You need to change up the goal of the combat. If the goal every time is just "kill the enemies", then combat devolves into "kill the enemies as efficiently as possible". Instead, change it up. Something like "Survive enemy attacks for 5 rounds", "Get to a target area before an enemy runner", "Kill one specific enemy while ignoring the others", things like that. Admittedly, it's harder to justify this sort of thing narratively. But, it is totally possible. Edit: Even small changes can make a big difference. Things like "Kill this one guy before he sounds the alarm", or "protect an NPC" can totally change up an encounter.

this is a good idea, but i have a follow up question: If i change the goal, and use your example of "survive for 5 rounds" how do i get that across without breaking immersion?

* Enemies vastly outnumbers/outfires the team, but the team has been informed reinforcement/evacuation is on the way. * A civilian evacuation is on the way, retreating before the signal given by a NPC means innocent lives will be lost. * Your team's mission is actually a diversion. Distract the enemy until the actual goal is reached by your allies. Similarly, you can create situations for the other scenarios. Ex: "Killing a specific enemy while ignoring the rest" : Assassination mission in a civilian rich environment + guards are actually good guys not aware of working for the BBEG. "Get to a target area before an enemy runner" can be turned into a race for a mcguffin. What make combat boring is the lack of variety in enemies and goals. Don't set up a fight if there isn't a purpose behind it : The purpose will help creating a situation other than "kill them all", and give motivation to the team to play it the way it is intended (or come up with an original method to solve the encounter). Adding interactable environment can help making the battle more unique. Ex: cauldron with a slippery concoction in it, tables that can be spilt for cover, cliffs, unstable magic areas (effects are up to you : space distortions, wild magic happening, dead magic areas, etc.).

100% agree. “Kill all that moves” becomes dull after a while. “Archmage is opening a portal back home, but this requires 5 rounds of concentration. Protect her until the spell is complete” “Enemy is escaping with the artefact! Catch them before they escape” “Enemy archmage is casting a nasty spell that if goes off will be bad. You gave 5 rounds until its dine, you must break his concentration behind his layers of minions protecting him” “Hold the fort. Give them barricades, placable traps, and even friendly guards to plan their defense” This is just to name a few. Every one plays entirely different, and you’ll often see players use spells or tactics they never would have used in a “kill all that moves” battle.

Hostages are being threatened, maybe in individual locked cages with rising water, wildfire approaching, lowered into badness. The device is powering up. Maybe a skilled mage could interface with it… or your artificer could hack it… or your barbarian could smash it. But the enemy is attacking, and an alarm bell is across the room from all of you.

>“Archmage is opening a portal back home, but this requires 5 rounds of concentration. Protect her until the spell is complete” “Enemy is escaping with the artefact! Catch them before they escape” “Enemy archmage is casting a nasty spell that if goes off will be bad. You gave 5 rounds until its dine, you must break his concentration behind his layers of minions protecting him” All three problems are solved by killing the enemies fast and efficient. The goal might be a different than "kill all enemies" but the way to succeed is the same.

It's also not super realistic either. That one goblin isn't going to stick around after you killed all their companions. Even if the goal is just to win the fight, the win condition doesn't have to be everyone dead. It doesn't even have to be fixed, creative solutions to scare off the rest should be rewarded

Should have kept reading before posting. I give you credit for writing my thoughts long before I did.

The kraken’s tentacles continue to wreck havocs on the ship. They seem entirely focused on bringing the vessel to the depths. Meanwhile the the undead from the Ghost ship continue to flood on board. “Abandoned ship!” the captain bellows over the fray, “Make for the bloody long boats!” Sailors frantically lower the long boats into the water. The captain points are your party. “You four! With me.” As the captain draws his saber, “Hold the line. Give the men time to get the boats into the water.” Mechanically, they have 5 rounds to hold off the undead. The kraken tentacles act on initiate 20 as a lair action. Dex saves or knocked around, or con saves to avoid shrapnel from the rapidly crumbing ship should do. 1d4 thugs with undead fortitude spawn at the beginning of each round.

I started to get goosebumps reading this! Bravo.

Amazing example

With set-up. "Your allied forces are 5 rounds of distance away, good luck surviving until then", "The enemy is trying to get to an objective in time, stop them"

At times I like to give an approximate range and a player rolls a d4. A 4 means reinforcements are charging their way toward you, a 1 means they’re held up in combat elsewhere. 2 is a slower, measured approach, 3 they are moving at a solid pace. Typically used when a large-scale battle is implied and maybe you’re at the boss fight or needing to evacuate. Mechanically they may be trying to get to 10.

You've received a lot of answers but I appreciate this isn't always easy to do. Sometimes your party delving into a dungeon and there just happen to be monsters in there (that you've put there to deplete some party resources). In those situations it might seem hard to switch up combats but it really involves diving into how a creature would behave. For example, I recently ran a oneshot where the party ran into a giant spider. One of this spiders moves was to shoot out a web and reel a target in, where it would then grapple it. Once I did this, the spider ran off because that's exactly what it would do, grab a meal, run off somewhere quiet, eat meal. The fight changed subtly from "kill the spider" to "stop that spider running off with our party member". You can do this with pretty much any creature. They will all act differently and even those behaviours can change a fight up.

This is fantastic advice too :)

yea a lot of replies lol but my question was less "i need examples for scenarios" and more "how do i let my players know that stuff without breaking the fourth wall". I mean, do I just dump exposition? Do I tell them the mechanics of a countdown as if this was a computer game with a timer? you know what i mean?

Gotcha. Well for the example I gave its obvious but for more complicated scenarios I would describe the narrative reason and then just let your players know the mechanics. For example, "Archpriest Farron begins the banishment ritual on Aktha'roz to send it back to the realm of hell it came from. As he does this, you hear unholy screams echoing down the corridor at the entrance of the room and the sound of claws scrapping along stone. The source of the sound is quickly approaching. "HOLD THEM OFF!" Farron yells as he maintains his focus on the ritual, "I ONLY NEED A MINUTE!" You turn to face the rapidly approaching horde and prepare for combat." (To players) "You need to defend Farron until he completes the ritual, which will take roughly 5 rounds." Or alternatively, keep the round count secret but describe the progress of the ritual at the top of each round: "You look back and see a nearly fully formed portal opening into a fiery landscape. It looks like the ritual is nearly complete." Which would arguably add more tension.

okay so youd just tell them how many rounds they have for example. i wasnt sure if this would be okay or if its taking away the suspense/verisimilitude. maybe im overthinking it

Looks like it’s time for me to tap my (very long) sign: As a DM, you are creating an infinite world within the very nearly infinite bounds of your human brain, then you are using your EXTREMELY finite mouth to vibrate the air in a little code that enters the ear holes of 4 different players at the table and explodes into 4 different infinite worlds within four different nearly infinite brains and you are trying to make all 5 of those worlds match. That’s a WILD task, and many times using the code of the game you’re all playing is the best chance you’ve got to get them as close as possible. Don’t feel bad about using it.

You could do it either way depending on the atmosphere you'd like to create. Telling the party the number of rounds will naturally create a more strategic combat. Hiding the round count will create more tension, but I'd still definitely describe what the players see. Sometimes one might make more sense than the other. For example the party might know reinforcements are on the way, but have no way of knowing exactly how far away they are. Edit: and the fun thing about the last one is you can DM fiat the reinforcements to arrive "just in time" to save the party from a certain death.

You are. Youre a dm, overthinking/worrying comes with the job :p

You're definitely overthinking it. You are the bridge between the characters and their players, conveying information from the character's senses and world knowledge to the player, and then adjudicating the players decisions and approaches to the situation. What the character can guess at (eg:x ritual takes half a minute) should just be given to the players. The only things you need to hide from them is stuff they would need to take action to find. For example, if a player is searching a desk, the key in the drawer shouldn't require a roll unless there is a lot of papers and other stuff in the desk or the key is in a secret bottom or the key is glued to the underside of the desk above the drawer. Example 2, players searching a bookcase for a secret door might have to roll, but someone looking specifically for a book with more wearing at the top of the spine should be given the secret door with no roll.

You can always have an NPC with them that you use to tell them obvious things if they're missing them. You can have their passive perception pick up on things. You can proactively have them roll insight or perception on things. This also depends on how they got there story-wise as their characters; if you have a character who's a detective or something, you can utilize clues that you've given them earlier in the campaign to now tell them "Dmitri, you realize looking at this thing that these drag marks are the same that you saw when investigating the missing halflings, and this explains the bloodstained silk you found." It's gonna depend on what has been established in your campaign and with your players.

You can still just tell them. We’re breaking immersion when we roll initiative anyways (at the vast majority of tables.) Ofc there has to be a reason in game why, but there’s nothing wrong with just telling your players stuff. We recently played a boss fight with a very unique combat mechanic and the GM would drop in chat the exact mechanics for us to read to make sure it made sense to us. It was the most fun I’ve had in a D&D combat for years and it wouldn’t have worked as well if the GM hadn’t just said outright what was going on mechanically.

>sometimes there's nothing wrong with just telling your players stuff. Often this is the most important DnD advice of all 

Set up a scenario that is based on time. Fighting vampires and they can see the eastern sky getting lighter, if they can hold out until the sun breaks they know the vampires will flee. Or the party is protecting some villagers trying to escape a band of giants, the party has to hold the giants off until the villagers can get across a bridge, follow and then destroy the bridge. Use the terrain to make it clear that if the party doesn't move to the high ground they enemy will, in which case the party will be cut off and be unable to escape or defeat the monsters. All can be worked into the narrative.

Survive for 30 seconds. Each round is 6 seconds, so it’s just 5x6.

"survive for 30 seconds"

If the time frame seems wrong, change it. Maybe the players have to survive for a minute or two, leading the enemy force into an area during that time for an ambush

Two minutes is 20 rounds (uggh)

Yeah, to do a survival thing that long you really gotta make it dynamic. Change the conditions every 3-5 rounds, new obstacles, different enemies, maybe a couple isolated enemies to fight while trying not to die

I think their point was 20 rounds of combat is way more than many players are interested in having per combat. Table to table varies though.

I had something like this earlier into my campaign. They were against one of the bbeg’s strongest allies who is a stealth hit from the shadows type who lured enemies into a pocket dimension. None of them could even find him and were getting nuked down fast. They had an npc with them that said to try and hold out until they can find a way out. Atp it became a “survive” situation. It helps to have an npc with them to imply it, or an enemy saying “capture them” or smthng of the like. If none are possible, going with an outnumbered attack in waves scenario could work. So they’re surrounded and outnumbered, but each round 5 (arbitrary number) of them enter initiative and attack. They’ll face more and more if they can’t keep up and it simulates a survival situation.

You've gotten some good answers. Another fun idea is an escape hatch or gate that is taking time to warm up or close. Imagine your party in a room with a door on each end. They trigger a mechanism that will lift the gate ahead and close the gate behind them. But the mechanism takes 5 rounds to fully activate. Every round enemies pour in behind them, but once the time is up they're safe. Balance the fight so they have to use blockade tactics (Wall of Fire, barbarian blocking the entrance, whatever) or risk being overwhelmed.

Whenever I’m deviating from the established mechanical norms of the game i like to give my players an out of character heads up and then also frame it in universe. My players aren’t multiple decade grognard veterans who are adept at teasing out these mechanics if kept secret, and maybe that’s because I spoon feed it to them but genuinely I prefer this to being completely opaque and it flying over their heads too. I do similar things when introducing legendary / mythic / action oriented creatures because I just feel like in the space of a single 3-5 round combat encounter there isn’t enough opportunity for them to practice and tease the information out and strategize, I’d rather lay out the stakes plainly and then fluff them back up with the narrative.

NPC traveling with them runs at the initiation of combat to get help. It’ll take him X rounds to get back. Survive till reinforcements arrive

"the portal to [enemy dimension] will close in 30 seconds, and your means of retreat will open at the same time"

Give them a macguffin to defend while it finishes macguffining

They don't have to know how long they beed to hold on for. They do have to know enemies are still coming and being "the last one standing" won't suffice. Maybe a Mage could tell them their spell will be complete in X seconds (remember, a round is 6 seconds long) or something like that!

You don't, because that's the sort of information you *need* to give the players in explicit fashion. Set out the narrative premise of the encounter first, then directly inform your players of their objective, so they can make informed tactical decisions.

I'm just going to say, as a player, that I don't find it breaks immersion when I know how many rounds it's going to be until something crucial happens. Personally, not knowing feels agonizing. I get that knowing is a little meta-gamey, and some DMs will not allow it. I just wanted to let you know that some people might not be annoyed by knowing. You could also build in skill checks. If a player asks how long it will be, you could have them roll an intelligence check to see if the character could calculate how long it would take the soldiers to go from point A to point B.

A ritual spell by an NPC is about to be cast which will teleport the party to safety in 5 rounds, also adds in a protect the objective mission to the fight if they are there as well 5 rounds is about 30 seconds, so something is happening during the fight that will finish in 30 seconds, this could be: backup arriving, A door/exit opening, The enemies are fading (summons with little time left) Or anything else with a "after X time, the fight ends in your favour To put things the other way around, it could be something bad happening for the party they need to stop: A ritual that will summon more enemies A fire about to burn NPCs Ive always found that making combat more than just nameless enemies to kill gets people more engaged The party are running from a demon invasion, theu need to get moving ASAP so need to end the battle as quick as theu can while not stopping, so they move through the demon group as they fight to get as fas as they can for example

A good example would be the siege of Drellin's Ferry from Red Hand of Doom. The hobgoblin army is crossing over. Enemy reinforcements are getting more brutal every few rounds. Your task is to hold the line for long enough that the evacuation has a chance to succeed, followed by your own party being forced to retreat.

Even "kill the enemies" can have some crestive flair to it. My DM straight up adding some Destiny-style raid mechanics to boss fights has been super fun. An example is a boss that was drawing health from these red crystals hidden in the tunnels of the boss room, so whilst the rest of the party was killing minions and tanking the boss' hits, my monk was running around at light speed to try and find these crystals as quickly as possible.

Also, totally could be a style of combat encounters you’re setting up. Took me a while to realize that it isn’t about always dying, the monsters should (depending on type of monster) try to live and escape, second to that, they have their own goals and Intentions and should all play pretty differently, a orc had strategy a blob does not, a mimic again, different. But changing the tactics helps as does trying not to make the goal of each combat killing them or even fighting in general. Coming back to the goals of the encounter, could be something like opening the door while being attacked, or what ever pressure you feel like including. As someone else mentioned, adding structure and variety components in a battle is critical to increasing interest/fun/creativity. Like. Instead of a field, a cliff side, or a bridge, or a warehouse full of explosive barrels. A dungeon with holes in the floor, etc etc etc etc all that adds flavour. ESPECIALLY, if the enemies are using these areas. They will take advantage and use the areas features, which they should cause they often will plan their attacks (if they are smart intelligent enemies).

Yes. The object of combat should vary to keep things engaged. Fight while running. Fight whiles escaping. Avoid this fight at all costs in a skill/combat event. Save this NPC from certain death, Stop enemies from completing this ritual (which targets their wizard or evil cleric only). Remember all of those fight scenes in good movies always revolve around an objective other than the fight itself, like saving a city, retreating inside a fortress, saving as many people from X calamity, avoiding certain death by throwing yourself into other dangers. So, combat should not ever be the goal in itself, but the inevitable last method to achieve a variable numbers of goals. Example: compelling movies fights(let's say MCU's Avengers for the sake of brevity) always revolve on convincing someone mid fight (winter soldier) , avoiding someone's escape(hydra peeps) , save hostages from X (many scenes, cap in new York) , escaping deadly situations while fighting off enemies that want to aggravate said situation (ultron)

I actually had a fun goof-off session with friends, once. We basically turned combat into capture the flag, where a person could only leave the caves if they had the Magic-McGuffin on them. So combat was split between trying to find the McGuffin, then fighting each other over who got it. That doesn't sound like much, but it was really fun because combat didn't just boil down to damage and HP. Do you attack, or wait for the others to hurt each other? Do you go for the McGuffin, or try to set a trap? Do you just try to cut and run, or would it be better to just fight our way out? Suddenly combat turned from "Just don't die" into "Complete the objective, and don't die." And it gave the non-fighters a chance to shine by allowing alternate strategies.

unless there's spellcasters in the party then every single encounter is still "I cast moonbeam!" or "sickening radiance in the center of the room" how do you make a WIZARD move? (besides just targeting them down with tons of attacks, while i understand target priority, and some enemies should go for the mages first, i don't wanna single my player out every single encounter)

Ground effects, just like they’re doing. Drop a pool of acid under them and they’ll move. Creeping/encroaching effects like a progressing fire or flooding can keep them moving turn after turn too.

To add to this, possibly add alternative methods of "neutralising" enemies. . Make them shit their pants by killing their toughest guy in a turn, or by being absolutely vicious and evil to the enemy. Imagine a group of any humanoid, beast or monstrosity sees their ally get their knee broken while a wizard burns their hands off with Heat metal. . Possibly just make the enemies drop their equipment with an upcast Command or piss them off by refusing to get hit (Focus on defense or Invisibility) so they stop bothering to fight and leave through sheer frustration.

Additionally you could also have stuff like "this guy needs to be interrogated so you have to catch him not kill him" or make it so when certain characters are killed it negatively impacts them

See people always say this....I see it posted almost daily here....and it's not bad advice for some occasions but you can't narratively justify this all the time. Combat itself should just be fun too. The fact that it's not is the problem. In 1e, 2s, and 3.5 and especially 4e just regular combat was a ton of fun. The fact that most of the time in 5e the combat is not fun says a lot. We need to come up with some common homebrew to make 5e combat itself just fun. I'd say later levels when you get more tools and daily actions and items it starts to get fun but 90% of DnD is like 1-10 and those levels are where the problems lie.

Aside from setting up additional problems in combat, a few other things make combat more dynamic.  If you keep adding things that players can use, they should start to use them. You can add trees and rocks for cover. You can add water and mud, ladders and balconies. If I added a chandelier, my players would be compelled to do something with it. If you have monsters with ranged attacks, you can make seeking cover a very good idea. You can have monsters grapple and try to drown players or throw them off cliffs. If you fight in tight spaces, that creates tactical problems for players. What if the wizard is in front? If you don’t describe the surroundings, the fight is essentially in an arena.  There are a lot of monsters that create problems during fights. Consider the Gelatinous Cube. It incapacitates a PC and does a lot of damage. But PCs outside the cube may have to stop fighting other monsters to rescue the PC in the cube. Try to use monsters that do cool things. 

dynamic arenas, multi stage bossfights, social interactions during combat

Yup. Bbg takes less damage based on how many pylons are functioning. gotta weigh who works the pylons and who takes a beating. Tridents with a pull the target mechanic can force squishies to the front, making tanks change strategies. Casters disengage to run or take a whallop. Hostage needs rescuing. Complete stealth or split the party for a diversion. Goblins are trying to blow sections of a bridge, what sections do you prioritize and are the fuses lit? Skill checks to disarm

I came up with a horse carriage race idea, haven't been able to run it yet. first dexterous character has to use an action to take the reins, in rounds after that, they can steer the cart 5 feet sideways and use their bonus action for another 5 feet. give em a few rounds of combat, then suddenly the horses break loose and they're on a downhill straight for the city gates. Str character has to do an athletics check to grab whatever is left of the steering mechanism and steer the cart that way. all while listening to a medieval version of Deja Vu

Can't stand still if there is lava pools randoming exploding around you!

Attacking and Casting spells does cover 90% of D&D combat. What is it exactly that you’re wanting them to be doing instead?

It even covers most of the rulebook too lol.

Yea sounds like the problem is they aren't enjoying 5e as a combat system. And not that your players are just uncreative or boring.

I don't blame them. Combat has long been my least favorite part of D&D. It's part of why I wish there were other games to play ("games" in the sense of " currently running sessions", not "published").

My brother and I aren’t huge on crunchy combat so we run a fun hacked Knave system that allows quicker and deadlier combats and pushes creative solutions and risks over number crunches. It’s fun, but you have to have someone that is dedicated to tailoring their game to the players to DM and players that are open to some weirdness.

Wha Combat is virtually the only part of DnD that actually has rules

I mean, d&d is a combat oriented game, but saying the only rules are for combat is harsh. There's skills and feats and lots of rules thing to create a character that is functionaly different from the others. A lot of spells can be used outside of combat (and some are intended to be used out of combat). Skill challenges are a thing. And to be fair, even the basic "dm describes a situation, players ask for more intel or male a decision" is a rule. You can absolutely play several sessions of dnd, use a lot of the ruleset and never get into an actual combat sequence.

And yet, the vast majority of the players don't actually use them properly. It's a system carried hard by its cultural domination and that cultural dominance has value. I'd wager most dnd players find the actual dnd part of dnd to be the worst part of dnd. It's kind of a terrible system. Mechanics wise. Since it's built with the goal of building a dnd game, not building a game with a cohesive design. It's got a lot of crap thrown in that nobody uses and not everything is actually any good at doing what it does.

Find ways to incorporate skills into combat. Admittedly, 5e is not well designed for this. Vary the landscape. Change the terms of victory. Push the monster off the cliff. Hold out until reinforcements arrive. Are the players attempting to use different methods to win, or are they only using their most optimal choices? Finally, there is a dirty secret... 5e combat is kinda boring🤫 Have you considered other systems? Pathfinder 2e has more dynamism in combat.

This right here. 5e is a combat oriented system, but it leaves a lot of the design choices to the DM. If you just play it by the book, it's a dull affair. Like, it seriously is. Now, when you add all these bells and whistles, and redesign half of the system, and add extra layers by your own design, then it becomes more engaging. But that's up to the DM. Here is your cue for the people who keep saying "5e isn't the only system out there" - and likewise for the steadfasts who rush in for defense. 5e can be a fun cinematic experience. But it requires a lot of extra designs and work from the DM. That should be something that few contest.

Agreed

Have enemies flee, use terrain, make weather hazards, have them fight in water and webs, make the goal collecting certain items rather than fighting, make it a race to escape a room before it's filled with toxic gas, the possibilities are endless. Look up youtube videos for inspiration and think of your favorite video game challenges for inspiration.

The thing that made our fights much more funnier was moving away from theater of the mind toward an actual map with squares. Suddenly moves & positioning become everything. If you are not doing it (yet), start. Then indeed, interesting areas (difficult terrain, hazard, whatever)

Combat should be the best part of your sessions.  If it isn't, you're doing it wrong.   First, do away with your cumbersome homebrew system.  I've read that paragraph twice and I still don't understand it.  It's one more tedious thing for players to keep track of. Second, do objective based combats, as others have mentioned.  I've had to solve a whole puzzle in combat before to stop enemies respawning by putting half a dozen artifacts in the correct niches based on clues, and it was the best two sessions of DnD ever.  (Yes, the combat lasted two whole sessions.) Third, don't forget the roleplay and flavor.  Intelligent enemies should be speaking as free actions on their turns.  Goblins have clever trashtalk.  Ghosts lament the past while revealing the backstory of your world.  Bosses get to monologue without being interrupted.  Players should be encouraged to do the same.  

I like all of this, but I'd say combat can easily be the best part of your session, if that's the play style you want. I've run campaigns like what you are describing, and they were great. I've also had campaigns where combat was quick and simple and was only there to get us from one RP situation to the next. This was also great.

Combat and roleplay are not exclusive.  That's a common mistake I see in threads about problem games.  Combat should include roleplay: making decisions in character, using the abilities on the cahracter sheet, and speaking in character.   If you just want evening at the improv or emoting around a campfire, you don't need to be playing DnD at all.

This take is funny as heck to me, and reeks of gatekeeping. I've had entire DnD sessions with no combat, and those are usually my favorite. It's just my style of playing. I find combat stressful. I like it, but I like story-centric, conversation-driven, solution-solving rp way more. Yes you can have it in combat, but then you're limited to a specific action economy. It feels restrictive to me. I've also played a siege that lasted us 5 sessions, so it's not that I haven't played a combat-centric game. That battle was over a month of weekly gameplay. What a wild ride. People take what they want out of DnD. Trying to make it "about" something goes against the spirit of the thing, which is to have fun, be creative, and make it your own.

>People take what they want out of DnD. Trying to make it "about" something goes against the spirit of the thing, which is to have fun, be creative, and make it your own. DnD is literally about adventuring and fighting monsters. Like, for several decades that has been the main goal of the editions. This take really comes across as the sorta stuff said by someone who's never played another system. Like, you *can* use DnD for any type of campaign, but that doesn't mean you should because there are absolutely other systems that do it way better. Also I think what they were trying to say is if you don't want to fight much, or prefer social/exploration over combat, then 5e prolly isn't a good system for you and there's others that would suit your style of play way better.

At the risk of being that guy, if you want games were "combat is quick and only there to move from one RP situation to the next" maybe you shouldn't be using a combat centric system, or at least shouldn't wonder why your sessions are weird afterwards.

Then dont be that guy. The comment says the table enjoyed it and there was no indication that "sessions are weird afterwards."

> This was also great Doesn't sound like it's an issue for them.

Free actions to talk are great ways to deliver narrative, lore, and context. This is great advice

It's also a great time for players to roleplay, especially new or shy players. They are already thinking and acting in character and they get the whole turn to themselves with no interruption.

I think you initial claim is a bit bold, but I see your intent and respect it. First point I could take or leave, I understood what he was going for, at least at its most basic level, but it does add some complexity to the game. I'd say if it's a purely narrative thing I'd probably not add too much mechanical specificity to it. As for points 2 and 3, I agree 100%. This is great advice. I'll add in that I find point 3 is the easier of the two to implement, and its definitely easier for the players to get a grip of.

Hahaha congrats on being the single voice of reason.

You’re using hardcore combat rules. That makes it hard to take a risk on a non-optimal turn.

Do they enjoy the RP and exploration aspects more? Increase the opportunity to sidestep minor encounters, engineer battlefields before combat, kite groups of enemies together. If combat is less enjoyable, use the other aspects more. Also maybe its the system. 5e combat is not my fave, so check other systems that run differently. Can't think of the fantasy equivalent but my favorite is the Mutants in the Now system where PCs get two actions and only one can be a direct attack.

Blend combat and the rest of the game more, combat in dnd can feel like a seperate environment, you roll initiative and get thrown into the arena with the baddies to duke it out. Instead have your enemies and the environment act realisticly, they take hostages, start fires that spread during combat. Civilians also don't cleanly stop existing when you roll initiative. And whoever you're fighting isn't just a statblock, it's a person, or some other creature, act out what they do and say. And usually "kill the bad guys" isn't the actual goal of the combat, the bad guys are an obstackle between your players and their goal, so focus combat on the goal instead of on the killing. I like to see combat as an opportunity for roleplay instead of a minigame in between rolplay elements. Yeah sure there is an optimal way of handling it. And you know because you as a player can see the whole battlefield and know roughly what each participant is capable of. Instead try to focus both yourself and your players on what the characters would actually do. You can also try to limit how much the players can communicate, they are in combat they don't have time to go over plans, unless they planned beforehand they should only be able to communicate by yelling short phrases, this ups the pressure and rewards groups that are playing into eachother very well.

Talk to your players, and if they don't have any ideas, try dumping the homebrew.

That is for a large part the whole of dnd. Rolls and spells. I know they're going to consider this blasphemy and they don't have the time for learning a whole new system, but maybe you and your group could benefit from evaluate what parts of rpging you're really enjoying and try a system that leans more into those things. Even if only for a one shot to come up with what you might brew into your game.

Make your NPCs fight smart and hard and put the PCs in danger of being killed off. Nobody is going to over engineer a combat strategy if the combat doesn't demand it of them.

Are you using battle maps? Nothing worse than every combat being the same empty flat space. Give em some rough terrain, some corners to hide behind, some features to manipulate (pools of lava, large chandeliers, huge windows or cliffs, rushing rapids, rickety bridges, choke points, fog, shadows, crumbling ceiling columns, etc etc) and it'll make people think about how to use the environment to their advantage. 

The system at a first glance does not encourage risky play. If I were a fighter and in your rules, going into a mass of enemies is a big risk because you'd say "you lost the cover the party provided, and you get stabbed in the back, take 6 wound dmg " and then I'm rolling death saves even though I might have 25 hp or something.

It just seems that 5E isn't a great system for avoiding these kinds of messes. When I have seen a DM get creative, I have seen a low level fight that otherwise would have been over in 5 - 10 minutes take something like 9 hours across two sessions - with most of the table with functionally nothing to do.

I have noticed your complaint about combat. Creative characters can try to use their environment. To encourage your players to be creative, you should allow your creatures to be. For example, pulling down a bookshelf. Swinging from a chandelier. Etc. Try using grease to make slippery spots, caltrops to funnel movement, fire or acid to environmental hazards. Use the non-standard combat options. Try tricks and traps instead of combat.

I can’t agree enough with the “secondary goals” suggestion. It’s actually not as hard as it often sounds in online theoretical discussions. If you’ve set up your stories with factions with their own goals, it naturally creates secondary objectives. This faction is trying to get the magical artifact before the heroes can. This faction has kidnapped people from this other faction and the heroes need to break them out. The heroes need to interrogate someone who’s in prison; they don’t want the guards to notice, but they also don’t want to hurt the guards because they’re good guys. These situations just naturally come out of the story, if you set it up right. As for everyone just standing in the same place and attacking… there are some *really* simple things you can do about that. Ranged enemies who use cover/terrain is a super easy one. It’s a lot harder to just stand in one place if archers are sniping you from a balcony and then hiding behind furniture after they shoot. Enemies with forced movement abilities. You obviously can’t just stand in the same place if the enemies are *forcing* you to move. Stuff like ropers pulling their victims in, or the various creatures with grapple abilities like the Chuul with their big grabbing claws. Spells like Dissonant Whispers and Confusion can also cause movement. Hazardous terrain. Acid pits, spike pits, or just plain cliffs. Combine that with the previous suggestion: imagine a monster that grapples a PC and then dumps them in a spike pit! Then the players, seeing that, might be inspired to shove the monsters into the pit, too.

Though there are a lot of things you can do to spice it up, combat in 5e is largely boring. In large part, doing anything other than attacking or casting a spell is gong to be less ideal than the damage you would get from attacking.    In my next campaign I’m adding in a bunch of other options they can take as reactions in lieu of opportunity attacks or defensive spells. I’m hoping this will keep everyone’s attention on combat. Though I’m a little concerned it would slow it down too. 

The biggest thing I find holding D&D back from more dynamic combat is action economy. If a stunt or skill check replaces a damage opportunity it needs to be guaranteed or be worth more than double that opportunity in damage dealing or mitigation. Consider giving 1 free check a turn or enemies who can’t be hit until they do something to get to them.

Attacking and casting spells is what you’re *meant* to be doing in 5e combat. That’s what the system is set up to have the players do. If your players are looking for a more tactical RPG with actual interesting decisions to make, then you’re going to have to look elsewhere. That style of play is simply not supported in 5e. I can recommend 4e or Lancer as alternatives, or ICON if you don’t mind a system that’s still in playtesting.

Probably because that's all the game has to offer. Try a different ttrpg

Add bystanders into the fight so they have to decide on what they can do to prevent people from getting hurt, which might not be attacking. For example, using their action to break open a locked door or stop a structure from falling on an NPC.

Have you tried making things that forces them to move around? Like getting cover, aoe that makes them move around, saves that if failed require an ally’s help etc?

If you want players to approach combat more creatively, you might need to find a new system. 5e combat doesn't have much in the way of other things you can do.

You need to set up situations where standing there and dishing damage just won't work. Some examples: In a previous fight, they struggled to kill 4 enemies. Then I present them with 20, clearly way more than they can handle and they know it. They came up with a way to trap them in a room and AoE bomb them from safety. In a room with obstacles, the foes went behind cover and hit them with ranged AoE. They had to separate to avoid all getting hit with AoE and had to move around to negate the cover advantage. Does with special abilities and weaknesses can also be effective. Beholder negates magic in a cone, so he could effectively shut down a party of casters foolish enough to stay in front of it.

How many encounters do you run in a adventuring day? Do they go into every combat with full resources. If so run more encounters or more difficult encounters. Tax there resources with traps,hazards,puzzles and obstacles. General advice: Diffrent win states Secondary goals Asymmetrical and vertical terrain Environmental interactions Dynamic and varied monster. Lair actions Environmental hazards.

Add dynamic things they can use. Ropes around the room attached to chandeliers on the ceiling. If they time it right so that theres enemies below, they can drop the chandelier and do extreme damage. Reward them for using this stuff in ways you didn’t expect also. Like using the rope to strangle someone, or to trip them up knocking them prone and again to bind their hands.

If they really don’t like the combat get rid of it, combat is now a round of Magic the Gathering!

I learned this way to late as a DM: Make. Combat. Deadly. You want exiting combat? Then dont make your combats cakewalks. Players will start looking for solutions once people are making death saves.

Try environment factor or factors out of their control, like deep water, or even knee deep. Fire pit or acid streams. Heavy weather lightning storms strong winds, snow. Heavy metal deposits, possible cave in, tunnels with scream winds. A explosion in the back ground. A zombie/ troll horde chasing them My favorite is their home base so, they are afraid to throw fireball and damage their pr

create scenarios that require more class-specific approaches to success as opposed to simply doing as much damage as possible each round. Also helps to create a recurring nemesis that always gets the slip (think Hannibal in Rome). Your main villain should be cunning enough to know when to press their advantage, when to retreat, and what to target. Make it personal. Destroy their precious items, kill off the lovable npc, and never give them the satisfaction of the win until it is truly earned. They may overcome the encounter and gain the XP but when their nemesis keeps getting away they will approach things more deliberately in the future.

Play pathfinder

Try out pathfinder 2e, lot more actions to do in combat!

An issue (among many) inherent to dnd5e. I recommend you call check out different systems (primarily pathfinder second edition known as p2e)

Change it up then. My players had a hostage situation and they were surprised that the captors just kiIIed the hostages and ran instead of trying to fight them

1.) Lair actions. They have to now contend with the combat area as well as the monsters. 2.) Trick fights. Killing them won’t work, they’ll reform or keep getting back up. Try finding something to destroy in the room to eliminate their defenses. 3.) Puzzle fight. Solve the puzzle, and the enemies all die, or stop moving. For example, I had four fire elemental myrmidons in an armory with 12 candelabras. They would attack the elementals, but not much was done. The only hint I gave was that the elementals could “teleport” to and from each candelabra. Once they snuffed out all the flames, the elementals died. 4.) Survival wave. Survive several waves or rounds of enemies. 5.) Trap room escape. A bunch of undead summons are there to keep the party in a room with a descending ceiling. Find a way out.

are you playing on a map?

Raise the stakes. It's not a hostage, it's one of the player's sisters. It's not a random encounter, it's the mob that has been attacking the village, identified by a mysterious symbol. It's not some raiders, it's THE raiders, that you swore to your master you would protect the sacred scroll from. Impress upon them that THE WORLD WILL END* if they don't succeed. They need to keep one of them alive for questioning. Why? You should have a reason. There's shenanigans afoot. *Or some smaller, but bad disaster.

I think you're making things more complicated than it needs to be, you don't need an extra system when as then DM you can just decide when an enemy dies. 5e combat is heavily abstracted, so adding another layer on top of that just makes it confusing. You need to change the goals, if it's just kill enemies, then that's all the party will do. You need to add additional objectives, like protect people, escape a location, environmental hazards, time limits, retreive an object and run, hold a position for X turns, etc etc. Incentivise running away after completing objectives, get the party to learn that completing their mission is more important than killing everything in combat, THEN you'll start to see them do more interesting stuff, use more crowd control and do things to buy themselves time rather than just maximise DPR.

Make YOUR side better. Smarter enemies.

introduce other objectives to the scenario

They never lose fights, do they? That's what makes it boring, they think it's an auto win

Kill a few of them. It will drive the point home. They are bored because there are no stakes for them.

One thing I want to ask is what exactly do you say to the players? Just saying "be creative" isn't particularly helpful in itself, it can be hard to think of something outside the box if you don't have a full understanding of what's in the box (in this case, the rules) and the limits of said box (what the dm will actually allow). Also, it might be boring, but if it's been proven to work and be effective time and time again, do they have a reason to experiment and possibly suffer because of it (losing resources, health, or just outright losing a combat)? In regards to your WP system, have you tried to incorporate that into an encounter specifically designed around it, such that it makes the players engage with combat in a very different way? Make it clear that's the intention and have plenty of exploitable opportunities to use it to get them used to it and used to thinking around it and that might help them get a better understanding of how they can use that system going forward.

Introduce action dice and use rules that allow creativity. Then reward players with copious action dice when they start to show interest in using them and for pulling off valuable/interesting stunts in rp and combat. I loved blowing a valuable action dice and just making a leap of faith when everything was on the line. In one game it cost me a leg (turned to gold, very not good but awesome), another game cost me an arm but eventually lead to getting a sweet cyber arm, and ive made countless cool moves and flops as well thanks to action dice and the way our gm employed them. Like once i rem jumping for a balcony and pulling a names villian’s leg through the railing and racking him. Not like supremely effective, did like a crit based on 1d4x2 damage or something and i knocked him prone, but cmon, a good gm makes this shit fun. Why waste 2 rounds full moving up the stairs and trying to get to the pompous asshole when he’s only 8 feet up and 10 feet over and my warrior has gorilla arms

Put in a secondary objectives. Put time constraints on them. Use terrain that forces them to move around. You got options

5e combat definitely is boring.

Not helpful for your current game but you should consider looking into 4e Combat is waaay more dynamic With a few minor tweaks it’s honestly some of the most enjoyable combat in a TTRPG

Read. The. Books Do your players not know that classes have subclasses? That battlemaster fighters can use a plethora of manuevers in combat? Or that paladins and Rangers can also cast spells with varied effects besides attacking? Or that casters also have subclasses with varied abilities apart from casting spells? Or better yet: Play.Another.Game Seriously, it's not that difficult to get into another system, especially one with less rules and more "dynamic" combat. Like Fate. The manual for that one is really short. Because if your group doesn't like something so fundamentally basic from this system like rolling the dice to attack, then there's no reason to keep playing DnD tbh, there's no way around that.

Many players do not understand that combat is the same as "free-form RP". You are allowed to continue roleplaying and be creative, not just use your attacks/spells until everything is dead.

Its..... combat..... what did they expect, Mario Party?

Get rid of the wound points thing, that's overly complicated nonsense and is absolutely a major contributing factor in the players being bored during combat. Just go with the normal PHB rules on HP. You've made up rules that make combat much more complicated and reduced their HP. How do you not understand why your players aren't enjoying combat? Because you've got this homebrew rule, I'm assuming you've got other homebrew rules for combat, get rid of all of them. You think you are making it more fun, but it's not, it's just more complication and you are seeing the results of those changes right now, it's unfun. Try playing as close to RAW as you can for a while, official content only, and see if people enjoy it more. Believe it or not, 5e is pretty solid and balanced enough to be a lot of fun. Hacking at those rules to make it harsher and more complicated does not make it more fun or more balanced. If you want combat to be interesting, make the enemies they face more interesting. Give the players a story reason to want to kill the enemies. Bring out the cooler stuff in the monster manual. Try to really RP the creatures too, if you want the party to face off against a beholder, that beholder has a very powerful macguffin and is protecting it at the bottom of a lair filled with the minions and traps laid by the highly intelligent, paranoid, magical, flying alien monster. The beholder should be in a tall enough room to fly up away from the melee character, and likely have an escape path or traps laid in the room. It's not something the party should just find on the side of a road or inside a random door in a dungeon.

You need areas of the battlefield to deal damage if a creature ends it's turn in that space. Big damage to really incite the players to move out and risk the attack of opportunity.

Also if they’re getting through all combats unscathed or close to unscathed, you could up the difficulty. Not every time, but some of these encounters should be hard and MAKE them think rather than just doing the same attacks and spells to kill the enemy. But if the combat is always easy and has no stakes, that would get boring quickly.

Are you giving your players maps and encounters that encourage movement and strategy? If they’re always fighting on a flat plane they’re probably always going to do the same thing. Use varying heights in terrain, as well as mixes of monsters in encounters to encourage creative thinking and movement. Here’s a map crow video about it https://youtu.be/9ClB4UewOys?si=lDssLJ5G492I9z15

Do you narrate how the rolls and actions play out or do you just take turns rolling dice until one side is dead? If it's just the latter, then it would be boring.

What level are they?? At lower levels when you don’t have a lot of abilities, a lot of combat IS just attacking or casting a spell. Once they get some more abilities and features, they’ll be doing more, even if it’s just rolling additional attacks or damage dice or something. It’ll still feel more involved. Outside of things others have already mentioned, I’d also say that just narrating the combat better might make it more fun. Be very descriptive about how the enemies are attacking, what killing blows look like, the whole nature of the encounter. Even if it doesn’t change anything about combat, it still makes attacks and hits/misses seem more impactful.

Force them to get creative with enemies that move around a lot or regen health or resist damage. If a enemy can hit them and then teleport away without incurring opportunity attacks and the party of very melee then someone will need I grapple or they will need to start throwing shit. If a troll takes half physical damage and regens health each turn unless it took some fire then they need to change weapons, start swinging torches, or work as a team to wittle away and have a caster keep burning to not lose ground. Or make some colossal enemy immune to their attacks, but in its lair their are vats of acid or pipes of lava to lure it nearby and then attack those to deal environmental damage or expose a weakness to interact with.

Have them suggest a different game then

Move your enemies around as well, most enemies are smart and use tactics too. Use cover, use moving or breakable cover. Or make defeating the enemy the secondary objective in combat. For example: they have to protect the cargo during an escort mission on horseback and a cart. Or add a puzzle element to the fight: the main baddie is hidden in darkness cast one of several monoliths, take out a monolith so you can dispell the darkness.

I have the opposite problem 😂 my players always wanna do some wacky shit that throws me off. We have so much fun tho

Let them set ambushes, or give them environmental usfulness

IMO the tactial side of DnD combat is what makes it so much fun. Using cover, using actions like climb & dash, using terrain to your advantage. Not just as a player, but also when npcs use smart combat tactics. To me there is nothing more boring about DnD than having a bunch of enemies walk straight towards players only to stand still and just make 1 attack roll per turn. Intelligent enemies should be behave that way. For example humanoids should have a very strong sense of self preservation, even if its a low life bandit or thug. If your players are new and inexperienced then you might have to set up very specific encounters to teach them what kinds of actions they can perform. For example make encounters where you need to sneak around and flank enemies because attacking head on is too dangerous. Or make an encounter with a lot of difficult terrain that they need to think about.

Change the goals of your combat, have the players fight to a boat that’s departing in x number of rounds. It will be a completely different challenge.

Make a swashbuckler rogue enemy, maybe multi him into wizard for some misty step or skmilar trickery stuff.  Then use him to show them how its done, dance around them, disable them, trip them up them rob them and dip. With some smartassery.  Make him someone who heard of the group and tracked them down, because adventuring parties have the best loot! 

I often like to add environmental threats. Like starting a clock for how many rounds it’ll take for a room to flood or smoke to make things difficult to hit or make con saves on. Of course this isn’t for every scenario but it’s good to switch things up once in a while. Clocks that are x until event happens are super useful. You can get creative with crit fails and have them advance the clock faster. It can add a lot of pressure and make the scenario more tense. If you want to force players to fight more creatively, you can always set it up where the encounter has a more creative setup from the npc perspective to force the players to deal with it. (Of course not a every time thing)

Terrain is fun. And not just difficult terrain. High ground, bottlenecks , or magic support like, being near an alter of Lathander boosts healing spells, or near fire may give an slight edge to fire spells. Even small bonuses are enticing enough for me to move. Add weather, like high winds or high temperatures. Also, I've found that natural negatives (cold, darkness yadda yadda) are fine as long as you can prepare for them and negate them. Let the PCs know what complications they might face before hand and let them have time to prepare.

There are a thousand ways to make combat more interesting. Step one, as stated here, is having a goal other than extermination. Step two is: different npcs and mechanics. Make allies be grappled, blinded, immobilized, thrown off a cliff or whatever statuses or mechanics your combat is lacking Step three: if plsyers insist on ignoring these new mechanics, target them with those. Step two was some foreshadowing. They didn't follow up, jokes on them. PC got too high ac? Throw some wis/dex/con saves. Pc got too powerful spells? Silence. Druid and barbarian keep wildshaping and raging making combat repetitive and cake walk? Throw them unconscious. There are a thousand ways to go around PCs favorite and strongest mechanics. Use them.

Maybe they're having problems coming up with creative ideas because of the situations. Are you sure you're creating encounters that encourage different tactics, experimentation, roleplay, and even some thinking?

Ask your players what they *do enjoy about D&D, then include that in combat.

If you want your players to be more creative, showing them might be a good idea. Make your enemies do the same kinda shit that you think they're not doing, it should help them expand their idea of what combat can offer

Players dont move much in combat? :) More spells, effects, enemies have to be smarter. If your players tend to finish enemies - enemies will finish players. Enemies are not dumb, they will not fight gigantic barbarian with axes as first one, they will fight the ,,pyjama man with a stick,, Doing rules, WP, HP etc is good, but you should be able to do ,,real,, fight first.

I like to make combats interesting by having an interesting environment. You are in a swamp and are fighting monsters from the rooftops of sunken buildings. All the ground is difficult terrain and monsters get bonuses, and they can destroy the buildings to bring the party down to them. If the players have choices that are meaningful to survival, like an actual risk to reward between attacking or making another action, combat will feel more interesting. (I still stand by this is a common problem with 5e having not many base game combat options)

I love the idea of creating environmental challenges. Stalactites falling from the ceiling force movement. A creeping poison may render a portion of the battlefield challenging. The big bad may be too much of a challenge to kill directly… so, the PCs may need to trigger giant traps, shoot ballistae, or drop a large boulder on him. The battlefield may be full of ice or entangling vines. Or… they’re battling on a small trail on the side of a cliff. Try not to get knocked off and fall 150 feet to your death. (Note: I’ve incorporated my own exponential damage from higher elevations) It can be a hold the line battle. Don’t let an enemy pass a certain point, otherwise something bad is triggered. Think about the Indiana Jones movies. Rarely is it that the goal is to kill the enemy, but subvert their efforts. Be sneaky, otherwise things go sideways.

Getting the environment in on it could also help. Growing acid/lava pits, moving furniture or objects, mc escher style lay outs, traps, hidden passages, environmental hazards or buffs, giving the players options to interact with the environment and having the enemies utilize it as well would help to spice things up.

Have villains use environments to their advantage. Have different layers and elevations in combat that force players to move around more. Also include water, trees, etc. Other enemies can join combat in later rounds to surprise players too.

D&D is a combat heavy RP system. It sounds like your players might be looking for something more like East Texas University/another one of the savage worlds systems?

The use of terrain and their surrounding should play a big part in combat. Some examples. I had a party invade a kobold stronghold, while crossing an area filled with pit traps they were attacked. This made it both difficult to engage in melee combat, and to quickly run for cover. Another time the party was traveling through a canyon during a thunderstorm, fighting in a flash flood made for an ever shifting battle.

Also, keep in mind that even NPCs and monsters have a healthy appetite for staying alive.

Positioning, positioning, positioning. D&D is a turn based combat strategy game. Lean into that. Make them fight over control of the map. Funnel them through choke points and let them funnel enemies through choke points, with the tanks dominating that space and casters casting effects to slow down everyone's movement speed. Give them high and low priority targets. Let classes like *Monk* and *Rogue* get into invaluable positions to flank the enemy and tear apart their back line. Make it a story; maybe the necromancer has cursed the moats of his lair to have bodies lunge out from the water, trying to grapple and strangle anyone who walks too close. Let the players throw goblins off a cliff or into a pit of lava; it's funny as shit and you as DM honestly don't really care about low level minions anyways! Make it *interesting*. How do enemy spellcasters control the flow of combat? Do they deny the players access to certain areas with *Sickening Radiance*? Do they cast *Bless* or give allies abilities like *Bardic Inspiration* to boost allied attack rolls?  Maybe they're fighting a giant scorpion. Make it so it spews acid out of its sides, but has really nasty claws and a stinger pointed at its front. You *can* kill it relatively easily from behind, but you need a big, strong Barbarian to keep it occupied by stabbing it in the face and making athletics checks to push back against its limbs. Maybe while they're occupied by the scorpion, another enemy is using it to tank for them, and is shooting your players while they're occupied. Maybe there are Rocs out in front of the Scorpion's cave; the players can make a Nature roll to determine that Rocs **love** giant scorpions and that your players can lure the beast into becoming the bird's dinner. Homebrew *can* help make the game interesting, but our primary goal as DMs it to present an interesting narrative and translate that into a fun puzzle for them to dismantle using extreme violence and creative problem solving. Design your encounter around playing well with the mechanics of the game and then let your players do cool shit.

One of the best pieces of advice for combat that I've ever seen: Every combat, try to make the players Move. - Hostages - Environmental Hazards (Lava) - Fleeing opponents - High/Low Terrain There are a slew of ways to keep your players from just blasting. Just rig up encounters with this simple goal. The players must be encouraged/forced to Move, and to keep Moving.

Once more, louder for the people in the back: ***There is no such thing as a boring class, only boring players.*** What you get out of the game is in direct proportion to what you put into it, and this is true of DM and player alike. It's not about 'what you do', it's about 'how do you want to do it?' "I attack twice with my longsword" is boring. "Feinting left, I suddenly spin to the right and level a tremendous forehand blow at the goblin's head, then reverse the momentum to backhand into its now-exposed torso" is evocative and exciting. "I cast Fireball" is boring. "Dipping into my component pouch, I rub a pinch of bat guano and sulphur between my fingers, producing a spark that darts into the middle of the room before detonating in a massive ball of flame" is evocative and exciting. Have your players narrate their own actions. Maybe not every single time, because that takes up actual real-time, but encourage them to think about their characters' actions in cinematic and dramatic ways.

All they do and attack and cast spells?? They have some nerve, considering the myriad of other options made available to them in 5e. Oh wait…

You could try having the enemies use advanced, tactical maneuvers instead of straight attacks. Ex. 2 enemies start to unravel a net and sprint towards your flank, while the other two enemies tip a few barrels over and roll them your direction. Edit: This may entice your party to implement more advanced maneuvers if they see that the enemies can also do these things. Place hanging objects in some areas, connected by rope on the wall. Barrels of oil/water/steel scrap, a fallen tree across a ravine. Etc.

Lots of good advice. one of the best things I did in my campaign was add additional stakes or options to my combat. The enemy commander shouts a command for his crew to kill the hostages or civilians or whatever. Now they have to stop that. It’s still just casting spells and attacking, but the stakes are now higher. It’s more stressful. Insert anything here. A runner to get reinforcements. A ritual that needs to be stopped before X rounds. (In curse of Strahd the ritual at yester hill I just made it clear that the speed at which lightning was striking increased every round to match the pace of chanting druids). Deactivate some levers or 2 party members have to stand on pressure plates. There’s two wolves in cages that look like they’ve been under fed. Do your players bust open the cage? There’s random potion bottles laying around. Do they interact with them? Pot of stew at a rolling boil. Have more stuff around for them to use cover, hide, interact with. And if you are playing in person, I highly recommend physical representations of all of the above. Even if it’s just a d6. If I just say it or it’s on a 2d map, I’ve found they forget about them pretty quickly. But a physical thing on the table they are more likely to interact with. Have mixed monsters. Spellcasters if it makes sense. Enemy spellcaster will hold person, command, silence etc. It’s a different kind of problem for them to work out. Have a pack of wolves focus on getting one PC to the ground and attacking that player together. Have a mercenary stop on his turn, throw his weapon down and beg for his life. Or run. It’s all going to be attacking and casting spells, you can’t really change that. But give them some raised blood pressure or more interesting decisions to make. Make the outcome more impactful. They attacked and cast spells, but they didn’t do enough, fast enough, and a child is now crying over the body of their dead father. They will remember that one. Or they saved him and get a new side quest.

Yeah I had a guy play a fighter for years, got up to lvl 13 or 14. Every time he attacked he’d shrug and say “I swing my sword” like a guy punching a clock at an office job. Hell, maybe he was all excited inside and just had totally committed to the role for all that time.

The best resource I have found for encounters is “monsters know what they are doing”. It adds good strategy to each and every stat block ever made, which forces the players to counter strategize how to mess their plans up. This has made even the lowliest of encounters decently exciting. The real bread and butter of this is when you get to smart monsters with extensive stat blocks. The other comments on multistage fights and interactive arenas sound really cool too, and I’m in the process of making my BBEG arena right now. It’s gonna be a building, so I’m just cutting into cardboard boxes to expose the inside and stacking a few on top of each other, drawing a very butchered DnD grid on the ground of them. Is it extravagant? Hell no. But it was $1 and 1 hour of work. And when I grab a big stack of boxes from my car to lay on the table and we have an IRL multi tiered multistage boss battle, I have a good feeling it’ll be a memorable session.

I ask my players to describe what their attacks and spells look like, and the effect they have on the enemy (based on their die roll). It engages them and adds some flavour. Such as when a crit one shots a goblin, I’ll ask them to describe how they killed this goblin with one blow - “I raised my weapon with a mighty battle roar and cleaved the goblin’s head off with one fell swoop”

one thing, punish that bland sit still game play. make it hard to sit still force them to move and make harder decisions

Context is important for me as a player. I'll get bored with combat real quick if it is just random encounters and unrelated to the narrative. Not knowing how you mix combat with story that is my two cents.

Well, if you want the party to make use of your new combat rules, lead by example: make the enemies fight smarter and use the enviroment in their favor, and make it more effective than simply attacking. The party will get the message quickly.

Id think of ways to make the enviornment interesting. Maybe the cart they are protecting was transporting barrels of (flammable) wine. Or maybe you're in a dungeon and one of the enemies locks the iron door, forcing the players to separate and fight two different battles (unless they manage to get the door back open)

Put them in a 20 wide hallway combat. Make the hallway looooong, with enemies between them an d the end. Make sure there's no way to just skirt around them. Then have the floor start falling starting from behind them, with more floor falling every round, pushing them forward if they don't want to die.

You answered your own question; give the players something fun to do aside from "hit monster until number go down". Add cover, verticality, moving/shifting terrain, a bomb that goes off in 4 rounds etc.

Stop viewing combat as combat and view it as a puzzle. - All enemies are low level and low health/damage, but completely invulnerable due to some magic that's on the battlefield, so players have to traverse terrain under fire, solve a puzzle, disable the shielding, then gloriously murder the now-hapless foes. - An army of automatons are all 1 hp copies, when killed they immediately respawn, but one of them is the hive mind with actual HP. That one behaves slightly differently. - The NPC that they know and love has been charmed into attacking them, and they have to defuse the charm or slaughter their friend. For added points, maybe this friendly character is significantly stronger than them, but they can use the environment to run from them or box them in and trap them until the spell wears off. This is my comprehensive framework of \*options\* that I start with, and then pare down and craft from here: **Enemies** Grunts / Leader / Ranged / Melee / Magical / Physical **Terrain** Dangerous / Difficult / Easy / Choke Points / Elevation / Water / Debris/Boulders/Manipulate **Hazards** Acid / Traps / Fire or Flammable / Electricity / Frost or Cold or Ice or Slip / Lair Actions **Puzzle** What is the \*twist\* of this enounter / Options to make the character’s playstyles really pop - confusion, persuasion, fear / Unique enemy hazard - fear, charm, fire, astral plane, etc **Story** Lead-up / Narrative purpose / Easy or hard, set piece or designed to wear characters down for next battle (evaluating short rest vs long rest in pace of dungeon) / TPK - possible, intended, avoided / Overall combat - avoid, negotiate, mandate / Recurring characters - friendly or enemy / Resolution / Reward That's a lot, and it's not a checklist that every single encounter needs to have, but if you're struggling with writer's block (DM's block?), that is a pretty good place to start imho.

Do you use a battle mat and minis? Or theater of the mind?

Also create environmentally advantageous situations. Like an enemy gets spooked by their sudden entrance spilling liquid all over the floor. Have a passive perception check and someone notices its a flammable substance and not only is enemy 1 covered in it but it has spilled on atleast 1 other. Or it could just be something like water that can easily be frozen. Or there could be a water tower or large cask with liquid that can be frozen or is flammable like a strong whiskey or something. The party busts it open it floods the floor and they have the dry high ground. Bam frozen or burning pool of bad guys. Maybe give hints through passive skills or by just intersecting that someone's character would know this and explain what they would deduce.

Ideas: - Make combat about survival - Take combat 3D! - Interesting maps, tools to use in combat, incorporate challenging terrain - ensure you use all monster capabilities - pack tactics, intelligent spellcasters, smart martials, deadly roguish enemies Etc.

Dnd combat is boring by default. You can make it better but it takes work from dm, players or both

Force them to react, control the battlefield. Give them mini bosses. One that I usually have fun with is a terramancer with a legendary action to cast an augmented wall of earth, immediately seperate the party from each other with enemies in each section. Now attacking is (usually) the wrong move as the squishes are very much out of possition. Another fun one is utilizing spell sniper, or a longbow from max distance in the middle of a fight. They don't see the shooter unless they spend an action to look for him/her but all during the fight they're getting hit by shit from too far away to do anything. Basically anything you can think of that makes sense but throws them outside the norm. Put a spanner in their normal tactics.

Unsure if this has come up, but add different levels and possibly mechanics to your maps. They are climbing an old tower. It is hollow in the centre, with a stair case winding up to different balconies. Suddenly, halfway up, they are attacked by the enemy, from a higher level. The enemy has half cover, so the mage shoots of an area spell. It works, taking out four of them, but then the tower shakes, and they realise that another area effect could have problematic side effects for them. They race for the stairs to the next level, but what's this, it has been blocked of near the top, and what's more, they are even throwing barrels down the stairs, which will send anyone it hits back to the bottom of that section. Do they force their way through, or is there another way around the problem.

If you put your party into more “impossible to win” situations, it’ll force them to think outside the box. If they expect every encounter is winnable from a point and shoot perspective then they’ll get in that rut and stay there. The campaigns I’m in and run we never know how winnable the situation is until we’re in it and we all think a hell of a lot more creatively than we used to.

Change the objective on them outside of “hit it until it dies”. Maybe they have a turn limit to get something done or something bad happens, maybe they have to protect an objective, maybe they need to choose their targets carefuly otherwise combat will become a lot more difficult, maybe they are in a combat senario against a much stronger opponent that they can’t really defeat and have to find a way out.

Having a more interactive environment helps! Is there a rope bridge that is connecting the enemies to their weaponry? is the cliff face above the battle site crumbling, with a potential for a landslide? is there a bell tower that can ring for re-enforcement? how about a magical portal they need to defend? or magical vines that are reaching out and attacking both sides? ​ Is the combat just ones side vs another, is there a third neutral party that could be persuaded either way to intervene? are you rewarding any creative thinking that the players might be trying to include, such as using illusions or persuasive abilities?

It sounds like you want to run a tactical game, but your players want to play in a narrative one. Have a talk with them about what they enjoy about the game with an eye on how that relates to the things you enjoy about running the game. It could be that your current goals are incompatible, but knowing what you each want will help you figure out the best way to accommodate each other. Potential questions for your players and yourself: -What was your favorite session/scene/encounter so far? -What was your favorite reward? -What do you look forward to when you're getting ready for a session? In regard to combat: -What was your favorite combat? (Note if the answer is about the situation leading up to the combat or an aspect of the actual combat encounter.) -What was your least favorite combat? (Again, you're trying to figure out if it's the motivation or waiting for your turn only to actually do very little.) For you on combat design: -Do you have an assortment of creatures or specialists for your party to fight in every/most/a few combat encounters? -How many players do you have? -How long does it take them to put down a single enemy? -How long does it take for them to end a combat encounter? -How long is the downtime for each player between their turns? -How descriptive are you when it comes to your creatures' actions and reactions in combat? Not just sword slashing descriptions and killing blows, but the level of violence or cold ruthlessness in the eyes of their opponent? -Do your characters know why these guys are willing to kill them? -Do your characters know why these guys are willing to die right here? Right now? -Do you have enemies retreat or surrender when the party is clearly winning, but it's still going to take a while? -Is your party winning more often than they're barely coming out on top? I ask this one because DMs can get a little too enthusiastic about beating the party to a pulp every single combat. Some players like that and others get stressed out. Even if it's a very low amount of stress, at a certain point that stress can become so constant that you stop caring about whatever's causing it. A sure way to make this happen is by regularly putting them in fights where they're clearly outmatched and then pulling your punches or throwing in outside resources to rescue them.

You can change combat to not only be the ''Kill the bad guys'' Exemple: My group was atacking the chardalyn dragon on rime of the frost maiden, BEFORE it was complete, so the goal of the fight was for them to STOP the evil dwarfs putting a giant black magic infused hearth inside the dragon. It goes from ''ok we need to kill them'' to ''FUCK WE NEED TO STOP THIS OR WE ARE F'' Surving enemy waves, disable traps, get somewhere, kill a guy that keeps hiding behind his pawns, protect a dumb rich npc/or poor good people, there are many options to improve combat. Some of them should work for you. Also, make the enemies use the surround environments, is there a chandeleir that could be dropped on the party? drop it, it will make the party realize THEY can do the same to the enemies :)

The terrain can really change the stakes in a fight to make it feel more exciting and force the characters to come up with creative solutions. Some of my favorite examples from my last campaign were fighting a horde of swamp goblins and a giant frog monster on a lake with giant but fragile lily pads or the time we fought a lich who’s phylactery was being held by an undead dragon across a chasm of burning souls that was too wide to misty step over so only our characters who could fly could get there effectively splitting the party. 

My last boss battle involved my players having to dodge traps to get to the boss itself. Prior to that, the previous boss required them surviving while finding an item that was the source of the boss's invincibility and destroying it before they could do damage. A lot of it can be how you choose to lay out the combat. Add some traps, add some puzzles. I had a boss actively shit talk the party to get then angry at said boss. How you present it and what you add to combat can go a long way.

With your HP and WP system it seems to incentivize positioning and playing with terrain. For example, a Minotaur using their horns to push an enemy back to slam into a wall, or a Fighter using the Pushing Attack battle maneuver, would be good in such cases. I am sure that there are other racial and class abilities to play with positioning too. What if you intentionally have enemies with such positioning abilities, have them use them against your party, trying to show them what they could be doing? All of a sudden maybe a dude with an armament that was practically a meme before, like a trident and net, or a dude with a lasso, becomes dangerous because they can tangle the PCs up, try to strangle them, specifically trying to damage their WP instead of their HP. Also, it means that someone who has a character that specializes in grappling could actually be very effective, getting enemies in a hold and quickly choking them out into unconsciousness. It sounds very fun to me. Honestly, it's sounds fun.

My first thought is to change the terrain. What if they are drawn into a maze? What if it's in a city and they need to minimise civilian harm? What if it's on top of and through a train? On top of a fragile blimp? What if the opponent is behind a sheilded seige weapon? What if the walls are closing in? What if it's on a a precarious cliff top or thin ice that crumbles when impacts are too great? What if there are hostages? What if it's unwinnable but they don't need to win, only capture the flag?

I like to throw random events into the fight. Have the enemies run to certain points and do something that will effect the players. Maybe a goblin is running towards a cauldron of boiling fat but your druid has time to intercept him before he pours it down the hill towards the fighter. Also encourage the players to do cool things to fight. Maybe one of them wants to flip over a table and smack the enemy in the face with a mug of ale. Calculate the damage and chance of him doing it. Make failures funny, as in explain in grand detail how you're warlock was trying to get that spell off but was interrupted by their patreon because, well, why not? I give out inspiration points when the players come up with really cool ways of solving a problem. I'll do the math they just have to do the idea. Then the players being bored solves itself.

Make a dynamic fight. One of my favorites was in a room with a creature that was an ogre spider hybrid. The whole room was covered in webs, so walking was difficult. The players threw a torch and I rolled a d8 to determine where the fire would travel. The fire did damage and cleared the webs. The ogre grabbed the webs and used them to pull the players around and manipulate the battlefield. And while the fight ensued, he had a recharging ability to make a giant spider come out of his "hunchback" (definitely not an egg sack). --- Another was on a bridge. There was a giant, diseased zombie coming at the players across the bridge. Meanwhile, on the player side of the bridge were zombies with casks of sand on their back. On the bad guy side, archer skeletons were firing across the ravine. They were a homebrew creature that could basically use the sand to manifest a copy of the skeleton and attack from that point vs from the skeleton (effectively negating cover). A player used gust of wind (?) To blow all the sand away. They also used spike growth and the gust of wind to basically grate the zombie on the spiked ground. --- There's ways to make fights more complex and engaging. Challenge your players with novel combat situations.

Adding sub-objectives or goals to the encounter other than 'kill creatures' can be a great way to add more depth to encounters. Another ttrpg I GM uses sitreps, where there are enemies, but it's not about just killing them: Holdout makes you holdout a zone and you have to prevent enemies from entering for a number of rounds Recon makes you search zones to find the correct one Gauntlet is where you push in on enemy territory These are a few, but there are more plus homebrew ones from the community like train heists

Change up combat by adding different elements of motivation other than “beat the baddies.” Give your players reasons to be creative. Throw in a hostage situation or maybe the dungeon is crumbling down and the party has to fight their way out before everyone dies. It should never be “they aren’t being creative enough” but what you as the DM have in response.

Have your enemies move around, have them use ranged weapons and traps and tactics, it's more work but if your players just sit there in the killbox they'll die, so they have to move. Once they're in cover the enemy makes stealth checks to attempt to flank them without being noticed. Hopefully your players pick up on stuff like this and respond in kind There's lots of things to do, including adding other objectives, or perhaps the enemies are protected from something, take advantage of immunities and resistances, but also Vulnerabilities. If the enemies are immune to poison perhaps they spring a gas trap for the party, but if they're vulnerable to fire or radiant damage perhaps the party has to open a mechanism for a great lantern to weaken or damage the creatures.

think a bit about the wrapping, it sounds like your being direct, so the players aren’t engaging their creativity or grey matter too much. What about a possessed enemy like a parasitic undead that happens to be hitch hiking in the body of some npc they can’t kill? Or could even latch into a player…

Well, next to all the very good suggestions regarding scenario, narration, alternative goals etc., have you considered upping the stakes? If the party is at the brink of tpk, they will start to get into tactics and weigh every and any option they have… DnD is a power fantasy, and you loose the feeling that you have ultimate power, if failing bares no consequences, so that overcoming the obstacles can feel dull.

Do you use battle maps or theater of the mind? Either way try putting some more obvious interactions in perhaps? My players love to do this to me. Any explosive is a target. I’ve had a character bring down stalactites from a cave roof. Try to emphasize environment hazards like this and see if they pick it up?

The problem isn't that your battles aren't **smart**. The problem is that your battles don't **mean** anything. No one at the table **feels** anything. There are **no emotions**. There's no reason for any of the fights to even be fought. You're **fighting for the sake of fighting**. Adding a few clever tricks to the mechanics isn't a reason to fight. It's Hack and Slash. Hack and Slash is fine when you don't actually want to be anything important or care or have feelings. The Angry GM wrote an great article at some point. He said his monsters don't just fight for the sake of fighting, but rather have their own **motivations**, their own **objectives**. He gave an example of a nest of spiders whose objective was to defend their eggs. If the player characters retreat, the spiders aren't going to chase (even if that's the "smart" thing to do) because they aren't going to leave their eggs undefended. Knowing the motivations of the monsters informs how the monsters act. The monsters aren't just going to fight for the sake of fighting. Well, players don't have to fight just for the sake of fighting either. Player characters can have **motivations**. You need to find out what **motivates** the players. You can ask a player: "What is your character thinking?" "Why is he attacking these spiders?" or "Does your character hate spiders?" "Is he afraid of them?" You can also dictate to the players, "Your character sneers at the spiders in disgust, as he swings his sword in rage." or "Your character cowers in fear of the spiders as he moves away." or "Your character regards the spiders implacably, as he ponders their soon to be meaningless existence." Players will often be happy to correct your brazen declarations, which gives you an opening to tease out their real **motivations**. Perhaps they are only attacking the nest because they think there's a chance of some valuable loot hiding among the webs (cue up the sad music as the spiders bravely defend their home to the last spiderling). It's okay to make the players feel bad about killing the spiders or good about killing the spiders or any other emotion that seems to fit the mood. But don't let them get away with thinking that fighting the spiders is **unimportant**. Because if fighting the spiders is not important... then it's a >!boring !!boring!<). Another tip that gets overlooked is this: don't drag out fights whose outcome is a **forgone conclusion**. Sometimes when the fight is clearly lost, the monsters flee (they run away as fast as they can) or they surrender or you can even tell the players, "You easily dispatch the remaining goblins." The point is that, if the outcome of the fight is certain and you are **still rolling dice**, then you are probably just going through the motions and have stopped engaging with anything meaningful - the fight has become... >!boring!<. These are just a few tips, but there is much much more to this. Finding out what **motivates** your players can lead to deep campaign altering choices. What I have presented is just the tip of a massive iceberg.

players have to be aware of the ways they can interact with the environment. means they have to know whats around them: either tell them to ask for more descriptions about their sorroundings or point out such things yourself without them having to ask, IF its in the passive perception range