lazy to write out the formulae on their sheets for easy reference. Even still, 5e math is far less complicated than 3.x. To hit is always going to be d20+proficiency mod+ability mod+item bonus. AC is always going to be 10+dex mod (if applicable) + armor + buff bonus (if applicable) + cover (if applicable). Spell save DC is always going to be 8 + proficiency mod + ability mod + item bonus (if applicable). 5e is very fucking easy in the math department, people are just fucking lazy and don't pay attention.

 

[Judge Dredd]

The problem is those formula are always changing. If you have a bard in the party you have inspiration to add. Potions, items, and conditions that grant bonuses of penalties to ability mods. Advantage and disadvantage helps cut down the situational modifiers, but there's always some grognard who complains that it's "dumbed down" or is "DnD for babies."

While it's easy to sit here and do the maths. The problem is that this happening multiple times a turn multiplied by the number of players soon adds up. Things get more complex when PCs get magic items with multiple damage types.

On paper, assuming 30 seconds for a players turn, you'd expect a turn to take 3 minutes. In practice it can take 10 times that. More if we have to break out the rule book. Something is slowing it down somewhere.

This is rarely a problem in board games or some other systems, though analysis paralysis is always a problem, that's a human problem not a game design one.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

The problem is those formula are always changing. If you have a bard in the party you have inspiration to add. Potions, items, and conditions that grant bonuses of penalties to ability mods. Advantage and disadvantage helps cut down the situational modifiers, but there's always some grognard who complains that it's "dumbed down" or is "DnD for babies."

Bard inspiration is simply adding a die to the roll. If you have the bulk of the equation in front of you pre-done then it's not complex at all vs 3.x and it's Modifiers of Babel.

 

[anti SJW]

5E combat is lightspeed compared to the pile of crap that was 4th edition.

 

[Malagor the dank omen]

Save vs Death is a crutch of the weak, as is... permanent stat drains in a world where potions of strength don't exist.

I bet this thing is why some people will hate playing Dark Heresy with me. There are permanent consequences for taking critical damage, using drugs, failing important rolls... And the consequences can go from "You have now D10 less in X stat" to "You don't have a leg now and you can't walk unless they put a peg leg on you, and that operation can kill you".

I expect some bitching if they don't ditch me.

It's not that they're bad at math. It's that the math is so awkward.

Even with that, in my group it looks like i'm the only one competent at math so i'm in the page that it's a mix of both. In Cyberpunk the formula is D10+your skill level + your stat. And the paper allows you to put it simply so you already have summed your skill level + your stat for easy addition. And even with that, everyone keeps asking me "How much is 9 + 6?"

From what I have seen, if a game is moving slowly it is most likely because the players struggle to pay attention to what is going on during a combat encounter when it isn't their turn

In my experience it's mainly because one or two players do a lengthy exposition of what their characters do a la "My charcter does X because she is traumatized of past events with her father after her mother did this and she cannot do this anymore because it supposes a trauma for her" or they decide to sperg out into tangents about what they can do, how much they would have liked something similar and ask the master a couple of times if the thing can be how they like it.

 

[Jet Fuel Johnny]

Haha! Yeah, my Rifts players are really fucking thrilled when combat breaks out.

"The Brodkil jumps over the wall and charges, firing his railgun from the hip!"
>Rolls a 3.
"The rounds teach that stop sign not to fuck with him. Next!"
>Player with next Init
"BOOM GUN! FUCK THAT GUY!"
>rolls an 11.
"FUCK YEAH!"
>rolls 6d6x10. Gets 150 MD.
"One fifty HEAP straight to the chest, fucker!"
"He flies back to crash down in a heap. <lol> Next!"

Then, non-combat.

"Minigun 19 isn't working."
"Can I try Computer Operations?"
"Go for it."
>Rolls a 14 on a d100.
"It's the network cable. Looks like it took a bullet."
"Wait, that's it?"
"Do you want it more complicated?"
"No, no, we're good."

Gotta love Rifts. The Palladium System is fucking nuts, but weirdly enough, it's become a lot more fun that D&D.

 

[Lt. Jim Dangle]

I’ve had a lot of trouble with 5e, and I think it just comes down to simply growing out of tabletop. I’m not very interested in the roleplay aspects anymore. Clever ideas usually aren’t rewarded by the DMs, so we get into combat anyway. Combat goes very slowly, and people seem more interested in doing their own things than cooperating (which further lengthens the combat).

5e also has the issue of really gamey combat, for example if you use the flanking advantage rules then open combat often turns into Conga Lines as everyone tries to flank someone else. Also you get the circus parties where it's like a tabaxi, a genasi, a gnome, a tiefling, and a half-orc. It really makes me roll my eyes.

Also, for combat being slow, a lot of GMs try to do big battles with lots of enemies because that seems cool and epic, but then there's just a billion turns around. I try to mitigate this by doing a small amount of tough enemies.

 

[40 Year Old Boomer]

5e also has the issue of really gamey combat, for example if you use the flanking advantage rules then open combat often turns into Conga Lines as everyone tries to flank someone else. Also you get the circus parties where it's like a tabaxi, a genasi, a gnome, a tiefling, and a half-orc. It really makes me roll my eyes.

My group doesn't use the optional flanking rules, but I had one guy sperg out when he realized I was applying a light version of the firing into melee rules claiming that it completely ruined his character I don't DM with integrity. He was kinda right though because there should have been a 5 AC bonus rather than 2. We still laugh about it months later as nobody else had an issue and it gives more weigh to sharpshooter/spell sniper.

As far as circus parties, it depends on the group. I was going to be some kind of elf for the next campaign until I found out the other two regular attending members of the party we're going shifter and minotaur, so I said fuck it and am doing a bugbear cleric because all monster parties can be fun and we're starting out as level 1 slaves anyway. No idea what the 4th member is going to be.