I assume, like me, that most D&D or TTRPG nerds follow a bare minimum of accounts on Twitter with regards to the game type, one of them being Mike Mearls. The co-creator of 5E posts a fairly constant stream of game design musings which alone are worth the price of admission or more commonly known as clicking the “follow” button. The bonus to those interesting thoughts however is how regularly he interacts with folks on Twitter answering questions or just tempting them with the recent re-ignition of his passion for 40K miniatures. Don’t even get me started on the fact that I learned this game exists through his twitter. God dammit.
Sorry, anyways.
A little over a week ago I saw a tweet from Mike that caught my attention because he was responding to another game designer I recognized, Adam Koebel over some frustration he was feeling. Adam expressed his dislike over rolling with a +4 vs the 21 AC of a player ten times a turn and how boring it was. This comment was prompted by Mearls tweeting about how in 5E they had tilted accuracy towards the players to keep up the feeling of combat moving towards a conclusion. The brief conversation which took place below I found rather fascinating.
The question of whether or not the player’s enjoyment in combat takes design priority in something like combat caught me off-guard because my immediate instinct was to go, “Duh?”
To be perfectly honest even after thinking about it over the last week and a half that is still sort of my reaction. As a DM who only recently got to start playing on a regular basis I have to say that the majority of concern for entertaining combats should be tilted in favor of the players. There are a few reasons for that and chiefly among them is, I think, the most obvious one; there are anywhere from 3-8 times as many of them on average than there are of us.
Prioritizing the entertainment of one person over the average of five people sitting on the other side of the screen seems a bit bizarre to me.
As DMs we do the follow in the context of combat–
- Have ultimate control over the design.
- Can modify individual creatures and their abilities to our whim. (Within reason)
- Create new never before seen enemies.
- Design the terrain/setting in which the combat will happen.
- Set the number of enemies.
- Go multiple times per turn. Every turn.
- Revel in the success and failure of our guys.
I’m sure there’s more but just off the top of my head the DMs already have plenty of fun even before getting into the combat proper. Even then once it starts, whiffing on a bunch of dice rolls and narrating it sounds plenty entertaining because on top of that we also get to narrate the successes of our party. Our responsibilities in combat beyond just rolling dice, as Mearls points out, is largely based around keeping things fun and fast paced. Even experienced players can fall into the doldrums of move, roll, hit or miss, pass the turn and onward and while that may make for an efficient combat it’ll quickly become dull. I want to see my players eyes go wide when I describe the result of their actions or the actions of their enemies, I want to see them react viscerally to the things going on. I don’t want them woodenly taking their turns in an attempt to just get combat over with, if they are then I’ve failed in my number one job; to keep them engaged and invested.
I believe I spoke about this in an earlier post but just in case that was all in my head I’ll reiterate it here; DMs should derive most of their joy through the things they help facilitate for the party. If your focus is on entertaining yourself over your group it will show, perhaps not right away but it will and it’ll be to the detriment of everyone at your table.
One of the responses to Koebel’s question in that thread said,
To be a punching bag apparently.
which depressed me a bit because this is the sort of mentality that leads to the Me vs Them attitude that gets DMs into trouble. When you start being competitive with the party instead of a facilitator it’s going to affect the quality of your game. Not to mention it’s a silly fight to get into anyway, out of everyone sitting at that table you, the DM, have the most power and it isn’t even close. You can’t even pretend to make a fight that lopsided fun in any respect… unless you’re a sadist I suppose. The important thing is to catch yourself before you fall into that trap and step away if you need to, DM fatigue is a real concern, we all need a break now and then.
As an aside one important thing to note is Adam is not being confrontational here as indicated by the continued conversation–
One of the reasons I really appreciate Mearls is his willingness to openly admit the failings of a product he was at least half responsible for creating.
Adam’s comment there is something I wanted to end with because some of the responses in the thread pointed out that a +4 to hit indicates a pretty weak enemy which seems to be a fault in the encounter design; not the overall mechanics of 5E. Koebel is approaching this from the perspective of someone running a module, specifically Tomb of Annihilation, which means encounters and enemies are already laid out for him. In my experience running modules the enemies tend to err on the side of weaker in an attempt to ensure a minimal amount of variance for people running it. Higher powered enemies can introduce large unwieldy swings in the state of a combat which might be hard to handle for new DMs running a pre-made adventure. After all the idea behind them is to reduce the amount of on the spot improv a DM needs to do by providing them most if not everything they’ll need in a given scene. In most homebrewed games DMs would simply adjust monsters on the fly to modulate the difficulty in a combat to keep things interesting whereas doing that in a module can unintentionally affect pacing and overall balance going forward. Changes you make on the fly you want to remain consistent with otherwise it will become noticeable to your players. While we all know it happens its never fun to actively realize the DM is shifting numbers one way or another.
Overall it was an interesting tweet thread to follow with a good explanation on why the system functions how it does, where it fails and some ideas on how to improve it. If you don’t follow Mike Mearls or Adam Koebel I highly recommend you do, especially if you’re interested in table-top RPGs, even casually.
For now remember this, if the choice is between we the DMs being bored and our players the preferred answer will be… no one! But really, if it has to be someone it’ll be us.
I know, I know, but we do it for the players.
Until next time, happy rolling!
- Non-Washable
Non-Washable Gamer 
At a risk of gatekeeping or sounding elitist, I think that a lot of these people aren’t as qualified or experienced as Mearls and seem to get grump about little things. There’s a lot of material out there that is, quite frankly, terrible and then other things are perhaps more ‘playable’ but less challenging. But combats being ‘challenging’ in and of themselves are a fallacy. Not every combat needs to be challenging, deadly or whatever. Because if the monsters scale with the PCs then the PCs never feel powerful or that they’ve achieved anything.
Similarly if, as a DM, you want to hit players more – why? Does it fit the story of the game? My lot are level 8 and I still throw hobgoblins at them. A dozen hobgoblins are just mooks, at best 2 might hit and deal about 10-15 points of damage between them. But that’s ok because level 8 PCs should annihilate vanilla hobgoblins.
If as a DM you want to hit PCs more then increase your to hits, use advantage, surprise, stealth, have your goons cast *Bless* or Enhance Ability or similar buffs. Strong enemies have access to magic and magical items just like the player characters and if you want to provide a nail-biter its a great way of upping the ante.
I like what Mike does on twitter and youtube/MMHH and correspondingly don’t find Kobel particularly insightful. (#grognard?)
A lot of people tend to get a bit grumpy one way or the other about Mearls view of things and well, just grumpy in general really when it comes to social media mixed with opinions of any kind. All we can really do is just laugh and move on, differing opinions aren’t really something to be afraid of but rather just some good food for thought.
Combats certainly don’t always need to be challenging or at the very least not in such a straightforward way, there are lots of things you can do to make underpowered enemies still fun fights. Although the occasionally steamroll in favor of your players is good for them, makes them feel like they’ve come a long way since a few goblins with sharp sticks were a cause for worry.
Excellent point about motivation as well since like Koebel stated that his frustration with it was that he just felt bored and if the only reason you want to hit more often as a DM is because you’re bored you might need to re-evaluate why you’re there in the first place. Combat, while it happens regularly, is only a small part of the overall job we do and I don’t even really think it’s the most entertaining part of being a DM. Alternative tactics, spells and items are things I think people forget about a lot when it comes to augmenting the difficulty of combat, like when was the last time you saw a PC pull a scroll or drink a potion? I’m even guilty of not using that stuff nearly enough. If the enemies can carry it and drop it for PCs to pick up they should be using it when appropriate as well.
To each their own certainly! Koebel I enjoy more from the games he runs and participates in like one a while back my gf recommended where he ran a game of Dogs in the Vineyard which was really fun. Mearls from an all around standpoint I think is just a valuable follow which makes sense as a creative lead for WoTC.
Always happy to hear from you Joe, thanks for the comment(: