It’s a turbulent time in the D&D sphere! We’ve gotten through nearly 10 years of fifth edition and in that time there have been seismic shifts in the roleplaying game community: fads and crises and critical darlings have risen and fallen in that time. I’m still processing just how much fifth edition D&D (and its culture of play) have changed since 2014.
“If I have one hour to teach D&D, I’m going to bring the PHB or Basic Rules and I’m going to run a solid scenario that emphasizes imagination. If this is the best way to show D&D off, why isn’t it the baseline core experience we expect?”
Back in 2013, I had wrapped a 3-year 4E campaign (levels 1-30) that left me questioning what I wanted from a D&D game and propelled me into OSR (Old-School Renaissance) discussions. When the D&D Next playtest started rolling out, I was drawn back in because it embraced many of the solutions to 4E’s problems that I had arrived at myself.
In other words, D&D fifth edition is at least partly an OSR game. This is by design, and is pretty well documented. Rodney Thompson, Mike Mearls, and others on the team appropriated some of the most popular talking points from the OSR philosophy to draw those players back into D&D and reformulate the game into a minimum-viable core system that could be tailored to a given group’s preference.
Part of that intention played out, but as fifth edition got legs and became the home-run success we never imagined, the product line didn’t usually support the idea of modular play. The PHB+1 rule of thumb was tossed away because it was now seen as an artificial obstacle to player choice—and that’s where your combat encounters started to slow down.
Wait, what?
IS COMBAT SLOW IN FIFTH EDITION?
Yes, this preamble had a purpose. It was leading us to why combat in fifth edition has gained the reputation of being long and complicated. On a particularly spicy episode of the Eldritch Lorecast this week, James Haeck (a designer I very much admire) said “A full round of combat takes between 20 and 60 minutes” and my jaw hit my desk. This has rarely been my experience. An hour for one round of combat? I have no doubt this occasionally happens, but it shouldn’t.
When fifth edition was released, the D&D community had been inured to 2-3 hour combats, starting in 3E and moving through 4E, where the players’ attention was on “character builds” and combo-synergy. In reaction to this and other trends, the OSR started differentiating their style with maxims like “The answer isn’t on your character sheet!” and “Rulings, not rules!” A discussion of these ideas and their merits will have to wait for another post, but to embrace those solutions you need to have the rules and the GM working together to create that style of play.
On release, one of fifth edition’s most celebrated aspects was streamlined combat. What a breath of fresh air after 4E’s full-session fights. “You can run a combat in 20 minutes!” we all said. And we did. Using the same Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual we have today, combats were quick and dynamic. Theater of the mind play was back in fashion, and it served us well.
Out of the Abyss and Storm King’s Thunder (among other adventure products) included maps that were meant to be looked at, not played on. The scale on many of them was 1 inch = 50 feet! It didn’t work with any of the battle grids we use now, and it’s still a nightmare trying to use those maps on a virtual tabletop today. But it wasn’t seen as a problem because we were finding the middle ground between the OSR and what we often call the “new school.” We had some cool character options, and combat was fun—but it didn’t slog!
So what’s changed between 2014 and episode 102 of the Eldritch Lorecast?
Well a lot of things have changed. One is that with participation in the game exploding in popularity, “new school” players brought over assumptions about how D&D runs from previous editions like 4E. Groups who use grids and want more complex tactical combat slowly reclaimed the culture of play. It’s evident in how official and third-party content evolved to assume the use of a grid and more precise positioning. What’s more, Wizards of the Coast itself changed its attitude about player options.
PHB+1 Out with the Bathwater
From almost day one of fifth edition’s release, the designers embraced the understanding that piles of splatbooks and player options resulted in power creep and overall system rot. The suggested solution to this was spoken of frequently by the design leads (and enshrined in the official Adventurers League organized play campaign): encourage players to build their character using the PHB plus one other sourcebook.
There was a feeling of restraint, of measured wisdom that the game would be better off without piles of options—which inevitably create analysis, leading to potential paralysis, and preventing a group from curating the kind of experience they want to have with the game. And it’s easy to see where this got dropped along the way: people complain that silvery barbs (a spell designed for the Strixhaven campaign setting, released in 2021) ruins the game. Regardless of how we feel about that particular spell, it shouldn’t have much bearing on the overall game unless Strixhaven is the one additional sourcebook chosen by players at the table. So where exactly did the problem start?
D&D Beyond. It’s a common talking point in some circles that D&D Beyond has been both a quality of life improvement for many D&D games—but also presents problems for DMs who want to curate their game. D&D Beyond doesn’t implement anything resembling the PHB+1 guidance. Players default to having all options appear in the character creator (with some minimal ability to filter certain settings and third-party content, which to be precise doesn’t always work as expected). Silvery barbs usually shows up in spell options. In fact, it’s obvious that by the time Wizards of the Coast bought the online platform a year after Strixhaven released, they themselves weren’t advocating for PHB+1 at all.
Adventurers League removed the PHB+1 rule one month before Strixhaven released in 2021. It’s worth noting that Strixhaven has never been allowed as a source for AL games, but the silvery barbs spell is a sort of icon for problematic or disruptive player options that DMs previously needed to opt in for. By 2021, DMs were commonly feeling they had to cave to the default assumptions or look like an asshole.
Miniature setup from a dragon fight I ran at Gen Con in 2022
THE PARADOX OF CHOICE
I don’t care about silvery barbs, but there are things like it that I do care about: the Twilight Cleric Domain, Wild Magic Barbarian Path, Rune Knight Fighter, and many optional class features (all from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, released in 2020). These design bits happen to interfere with quick combat. They allow for all kinds of additional actions and reactions and extra rolls and table consultations during the game. They make a single combat round take 20+ minutes.
Why the Adventurers League decided to end the PHB+1 rule isn’t clear, but it was in line with the new attitude at Wizards of the Coast and D&D Beyond: encourage the community to participate in all the D&D content library—and to buy it.
I’m not surprised WotC wants to make money. But there were lead designers there who kept that attitude in check because they cared about the health of the game.
“When swinging your sword at a monster takes more than a minute (and ends with you teleporting across the battlefield, dealing area-of-effect damage, and then rolling for a wild magic surge—multiplied by 4-6 for each PC), your combat is gonna get long.
We can solve this problem at character creation.”
In the One D&D playtests (which are pretty transparently an attempt to dress a marketing initiative in the costume of the highly successful D&D Next playtest) have proposed many revisions that intend to make combat faster and less “feel-bad.” Examples include changing exhaustion, cutting sneak attack uses during other players’ turns, features that soften the sting of low rolls, and a mountain of ways to gain advantage and/or inspiration to mitigate failure. Granted, not all of these will stay in the game, but it represents an effort to design the game so failure is less present.
I keep hearing proponents say that it feels crappy to lose your action because you missed an attack, or that exhaustion levels are too debilitating and feel bad. Setting aside that actually getting exhausted in real life feels much worse than disadvantage on a roll, I think we can agree that these moments of failure feel bad because you have to wade through hours of slow gameplay just to have the dice betray you. It feels like a waste. But when your turn comes back around after five minutes, the miss doesn’t hurt as much.
Ah-ha! Here is our solution like a goose among a circle of ducks. Your game is too slow. Combat rounds are taking an hour each. The “new school” fires of slog and analysis and the paradox of choice have reignited. Why is combat so long? You have too many fiddly options on the character sheet.
THE IDEAL SESSION
Granted, I play with a lot of different folks week to week in my GM-for-hire gigs. Some are so savvy they can run a Twilight Cleric and a Wild Magic Barbarian seamlessly and avoid slowing the game down. But those are expert exceptions. They’re not the general rule. I love playing with these players. I wish I had a hundred of them. But I like playing with brand new players just as much, and being in a one-shot with strangers trying to explain wild magic and temporary hit points on top of proficiency bonuses and feats and ability score modifiers and and and…it makes the game less accessible.
If I have one hour to teach D&D, I’m going to bring the PHB or Basic Rules and I’m going to run a solid scenario that emphasizes imagination. If this is the best way to show D&D off, why isn’t it the baseline core experience we expect? Why isn’t imagination and quick combat for narrative effect good enough for those of us who have been playing for 20+ years?
So I put it to you that combat doesn’t slow down because players forget to pay attention or because the DM rolls damage instead of using the static numbers. It slows down because we’re assuming that every crunchy bit of candy is fair game. It becomes a slog when monsters have reactions and page-long stat blocks, and the designers are pumping the PCs full of temporary hit points and extra rolled effects.
When swinging your sword at a monster takes more than a minute (and ends with you teleporting across the battlefield, dealing area-of-effect damage, and then rolling for a wild magic surge—multiplied by 4-6 for each PC), your combat is gonna get long.
We can solve this problem at character creation.
PHB+1 AND EXCEPTIONS
The method I use is to say “build your characters with the Player’s Handbook and the relevant campaign setting book—everything outside of those is by exception only.” This allows me to be flexible, but immediately focuses players on the world the characters occupy. Players will still ask for certain spells or subclasses, but they self-filter so the flood of player candy isn’t as strong. I usually say yes to the requests, but it’s often 2-3 things instead of 10. I highly recommend this approach.
And, for the record, my D&D sessions move at a clip. I run a lean, fast combat and we always have a good time (even if the fighter misses some swings). We go to 5, even 10 rounds sometimes (which other DMs tell me is unusual). But it’s not a 2-hour fight. I credit that to running the game with energy, prompting players, and not being afraid of monsters making sub-optimal choices—but most of all it has to do with the players and their options. “Attack, attack, move, done” is a beautiful thing.
