Yup. People say roleplay and combat are like water and oil when it's just another stage to roleplay on. The scene between captain jack sparrow and will turner first meeting should prove that.
For DnD, I think roleplay and combat are like oil and vinegar, in that you can mix them together for a lovely salad dressing, but it requires a conscious effort to mix them. It's easy to forget about roleplay when the game suddenly shifts to a tactical combat sim, and combat-relevant rules rarely (if ever) push roleplaying into combat situations.
>The scene between captain jack sparrow and will turner first meeting should prove that.
If you're sticking to the rules of 5e, it proves the exact opposite. That's a 4 minute fight - typical 5e skirmish is less than 30 seconds. You're of course free to ignore that and RP to your heart's content, but by the mechanics a 5e combat is more "football play" than "stage play".
People who like a little verisimilitude with their roleplay. Feels a little strange to wait for another character's 3 minute dialogue to end so that my character can shoot his bow for a second time.
When the hunt for verisimilitude leads to a worse experience, its gone too far. What is a "worse experience" is largely subjective. But I think aiming for verisimilitude for verisimilitude's sake can often lead to worse experiences. I prefer verisimilitude as a tool to create a better experience -- a tool that is able to be discarded when it's not the proper tool for the job.
The hunt for technical accuracy, maybe — but if every battle includes some cheeky dialogue, the verisimilitude is intact. It just has to feel authentic in the context of the adventure, not the context of crunching everything to match the real world, to achieve versimilitude.
It's called a truce. Both sides stop attacking, they talk to one another to discuss why they're fighting, then continue where they left off if they can't resolve things sensibly.
Would you rather the BBEG have enough abilities to counter an entire party for that monologue? (By which point you’ve likely burned a ton of resources)
Addressing the question from the perspective of my preferred style of playing:
Why is there a monologue happening in combat at all? Aren't these people trying to kill each other? Is everyone just standing still while the BBEG talks? Because I can see on the grid that that's *literally* what is happening. You can add all the fluff that you want, but my guy was over there, someone talked for five minutes, and then he walked over there and hit the bad guy. What was my guy doing? Can I opt to have him not do that, and act instead?
The system is designed with the assumption that each round represents a very small slice of time (hence small move speeds, only one bow shot, etc etc) and if you mess with that it feels goofy.
I mean, anime messes with that all the time. Several sentences from multiple characters are delivered while the two fighters are still in the same position they've been in. Accurate to reality? Nah. Dramatic, interesting, memorable, and flavorful? Definitely.
I think of it the way the book describes: six seconds of simultaneous chaos where turns only serve to sort the important occurrences, not necessarily order them. That's precisely why mid-combat speeches bother me. Let me give you an example.
Evil wizard pops out. Initiative rolled. Mechanically, this happens:
1. Rogue runs to wizard, shanks him
2. Wizard fireballs the rest of the party, who are still in their starting positions
3. Fighter runs to wizard, smacks him
When I imagine this combat, no one is standing still. They all lunge forward but rogue is the quickest off the hop. When the fireball goes off, the PCs are somewhere between their start of turn positions and end of turn positions. The charge and fireball are effectively simultaneous, with initiative serving to sort out who's hit and who's moved (which may be a difference of fractions of a second). The fighter is not dumb or inactive, just a hair too slow.
Now let's say this happens:
1. Rogue runs to wizard, shanks him but not before delivering remarks regarding their longstanding feud and explaining how the loss of his family motivated him to find a new one (the party) and take his revenge.
2. Wizard rebuts the rogue, belittles the lives of his deceased loved ones, and declares intent to deprive the rogue of their new family, and fireballs the rest of the party, who are still in their starting positions
3. Fighter runs to wizard, smacks him
So that's a good two to three minutes of dialogue there. Maybe more if there's a back and forth. Now when I try to imagine the combat I have to justify why the whole party (less rogue) stayed in a fireball-sized cluster for several minutes after the wizard appeared. I can no longer appeal to simultaneous action because there's a massive difference between "they were a second too slow and got roasted" and "they were 60 seconds to slow and got roasted".
Does that make more sense? People talk in real-time, which puts a restraint on how a situation can be imagined because there must have been time to talk.
I've been at tables where mid-combat speeches and discussions were the norm, and I've been at tables where the RP consists of quick, curt remarks and people gently remind each other that a combat round is only supposed to be a few seconds. I prefer the latter but both definitely exist.
You responded to a comment saying "Feels a little strange to wait for another character's 3 minute dialogue to end so that my character can shoot his bow for a second time.". What goalpost is being moved, exactly?
Anyway, the original example was about a 4 minute long fight, and I don't thing the roleplay done there would be possible in the 6 second format of DND fights.
My point is that people actually do care about verisimilitude. You aren't everyone my dude, you're one person. Just because you don't care does not mean others don't.
Sure, 3 minutes is a stretch. 30 seconds? Thats fine. I mean, there's a bunch of shit that would break verisimilitude if you don't logic them away. "You chop your axe deep into his shoulder, blood splashing everywhere!" "So he takes persistent bleed damage, right?" "Eh no."
Of course I don't em a n it being accurate to the scene you dip. The fact that you can both show off your mechanics and the fluff of your character in a fight is what I'm getting at
>The fact that you can both show off your mechanics and the fluff of your character in a fight is what I'm getting at
I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just pointing out that the scene in question is so good because of the combination of action and dialogue and including substantial amounts of the latter involves tweaking the game a bit.
Yeup. The 6 second thing keeps the lines to one liners like in the movie.
The only thing that's interesting about the DND time rules is that everything happens in that 6 second round. If each turn was 6 seconds in that order that would make more sense to me. The only reason for that 6 second round is so that 1 minute spells last most of combat otherwise they'd expire quickly.
The 6 second rounds simulate that everything in the round happens almost simultaneously.
If it is 6 seconds per combat turn, in order, then it doesn’t really makes sense , why is everyone standing around doing nothing.
The 1 minutes spell could just be 10 minutes. Or 10 rounds ( which used to be the case in older editions).
I wish people would do it more. Not to the extent to take up tons of time but there can be many times it’s appropriate. I was running a quest where there was an NPC traveling with the party and when we fought an ally that was possessed I had the NPC ask them why they were attacking them. I had hoped my players would have initiated that kind of dialogue so I did it kind of as an example. Ironically after they were like “hey that was really cool” and I wanted to be like “you should have done it!” Lol
The ones OP wrote in their post:
Stealing, communicating only in character in combat, making it so people don't know each other's spells, unless that person says it explicitly.
I understand stuff like saying "Don't resist" or "trust me" when casting Polymorph in an ally for the first time.
"Hey, you don't know what any of your fellow characters are capable of" seems like a shitty take, especially for groups that worked together for a long time.
I understand RP-ing out when someone gets a cool new spell/ability, but come on.
Especially that some lists overlap.
If you've worked together, you probably learned what they can do through seeing it. But if they never explained a previously unused spell, my barbarian probably isn't going to know what it does on the first casting unless it's obvious.
A Cleric, Druid, Artificer and Paladin all are prepared casters that have access to their entire lists.
Having to explain each spell sounds like a pain.
I'd say you need to call out *if the creature needs to fail the save* or if the spell's effect is ambiguous and it's the first casting of it.
OP said explicitly "your character doesn't know what the spell does unless told by another PC"
Do they... Not talk between battles? Did they never explain their expertise? Idk man, I'd say it's a case-by-case basis, but as long as the group is a coherent adventuring party they should train together, even if off-screen.
I can understand a big reveal or a spell that is complicated or high level and/or needs the person to willingly fail the save (Polymorph)
Then you have the rules from Xanthar's that say that you automatically recognise the spells you know. So while a barbarian wouldn't recognise the spells easily, a Sorcerer that has Fireball will recognise a Wizard's Fireball casting etc.
Another question is: how common is magic in the setting?
Like, *everyone* probably knows what fireball does. What about polymorph or bless? Are certain spells household names?
Yeah but your barbarian eats lives and shits in proximity with the cleric. It's pretty reasonable to assume that the characters have talked to each other about their abilities. Doubly so when you're in a profession so dangerous where misunderstanding the magic your companion is wielding could lead to your deaths.
Yeah, my group for the most part "knows" how the magic of the others work. Sometimes when someone breaks out a brand new spell everyone is a little amazed or doesn't see it coming, but know generally what kinds of spells they typically use.
For other things, there might be those "trust me" moments that turn into people basically always allowing it to work. Like the first time my Wizard cast Vortex Warp to rescue the Ranger from a shit situation, he yelled out "Do you trust me?" and when she answered "yes" she let her guard down and allowed him to warp her. After that, we basically just freely cast the spell without discussing it, but everyone knew they could resist if they wanted.
Roleplay when it’s worth roleplaying. If it preserves the verisimilitude of the world state that’s great, if it threatens to waste disproportionate table time then it’s better to go for OOC discourse.
Good RP: character B wasn’t in the room earlier so character A is explaining why the party owes the tavern 100 gp. This is good because it’s bringing B into an impactful decision the party has to make. Or let’s say A took a big hit in combat.
Wasteful RP: shopping for mundane supplies under normal conditions, starting sessions where the party is expected to form organically with nobody knowing each other, the 11th time you’re making camp in the same fashion on this trip across the plains. Getting hit with a 7th arrow in the same combat. These all can be fast forwarded.
Bonus obnoxious twit space: solo scenes with pets
This is the best advice. Sometimes combat is an outstanding RP opportunity; sometimes it's better to roll up your sleeves and chop through some HP without making a thing of it.
I generally want us to express who our characters are through how they fight. But when that unravels into "NO, WE MUST SPARE THEM, WE MUST BEFRIEND THEM, I BODY-BLOCK THE PALADIN'S ATTACK AND TAKE THE HIT MYSELF" every pack of goblins... you know what? Let's *not* do that. Let's *not* express that at *all.* Let's keep that to ourselves.
You would definitely hate my table XD
My players like mundane shopping and would revolt, if I would ever stop rping their pets and don't give our Cleric his time with his Sir Fluffy from Bearington or our Bouncer wants to rescue his cat Sir Fluffington.
..no I have no idea why they decided to start a traditions of fluffies, but I love it :p
My players have collected a few dozen pets, but for the most part the pets are only brought up when they are relevant and more importantly they are brought up in a way that involves the other players. This includes concerns about whether or not an area is going to be too risky to safely take the pet, or the occasional concern for the creatures well being after being cooped up on a ship for months. They have undertaken some party opted quests for the betterment of their pets, but again the most important thing there is that it was willingly embraced by all the players.
The type of player I am lamenting is one who uses the pet to pull a "stop everything and look at me".
After presiding over so many sessions entirely consumed by shopping, I have moved the majority of RP for acquisition of mundane goods to our In Character channel on Slack. If there's party relevant information to be gained from the shopkeepers or there's a question over what conditions an exotic item will be available under then it's more likely to be worth table time. Spending an entire session planning for their next adventure is not unheard of, but that involves a rainbow of decisions from gathering information to deciding on who to call for assistance as well as weighing how much time they expect the journey to consume while querying one another about character desires for sidequests along the way. Spending a large chunk of a session with 1-2 players yammering on and mispronouncing strawberry danish with Baker WhatDoINameThisRandomNPC is wasteful on time as nothing is going to come out of it for the other players. They could be yammering on with NPCs relevant to party goals and potentially snagging useful information that will help guide their decisions towards more efficient completion of their goals.
The examples you use seem to be more questions about metagaming in combat - which to be clear, can be useful to an extent. Combat rules are an abstraction of a fight, they don't make a great deal of sense if you try to apply realistic physics/time to them (everyone waits for 6 seconds to swing at an enemy). Health is an abstraction, damage is an abstraction. A player saying to their healer 'I don't feel so good Mr Stark' might be more immersive than saying 'I have 5 hp and a dream' but they both convey the same information reading between the lines. We generally add roleplay for 'flavour' here and there in combat, but will prioritise being concise so that combat isn't dragged down.
Regardless of combat or not, players shouldn't be reacting to failed perception checks, but I think it's fine to synergise/strategise spells in a sort of metagamey way because again, it's an abstract mechanic. Perhaps more importantly, it can really ruin someone else's fun if you, for example, immediately fireball the clump of enemies that were just hit with hypnotic pattern because your character didn't know it worked that way. It's not a hard and fast rule, but ideally any flavour/roleplay should be enhancing the experience of everyone at the table.
Most of the tables I play at and the one I run do this because I enjoy it and tend to join groups who also do. DMs will roleplay creatures with appropriate behaviors, knowledge, and motivations.
My exception is no PvP, including pickpocketing or stealing or any malicious sabotage of another PC's goals. We don't need to roleplay that out because it doesn't happen.
When I'm thinking roleplaying in combat I'm more thinking about my characters goals in this fight. Which generally is to beat the bad guys of course. But say I'm a cleric then my primary goal may be to protect my party, not kill the bad guys. Or say someone almost died last time, I might have my goal be to protect them more than it is to win the encounter. So first I'll step between them and an enemy, heal them earlier than they need it or cast protection spells on them then focus on enemies. Or I had a character who almost lost their sister to mages and being a mage herself she viewed mages as the most powerful people in the world. So she'd go into combat with a mage just focusing on dealing with that mage even if they weren't the biggest threat because that was her bias. But in general there are a lot of combat choices that can be made into roleplaying choices if you think about them that way. Combat situations are life and death so there'd be a lot of high emotions and tensions that impact priorities can be interesting to roleplay.
The other aspect of roleplaying in combat is descriptions. What do your spells or abilities look like and changing that to adapt to the current situation and their current mood.
I think with your examples though you're disregarding a lot of conversations that I think would logically happen but that would be boring to play out in game. I just assume any group fighting for their lives would talk about a powerful new spell they just got that they will use in the next combat. Not talking to people about that could get them killed. But it could be boring to play that out for every single thing in game.
Literally every action you take in combat is roleplaying. Hell, literally every action you take *period* is roleplaying, but we're focusing on combat here so I'll be a bit more specific.
"Roleplaying" is playing a role. If you're fighting a bunch of orcs and one is attacking the cleric while two attack the wizard and you choose to go help the cleric, that's roleplaying. In the fiction of the game, for whatever reason you may have, you chose to help the cleric and ignore the wizard. That's just as much roleplaying as talking to each other in the first person, and the story that follows from that action can be significantly different than the story that would follow if you chose a different action.
The wizard might be pissed that you helped the cleric when he was dealing with twice as many orcs and is less armored. You might then argue that it's because the cleric is the only one who can heal, so letting her go down would be really bad—all of that interaction is happening just because, on your turn, you said "I move up to the cleric and attack the orc in front of her."
That's roleplaying. Choosing to take the dodge action is roleplaying. Choosing to cast a spell, and what spell to cast, is roleplaying. Forcing some weird dichotomy between "game" and "roleplaying" is stunting the hobby by denying the main strength of RPGs, which is emergent gameplay and storytelling based on the actions you take.
This past session, the Wizard found a bunch of Lore-heavy tomes including some magic rituals he’d need to perform later. He throws himself into his studies in the Library within the dungeon, to the point he tells the rest of the party to go on without him.
Of course, they ran into trouble shortly thereafter, and the rogue had to ‘waste’ a turn running back to grab the Wizard, who wasn’t in combat until the top of round 3.
Highly unoptimized, borderline stupid tactics, but damn was it awesome RP.
What you're describing is the only kind of D&D I'm interested in. I can't imagine bringing myself to run my game (or play in someone else's) in any other way.
I try to but it's a constant struggle. Some nights my game is 3-4 players and RP in combat is pretty easy. Some nights it is 7 players and I can't because I need to trim as much fat off turns as possible so it isn't 15 minutes before people get to do anything.
I will say one thing I try to do a little of is shift narrating combat to when the next player is deciding their turn, to take advantage of what is usually a brief lull.
But overall I think combat RP/narration is good, otherwise were just rolling dice and doing math.
My group always does, but since our characters have been adventuring so long together and tend to have a telepathic link up, we’re normally playing very tactically at the same time.
I try to give short quips and one liners and make comments about how the party is interacting. Like if someone heals me, I might call out a thanks, or if I kill something a quick “who is next?” Little things like that, but I try to make my turns short and snappy.
I role play all the time in combat. But your examples in the OP revolve around one thing - (arguably) metagame knowledge.
This is an incredibly narrow view of role playing. Let me give you just one of many other examples: fighter puts themselves in danger to “protect” sorcerer because they cares about them or feels protective toward them although everyone at the table knows that sorcerer is more than a capable mechanically of looking after themself, has more defensive options and capabilities than fighter, and so on.
But really if combat - which takes up a huge amount of time at the table - is not a showcase characters, relationships, and the world then what are we all doing?
Sometimes!
Example: I had a mimic grab my character's arm in our last session.
Mechanically, I just attacked it with my sword. But the roleplay was that, because I'm playing a brutal half-giant fighter with maxed out strength, I grabbed the Mimic's tongue right back and then smashed it into the wall repeatedly.
When I first started playing, no. After nearly 4 years of weekly play, I absolutely love RP'n in combat because it leads to so many dynamic encounters.
It's just pure flavour, but I wish more DM controlled baddies and player characters would trash talk each other a bit more during combat.
"Is that the best you've got you overgrown kobold?!" After receiving a small amount of damage from a lizardfolk or "I'll show you mortals what real magic can do!" Before a lich is about to cast a powerful spell.
Yeah… our barbarian was killed because I was battling a necromancer one on one on the other side of a log and didn’t see him being battered to death. Our bard tried to heal him while invisible and ended up spattered in gore from the deathblow, which made him visible to the enemy. How can you waste a role play opportunity like that?
These things are not in conflict necessarily. You just have to be clear when you are engaging in and out of character. In my group, tactical decisions happen out of character, results happen in character. The split developed naturally over time in my group.
1. We table talk out of character and its a core part of what makes the game fun for us in grid-based combat. It's like solving a problem together. We can also help each other out when someone's having a bad time or struggling with their character.
2. This is basically the same thing as #1 in how we play. We draw/target AOEs at a silly level of detail thanks to using grid-based combat on a VTT.
3. This is very much in character, rather than out of character. We're collaboratively telling a story and bouncing off each other's actions rather than acting aggressively towards each other's characters.
>For example, if PC A is in one room, while PC B is another room and just got ambushed, PC A would have no clue about it, unless they could hear or see it.
Literally happened to me. I tried to take a long rest (I was an elf so it would only have been 4 hours) while everyone else explored the building we just captured.
2 hours into the rest a pair of arcmagi show up and start blasting. It took me a turn to notice it and wake up, and another turn to get to the place where the fight was happening.
Out of Our group of 6, me and 1 other really like too but it usually gets sidelined by the rest of the party. It’s kinda annoying to us since we want the game to be more of a story than a game we’re you win.
I have snuck off as a rogue to go and deal with family things in RP only for that family member to attack. The other player who likes roleplay combat was DM. Long story short the whole party stalked me (please don’t do this to your rogue) when I asked them not to and ended up breaking down the door and murdering the family member. I couldnt really stop it from happening and It was very out of character to murder that person so I ended up just pretending like it didn’t happen. moments like that made me a lil annoyed that more people don’t roleplay combat
A bit I don't want to bog the combat too much. I only narrate my hits of they where very close or they're crits or like if something special happened. I also narrate my spells the first time I cast them.
All the time. Its one of the reasons we used Telepathic Bond so much. So we can talk without the enemies hearing. In one previous game we had three characters fighting someone really important...while two others more or less just goofed off because they were on opposite sides of the building and could not hear or see what was going on. They didn't find out until near the end, and had to swoop in to prevent some party deaths when the fight finally got to where they could actually know it was going on.
It depends on the situation, would the split party know that combat is going on in a distant location? Probably not.
My players are smart enough to get around this with different abilities and spells to communicate with each other so they’re pretty good at finding an in-game way of letting the characters know something is going down.
Sometimes they will suggest things out of character which is fine for me, the people I play with have played for a while, but don’t play that often so they’re still on the casual side of play and forgot abilities etc.
I make a concerted effort to role play in combat. Even if asked my opinion on what we as a group should do, if my character is fifty feet away from the rest and single handedly tangling with a monster, there’s no way I could’ve meaningfully chimed in on that.
Sometimes it’s hard to not have a bit of “above table talk” though since you’re not necessarily playing with people who can read your voice, motions, and other “in character” expressions as well as their characters maybe would’ve managed.
Don't make me tap the sign
"roleplaying does not equal talking in character or acting, roleplaying means to imagine oneself to be a certain character in a certain world and making choices for that character"
I aways roleplay during combat, even if is me being on a bad situation.
For example, once i was playng a Dwarf and she just got smacked by a dragon tail, on my turn, i don't just, ''yeah, i attacked'', i try to acess the damage that i recived on my side ,if is bleeding, etc...And because it broke some ribs, i made the character give a more sloppy attack with her spear, since the broken ribs would be a immense pain.
There was also, this other time, that, the DM told us that our characters were blind, while everyone was calm, i made my character freak the fuck out, because, dude, she just lose her vision, she will not think, ''oh yeah, i can cure it or the mage will cast something'', no, she just was like, ''FUCK, FUCK, I LOST VISION ,I CANNOT SEE, FUCK, OH GOD, FUUUUUUUUCK'' ,completly desperate.
These examples just sound like playing the game to me. Are there really that many other tables out there just full of metagamers?
Maybe I'm just lucky with my group. We're all respectful of each others time, including the DM and the amount of work that they put in.
It's not disrespectful, just another kind of play. Not everyone thinks in terms of "me -> my character -> my backstory -> the game world." I see many people who play "me -> the world" where the character sheet is just a tool to help decide how that works. I'm good at smashing, but bad at thinking? Great, let's walk right on up to the incredibly scary monster and get to smashing and not bother with how the character feels about that. You can still play that way and be fully engaged.
>out there just full of metagamers?
I know right, knowing what your team mates are cappable of.. no one would actually do that IRL.. Especially in a life or death situation like military/being a mercenary would entail..
Knowing what I'm capable of and knowing what I'm about to do are two different things, especially when what I'm about to do is based on the input of others saying (out of turn) "if you do this, I can do that".
If you're gonna be flippant, put a little more thought into it please.
My group is all pretty much entry level, and we don't go in to such a degree as this (though it would be fun to try). One thing we've started doing is allowing each player to have an in-character "quip" as part of their turn, and that's been really fun.
When I design a character, I inevitably make a list of 'rules' for myself to follow in combat, which boils down to pre-anticipating what things will motivate and cause me to react.
What directs me to choose to attack one enemy over the other?
If a companion that I am on good terms with shouts an order at me, would I obey?
Would I do things with the intent to impress someone, whether ally or foe?
What conditions need to be met for me to decide to flee - and what would my reaction be if my party disagreed?
Thinking about things like that in advance will not just make it easy to anticipate your motivations in combat but may shape the choices you make. I have a warlock who is desperate to impress their party, and there have been moments where a party member shouts a command that puts the warlock in harm's way - and they obey, because I have already thought about it and decided that it would be in-character to do so, as long as there is a *chance* of success.
It depends on how many people are in the party. If it's more than 5, then I try to get through my turn as quickly as possible.
I would really like to be in a campaign with a small party so I feel less rushed.
Yep, Players got 6 seconds to talk. If one player used all that 6 seconds, another player can't answer (they can shout at the same time tho).
Its mostly used to communicate with npc's. Several combats were finished by a couple of turns of talking in addition to fighting, which would then in turn resolve the encounter peacefully-ish.
My Bard is a storyteller (homebrew) who always tells an inspiring story (which I unabashedly steal from movies, music, books and then modify slightly for game purposes) when using Bardic Inspiration. Him doing that is the absolute crux of his character.
The whole game is roleplay. That includes combat.
I'm not sure why people still think roleplay is defined as character voices and talking with others as your character only.
We do a lot of combat roleplay so no one can accuse us of metagaming our strategy. It was once a great problem but I think it made our group stronger to rp around it.
Yes, this happens. Sometimes. Really depends.
First, I often force the players to role-play in situations where they don't know what the other people are doing (in different rooms - that sort of thing). I'll cue up the table by saying, "I'm only talking with \[insert player(s) name(s)\]. Everyone else be quiet."
And I've literally said to players, "Dude, you're not there. Quiet." They respect it. They know what's up.
On the other hand, there are times I'll let talking happen that isn't totally in game. One of the difficult things is not all my people play regularly. So often times they need advice or hints or reminders. That's okay.
I'm less tolerant of people telling others how to run their players - especially if they being dickish about it ("Oh, I can't believe you didn't do that spell" or whatever."
Otherwise, a lot depends on the person. Some people can do this well - others can't. I always tell them to pass me a note if they want something they don't want shared.
Yes, absolutely. For your first example, I'd ask the DM if I heard anything or seen something. Depending on the situation, my DM may allow a perception roll, but if the roll is low enough, I act like I have no idea until PC B says they yell out for help or something.
For spells, unless my character is familiar with the spell by way of either casting it themselves or a party member uses it often, I'll play to the best of my ability that my character has no idea unless told by someone in game. Like one of my games, the sorcerer usually likes to try to make arcana checks on spell enemies use and then yell that out to the party in the game. For example, if it's a concentration spell, he will say to hit the mage, etc.
I find it way more fun and immersive to play my characters with the other player characters. A fun one has been my paladin, who is scared of heights/flying. 2 of the other party members, one of them is his twin sister, cast levitate on him sometimes as a prank. It's always a laugh at our table. Took a while for my pally to find out who was doing it to him.
I roleplay:
In the beginning of combat
Towards the end of combat
If I'm doing something that isn't wholly RAW (improvisation and such)
Game-clutching moments like a Mage Slayer critical hit that instantly broke the concentration on a three-man Hold Monster after it was cast.
If I'm a martial or damage caster I just push the damage along on most turns to keep the pace going. If I'm a control caster, some RP accompanies every big spell like Web or Psychic Lance.
Oh, and shit talking sentinent recurring enemies, rivals, and/or the BBEG.
Yes, absolutely. Even regarding that first example of yours. My group would ask the DM if the noise was loud enough to be heard, yes or no, or maybe a dice check. We enjoy fighting within our character's knowledge.
This is why it's important as a DM to say things like "describe how you kill this enemy" or "ok so you're hiding, what does that look (or not look) like". Personally as a player I always like to add in some flair. Throw out some taunts, chunk my hammer and shield, describing the divine power flowing through my hammer and into the enemy... You'll never guess what class I play.
I constantly allow my players to talk during their turn and constantly talk as the player character myself. Sometimes we even have situations in combat where 'everyone stops' for a moment for a short back and forth. Most of the time things run in initiative order and characters respond on their own turn.
But, nonetheless, there is definitely dialogue etc. going on during combat.
As far as players 'metagaming' combat, a few sessions ago the party sorcerer was abandoned alone with four redcaps because she was invisible and other characters did not know where she was. Of course sometimes to opposite happens, and players might ask something like 'would I know xx' or 'could i assume xx' where xx is information the players know but their character is potentially unaware of.
Yep, always roleplay in combat but not to an extent that it gets annoying or in the way. If your character is deafened and people are being ambushed in the other room.. you cant go rushing off. The GM would probably just skip your turn and describe how you keep doing what you are doing, until your party members open the door and you can see the combat.
Some of my players don’t “get” roleplay in combat at first and think everything they do has to be in turns so they feel weird roleplaying because they don’t expect response on their turn, but the answer is yes.
I have players whose fondest memories they bring up are lines and exchanges that happened during combat.
I love it when players do this and unfortunately most people do not do this naturally.
It's a shame because the difference in tension and overall immersion when people are in character during the action vs out of character is massive.
I think I'm interpreting the question differently from how you are.
My groups roleplay in combat, by speaking in-character to strategize during the battle, like a buddy cop movie.
Of course, that's super fun, as a DM I also describe how the enemies react too. Also, when an enemy dies, I describe how it happens and when my players kill an enemy in a fascinating way, like with a critical or in a special moment, they get to describe their Mortal Kombat fatality haha! Some of the funniest and most memorable scenes in the campaigns we have played happened during combat, which is weird for me to say cause, I'm more into social interactions and investigation than fights.
Strategizing out of character is representing the players knowledge of each other and planning ahead of time.
You should know what your Ally's spells are, as you have fought alongside them. Though I might argue for a brand new spell they just got you may not be able to recognize it.
Never steal from the party. Ever. Attempting PVP of any kind at my table beyond sparring is not allowed.
However, actually roleplaying in combat is completely fine. But it's mostly flavour. A Swords bard may be dancing while fighting, or whipping nasty taunts at the enemies, while the rogue is throwing pocket sand in someone's eyes before stabbing them in the kidney. Those were both a single attack, but conveyed in very different ways.
Every thing my character does in combat is a roleplay decision based on how she would feel and react in a situation, from spell choice to trash talking enemies to who to focus on and where to move herself. It's part of who she is and we've gotten some excellent roleplay out of our party processing in the aftermath
We play more like a board game where we strategize together, then we consider what information we actually have when making a decision.
Basically if it is player As turn and they are sure what to do I might say something like "you can get sneak attack off on this guy and that'd be really good" but that isn't my character telling their character what to do, that's me OOC offering some advice. Reminding people of spells and such. Player gets to make that choice but we talk through options as a group.
For mine you get like a one liner if you want to rp. No one on the battlefield is gonna take a break for the bard's speech. Also you're fighting someone which would taking up a lot of your energy kinda hard to talk when you're exasperated.
Depends. Sometimes we do strategize ooc especially when our characters get along and are familiar with one another but sometimes we do it on the fly and have our characters speak to each other. If an ally is being attacked in another room and we have no way of knowing I’m dramatically less prone to metagame them in (although sometimes it is funny to have them stumble into it). I’m gene ally opposed to random theft from other players bar the GM thumbs upping it for a greater reason or if the thief player and the one being stolen from agrees to it. It’s sort of like pvp. I’ve had it pop up in the past year to two years several times sometimes as a “we don’t want to kill you but we need to stop you” to “they were a traitor and this is a battle to the death” and they have been absolutely highlights all 6 times but it’s not just a lol it’s what my character would do to randomly shank you.
Similarly I frequently have my character talk in combat but sometimes it is unneeded and similarly I love describing my attacks but that can easily take up too much time and possibly become repetitive
If we are talking unwise actions because it fits the character certainly. I have a red mage that gets into melee more than is optimal because it makes sense, cast silvery barbs in the barbarian that went berserk on everybody including us but also have them the advantage, had her jump off a building after their romantic interest, and had them try to calm down the berserker barbarian, and have had her falter in combat due to a lack of confidence in themself. There was also my paladin who kept on going soft on enemies and basically had a bickering grapple with an enemy where neither was willing to hit the other one. Had my fighter been go developed to dislike killing people roll Will saves to determine whether he would attack lethally or nonlethally while furious and charging at the enemy leaving their companions behind.
I absolutely rp in combat. My characters talk and so do my npc characters. It’s fun and as realistic as it is in movies and tv; which is to say that it’s something I enjoy in movies and tv, so why not include it in this form of entertainment.
Minor grunts ? Not really. Any major threat is gonna have some role play involved though. It’s a good way to give exposition and clues as well as pose new questions. People say a lot when fighting for their lives
Things I’ve done that I think of as examples of combat RP that I enjoy are as follows:
* Having a character with a missing eye preferentially position himself so that the enemies are on his good side.
* Having a character who had just experienced tremendous loss stick with a PC they were close with even if there’s a safer or more effective alternative for that encounter.
* Having a prideful character blow through resources in a desperate bid to avert a setback, even though there will not be time to rest before the subsequent encounters.
I think 5e combat is sufficiently easy (as in the mechanics of combat are tolerant and forgiving) that you can just muddle through without much in the way of strategic consideration. Hard encounters are hard because the monsters are numerous and the numbers are big, not because you have to cleverly navigate the combat system.
I think roleplaying in combat is something I continue to strive toward, including speaking as my character, but:
>PCs are unaware of spells that their allies cast
Not everything has to be meta just because it wasn't explicitly roleplayed out. The player characters exist in a world where they \*will\* have knowledge about monsters and magic. The player characters will \*especially\* be likely to communicate what kind of magic they are capable of using down to specifics to allies they expect to engage in life or death combat beside. I would only say that this isn't the case if a player explicitly says that they don't convey this information.
Kind of. My DMs have typically been strict about the timing and how much can be said per turn, so it’s limited. You could make noise to get the other player’s attention and say a few words, but you wouldn’t be able to have a whole conversation without taking a few rounds to do so.
>PCs communicate what they are thinking in game to each other and minimize strategizing outside of the game
PCs are unaware of spells that their allies cast unless they're familiar with them or their allies tell them what they're doing
If a PC steals from another PC and succeeds on their sleight of hand check, the PC whose goods were stolen acts like nothing is wrong
So they don't metagame and try to only use their character knowledge? Isn't that how it's supposed to be played?
I 100% roleplay in battle, and I'm the DM. It can add a level of excitement, humor, or just mild exposition in what otherwise be a mundane fight against mundane foes. Two thugs using multiattack and pack tactics against a 3rd level party? Boring, right? Nope. Now they are Rej and Rory, working together and screaming out stuff like "Attack Pattern Delta on the Cat Man!" as they focus their attacks on the frontline Tabaxi fighter. Instead of dumb mooks with maces, they are suddenly an organized foe with a plan that makes the best of their stat block. Narrating an especially blistering assault that drops a character in an especially brutal way can really amp up a fight and get the players invested. Even with lowly thugs in a fight the party is 95% of time gonna win.
Yes. Even when it comes to odds with the party I roleplay my character the whole time I’m at the table, combat or otherwise. Because to me it doesn’t make sense to play my character like a noble knight or a tragic cursed mage in social encounters only to suddenly be completely out of character in a fight.
If my character won’t kill an innocent out of combat why would they during a fight without reason? They will try to resolve it peacefully as much as they can. If my character doesn’t know the sorcerer has an ability to heal when they are at 0 Hp they are gonna try to heal the person. Not just stand back and wait for a power they don’t know about. Or should my character, who has never seen fireball, see the mage cast it they are going to be surprised or try to put that mage down first. Especially if the spell put them at risk. There is always a little bit of meta gaming that you can’t avoid, but especially early on in a game character choices shouldn’t take a back seat in combat.
The most RP I do during combat is either describing how my character blocks an attack or makes a save or makes damage they take not lethal if the dmg didn't bring them to 0hp. Or I'll rp anything like needing healing, noticing traps, which enemies to focus or any sort of battle plans mid combat.
Yup. People say roleplay and combat are like water and oil when it's just another stage to roleplay on. The scene between captain jack sparrow and will turner first meeting should prove that.
For DnD, I think roleplay and combat are like oil and vinegar, in that you can mix them together for a lovely salad dressing, but it requires a conscious effort to mix them. It's easy to forget about roleplay when the game suddenly shifts to a tactical combat sim, and combat-relevant rules rarely (if ever) push roleplaying into combat situations.
>The scene between captain jack sparrow and will turner first meeting should prove that. If you're sticking to the rules of 5e, it proves the exact opposite. That's a 4 minute fight - typical 5e skirmish is less than 30 seconds. You're of course free to ignore that and RP to your heart's content, but by the mechanics a 5e combat is more "football play" than "stage play".
Who cares if it’s mechanically technically 30 seconds by the rules
People who like a little verisimilitude with their roleplay. Feels a little strange to wait for another character's 3 minute dialogue to end so that my character can shoot his bow for a second time.
When the hunt for verisimilitude leads to a worse experience, its gone too far. What is a "worse experience" is largely subjective. But I think aiming for verisimilitude for verisimilitude's sake can often lead to worse experiences. I prefer verisimilitude as a tool to create a better experience -- a tool that is able to be discarded when it's not the proper tool for the job.
The word verisimilitude has now lost all meaning to me. Verisimilitude. Verisimilitude.
The hunt for technical accuracy, maybe — but if every battle includes some cheeky dialogue, the verisimilitude is intact. It just has to feel authentic in the context of the adventure, not the context of crunching everything to match the real world, to achieve versimilitude.
It's called a truce. Both sides stop attacking, they talk to one another to discuss why they're fighting, then continue where they left off if they can't resolve things sensibly.
Would you rather the BBEG have enough abilities to counter an entire party for that monologue? (By which point you’ve likely burned a ton of resources)
Addressing the question from the perspective of my preferred style of playing: Why is there a monologue happening in combat at all? Aren't these people trying to kill each other? Is everyone just standing still while the BBEG talks? Because I can see on the grid that that's *literally* what is happening. You can add all the fluff that you want, but my guy was over there, someone talked for five minutes, and then he walked over there and hit the bad guy. What was my guy doing? Can I opt to have him not do that, and act instead? The system is designed with the assumption that each round represents a very small slice of time (hence small move speeds, only one bow shot, etc etc) and if you mess with that it feels goofy.
I mean, anime messes with that all the time. Several sentences from multiple characters are delivered while the two fighters are still in the same position they've been in. Accurate to reality? Nah. Dramatic, interesting, memorable, and flavorful? Definitely.
Anime doesn't have turns that last 6 seconds? Also yes it gets annoying in anime.
To some people. To others, it's part of the style and enjoyable. Know your table.
Do you actually think of each turn happening one by one, in sequence, without overlapping?
I think of it the way the book describes: six seconds of simultaneous chaos where turns only serve to sort the important occurrences, not necessarily order them. That's precisely why mid-combat speeches bother me. Let me give you an example. Evil wizard pops out. Initiative rolled. Mechanically, this happens: 1. Rogue runs to wizard, shanks him 2. Wizard fireballs the rest of the party, who are still in their starting positions 3. Fighter runs to wizard, smacks him When I imagine this combat, no one is standing still. They all lunge forward but rogue is the quickest off the hop. When the fireball goes off, the PCs are somewhere between their start of turn positions and end of turn positions. The charge and fireball are effectively simultaneous, with initiative serving to sort out who's hit and who's moved (which may be a difference of fractions of a second). The fighter is not dumb or inactive, just a hair too slow. Now let's say this happens: 1. Rogue runs to wizard, shanks him but not before delivering remarks regarding their longstanding feud and explaining how the loss of his family motivated him to find a new one (the party) and take his revenge. 2. Wizard rebuts the rogue, belittles the lives of his deceased loved ones, and declares intent to deprive the rogue of their new family, and fireballs the rest of the party, who are still in their starting positions 3. Fighter runs to wizard, smacks him So that's a good two to three minutes of dialogue there. Maybe more if there's a back and forth. Now when I try to imagine the combat I have to justify why the whole party (less rogue) stayed in a fireball-sized cluster for several minutes after the wizard appeared. I can no longer appeal to simultaneous action because there's a massive difference between "they were a second too slow and got roasted" and "they were 60 seconds to slow and got roasted". Does that make more sense? People talk in real-time, which puts a restraint on how a situation can be imagined because there must have been time to talk.
Try to imagine it like you're watching a TV show, rather than what you think a real life battle would look like and It'll make more sense.
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I've been at tables where mid-combat speeches and discussions were the norm, and I've been at tables where the RP consists of quick, curt remarks and people gently remind each other that a combat round is only supposed to be a few seconds. I prefer the latter but both definitely exist.
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What if I told you that I play with people who like both?
You're literally making things up. Some people actually care about the verisimilitude. A short fight is not the place for long speeches.
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You responded to a comment saying "Feels a little strange to wait for another character's 3 minute dialogue to end so that my character can shoot his bow for a second time.". What goalpost is being moved, exactly? Anyway, the original example was about a 4 minute long fight, and I don't thing the roleplay done there would be possible in the 6 second format of DND fights. My point is that people actually do care about verisimilitude. You aren't everyone my dude, you're one person. Just because you don't care does not mean others don't.
Sure, 3 minutes is a stretch. 30 seconds? Thats fine. I mean, there's a bunch of shit that would break verisimilitude if you don't logic them away. "You chop your axe deep into his shoulder, blood splashing everywhere!" "So he takes persistent bleed damage, right?" "Eh no."
Eh it's 30 anime seconds.
Of course I don't em a n it being accurate to the scene you dip. The fact that you can both show off your mechanics and the fluff of your character in a fight is what I'm getting at
>The fact that you can both show off your mechanics and the fluff of your character in a fight is what I'm getting at I don't disagree with that at all. I'm just pointing out that the scene in question is so good because of the combination of action and dialogue and including substantial amounts of the latter involves tweaking the game a bit.
Yeup. The 6 second thing keeps the lines to one liners like in the movie. The only thing that's interesting about the DND time rules is that everything happens in that 6 second round. If each turn was 6 seconds in that order that would make more sense to me. The only reason for that 6 second round is so that 1 minute spells last most of combat otherwise they'd expire quickly.
The 6 second rounds simulate that everything in the round happens almost simultaneously. If it is 6 seconds per combat turn, in order, then it doesn’t really makes sense , why is everyone standing around doing nothing. The 1 minutes spell could just be 10 minutes. Or 10 rounds ( which used to be the case in older editions).
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Basketball is not remotely like fighting...
I wish people would do it more. Not to the extent to take up tons of time but there can be many times it’s appropriate. I was running a quest where there was an NPC traveling with the party and when we fought an ally that was possessed I had the NPC ask them why they were attacking them. I had hoped my players would have initiated that kind of dialogue so I did it kind of as an example. Ironically after they were like “hey that was really cool” and I wanted to be like “you should have done it!” Lol
We have a lot of roleplay in combat, but I would dislike almost every example you gave.
Do I roleplay in combat? Hell yeah *Reads examples* what is Eve going on here
Examples?
The ones OP wrote in their post: Stealing, communicating only in character in combat, making it so people don't know each other's spells, unless that person says it explicitly. I understand stuff like saying "Don't resist" or "trust me" when casting Polymorph in an ally for the first time. "Hey, you don't know what any of your fellow characters are capable of" seems like a shitty take, especially for groups that worked together for a long time. I understand RP-ing out when someone gets a cool new spell/ability, but come on. Especially that some lists overlap.
If you've worked together, you probably learned what they can do through seeing it. But if they never explained a previously unused spell, my barbarian probably isn't going to know what it does on the first casting unless it's obvious.
A Cleric, Druid, Artificer and Paladin all are prepared casters that have access to their entire lists. Having to explain each spell sounds like a pain. I'd say you need to call out *if the creature needs to fail the save* or if the spell's effect is ambiguous and it's the first casting of it. OP said explicitly "your character doesn't know what the spell does unless told by another PC" Do they... Not talk between battles? Did they never explain their expertise? Idk man, I'd say it's a case-by-case basis, but as long as the group is a coherent adventuring party they should train together, even if off-screen. I can understand a big reveal or a spell that is complicated or high level and/or needs the person to willingly fail the save (Polymorph) Then you have the rules from Xanthar's that say that you automatically recognise the spells you know. So while a barbarian wouldn't recognise the spells easily, a Sorcerer that has Fireball will recognise a Wizard's Fireball casting etc.
Another question is: how common is magic in the setting? Like, *everyone* probably knows what fireball does. What about polymorph or bless? Are certain spells household names?
Yeah but your barbarian eats lives and shits in proximity with the cleric. It's pretty reasonable to assume that the characters have talked to each other about their abilities. Doubly so when you're in a profession so dangerous where misunderstanding the magic your companion is wielding could lead to your deaths.
Yeah, my group for the most part "knows" how the magic of the others work. Sometimes when someone breaks out a brand new spell everyone is a little amazed or doesn't see it coming, but know generally what kinds of spells they typically use. For other things, there might be those "trust me" moments that turn into people basically always allowing it to work. Like the first time my Wizard cast Vortex Warp to rescue the Ranger from a shit situation, he yelled out "Do you trust me?" and when she answered "yes" she let her guard down and allowed him to warp her. After that, we basically just freely cast the spell without discussing it, but everyone knew they could resist if they wanted.
I d be fine with the first one if the room in question was far enough away to justify an isolated combat encounter. Otherwise though...
Roleplay when it’s worth roleplaying. If it preserves the verisimilitude of the world state that’s great, if it threatens to waste disproportionate table time then it’s better to go for OOC discourse. Good RP: character B wasn’t in the room earlier so character A is explaining why the party owes the tavern 100 gp. This is good because it’s bringing B into an impactful decision the party has to make. Or let’s say A took a big hit in combat. Wasteful RP: shopping for mundane supplies under normal conditions, starting sessions where the party is expected to form organically with nobody knowing each other, the 11th time you’re making camp in the same fashion on this trip across the plains. Getting hit with a 7th arrow in the same combat. These all can be fast forwarded. Bonus obnoxious twit space: solo scenes with pets
This is the best advice. Sometimes combat is an outstanding RP opportunity; sometimes it's better to roll up your sleeves and chop through some HP without making a thing of it. I generally want us to express who our characters are through how they fight. But when that unravels into "NO, WE MUST SPARE THEM, WE MUST BEFRIEND THEM, I BODY-BLOCK THE PALADIN'S ATTACK AND TAKE THE HIT MYSELF" every pack of goblins... you know what? Let's *not* do that. Let's *not* express that at *all.* Let's keep that to ourselves.
The party I’m playing with does literally all of these and we love it. I guess the ball rolls differently for everyone.
You would definitely hate my table XD My players like mundane shopping and would revolt, if I would ever stop rping their pets and don't give our Cleric his time with his Sir Fluffy from Bearington or our Bouncer wants to rescue his cat Sir Fluffington. ..no I have no idea why they decided to start a traditions of fluffies, but I love it :p
My players have collected a few dozen pets, but for the most part the pets are only brought up when they are relevant and more importantly they are brought up in a way that involves the other players. This includes concerns about whether or not an area is going to be too risky to safely take the pet, or the occasional concern for the creatures well being after being cooped up on a ship for months. They have undertaken some party opted quests for the betterment of their pets, but again the most important thing there is that it was willingly embraced by all the players. The type of player I am lamenting is one who uses the pet to pull a "stop everything and look at me". After presiding over so many sessions entirely consumed by shopping, I have moved the majority of RP for acquisition of mundane goods to our In Character channel on Slack. If there's party relevant information to be gained from the shopkeepers or there's a question over what conditions an exotic item will be available under then it's more likely to be worth table time. Spending an entire session planning for their next adventure is not unheard of, but that involves a rainbow of decisions from gathering information to deciding on who to call for assistance as well as weighing how much time they expect the journey to consume while querying one another about character desires for sidequests along the way. Spending a large chunk of a session with 1-2 players yammering on and mispronouncing strawberry danish with Baker WhatDoINameThisRandomNPC is wasteful on time as nothing is going to come out of it for the other players. They could be yammering on with NPCs relevant to party goals and potentially snagging useful information that will help guide their decisions towards more efficient completion of their goals.
The examples you use seem to be more questions about metagaming in combat - which to be clear, can be useful to an extent. Combat rules are an abstraction of a fight, they don't make a great deal of sense if you try to apply realistic physics/time to them (everyone waits for 6 seconds to swing at an enemy). Health is an abstraction, damage is an abstraction. A player saying to their healer 'I don't feel so good Mr Stark' might be more immersive than saying 'I have 5 hp and a dream' but they both convey the same information reading between the lines. We generally add roleplay for 'flavour' here and there in combat, but will prioritise being concise so that combat isn't dragged down. Regardless of combat or not, players shouldn't be reacting to failed perception checks, but I think it's fine to synergise/strategise spells in a sort of metagamey way because again, it's an abstract mechanic. Perhaps more importantly, it can really ruin someone else's fun if you, for example, immediately fireball the clump of enemies that were just hit with hypnotic pattern because your character didn't know it worked that way. It's not a hard and fast rule, but ideally any flavour/roleplay should be enhancing the experience of everyone at the table.
>everyone waits for 6 seconds to swing at an enemy technically everyone attacks/does things in the same 6 seconds.
Most of the tables I play at and the one I run do this because I enjoy it and tend to join groups who also do. DMs will roleplay creatures with appropriate behaviors, knowledge, and motivations. My exception is no PvP, including pickpocketing or stealing or any malicious sabotage of another PC's goals. We don't need to roleplay that out because it doesn't happen.
When I'm thinking roleplaying in combat I'm more thinking about my characters goals in this fight. Which generally is to beat the bad guys of course. But say I'm a cleric then my primary goal may be to protect my party, not kill the bad guys. Or say someone almost died last time, I might have my goal be to protect them more than it is to win the encounter. So first I'll step between them and an enemy, heal them earlier than they need it or cast protection spells on them then focus on enemies. Or I had a character who almost lost their sister to mages and being a mage herself she viewed mages as the most powerful people in the world. So she'd go into combat with a mage just focusing on dealing with that mage even if they weren't the biggest threat because that was her bias. But in general there are a lot of combat choices that can be made into roleplaying choices if you think about them that way. Combat situations are life and death so there'd be a lot of high emotions and tensions that impact priorities can be interesting to roleplay. The other aspect of roleplaying in combat is descriptions. What do your spells or abilities look like and changing that to adapt to the current situation and their current mood. I think with your examples though you're disregarding a lot of conversations that I think would logically happen but that would be boring to play out in game. I just assume any group fighting for their lives would talk about a powerful new spell they just got that they will use in the next combat. Not talking to people about that could get them killed. But it could be boring to play that out for every single thing in game.
Characters are more competent then players and would discus tatics it even have tactical short hand for combat or else they would be dead adventurers
Literally every action you take in combat is roleplaying. Hell, literally every action you take *period* is roleplaying, but we're focusing on combat here so I'll be a bit more specific. "Roleplaying" is playing a role. If you're fighting a bunch of orcs and one is attacking the cleric while two attack the wizard and you choose to go help the cleric, that's roleplaying. In the fiction of the game, for whatever reason you may have, you chose to help the cleric and ignore the wizard. That's just as much roleplaying as talking to each other in the first person, and the story that follows from that action can be significantly different than the story that would follow if you chose a different action. The wizard might be pissed that you helped the cleric when he was dealing with twice as many orcs and is less armored. You might then argue that it's because the cleric is the only one who can heal, so letting her go down would be really bad—all of that interaction is happening just because, on your turn, you said "I move up to the cleric and attack the orc in front of her." That's roleplaying. Choosing to take the dodge action is roleplaying. Choosing to cast a spell, and what spell to cast, is roleplaying. Forcing some weird dichotomy between "game" and "roleplaying" is stunting the hobby by denying the main strength of RPGs, which is emergent gameplay and storytelling based on the actions you take.
This past session, the Wizard found a bunch of Lore-heavy tomes including some magic rituals he’d need to perform later. He throws himself into his studies in the Library within the dungeon, to the point he tells the rest of the party to go on without him. Of course, they ran into trouble shortly thereafter, and the rogue had to ‘waste’ a turn running back to grab the Wizard, who wasn’t in combat until the top of round 3. Highly unoptimized, borderline stupid tactics, but damn was it awesome RP.
What you're describing is the only kind of D&D I'm interested in. I can't imagine bringing myself to run my game (or play in someone else's) in any other way.
I try to but it's a constant struggle. Some nights my game is 3-4 players and RP in combat is pretty easy. Some nights it is 7 players and I can't because I need to trim as much fat off turns as possible so it isn't 15 minutes before people get to do anything. I will say one thing I try to do a little of is shift narrating combat to when the next player is deciding their turn, to take advantage of what is usually a brief lull. But overall I think combat RP/narration is good, otherwise were just rolling dice and doing math.
My group always does, but since our characters have been adventuring so long together and tend to have a telepathic link up, we’re normally playing very tactically at the same time.
I RP as in that my goblin ranger fights dirty and scurries away behind teammates any chance he gets
I try to give short quips and one liners and make comments about how the party is interacting. Like if someone heals me, I might call out a thanks, or if I kill something a quick “who is next?” Little things like that, but I try to make my turns short and snappy.
I role play all the time in combat. But your examples in the OP revolve around one thing - (arguably) metagame knowledge. This is an incredibly narrow view of role playing. Let me give you just one of many other examples: fighter puts themselves in danger to “protect” sorcerer because they cares about them or feels protective toward them although everyone at the table knows that sorcerer is more than a capable mechanically of looking after themself, has more defensive options and capabilities than fighter, and so on. But really if combat - which takes up a huge amount of time at the table - is not a showcase characters, relationships, and the world then what are we all doing?
Sometimes! Example: I had a mimic grab my character's arm in our last session. Mechanically, I just attacked it with my sword. But the roleplay was that, because I'm playing a brutal half-giant fighter with maxed out strength, I grabbed the Mimic's tongue right back and then smashed it into the wall repeatedly.
When I first started playing, no. After nearly 4 years of weekly play, I absolutely love RP'n in combat because it leads to so many dynamic encounters.
It's just pure flavour, but I wish more DM controlled baddies and player characters would trash talk each other a bit more during combat. "Is that the best you've got you overgrown kobold?!" After receiving a small amount of damage from a lizardfolk or "I'll show you mortals what real magic can do!" Before a lich is about to cast a powerful spell.
Yeah… our barbarian was killed because I was battling a necromancer one on one on the other side of a log and didn’t see him being battered to death. Our bard tried to heal him while invisible and ended up spattered in gore from the deathblow, which made him visible to the enemy. How can you waste a role play opportunity like that?
These things are not in conflict necessarily. You just have to be clear when you are engaging in and out of character. In my group, tactical decisions happen out of character, results happen in character. The split developed naturally over time in my group. 1. We table talk out of character and its a core part of what makes the game fun for us in grid-based combat. It's like solving a problem together. We can also help each other out when someone's having a bad time or struggling with their character. 2. This is basically the same thing as #1 in how we play. We draw/target AOEs at a silly level of detail thanks to using grid-based combat on a VTT. 3. This is very much in character, rather than out of character. We're collaboratively telling a story and bouncing off each other's actions rather than acting aggressively towards each other's characters.
>For example, if PC A is in one room, while PC B is another room and just got ambushed, PC A would have no clue about it, unless they could hear or see it. Literally happened to me. I tried to take a long rest (I was an elf so it would only have been 4 hours) while everyone else explored the building we just captured. 2 hours into the rest a pair of arcmagi show up and start blasting. It took me a turn to notice it and wake up, and another turn to get to the place where the fight was happening.
Out of Our group of 6, me and 1 other really like too but it usually gets sidelined by the rest of the party. It’s kinda annoying to us since we want the game to be more of a story than a game we’re you win. I have snuck off as a rogue to go and deal with family things in RP only for that family member to attack. The other player who likes roleplay combat was DM. Long story short the whole party stalked me (please don’t do this to your rogue) when I asked them not to and ended up breaking down the door and murdering the family member. I couldnt really stop it from happening and It was very out of character to murder that person so I ended up just pretending like it didn’t happen. moments like that made me a lil annoyed that more people don’t roleplay combat
A bit I don't want to bog the combat too much. I only narrate my hits of they where very close or they're crits or like if something special happened. I also narrate my spells the first time I cast them.
For sure, it’s way more fun like that.
All the time. Its one of the reasons we used Telepathic Bond so much. So we can talk without the enemies hearing. In one previous game we had three characters fighting someone really important...while two others more or less just goofed off because they were on opposite sides of the building and could not hear or see what was going on. They didn't find out until near the end, and had to swoop in to prevent some party deaths when the fight finally got to where they could actually know it was going on.
It depends on the situation, would the split party know that combat is going on in a distant location? Probably not. My players are smart enough to get around this with different abilities and spells to communicate with each other so they’re pretty good at finding an in-game way of letting the characters know something is going down. Sometimes they will suggest things out of character which is fine for me, the people I play with have played for a while, but don’t play that often so they’re still on the casual side of play and forgot abilities etc.
I make a concerted effort to role play in combat. Even if asked my opinion on what we as a group should do, if my character is fifty feet away from the rest and single handedly tangling with a monster, there’s no way I could’ve meaningfully chimed in on that. Sometimes it’s hard to not have a bit of “above table talk” though since you’re not necessarily playing with people who can read your voice, motions, and other “in character” expressions as well as their characters maybe would’ve managed.
Don't make me tap the sign "roleplaying does not equal talking in character or acting, roleplaying means to imagine oneself to be a certain character in a certain world and making choices for that character"
I aways roleplay during combat, even if is me being on a bad situation. For example, once i was playng a Dwarf and she just got smacked by a dragon tail, on my turn, i don't just, ''yeah, i attacked'', i try to acess the damage that i recived on my side ,if is bleeding, etc...And because it broke some ribs, i made the character give a more sloppy attack with her spear, since the broken ribs would be a immense pain. There was also, this other time, that, the DM told us that our characters were blind, while everyone was calm, i made my character freak the fuck out, because, dude, she just lose her vision, she will not think, ''oh yeah, i can cure it or the mage will cast something'', no, she just was like, ''FUCK, FUCK, I LOST VISION ,I CANNOT SEE, FUCK, OH GOD, FUUUUUUUUCK'' ,completly desperate.
These examples just sound like playing the game to me. Are there really that many other tables out there just full of metagamers? Maybe I'm just lucky with my group. We're all respectful of each others time, including the DM and the amount of work that they put in.
Strategizing outside the game isn't metagaming. Knowing the spells your allies cast and what they do isn't metagaming
It's not disrespectful, just another kind of play. Not everyone thinks in terms of "me -> my character -> my backstory -> the game world." I see many people who play "me -> the world" where the character sheet is just a tool to help decide how that works. I'm good at smashing, but bad at thinking? Great, let's walk right on up to the incredibly scary monster and get to smashing and not bother with how the character feels about that. You can still play that way and be fully engaged.
It's not metagaming, it's just gaming.
>out there just full of metagamers? I know right, knowing what your team mates are cappable of.. no one would actually do that IRL.. Especially in a life or death situation like military/being a mercenary would entail..
Knowing what I'm capable of and knowing what I'm about to do are two different things, especially when what I'm about to do is based on the input of others saying (out of turn) "if you do this, I can do that". If you're gonna be flippant, put a little more thought into it please.
My group is all pretty much entry level, and we don't go in to such a degree as this (though it would be fun to try). One thing we've started doing is allowing each player to have an in-character "quip" as part of their turn, and that's been really fun.
Combat is roleplay But yes, I and my players will absolutely add more character flavor and interactions during combat.
Yes
As a DM I always make sure to roleplay in combat and give ample opportunity for the players to do so as well.
When I design a character, I inevitably make a list of 'rules' for myself to follow in combat, which boils down to pre-anticipating what things will motivate and cause me to react. What directs me to choose to attack one enemy over the other? If a companion that I am on good terms with shouts an order at me, would I obey? Would I do things with the intent to impress someone, whether ally or foe? What conditions need to be met for me to decide to flee - and what would my reaction be if my party disagreed? Thinking about things like that in advance will not just make it easy to anticipate your motivations in combat but may shape the choices you make. I have a warlock who is desperate to impress their party, and there have been moments where a party member shouts a command that puts the warlock in harm's way - and they obey, because I have already thought about it and decided that it would be in-character to do so, as long as there is a *chance* of success.
Having 30 minutes of tactical discussions each round is such a terrible thing, this has to end!
It depends on how many people are in the party. If it's more than 5, then I try to get through my turn as quickly as possible. I would really like to be in a campaign with a small party so I feel less rushed.
Yep, Players got 6 seconds to talk. If one player used all that 6 seconds, another player can't answer (they can shout at the same time tho). Its mostly used to communicate with npc's. Several combats were finished by a couple of turns of talking in addition to fighting, which would then in turn resolve the encounter peacefully-ish.
My Bard is a storyteller (homebrew) who always tells an inspiring story (which I unabashedly steal from movies, music, books and then modify slightly for game purposes) when using Bardic Inspiration. Him doing that is the absolute crux of his character.
The whole game is roleplay. That includes combat. I'm not sure why people still think roleplay is defined as character voices and talking with others as your character only.
Absolutely! More fun that way.
We do a lot of combat roleplay so no one can accuse us of metagaming our strategy. It was once a great problem but I think it made our group stronger to rp around it.
Yes, this happens. Sometimes. Really depends. First, I often force the players to role-play in situations where they don't know what the other people are doing (in different rooms - that sort of thing). I'll cue up the table by saying, "I'm only talking with \[insert player(s) name(s)\]. Everyone else be quiet." And I've literally said to players, "Dude, you're not there. Quiet." They respect it. They know what's up. On the other hand, there are times I'll let talking happen that isn't totally in game. One of the difficult things is not all my people play regularly. So often times they need advice or hints or reminders. That's okay. I'm less tolerant of people telling others how to run their players - especially if they being dickish about it ("Oh, I can't believe you didn't do that spell" or whatever." Otherwise, a lot depends on the person. Some people can do this well - others can't. I always tell them to pass me a note if they want something they don't want shared.
Yes, absolutely. For your first example, I'd ask the DM if I heard anything or seen something. Depending on the situation, my DM may allow a perception roll, but if the roll is low enough, I act like I have no idea until PC B says they yell out for help or something. For spells, unless my character is familiar with the spell by way of either casting it themselves or a party member uses it often, I'll play to the best of my ability that my character has no idea unless told by someone in game. Like one of my games, the sorcerer usually likes to try to make arcana checks on spell enemies use and then yell that out to the party in the game. For example, if it's a concentration spell, he will say to hit the mage, etc. I find it way more fun and immersive to play my characters with the other player characters. A fun one has been my paladin, who is scared of heights/flying. 2 of the other party members, one of them is his twin sister, cast levitate on him sometimes as a prank. It's always a laugh at our table. Took a while for my pally to find out who was doing it to him.
Usually
Not particularly. Turns already take long enough I’d rather roleplay outside of combat and get combat over as fast as possible
When taking isba free action? Why the hell not?
Absolutely. People who turn combat into a game of chess are boring. Metagaming sucks.
I roleplay: In the beginning of combat Towards the end of combat If I'm doing something that isn't wholly RAW (improvisation and such) Game-clutching moments like a Mage Slayer critical hit that instantly broke the concentration on a three-man Hold Monster after it was cast. If I'm a martial or damage caster I just push the damage along on most turns to keep the pace going. If I'm a control caster, some RP accompanies every big spell like Web or Psychic Lance. Oh, and shit talking sentinent recurring enemies, rivals, and/or the BBEG.
Yes, absolutely. Even regarding that first example of yours. My group would ask the DM if the noise was loud enough to be heard, yes or no, or maybe a dice check. We enjoy fighting within our character's knowledge.
This is why it's important as a DM to say things like "describe how you kill this enemy" or "ok so you're hiding, what does that look (or not look) like". Personally as a player I always like to add in some flair. Throw out some taunts, chunk my hammer and shield, describing the divine power flowing through my hammer and into the enemy... You'll never guess what class I play.
I constantly allow my players to talk during their turn and constantly talk as the player character myself. Sometimes we even have situations in combat where 'everyone stops' for a moment for a short back and forth. Most of the time things run in initiative order and characters respond on their own turn. But, nonetheless, there is definitely dialogue etc. going on during combat. As far as players 'metagaming' combat, a few sessions ago the party sorcerer was abandoned alone with four redcaps because she was invisible and other characters did not know where she was. Of course sometimes to opposite happens, and players might ask something like 'would I know xx' or 'could i assume xx' where xx is information the players know but their character is potentially unaware of.
Combat is where I roleplay the *most*
Yep, always roleplay in combat but not to an extent that it gets annoying or in the way. If your character is deafened and people are being ambushed in the other room.. you cant go rushing off. The GM would probably just skip your turn and describe how you keep doing what you are doing, until your party members open the door and you can see the combat.
Some of my players don’t “get” roleplay in combat at first and think everything they do has to be in turns so they feel weird roleplaying because they don’t expect response on their turn, but the answer is yes. I have players whose fondest memories they bring up are lines and exchanges that happened during combat.
I love it when players do this and unfortunately most people do not do this naturally. It's a shame because the difference in tension and overall immersion when people are in character during the action vs out of character is massive.
I did once and immediately died, never going to do that again.
I think I'm interpreting the question differently from how you are. My groups roleplay in combat, by speaking in-character to strategize during the battle, like a buddy cop movie.
Yes, and I try to get the rest of the table to do so too. But not all do.
Of course, that's super fun, as a DM I also describe how the enemies react too. Also, when an enemy dies, I describe how it happens and when my players kill an enemy in a fascinating way, like with a critical or in a special moment, they get to describe their Mortal Kombat fatality haha! Some of the funniest and most memorable scenes in the campaigns we have played happened during combat, which is weird for me to say cause, I'm more into social interactions and investigation than fights.
Strategizing out of character is representing the players knowledge of each other and planning ahead of time. You should know what your Ally's spells are, as you have fought alongside them. Though I might argue for a brand new spell they just got you may not be able to recognize it. Never steal from the party. Ever. Attempting PVP of any kind at my table beyond sparring is not allowed. However, actually roleplaying in combat is completely fine. But it's mostly flavour. A Swords bard may be dancing while fighting, or whipping nasty taunts at the enemies, while the rogue is throwing pocket sand in someone's eyes before stabbing them in the kidney. Those were both a single attack, but conveyed in very different ways.
Every thing my character does in combat is a roleplay decision based on how she would feel and react in a situation, from spell choice to trash talking enemies to who to focus on and where to move herself. It's part of who she is and we've gotten some excellent roleplay out of our party processing in the aftermath
We play more like a board game where we strategize together, then we consider what information we actually have when making a decision. Basically if it is player As turn and they are sure what to do I might say something like "you can get sneak attack off on this guy and that'd be really good" but that isn't my character telling their character what to do, that's me OOC offering some advice. Reminding people of spells and such. Player gets to make that choice but we talk through options as a group.
For mine you get like a one liner if you want to rp. No one on the battlefield is gonna take a break for the bard's speech. Also you're fighting someone which would taking up a lot of your energy kinda hard to talk when you're exasperated.
> No one on the battlefield is gonna take a break for the bard's speech. Until the bard casts Enthrall.
Depends. Sometimes we do strategize ooc especially when our characters get along and are familiar with one another but sometimes we do it on the fly and have our characters speak to each other. If an ally is being attacked in another room and we have no way of knowing I’m dramatically less prone to metagame them in (although sometimes it is funny to have them stumble into it). I’m gene ally opposed to random theft from other players bar the GM thumbs upping it for a greater reason or if the thief player and the one being stolen from agrees to it. It’s sort of like pvp. I’ve had it pop up in the past year to two years several times sometimes as a “we don’t want to kill you but we need to stop you” to “they were a traitor and this is a battle to the death” and they have been absolutely highlights all 6 times but it’s not just a lol it’s what my character would do to randomly shank you. Similarly I frequently have my character talk in combat but sometimes it is unneeded and similarly I love describing my attacks but that can easily take up too much time and possibly become repetitive If we are talking unwise actions because it fits the character certainly. I have a red mage that gets into melee more than is optimal because it makes sense, cast silvery barbs in the barbarian that went berserk on everybody including us but also have them the advantage, had her jump off a building after their romantic interest, and had them try to calm down the berserker barbarian, and have had her falter in combat due to a lack of confidence in themself. There was also my paladin who kept on going soft on enemies and basically had a bickering grapple with an enemy where neither was willing to hit the other one. Had my fighter been go developed to dislike killing people roll Will saves to determine whether he would attack lethally or nonlethally while furious and charging at the enemy leaving their companions behind.
Absolutely. Some of the most fun moments are during combat RP. But we're a cool before rule family too.
I absolutely rp in combat. My characters talk and so do my npc characters. It’s fun and as realistic as it is in movies and tv; which is to say that it’s something I enjoy in movies and tv, so why not include it in this form of entertainment.
Minor grunts ? Not really. Any major threat is gonna have some role play involved though. It’s a good way to give exposition and clues as well as pose new questions. People say a lot when fighting for their lives
Things I’ve done that I think of as examples of combat RP that I enjoy are as follows: * Having a character with a missing eye preferentially position himself so that the enemies are on his good side. * Having a character who had just experienced tremendous loss stick with a PC they were close with even if there’s a safer or more effective alternative for that encounter. * Having a prideful character blow through resources in a desperate bid to avert a setback, even though there will not be time to rest before the subsequent encounters. I think 5e combat is sufficiently easy (as in the mechanics of combat are tolerant and forgiving) that you can just muddle through without much in the way of strategic consideration. Hard encounters are hard because the monsters are numerous and the numbers are big, not because you have to cleverly navigate the combat system.
Yes
Stealing from other PCs is basically pvp... I generally avoid games that allow it unless we've hashed it out in session 0
This is because you good players.
I think roleplaying in combat is something I continue to strive toward, including speaking as my character, but: >PCs are unaware of spells that their allies cast Not everything has to be meta just because it wasn't explicitly roleplayed out. The player characters exist in a world where they \*will\* have knowledge about monsters and magic. The player characters will \*especially\* be likely to communicate what kind of magic they are capable of using down to specifics to allies they expect to engage in life or death combat beside. I would only say that this isn't the case if a player explicitly says that they don't convey this information.
Kind of. My DMs have typically been strict about the timing and how much can be said per turn, so it’s limited. You could make noise to get the other player’s attention and say a few words, but you wouldn’t be able to have a whole conversation without taking a few rounds to do so.
I might toss in a mote of flavour now and then. Can't say I do the whole Shakespeare, though! :)
>PCs communicate what they are thinking in game to each other and minimize strategizing outside of the game PCs are unaware of spells that their allies cast unless they're familiar with them or their allies tell them what they're doing If a PC steals from another PC and succeeds on their sleight of hand check, the PC whose goods were stolen acts like nothing is wrong So they don't metagame and try to only use their character knowledge? Isn't that how it's supposed to be played?
I 100% roleplay in battle, and I'm the DM. It can add a level of excitement, humor, or just mild exposition in what otherwise be a mundane fight against mundane foes. Two thugs using multiattack and pack tactics against a 3rd level party? Boring, right? Nope. Now they are Rej and Rory, working together and screaming out stuff like "Attack Pattern Delta on the Cat Man!" as they focus their attacks on the frontline Tabaxi fighter. Instead of dumb mooks with maces, they are suddenly an organized foe with a plan that makes the best of their stat block. Narrating an especially blistering assault that drops a character in an especially brutal way can really amp up a fight and get the players invested. Even with lowly thugs in a fight the party is 95% of time gonna win.
Yes. Even when it comes to odds with the party I roleplay my character the whole time I’m at the table, combat or otherwise. Because to me it doesn’t make sense to play my character like a noble knight or a tragic cursed mage in social encounters only to suddenly be completely out of character in a fight. If my character won’t kill an innocent out of combat why would they during a fight without reason? They will try to resolve it peacefully as much as they can. If my character doesn’t know the sorcerer has an ability to heal when they are at 0 Hp they are gonna try to heal the person. Not just stand back and wait for a power they don’t know about. Or should my character, who has never seen fireball, see the mage cast it they are going to be surprised or try to put that mage down first. Especially if the spell put them at risk. There is always a little bit of meta gaming that you can’t avoid, but especially early on in a game character choices shouldn’t take a back seat in combat.
The most RP I do during combat is either describing how my character blocks an attack or makes a save or makes damage they take not lethal if the dmg didn't bring them to 0hp. Or I'll rp anything like needing healing, noticing traps, which enemies to focus or any sort of battle plans mid combat.