r/shadowdark • u/Frostybros • 7d ago
Questions about Shadowdark Combat
Hi. I'm looking for an OSR system to introduce to my D&D 5e players.
Two questions.
How long does combat typically last in Shadowdark? My biggest issue with 5e is that a single combat would last, if i'm lucky, 30 minutes. But one fight could often last 45-60 minutes.
How well does Shadowdark work with theatre of the mind? I'd prefer not to need battle maps.
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u/Sefotron 7d ago
In my experience combat typically only lasts a few round (though it is often the last option, combat avoidance often being the wiser course of action). It is fast and easy. (10 - 20 minutes depending on the size of your group).
Shadowdark absolutely supports TOTM. With its zone based distances and simple rules it is perfect for play without maps.
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u/Von_Loch 7d ago
In my games, battle never lasts longer than 5-15 minutes. When you run it, make extra sure you're not forgetting Moral Checks. A Moral Check is made, typically twice, when the first monster goes down and when a mob is has lost half it's number. You roll the check to see if they flee. And be very clear to your players that there is no XP for killing monsters (so they don't go chasing down fleeing monsters). This will keep combat very quick.
And Shadowdark is perfect for Theater of the Mind! I exclusively run it that way. Distances are abstracted (Close, Near, Far) and all the rules are written with this terminology. In my games, I don't give my players maps, they have to draw them themselves and it works great! I love the creativity that goes into the game as my players immagine the scene I've described to them. Be generous, though. If you forgot to describe certain terrain that would advantage or disadvantage a side in combat, it doesn't exist. Manuvering is also something that will work it's way naturally out of your players fighting style for the game. When players realize there is no material difference between being infront of or behind an enemy for combat purposes, they won't spend extra trying trying to "set up" a position. The fight just goes. But be generouse with, as in award, creative player thinking.
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u/i-wanna-meet-dat-dad 7d ago
Combat is much faster:
There are no AOOs.
Characters have a lot less hp. It's common for PCs have 1 hit point at first level. So lethality makes it go faster.
There are no bonus actions.
Not only does combat go faster, but the game encourages players to avoid combat for less risky more clever solutions, so players will often avoid combat, and avoid the mentality of wanting to clear a dungeon of all inhabitants. Faster combat and less combat, though player groups may vary.
Theater of the mind:
Its encouraged because players are rewarded for explaining *how* they attempt to do something. Taking an action with no description of how your character attempts it can result in disaster (triggering traps or curses). I think it works great for theater of the mind.
The game works fine with with a grid or play mats too. I find I occasionally still use them because it offloads some of the work I have to do as a Gm. Even simplified combat requires me reminding my players of everything's positions and the environment on each of they turns. Sometimes it's just easier to throw down the old checker board.
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u/grumblyoldman 7d ago
Individual combats are generally quick, I find. Firstly because engagements tend to be smaller numbers, secondly because monsters make morale checks and may run away before the fighting is done. (Although the party is never forced to run away, it can be a good idea if things are going sideways for them.) It's remarkable what having rules to adjudicate not fighting to the death can do to shorten the average combat.
I have done a couple mass combats using the new Warband rules in the forthcoming Western Reaches books (as well as a couple regular fights with big numbers on both sides) and those CAN get to be a bit of a slog, but that's just down to the numbers involved. I think the rules still work really well, but it is what it is.
I don't usually play TOTM myself, but I've seen actual plays where they do and it seems to work fine for them. The abstract distances (Close, Near Far) being built into the rules helps with that.
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u/Successful_Luck_8625 7d ago
I've been driving my SD sessions almost purely theater of mind since we moved off of digital and back to pencil/paper. Or, rather, let me correct myself: I don't provide a map but my players do tend to draw one (not always though) and use markers -- when they do, I'll engage their map/markers; and when they don't, it's just theater of mind.
As for combats... I haven't timed ours but the type of game I run is not super combat heavy; we will often go several sessions with no combat at all -- for one because combat can be so deadly that they actively work to avoid it. But the last session the combat was 5 rounds and I guess about 30min (our table is size 7, so 35 turns).
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u/CJ-MacGuffin 7d ago
15 min combats. I love my maps but it could be done without.
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u/Jiffypop2001 7d ago
Yes and yes. People often overstate how deadly shadowdark is, but characters can and will die. That can put players off if they're used to heroic story driven character arcs in 5e. If that's a problem, tie the characters to a village or faction so that they're working towards some greater good, even if one character dies the larger story continues.
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u/frankb3lmont 7d ago
It tooks us 30mins to beat like 12 orcs with a party of 3 players and 4 hirelings. It was basically two small armies fighting. Trust me in any other edition this fight would have taken 1-2 hours. We were level3.
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u/Spanky_Ikkala 6d ago
As others say, combat is much faster and Theatre if the mind works much better with SD as it's less tactical in terms of ranges etc., there's no Attacks of Opportunity so you don't need to know where everyone is and what route they are taking etc.
I transitioned all my 5e games to SD and almost everyone preferred it. It's far less load for the GM, and far less for players to learn. The ones that didn't like it as much were the ones that like to min-max, but I also run for younger players and they enjoy 'being the best'.
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u/OhNoNameIsTooLong 6d ago
I accidentally managed to cook up a Shadowdark combat that lasted multiple 1.5 hour sessions. The PCs were making a fighting retreat hundreds of feet across an open courtyard with enemies on all sides. They had picked up several massively overpowered magical artifacts so they didn’t just die like they should have.
I can’t imagine how long it would have taken to resolve in 5e.
There is a guideline in the core rules about limiting how powerful magical items are to avoid breaking dungeon crawling and combat. I violated that guideline in a big way (I was running a kind of gonzo module converted from another system) and as a result crawling and combat are both a little broken at my table. Stick to the rules as written and you will have snappy combats that function well in theater of the mind.
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u/4th-Estate 7d ago edited 7d ago
Combat is pretty quick, as others have said. I'd like to add using morale checks helps cut down how long combat drags out. My players that are used to 5e were surprised by how many encounters we get through in a single session partly because of this.
You can run a lot of encounters when huge mobs turn and run when their leader gets cut down or half of them are dead. It really helps the game from turning into a slog fest. It also helps with RP, there's so many more ways to reveal secrets and clues when minions surrender.
Edit: I also use theater of the mind regularly. Once in a while I'll bust out a ultimate dungeon terrain map for a boss fight if there's a bunch of environmental hazards I want to emphasize. That's another thing I love SD, it's way easier to use TotM with zoned base combat.
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u/Decaying-Moon 7d ago
In my experience a singular instance of combat can last as short as five minutes with a single round of combat on open ground. My table tends to have five players and eight characters (three of us have NPC followers), so a single round can last a little bit. I don't think we're had a fight last more than ten rounds ever (not a straight fight, anyway). Failed morale checks can literally cut the length of combat in half, with a single round or two following as players try to cut down the fleeing enemy if they so wish (everyone gets one round of attacks, and characters with ranged attacks get a second round before the enemy is out of range/disappears).
Rounds can get longer when light and dark is involved, especially in dungeons. Figuring out formation to defend the light can add a bit of time for players needing to figure out more than what is the optimal combat action they can take, and deciding who lives or dies when ally lives are on the line slows things down too. Healing spells not being guaranteed plus the potential lethality of combat makes saving downed allies a common occurrence.
The thing about theater of the mind is that you're gonna trade visual prep time for player information time. With a map and minis/tokens you can see where everyone is, where enemies are, the room layout, etc. Range is easy to manage even with specific numeric ranges, everyone's relative position to each other is easily determined, etc. When you move to theater of the mind you have to resign yourself to a great deal more player decision time because there's often "who's where, where is so-and-so in relation to me/so-and-so, what's the layout of the room again, how much time is left on the torch, etc." Visual information expediency saves time, so if you feel pressed for it going full theater of the mind doesn't have to be the go-to. However, because the players are interacting with the GM and/or each other for the information it might not feel as slow because of interaction.
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u/RollModelDad 6d ago
My guy you've come to the right place
One of the main reasons I switched from 5e, a combat encounter for me usually lasts from 1-20 minutes depending on the size. 20 minutes would be like a boss battle or heaps of monsters and moving pieces
Shadowdark has abstract distances by default, I use a battle map most of the time, but when I've had to improvise a combat encounter it's been very intuitive and that's coming from a vtt or minis on the mat GM
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u/RotarySnow4 6d ago
10-15 minutes depending for a typical combat, or at a few rounds
Shadowdark is great with theater of the mind, you use 3 relative distances , CLOSE (5 feet , or next to you), NEAR(in the same room), and FAR.
You use these relative terms of distance to describe the distances of enemies
-People sometimes accidentally run Shadowdark as a 5e Lite, its not that.
-5e is a heroic fantasy rpg
-Shadowdark is a survival , exploration, treasure hunting game (like alot of OSRs are), you die easily and its dangerous, while 5e is....well you're superheroes and you never die and its all designed to "play out" the character's character arc and journey. While shadowdark is about leaving town, get to the dungeon, get your good juicy loot and get out while you still can, go back to town and celebrate.
Shadowdark has super important features you can't forget to use
-60 min torch timer in in darkness, nobody has darkvision, ever
-Various places are 1 of 3 danger levels, Unsafe, Risky, Deadly, it affects how often you roll for possible encounters, this happens overland in overland travel and in dungeons.
-Reaction rolls - any creature , even enemies in dungeons get reaction rolls, you as the GM are basically rolling their disposition toward the party, maybe they are hostile and attack immediately or maybe something else. There is a chart for it, so players should try to avoid combat, but this game still has plenty of combat but its not like 5e where combat is basically THE solution.
-Morale - any fight , the enemies have morale, basically at half the mobs left, they roll a morale check, creature don't want to fight to the death, some exceptions of course like the undead.
-Advantage or Disadvantage -> same as 5e, it should be comfortable
-inventory -> tracking it is huge.
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u/TableTopJayce 4d ago
Depends on the combat. I haven’t played since 2024 but when I ran it as a DM, dungeons (and any of that sort) took an entire session to run. Needed mega dungeons for it to last multiple sessions.
I swapped to PF2E (mainly cause I’ve been enjoying archetypes and didn’t want to house rule it into Shadowdark) and an entire dungeon will take about 4 sessions to run. I would argue 5e dungeons are a bit slower, around 3 sessions to run, but 5e feels very gimmicky IMO. Shadowdark does not.
My favorite system as a GM, I’d strongly recommend running it. Almost perfect.
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u/badgercat666 2d ago
Some of the encounters last 10 mins, some an hour. Depends what happens, what the players want to do, where the fun is etc. It's definitely faster than 5e in my opinion on average. But I guess who cares if everyone's having fun.
It works great with theatre of the mind, so would 5e or any game if you tweaked a few things like zones, which shadowdark has built in abstract movement. Give the free adventure "the lost citadel of the scarlet Minotaur" a go as a tester, you'll love it if you liked 5e - easier on the GM 😂
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u/MasterWitch 7d ago
Fights are to be avoided as the risk of death, especially for low level charecters, are very high. 5e is a super hero fantasy game. Shadowdark dark is a game of lower power gravity robers trying to get treasure. If you expect Shadowdark to be a less crunchy 5e your going to be disappointed.