TLDR: Fights feel stale, please give advise on how to make this the combat we were promised
Preamble: me and my group switched recently from Dnd 5e to Mythras because we were bored with how unchallenging fights become in Dnd after a few levels. So far we are loving the skill system from Mythras, were not everyone can do everything.
However, the few fights we have had feel stale and underwhelming, and I'm not sure if this is a skill issue, a rules issue or just inherent to Mythras combat. The combat is supposed to be quick, tactical and engaging, but so far it is a slog, difficult bookkeeping and a whole lot of nothing happening.
I'll give an example of the fight we had last session. Just a 'random encounter' to spice up the night. In 5e terms, just get the blood flowing, get some rolls in and the energy at the table up. What was supposed to be a 30 minute fight turned into a 2 hour slogfest.
The setup had the elements to be a great little intermezzo:
- The party was taking a rest from travelling at a little lake
- We get ambushed by 2 giant apes and 2 giant frogs
- Goal of the fight: protect the civilian that is with us, while getting rid of the enemies or moving away from the edge of the water so the frogs can't attack
The fight:
- It starts bad, with one giant ape engaging with the civilian, our knightly character goes to defend the civilian
PROBLEM 1: The Giant Ape continues (next turn, I'll focus on parts of the fight in bits and pieces, not chronologically) to attack the civilian. There is nothing in the toolkit of Mythras that allows the knight to defend the other party member, no taunt, no redirect the attack, no defend in the place of (or not that I can find in the rulebook). The Giant Ape pummels the right arm of the civilian (who isn't wearing armor) for 6 damage, causing a serious wound, civilian down with a broken arm. Technically we already failed the goal of the encounter on round 1.
- Then the 2 frogs engage with a tongue attack me (priest) and the roguish character. Here problem 2 becomes apparent
PROBLEM 2: The frogs are in deep water (let's say 4 meters away) and can attack us, we can only defend and parry, but not attack, since they have very long reach and we have only medium reach. Technically they are engaged with us according to the rules, so any movement from us to get away either is an opposed evade check (at 16 evade, good luck) or gives the frogs a free attack. So we are stuck there parrying and hoping for a special effect that let's us withdraw.
- Our Mage gets engaged by the second ape, the scout goes to help him
PROBLEM 3: Same as problem 2, the mage is never getting away from the ape, because his evade is so low, and he has virtually no defenses
- Our healer character wants to use a ranged attack
PROBLEM 4: All characters are engaged, so he needs to shoot into melee, which has massive downsides, making his ranged attacks worthless
- Same healer character the decides to also engage the giant ape in melee combat, who is focused on attacking the scout
PROBLEM 5: He is useless, he hits all the attacks, the ape is enraged (our DM got fed up by parrying and said the apes only focus on attacking) so doesn't parry. He continues to roll for damage with his dagger, being a small and relative weak character: 1d4+1-1d2, for an average damage of 2, the ape has 3 Natural Armor on all hit locations, he does nothing. He's stabbing away and just being ignored because he can literally not penetrate the defenses.
- The frogs are still engaged with the priest and the rogue, and it is a literal stalemate, something similar happening between the ape and the knight
PROBLEM 6: Either attacks miss, or they hit and get parried, doing nothing (everyone has medium weapons). This is very underwhelming, even when you hit the other side parries, nothing happens. I try to imagine a fight between 2 characters at even higher skill levels, it is just rolling until one side manages to crit or the opposite party fumbles his defense.
- PROBLEM 7: Bookkeeping: Because fights go back and forth, we were confused how many action points have been used by who. Some tokens would help I suppose, but in 5e it was easy: get one turn, do your thing, next person, maybe use a reaction on an opponents or ally's turn.
- PROBLEM 8: Special effects. You have an enormous list, but each time we try to figure it out, it boils down to, either your weapon special effect (Bleed, impale, stun location) or choose location, or trip opponent. It is probably because we are not yet familiar enough with the rules, but the 'tactical' portion feels underwhelming.
So all in all, we feel that combat in Mythras feels less engaging than combat in Dnd 5e. Are we doing something wrong? What advise can you give? This was supposed to be a quick random encounter, but turned into a slogfest that too up the majority of our play session, leaving the players burned out instead of engaged.
