I suck at the combat of this game - any tips?

[ScubaSteve]

I dont tend to play turn based type RPGs so likely a piece of it. Even then playing on balanced difficulty and on most encounters Im defeated or barely hanging after battle.

Ive gone through and made sure got spells, potions and gear set up for my party. Trying to put characters into good spots but IDK sometimes a mob(s) just outpower me it feels like.

just got to under caves and my party was one tapped by a leap slam...

[2LambBuna]

get as many crowd control abilities as you can like sleep, hold person & hideous laughter on your characters, they make life much easier on earlier levels when you don't have to fight everyone at once

[buttawise]

read all the tutorials and examine every creature the second combat starts. read about whatever their abilities are on their sheet (Right click Examine on anything). Press "T" to highlight a Help Box so you can read the entire description of things/topics. Even if you know you're about to reload a save make sure you read about every enemy before you do so.

Use potions/elixirs. Only 1 Elixir at a time however.

[NarkolepticSloth]

Summons too, in addition to the CC mentioned. DND is always a numbers game and the person who has more numbers usually wins.

[guard65]

Draw-in / Retreating combat works best, bring the enemy to your ambush.

[Flavour Bun]

save/reload or come back later. If this was DoS2 I could right on essay on how to succeed, but not in this game unfortunately, just buff as much as possible and pray.

[Gwynhara]

Basically, the rules (DnD 5e) emphasize "advantage" or "disadvantage" -- these are things that either improve your ability to hit the enemy, or vice versa, and the modification is substantial. Things like spells that create disadvantage or advantage, environmental factors that create disadvantage or advantage and so on. Very important.

Another thing is to prioritize and use buff spells and crowd control spells -- these are not "nice to have", but are critical mainstays for most encounters to limit the amount you are dealing with at once and to create disadvantage for them and advantage for you.

This is technically explained in the game in popups early on, but it's pretty glib, and because it works so differently from most other kinds of games, most new players will generally not get it without failing at first. That's okay -- it's different. Since you've been having issues, best thing would probably be to look at a YT video or two that is aimed at newcomers to give you 10-15 minutes of first tips about how to approach combat to improve your odds. It will help a lot once you reframe your approach, and reprioritize the kinds of things you are focusing on in encounters, rather than focusing only on damage.

[Grifter12]

If you enter combat, pause, look around and see a step ahead, and think of every action as an important resource to use and when, and use them..examine what your fighting. use disadvantage spells on casters, next in risk priority.. you'll fail, rinse repeat

[shadejh]

Don't forget all spells that are buffing you "until the next long rest".

[VoiD]

Get a balanced party, or don't, tbh anything works even at the highest difficulty, I'm running a paladin, cleric, barb and fighter group right now and we just smash things until they stop moving.

Builds and feat choices are helpful and all, but they won't make or break your character if you don't attempt to multiclass randomly, single classes work perfectly well for any content.

The real trick about this game is RNG, and the way to deal with the randomness is by removing it from the game, by that I don't mean cheating, I mean stacking the odds in your favor, always favor hit chance over damage, try to get a cleric to cast bless on your fighters in every combat, try to get +1 weapons, get effects that give you advantage on your rolls, try to get your attacking/casting stats to the next even number asap, do whatever you can to make sure all your hits often hover around 90%+ chance, then bad luck will never be an issue again.

It's a long discussion and this is relevant to any game where RNG is a big factor (like battle brothers, Xenonauts, XCOM, etc...) but the tl;dr is that percentage chances do not scale linearly, a 5% increase to your hit/dodge chance is far more valuable when you're closer to 100% than it is when you're closer to 0%, as in, if you have a 50% hit chance, and you add 5% more, it doesn't really change much and you'll be just as unreliable as you were before the boost, but if you're at 90% and you add 5% more suddenly your accuracy just got 2x better, as you're missing half the hits you were missing before, if you add 5% more then it's no longer comparable, as a billion 95% hits are still not as reliable as a sure 100% hit chance.

So don't slack on those armor class boosts, those +1 weapon boosts, those cleric buffs, stack them all, the more of them you add to your character, the easier the game will get.

[Befitzero]

If you find you're hitting a wall and can't get past, nothing wrong with changing from balanced to easy setting. It buffs your HP and makes it so that you won't party wipe as much. I lowered mine because I just got tired of reloading, I haven't played a DnD game since the early days and I'm rusty as heck, rather have fun instead of getting smacked around.

Also gang up on your targets, there isn't really a lot of AOE that the bad guys throw around. Once in a great while I will see some but it usually only will hit one or two people and not the whole group and if it dose most of the time you will get saving rolls.

Use examine to see enemy level if they are higher than you it will often make for a harder fight. If they are higher back off and do a different quest.

[Flavour Bun]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Get a balanced party, or don't, tbh anything works even at the highest difficulty, I'm running a paladin, cleric, barb and fighter group right now and we just smash things until they stop moving.

Builds and feat choices are helpful and all, but they won't make or break your character if you don't attempt to multiclass randomly, single classes work perfectly well for any content.

The real trick about this game is RNG, and the way to deal with the randomness is by removing it from the game, by that I don't mean cheating, I mean stacking the odds in your favor, always favor hit chance over damage, try to get a cleric to cast bless on your fighters in every combat, try to get +1 weapons, get effects that give you advantage on your rolls, try to get your attacking/casting stats to the next even number asap, do whatever you can to make sure all your hits often hover around 90%+ chance, then bad luck will never be an issue again.

It's a long discussion and this is relevant to any game where RNG is a big factor (like battle brothers, Xenonauts, XCOM, etc...) but the tl;dr is that percentage chances do not scale linearly, a 5% increase to your hit/dodge chance is far more valuable when you're closer to 100% than it is when you're closer to 0%, as in, if you have a 50% hit chance, and you add 5% more, it doesn't really change much and you'll be just as unreliable as you were before the boost, but if you're at 90% and you add 5% more suddenly your accuracy just got 2x better, as you're missing half the hits you were missing before, if you add 5% more then it's no longer comparable, as a billion 95% hits are still not as reliable as a sure 100% hit chance.

So don't slack on those armor class boosts, those +1 weapon boosts, those cleric buffs, stack them all, the more of them you add to your character, the easier the game will get.

I agree with what you said, I just want to point out that you're running what is probably the strongest group in the game outside of some high level mages or multi-class shenanigans, Paladin/Cleric/Barb/Fighter are all very strong, so it's a given that you're smashing through encounters. If you're using mages or other classes you're going to have a much tougher time, since the issue isn't necessarily hitting enemies, it's not dying before you hit the enemies - and depending on Initiative Rolls this might be unlikely depending on the encounter.

[Deltium]

This video is excellent for combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSLGMShwD-I

[ptirodaktill]

Well you should always start the combat in stealth and focus enemy casters first. A open palm monk can easely chainstunn/kill a caster. Do not use CC spells, they suck, focus on AoE dmg and summons.

[=]

Stealth ranged attacks are very strong in the early game, they can usually 1 shot most standard enemies like goblins. Rogues can hide, fire a ranged 'backstab and then move back into cover ready to repeat the process next turn. Asterion is extremely useful early game but his damage output does drop of a bit at higher levels.

The AI isn't very good at avoiding persistent AoE attacks so you can set up combats where enemies need to bunch up at a choke point with a storm of blades on it.

Pay attention to the environment, there are lots of things that you can blow up or otherwise use to damage or slow enemies (barrels are the most common) and you can also use various items to set things on fire etc.

If you try to play this game like a standard 'tank and spank' RPG you will get nowhere, you need to pay attention to your abilities and what you enemies can do. You can 'examine' them whenever you want to give you an idea of what they are weak against and some idea of their abilities.

[Skinflowers]

Originally posted by ScubaSteve:

I dont tend to play turn based type RPGs so likely a piece of it. Even then playing on balanced difficulty and on most encounters Im defeated or barely hanging after battle.

Ive gone through and made sure got spells, potions and gear set up for my party. Trying to put characters into good spots but IDK sometimes a mob(s) just outpower me it feels like.

just got to under caves and my party was one tapped by a leap slam...

Read all the toolitps. Read the combat log. The environment itself is a tool (e.g. electricity plus water = fun times) Cover matters. Relative height matters. Light and dark matters.

Don't worry too much. There is a lot to take in but when you nail it, it's sooooo very satisfying.

Good luck mate.