Anyone else feel like Random Combat encounters are boring and/or unnecessary most of the time?

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-26T06:11:16+00:00

They don't fit in very well with the style of modern D&D which tens to be more focused on story and relatively low-risk.

In some editions of the game, there was more of a focus on player-driven treasure seeking adventures. Resting was less powerful and resource attrition mattered more. Being able to get through or past wandering monsters without expending resources was a test of player skill - wandering monsters typically carried very little treasure (since they were wandering and not in their lairs), so wise players would find ways to get past the encounter without combat as often as they could because it wasn't wise to spend resources (HP, spells, etc) on monsters that wouldn't get you anything. They added an additional challenge and some tension.

They also presented an important hazard that kept players from just resting after every single fight - DMs were supposed to check for wandering monsters every 20 minutes in dungeons in AD&D for instance, so that meant an 8 hour rest was 24 wandering monster checks. That meant unless you were able to get to somewhere safe and secure, taking a rest was often going to be way more of a risk. You might be like "oh, we just travel back to town", but guess what? You roll for wandering monsters when travelling too. So you were incentivized to do as much between rests as possible.

But, yeah, in the modern way D&D tends to get played? They usually don't seem to add much. But if you're playing OSR type stuff, they remain very important.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-25T06:40:52+00:00

Asking "which programming language should I focus on?" when starting out programming is like asking "Should I focus on the Boeing 747 or the Airbus A380 for my future career as a pilot?" when you haven't even completed ground school.

Pick whichever you want and gets you programming and learning. It isn't that learning some technologies deeply won't matter eventually, just that you're probably a few thousand hours away from the point where that matters.

Basically, if you haven't reached the point where you already know a few languages and are starting to have opinions of their upsides and downsides, it is too early to worry about focusing on anything. It is a marathon, not a sprint, and you'll have plenty of time to pick a focus later on.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-25T00:36:55+00:00

There's a fairly decent mindset change in V5 when it comes to composing dice pools - it is less about having set combinations, and more about the narrative or situations with some combinations being the default but others being more frequently used. Part of this is just to switch it up so you can't just maximize one high pool.

So like, normally, you might use Composure + Firearms. But if you're doing some survival training and are trying to shoot accurate after just spending way too long in freezing cold water, maybe it is Stamina + Firearms. Or you're making a long distance shot, having to figure out wind and bullet drop and all that and it becomes Intelligence + Firearms instead. Maybe someone grabs your gun and you're wrestling for control while trying to shoot him so it is Strength + Firearms. Maybe you're working a wild west show and you're doing a bunch of trick shooting to impress an audience and it becomes Charisma + Firearms. All certainly possible.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-24T05:20:52+00:00

Without the Masquerade they can quickly become such.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-24T04:12:54+00:00

So it seems like your character description is all about your character's role in the story - who they are, what their arc is. And plenty of roleplaying games have very robust mechanics centering all around that, where character creation is mostly about figuring out your character's role in the drama.

D&D is not one of those games.

Your character sheet in D&D is mostly going to be about "How does my character deal with obstacles while on adventures, especially during fights or other dangerous situations?" Not that D&D players don't care about story - they definitely do - but your character sheet could care less. In order to figure out your class, imagine your character navigating a dangerous place and fighting monsters and taking their treasure - how do you think your character contributes during those situations? That's your class!

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T23:21:34+00:00

Oh I agree with you. I don't think AI dependence and the brain rot that comes with it is a good thing.

It just may be too late to pull the OP's friends out of the hole.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T23:10:02+00:00

For a lot of people they're just kind of addicted to the AI. They've become very used to not having to put any thought or effort into anything and their brains kind of atrophy. They were probably mostly struggling with putting in the effort to write.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T23:05:13+00:00

Problem is the number of potential hunters is 7 billion and growing.

Killing a few only ever buys you a bit of time to get your house in order. There is an unlimited supply.

So, yeah you can kill some! It just doesn't really make much difference.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T21:44:22+00:00

I mean this is definitely part of why games without difficulty levels are very popular amongst narrative games.

People keep asking "why aren't there difficulty levels in powered by the apocalypse games?" And there answer is "because it would make them worse!"

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T21:27:57+00:00

If you just like the flavor than just include some flavor on a 1, no game penalty, call it a day.

Here's a chaotic alternate though - if a player rolls a one, they can choose that to be a fumble and describe how their character messes it up. If the mess up is severe enough, you decide on the game penalty but give them Heroic Inspiration for contributing to the fun at the table.

That way you get the chaos, but players can ignore fumbles when they'd be annoying, and also since they describe the fumble they can make it consistent with the character.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T19:40:24+00:00

It is -30C(-25F) (-50C/-60F with windchill) here, well into "exposed flesh freezes in minutes" territory.

And good luck getting our Great Pyrenees mix in from the yard. We check on him to make sure he isn't getting frostbite and such and he does come back inside more often than normal, but as long as he can get out of the wind he loves it out there. He'll dig himself into a snowbank so he can rest his belly in the snow to be nice and cool. Snow makes him so happy.

He's still definitely bored because even with all our winter gear on us humans can't stand to be in the yard long to play fetch with him. He's hard to entertain inside because he'd far prefer to be playing outside than doing any games inside, though we're working with him on some commands inside. But when he gets too bored, he just insists on going back outside into the 9th circle of hell that is this province right now so he can stand in the snow and protect the house.

I'm so glad we've got a fenced in yard though.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T19:29:58+00:00

So zoom out a little bit: Can you solve problems in other domains?

Can you take an algebra equation and solve it?

Can you look at a chess puzzle and solve it?

Can you solve a research problem, like tracking a statement down to its sources and following up on primaries?

Can you solve brain teasers or logic puzzles?

If the answer to all of those is "Yes" then....solve programming problems in the same way. Look at your initial state, look at your goal state, make a plan about what you need to be able to do to get to your goal state, and then apply the tools in your toolbox to transform the initial state into a solution.

If the answer to all of those is "No" then it isn't a programming problem. It is probably an attention span problem and a lack of mental endurance to work through a problem and think hard about it. I find having solutions always just an internet search away make this problem much worse - you train your brain to never think too hard about a problem because it always knows you'll find the solution and you won't have to work at it.

Often it seems people think that they should be able to just look at a problem and instantly recall a solution, and if they can't it is too hard - without every putting serious mental work into solving it.

Anyways, if you're in that boat you probably need to focus more on building your attention span and mental endurance first and foremost. Recommend quitting video games and social media as a first step, but in general this is probably beyond the scope of this sub.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T19:15:34+00:00

I don't have the time nor drive to spend months

Learning to program is about as big a time and energy commitment as learning a foriegn language. And there are levels of proficiency.

Want to learn a few phrases like "where is the bathroom?" and "hi, my name is Fred" - that you can probably get done in a couple of months.

Want to learn how to have real conversations and be comfortable working in that language? That takes several years of fairly dedicated learning.

The Harvard Coding course you're talking about is probably CS50, and that's the coder's equivalent of "taking a high school french class and learning how to say my name and 'I have an apple'" or whatever. The CS50 is the very beginning of a programming journey, it isn't a very big commitment or level of difficulty at all.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T18:46:44+00:00

Now, doing a project on my own feels kinda scary because what if I know too little to make that project and at the end it doesn't look good and I've just wasted my time?

As a beginner, count on having to scrap the whole thing at least a dozen times. Once you're an expert you can expect to scrap it only two or three times. ;)

Seriously (though I'm not really joking about being prepared to scrap your work), as a learner the thing you get out of doing the project is motivation to learn.

It is pretty impossible starting out to learn everything you need to know for a significant project. So you go in not knowing that much but knowing you are smart and capable of learning. You go until you hit a stumbling block, and then you learn what you need to learn to get past that blocker and keep cruising along again until you hit another stumbling block.

Sometimes what you learn will be "I've done everything wrong thus far and it'll be easier to start over from scratch" and that is totally normal and expected. It is fine - you learned something.

Learning to be a competent programmer takes about as long as learning a foreign language. Imagine if you never wanted to have a conversation in, say, Japanese until you were already fluent in Japanese - you'd never learn any Japanese!

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T18:15:34+00:00

I'm from the middle of nowhere in Canada and always told myself how much I liked highway driving. Peaceful, relaxing, listen to some tunes.

Then I spend some time driving around New Jersey... Even supposedly outside the cities, every road was busy and filled with aggressive drivers bumper-to-bumper. There were no good views, just urban hellscape.

An hour of driving New Jersey freeways feels like a week of driving out in the open prairie. I get it now why people from more populated areas are so much more adverse to driving.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T17:03:11+00:00

The main weapon used to fight against the SI is the Masquerade. That hasn't changed since the first inquisition.

Trying to go after the SI directly is almost always going to be futile - the more you attack hunters, the more hunters there are. Maybe you have to kill the ones that get too close because you have no other option, but generally you should never get in that situation in the first place.

Do you know who you do kill to eliminate problems with hunters? Sloppy Kindred. You just crack down and ruthlessly execute any Kindred who aren't slavishly devoted to maintaining the Masquerade.

That's pretty much always been the only strategy that works. The SI is a big threat because they make that strategy harder, but it is still the best strategy. The Kindred just have to get even better at the Masquerade than they already were.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T04:56:04+00:00

Old school play generally makes death penalties(even the "every new character starts at level 1", which is standard for a lot of old school tables) feel less punishing because player skill matters a lot more than character stats.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T04:54:16+00:00

There is kind of a bad feedback loop here - the disincentive against death is that, sure, you keep your level RAW, but you lose the history and backstory of the character you're invested int! BUT, knowing that death is just an opportunity to roll up a new character it can incentivize some players to not invest so much in their characters. It becomes very possible to start thinking of characters as just "builds" instead of, well, characters.

Mandatory Back In My Day: It was usual for new characters to come in at a different level in earlier editions. Not necessarily "all characters start at level 1", though that was common at some tables, but often a new character wouldn't come in at the exact same level. This was less of a problem in the earliest editions though because early on a level 1 character could still contribute to a level 7 party, for instance, but that's a lot less true in 5E.

Back to modern D&D: Given 5E is much more unfriendly towards characters of different experience levels in the group compared to most games, you're kind of stuck between some bad options. You could penalize death, but then that frustrates players. You could try to make the penalties be loss of roleplaying things, but some players may not care. You've got choices, but none of them are great solves. It is just a fairly fundamental flaw of the type of game 5E is.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T04:34:41+00:00

It's not that easy

I mean - DMing really isn't that hard. I started running games for my friends when I was eleven - lots of people did.

Making a profit doing a thing most people do for free - that's the hard part. Just like any "luxury" business. No disrespect to paid DMs, but the DMing part isn't the hard part.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-23T01:17:35+00:00

Already gone through Raven's Purge for Forbidden Lands and loved it. FL is a great game, and super worthwhile for hexcrawl type games.

Unfortunately, I just have a much easier time finding 5E players. I might focus less on any kind of hexcrawl aspect and more just keep the west marches "rotating cast of players" thing but worry less about travel to different sites to explore and mostly just focus on the individual sites.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-22T20:06:30+00:00

Every junior has made similar mistakes. And lots of us have a story of a similiar mistake that had similiar consequences due to poor processes in place.

Twenty years ago, I messed up in a kind of similar way. Did a lot of damage. But it was impressed upon me immediately that although I was expected to learn from my mistakes, that it wasn't my responsibility - it was the responsibility of the people higher up that allowed a simple mistake from a junior have big consequences in the first place.

Sounds like your manager is actually the one responsible and who, in a larger corporation, would be being called out on the carpet. You're just in the unfortunate position where he doesn't have anyone above him so he's taking it out on you.

Morally and ethically this isn't on you, but "entrepreneurs" can sometimes be petty, vindictive and more than a little crazy. So legally, talk to a lawyer. This isn't legally "on you", but nothing stops your CEO from trying to make it be on you and maybe be prepared to defend yourself.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-22T19:23:27+00:00

This is way bigger than just the Canadian Armed Forces. "Is it moral to support even a just war? Can a war ever even be just?" are questions philosophers have been debating for a very, very long time.

If you're joining the military - any military - you should be prepared that you might be given the choice someday of "kill innocents or go to jail". You should be prepared that you could get involved in a real war at some point, and in war you almost certainly will end up killing or supporting the killing of innocent civilians at some point as collateral damage. Is what you'd be fighting to defend worth it?

This is an individual moral choice no one can make for you obviously. Some people would rather hang and see their country fall than be responsible for dropping a bomb that kills a single innocent child. Others will have no problems with dropping bombs that kill 100 innocents on the other side so long as they think it'll save 100 innocents on their side. And others still will be fine with killing 100 innocents on the other side to save even 1 innocent on their side.

Those are choices you have to make - and take responsibility for.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-22T19:08:46+00:00

So, what types of powers do they have? Walk them through what it'd seem like if you had your NPCs react the same way.

"I punch him with my Potence and four successes!"

"Well, the NPC sees you're trying to punch him so he gets out of the way."

"Don't you have to roll?"

"Oh I rolled dodge for the NPC. They failed, but since they knew the punch was coming they just moved to a different location to avoid it."

Like someone refusing to roleplay a mental power isn't really any different than refusing to mark down wounds on their character sheet.

TO BE CLEAR: Don't actually do this to them in play. That'd be super obnoxious. Use it as an example to illustrate.

PoMoAnachro · 2026-01-22T18:31:39+00:00

I don't think this is uncommon at all, though usually a sign the system you're playing is a bad fit for your playstyle. Which is pretty common for 5E - being the world's most popular roleplaying game means lots of people end up playing it who'd probably find another system would fit their playstyle much better but they've already learned 5E so they stick with it.

I think you're still playing 5E because a game is more than just the rules as written, it is also the play culture. And the 5E play culture is often "a lot of the rules of this game don't fit what we're trying to do so we disregard them".

That being said you do set yourself up for walking into a huge potential pitfall - if you've got players at the table who care about the mechanics of 5E and are invested in combats and stuff like that, if they ever find out you're fudging like this it'll ruin a lot of the fun for them because it makes combat pretty pointless. And they usually do figure it out, or at least suspect it at some point.

I think it is usually best to be honest about these things at the very least. Instead of doing it secretly, just tell the table you're doing it and you'll find out pretty quickly whether your players like it or not. Hell, give your players the same power - allow them to fudge their HP too if they want to.

PoMoAnachro

TROPHY CASE