Okay, so I'm a newcomer to any of this, but been playing some D&D for the first time ever, kitchen table style with some friends. Well, though the DM of the group has obviously pretty far down the well, as he has boxes and boxes of minis and the like to set up scenarios and all that.
But after the last session, my one friend made a comment about how combat is what you just have to get through to get to the good stuff, and it's kind of been sticking in my head.
At the very least, when combat's forced down to doing what's on the sheet as intended, I do definitely find it pretty dull. Just whacking/blasting at stuff and rolling lots of dice isn't to my interest, really. (Similarly, we've been playing loose with continuity in that levels can just be what they need to be and we don't need to worry about keeping track of loot between quests and stuff, and are treating them more as standalone affairs. And honestly, don't think I'd be especially interested in doing otherwise.)
That said, obviously threat/danger existing through combat is still important, and we have had plenty amusing instances inside of combat, too. Like, first adventure with my similarly new to the game friend, we decided to take a long rest back from the dungeon we did while in the woods. The DM decided to use that as a lesson and had a Shambling Mound sneak up as we slept, and in the ensuing chaos, the dog we managed to adopt and force into the module got snagged. We desparately freed it (the DM admittedly likely being overly fair on account of not especially wanting to kill our dog), ran to a safe distance... and then decided we wanted vengeance, so we lured it back to the hut of the NPC who gave us the quest, as it was previously established that he had powerful magic skills, and forced him to get out of bed and deal with it.
Or like, the incident where we angered a drake that shot lightning that we really shouldn't have, which resulted in scrambling desperately back down a dungeon and outside, awkwardly climbing up the walls, and then eventually managing to collapse the whole damn thing on the creature. (This being the same dungeon I came up with the invention of combining a Kobald corpse with my polearm to make a "Kobald on a stick" to trigger traps and do an increasingly poor and disturbing job of using it as a puppet to trick the other Kobalds.)
So like, random stuff like that where we can get creative and wild with it is where the game feels really fun. But like, then there are inevitably the combat scenarios where you just kind of have to roll with it and say "I punch. I slash. The enemy slashes. Shoot the cantrip, etc" and that's where it gets dull for me, I'm noticing thinking more on it.
So yeah, any thoughts on that? Any suggestions on, say, what to try when I make a new character? Thus far I've just been a monk, which has been fine but my abilities in and of themselves don't seem to have a lot of flexibility. Any suggestions for something that'd allow me to get more creative when things start to feel too flat and there's nothing really good to use in terms of environmental stuff and random odds and ends I've collected? Or are there any other tabletop games you guys would suggest as an alternative to suggest giving a try to get that sort of feel?
It's not the end of the world either way and I've still been having fun overall. Just something that's been on my mind since my friend brought it up, is all.
Tldr: Like exercising creativity and getting wild with stuff, and having to play by the book with combat can feel boring. Any tips?
