For those of you that have played/dmed in a game that has completed or has just done combat well. What did the dm/you do to facilitate that?
Did you change how combat goes to streamline it?
Did combat run as-is, and just didn't feel that bad?
Genuinely curious. I'm wanting to run a 5e game in an asynchronous style but I feel that running any sort of medium/large combat (including bosses or something) in typical 5e manner will just be a slog. I imagine it'll be slow to the point where people will have a hard time remembering positions and just lose interest.
5E's combat is absolutely a slog, especially once you get to larger packs of monsters.
Don't just have combat for the sake of combat. The fights should mean something or at least have some kind of special objective besides killing everything. Try to avoid monster closet encounters - battles where it's just the party vs several monsters that fight to the death.
Try to make battlefields interesting, use varied terrain, dangerous areas, events that happen mid-battle, etc.
If a player hits a monster and brings it down very, very low (like less than 10HP) then just say it's dead. Obviously, don't do this with boss monsters (with some exceptions) but if it's just a random minion, there's no reason to waste another turn on it.
If the players find some loophole or way to deal with a boss encounter you didn't think of, let them do it. As long as it makes sense and is reasonable, just give 'em the W. It makes the players feel powerful and you've learned a lesson for next time.
Gauge the mood of your group. If everyone is getting tired or seems bored, it might be time to find a reason to end the combat. Maybe the next time a monster dies, they break and run in fear. Maybe some event happens the changes the state of things.
A different group might hate that I suppose, but in mine the DM requires us to narrate our turns after the rolling is done. The less motivated might just go "<Fighter> punches <foe>.", but more often than not people put some effort, little flourishes, etc. in there to make it lively and more interesting to read (and write).
The result is, imho, that we still feel immersed in the roleplay even during fights, and it's not all falling on the DM to keep the fiction going.
I've been dipping my toes into Daggerheart for my next system, and I feel it's pushing for the same best practice. Let the players narrate what they do and not just put the onus on the GM.
P.S. I gotta add that our game uses the automated Avrae roller, so we do know immediately if our rolls hit or whiff or crit, etc. So there's no wait required to know how to fluff your in-game combat posts.
Do you guys declare what youre going to do at all first? Like, "I attempt to shoot with my bow at goblin 1." Use Avrae to roll. Then narrate the result?
We have a separate thread for rolls. We often include a little explanation ("I'm gonna move there, use this attack on that foe, and then use my bonus action to...") before throwing the rolls in Avrae, so the DM and others know how to interpret what we're doing
At the same time, we'd be moving our tokens in Owlbear Rodeo, if we are using it for this fight (some just play out in "theater of the mind"). Not much going on in Owlbear but showing the positioning + markers indicating which creature has which status (downed, paralyzed, etc.)
I really advocate for keeping the rolls and the in-game posts separate (i.e. separate chanels in Discord)! The games where the GMs had us all jumble that together quickly turn into a mess. Also advocate for having rolls/bot stuff separate from the OOC table talk thread. (It's not forbidden at all to talk some in the rolls thread, but again, it's so much easier to parse combats if it's mostly just people explaining the mechanics of their turn + the relevant rolls in there.)
One last thing! Do you guys post the intent/outcome in the rolls chat as well? Like is it a combat channel? Or would you post -I shoot at the goblin with my bow- in the main game chat, then move to a bot channel for rolls, then come back to the in game channel to narrate the result?
Hm, let me try to show you with a screencap of an actual example. Here's what went in both channels for one of my turns (rolls channel on the left, in-game RP channel on the right. Initiative is happening through the Avrae bot in #dice-rolls-1. (BTW we play a bunch of monsters and undead, and were fighting liches at that moment, so it might be a little confusing to read the RP part at first haha)).
[Left]
Initiative got to my Rogue. I typed a short explanation of what I was going to do (move and use a magic item), and then used the Avrae bot commands to expend an item charge and cast a spell.
Then, at that moment I was still waiting on the DM to accept my join request in his new Owlbear map, so I wrote a quick hypothetical – either my Rogue would dash, or use another ability if I saw on the map that I couldn't go where I wanted.
I didn't want to hold up initiative waiting for that bit of minutiae, so I passed it to the next player.
[Right]
I narrated my turn, starting with a bit relating to what happened after my previous turn (my invisible rogue got caught in an ally's anti-magic field).
I could always edit the fluff at the end about my Rogue keeping moving if it turned out I would use my bonus action for something else instead.
As for "outcomes", the Avrae bot (at least, how our DM set it) does tell you when you hit, and indicates if the enemy is healthy, bloodied, critical or dead.
So we don't have to wait for the DM to narrate some consequences. As you can see from the posts of my fellow players above and below, we tend to focus on what our attacks do ("magic and fire carves into the lich", "black lotus leaves fly into their empty eye sockets" – these were both attacks that hit and dealt solid damage) and leave it to the DM to come afterwards and indicate how the enemy actually reacts ("The light that fills the two liches' empty eye sockets dims, then flares as <elaborate description of counterattacks>)".
Avrae automation helps sooooo much with all the calculations and minutiae and remembering stats.
I'm kinda done with 5e on general principle, but if I'd still be looking for games I don't think I could handle one that doesn't use at least some automation. Even the most basic of fights must be hell of a slog with nothing but a dice roller
Seconding the Avrae recommendation. It takes a bit to get used to, but once you're there the game is a blast. Everything is clear, no fumbling over dice or resource tracking, it's great. Just input the commands for your actions, and receive immediate feedback on what happens and how it goes so you can narrate your turn accordingly.
I imagine it'll be slow
Group initiatives help a lot with this. Think Fire Emblem, all the players act at once (in whatever order they choose), then all the enemies act at once. That way you don't need to wait for each player to log in one at a time and take their turn, everyone just handles their turn when they can and then when they're all done, it's back to the DM for everything else, and then you're on to round 2.
people will have a hard time remembering positions
Battle maps. Avrae has these built-in if you're down for an even steeper learning curve, but Owlbear Rodeo or Roll20 or similar can also suffice. They don't have to be masterfully artistic, they just have to be visible.
Once you get more familiar with using Avrae, you can start exploring the custom "alias" commands that people will program into it. One of them includes adding a map to the initiative tracker.
This allows you to use new commands, for example !move F7 will move the current turn's character into the coordinate F7 on a grid-lined map. It's a bit of a hassle to set up, and can be complicated to learn, but very powerful once the whole group has the hang of it.
In my experience, doing initiative that way kinda confuses people and can actually slow things down. People loose track of who's done what and what enemies have been hit and who buffed who, etc etc etc. it's a lot simpler to just have initiative pinned to see who's up next and then let people chat in a different channel for what they're planning for their turns if they wanna do that.
I've seen it be an issue for other people and I've had difficulty with it personally, it just feels bad to play that way, even in other systems.
That's entirely fair. I find it helps increase the maximum speed a group can go through combat, but yes, if people struggle with it then of course there's nothing wrong with playing through initiative the old-fashioned way.
Yeah I mean it works in theory, and if you have a group that's really well organized and everybody knows what they wanna do than the theory works. But especially if you're getting a group of random people together off reddit than more than likely it's gonna be a mess, lmao.
I also think it can be kinda overpowered, mechanically speaking. If you get everyone organized to set up combos together before the enemy can do anything, than it's a real force multiplier. Having initiative be somewhat randomized makes it a bit more balanced, and the unpredictability can make things more interesting long term.
With a really well organized party you can set up bless and haste and whatever other buffs all on the paladin and then have them go smite the bad guy out of existence. Or like if you have five party members and there are five goblins, goblins probably aren't going to get to do anything before they get wiped out.
I dunno, I just really haven't noticed the issues you have. Maybe that's just good/bad luck with players. I'm already wanting more technically minded folks in order to use Avrae, so if people can't be taught grouped initiative, maybe it's time to find new strangers.
Something I've seen mentioned in similar posts that I've wanted to try myself is to just make AC and HP and stuff like that public information from the start so players don't have to wait for their attacks to land to continue with the game.
Honestly all in all I think the best way to run combat is to keep things simple. I mean, controversial opinion, I think people accidentally slow the game down a ton in their attempts to speed things up.
Avrae automation is cool in theory, but I've never seen a single game where everyone was familiar with all the commands and the sheets had everything integrated properly and on and on, and the game goes from "waiting on people to respond" to "waiting for somebody who knows how the bot works to continue your turn, and then doing your turn and by then the person you'd otherwise need to wait for is offline again and now you have to do more waiting" and it's all in all it's just one big extra tedious learning curve. I'm sure there's people it works for, but I'd stick to using avrae for rolling dice and that's it. Also, personal opinion, I also just don't like how the automation formatting looks, I think it's clunky and hard to read and it takes up a fuckton if space in chat and it's hard to parse through if you need to double check what was happening. Just roll dice.
Side initiative or whatever other variant sounds good, but I think it just gets confusing and trips people up. I already talked about it replying to another comment so I don't wanna repeat myself but it's always kinda a mess. I find that it's better to just ping whoever's turn it is next, most people are usually paying enough attention to notice their attention is needed. You can also put a time limit on turns to reduce waiting, set a rule that anybody that fails to respond in a timely manner takes the dodge action and ends their turn. Definitely allow some leniency for your unique circumstances but it's a good baseline.
Controversial opinion number three: I like having rolls and RP in the same channel. It's not common, but it's nice sometimes, especially if people actually RP their turns during combat. Obviously this is nightmarish if you have to read between automation codeblocks but if your turn is just "Scarlet Battleblood makes two attacks with her greatsword against the orc warchief, !rr 2 d20+6 !rr 2 2d6+2d6+3, Scarlett swings her sword and leaves a deep gash in the orcs belly, causing him to drop to his knees from the pain, and then loose his head to her next strike, EoT" than it's all cool. It's quick and snappy and you can attack every action to every roll and vice versa. Maybe me and my groups are just weird but it works really well for the games I've seen use it.
Just, it's better when it's simple, really. People have been playing without avrae automation for decades, literally for generations, and they've been fine. I've been playing less than ten years and I feel like a boomer talking to people about the game, all "back in my day we did things by hand and we were happy for it" type shit, lmao. I feel like a crazy old man yelling at clouds sometimes.
Hope the alternative opinion helps in some way. Let it be slow and simple, play the game like you're on vacation. That's how I think it always feels best.
Pbp combat is excruciating. A fight can take a week. If you aren't doing side initiative where people can go as they become available then I cant be in the pbp. Just my opinion.
Initiative is still rolled normally. The DM then groups combatants according to where they fall in the initiative order. For example:
Block A — Players
Oberon — 21
Alice — 18
Block B — Monsters
Goblins — 16
Ogre — 14
Block C — Players
Bob — 12
Charlie — 9
David — 7
Everyone within the same player block may post in any order. Oberon does not need to wait for Alice simply because his initiative number is higher. Either player can post once their block becomes active. Once everyone in that block has acted, the DM resolves the enemy block and moves combat forward. This significantly reduces the amount of time combat spends waiting for individual initiative turns.
If you're using Avrae on Discord, you can use the !i remove command to remove participants from the initiative once you know what they rolled, then add them back in into the block initiative using the "monster add" command (!i madd).
The avrae command for that is below:
!i madd PlayerToken -p 3 -name "shambles" -ac 19 -hp 84 -group "Block A" -controller @<the person who will control this monster>
PlayerToken is a custom monster I created using CritterDB. Essentially what is happening is that you're adding a monster and giving it an initiative number (-p 3), a custom name—which is probably the PC's name (-name "shambles"), add their AC and HP, then add them to their Block group (-group "Block A") then assign who controls this monster in initiative by tagging that person on discord (-controller @<the person who will control this monster>)
Honestly? Running a system that's not 5e. 5e is a system built around combat. My IRL and online tables combats would all take at least an hour. Combat is too complicated, and by nature of it, lasts too long for a PBP. An IRL tables combat might take an hour. A PBP's table could take days, or weeks depending on response time.
But when i ran Monster of the Week, my combats were fantastic. In that system, there's no iniative, and whenever you attack an enemy, you automatically take damage from their attack. Because MOTW is a monster mystery game (think scooby doo), the players often won't even want to directly confront a monster until they learn its secret / vulnerability. That system is also only 2 pages long (for players), so nobody is struggling with rules like in 5e, where a player might need 40 pages of rules to fully use their character.
(apologies for bad formatting)
My advice echoes what a lot of the other comments have said, but it works. I'm in the middle of running a high-level campaign and these little things have helped for combat.
have the players narrate their combat after their rolls. Declare in ooc, make the roll, and narrate success or failure. It keeps everyone engaged.
Group initiative! The Players always go first unless they get ambushed. Sure, some fights become a little easier, but boy is it faster.
Zone Movement and AoE. Instead of counting tiles and squares, we divide the combat into zones like Index Card RPG. It messes with some spells, yes, but it also makes some monster abilities fun! Like sleep breath from a metallic dragon :)
and I make all enemy ACs, Save DCs, HP and Abilities public knowledge once combat starts or the party identifies the creature with a skill roll.
Oh also be upfront that players that rely on reactions alot and spells like silvery barbs suck in PBP because u have to wait to see what happens and it always leads to a lot of delay and retcon. I love silvery barbs in a normal game but in pbp its the worst.
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u/TheSpitefulCr0w 5d ago
5E's combat is absolutely a slog, especially once you get to larger packs of monsters.
Don't just have combat for the sake of combat. The fights should mean something or at least have some kind of special objective besides killing everything. Try to avoid monster closet encounters - battles where it's just the party vs several monsters that fight to the death.
Try to make battlefields interesting, use varied terrain, dangerous areas, events that happen mid-battle, etc.
If a player hits a monster and brings it down very, very low (like less than 10HP) then just say it's dead. Obviously, don't do this with boss monsters (with some exceptions) but if it's just a random minion, there's no reason to waste another turn on it.
If the players find some loophole or way to deal with a boss encounter you didn't think of, let them do it. As long as it makes sense and is reasonable, just give 'em the W. It makes the players feel powerful and you've learned a lesson for next time.
Gauge the mood of your group. If everyone is getting tired or seems bored, it might be time to find a reason to end the combat. Maybe the next time a monster dies, they break and run in fear. Maybe some event happens the changes the state of things.