Forged in the Dungeon

Engage

I mentioned in my post about my ongoing Spelljammer D&D 5E campaign that I get frustrated by the vast swathes of time demanded by the system, particularly for combat. It’s so involved and requires the application of so many sub-systems, the knowledge of so many specific abilities such as spells and feats that even a small scale fight can take up the guts of an average session. Player patience is tested during the parts they are not involved in and when it does come to their turn it can be difficult for them to know the current state of play because they have, quite understandably, tuned out. So then you have to rehash the last few turns before they take their go.

Some have suggested ways around this, such as removing the roll to hit or limiting the time a player can take on their turn. I understand the impetus to use these workarounds. But one option feels too much like it’s removing a core element of the gameplay and the other is going to end up with some players rushing and resentful and others just giving up on doing anything cool and instead just hitting the thing with their sword every time.
So, what’s the answer? Sorry, good reader, I don’t claim to have one. But here’s what I am going to try:

Blades in the Dark has a mechanic that allows the crew to make a single roll before they get into the action. This is known as the engagement roll and the level of success you achieve with this roll essentially determines how far into a score the action starts. So, in a D&D context, if you roll poorly, you might have to begin the dungeon before you even find the entrance: you’re wandering the wilderness, risking random encounters and suffering exhaustion in the freezing cold while you search, relentlessly for the right damn tree stump that the tunnel is hidden under. But if you roll well? Well, then you come prepared; you knew the weather was going to turn nasty so you dressed for it, you knew it was going to be a long way so you hired some dog sleds, you bought a map from a local trapper and you read a book about the dungeon that told you how to bypass the traps in the entrance hall. In the second case, you start your delve right in the meat of the dungeon, ready to face the fun puzzles and fights and escape with all the coin you can eat as a reward.
Each option sounds like it could be fun to play, to be honest, but option 2 gets the PCs closer to the goal with the least amount of danger, thereby saving time and, moving them towards that tasty dungeon meat I was talking about earlier.

Information is power

Now, another element of this mechanic is that, in Blades in the Dark, to add or remove dice to or from your engagement roll pool, you would take into account many in-world mechanical elements that simply do not apply to my D&D space-galleon game. But there is another mechanic from Blades that I think could work instead. Players could each make a “gather information” roll before the engagement roll. They could use any skill they like for this; arcana, history, religion, stealth, anything that makes sense in the fiction. And they could also use their spells and abilities to improve their chances with their chosen rolls. Success on these rolls could improve their chances of scoring high in the engagement roll.

Normally, in Blades in the Dark, successful information gathering attempts will inform the type of plan the crew comes up with, thereby potentially adding extra dice to the engagement roll pool. In D&D, I am considering my options, advantage or bonuses. Advantage is my preferred way of rewarding players for clever or ingenuous play, but if I offer a +1 or +2 bonus to the engagement roll for each successful gather information roll it means they can stack. I mean, I suppose I could just chuck out the PHB altogether and allow them to have multiple d20s for the engagement roll but, as I mentioned previously, I am not trying to mess with the core rules of the game, just add a little spice to them.

Hot dam

Now, this method could work really well in an instance like I described above where they plan to visit a dungeon and a lot of information and luck could help them to get there quickly and painlessly. But, if all I have planned is a big encounter that doesn’t really involve a lot of build-up or mystery or travel to get to it, I am not sure it helps at all. The problem with D&D combat is still present.

One method I have considered is increasing the damage output of an encounter while decreasing the enemies’ hit points. This would keep the essential rules of the system in play and the sense of danger and high stakes, without the fantastic outlay of time.

So, I am not finished with this idea by any means. If I get a chance, I am going to test out the engagement roll and gather information roll tomorrow night when we return to the Rock of Bral. But I suspect I will need to tweak it and workshop it before it works as well as I want it to.

Does anyone else do this sort of thing? Does anyone have any good ideas for speeding up D&D combat? Should I really try?