Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative Theater of the Mind Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
Outside of combat, all of the rest of our D&D game runs on the premise that a DM describes the situation, the players describe their actions, and dice are rolled. Combat doesn’t have to be any different.
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
There is one fundamental mechanic to running combat in the theater of the mind: The DM describes the situation, the player describes what they want to do, and the DM adjudicates how they can do it.
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
When players describe their intent and dungeon masters adjudicate the situation based on that desired intent, combat runs fast and furious. In order for this to work, the player must trust the DM to adjudicate fairly and the DM must maintain that trust by doing so. In general a DM should steer in the PC’s favor when handling edge cases as long as it is within reason (for a fantasty action game) and is fair to the capabilities of the other characters.
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
They’ll feel like they got screwed because they couldn’t play it out on a grid. In general, when running combat in the theater of the mind, players should have the option of changing their minds if their results aren’t likely to meet their intent.
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
Dice are rolled. Both the DM and the players can describe the results of their actions. “Your maul cracks into the orc! How does he die?” “My maul hits with a sickening crack and the orc falls back into the flaming crack!”
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
On each characters’ turn, the DM clarifies their circumstances
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
On the DM’s turn, the DM describes what the monsters do, who they attack, and how
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
While each character race has a different movement speed, we can abstract this movement out without losing much of the high fantasy feeling of D&D. In general, when a dungeon master describes a situation, they can describe how many moves it will take to reach something. Many times this will be one move (who really wants to spend three rounds moving up to the bad guy?).
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
Certain classes have clearly superior movement speeds, like monks and rogues. In this case, that character can clearly move further than others. If it would normally take two moves to get up to a back-line enemy, for example, a monk can do it in one. Since we’re describing entire battles using in-game action-packed narrative, we can describe how quickly the monk darted through the enemy’s lines in comparison to the dwarf’s rushing charge.
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
Like much of the rest of our methods for running combat in the theater of the mind, we abstract these ranges. Most of the time any ranged attack can hit an enemy. Only if the DM has clearly described that a particular enemy is really far away (more than fifty feet or so) can we make the assumption that shorter ranged attacks won’t hit.
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
Tiny areas: 1 creature (cloud of daggers) Small areas: 2 creatures (thunder wave, burning hands). Large areas: 4 creatures (cone of cold, fireball, darkness). Huge areas: Everyone (earthquake, circle of death). Short lines: 2 creatures (wall of fire). Long lines 3 creatures (lightning bolt, blade barrier).
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
The DM describes which features of a location might act as cover or block line of sight between characters and monsters.
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
We can build up this trust and avoid favoritism by randomly selecting who gets attacked by our enemies unless there’s a good clear reason why one monster would attack one particular character.
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Created: 2025-05-19
Monsters aren’t idiots though. If it’s clear to both you and the players that a monster would attack a particular character, such a concentrating wizard, the monster will clearly do that.
See in context at Sly Flourish’s Guide to to Narrative “Theater of the Mind” Combat in the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons