DND_Reborn
The High Aldwin
Combat as Professional Wrestling? Or Combat as Fashion Show?
Combat as... donuts?
Combat as Professional Wrestling? Or Combat as Fashion Show?
Yes this. While it can be flexible, 5e favors trad and neo-trad play styles. The goal is to show off your character and their abilities, winning generally happens after enough rounds have passed of using those abilities in a reasonable manner.Combat as spectacle. It's a chance to cut loose and do cool stuff against enemies that do cool stuff to accentuate your cool stuff.
This is the way..
I like "combat as performance" for this, because it creates a new acronym.Combat as spectacle. It's a chance to cut loose and do cool stuff against enemies that do cool stuff to accentuate your cool stuff.
This is the way..
I have said this a few times but I argue that at best there is a spectrum of this, but realistically it is more a 3d graph with 6+ sets of options.The topic of combat as war vs sport came up again in one of the threads and I want to talk about it. Old-school TSR-era D&D is famously more combat as war than combat as sport. For those of us that played 4E, we know the pendulum swung the other way to almost pure combat as sport.
yeah, what about combat as part of teh storyExcellent point, one I had not considered. "Combat as War," as traditionally presented, only considers the players as waging war, with the monsters doing barely more than basic self-preservation. When paired with my above criticism of "Combat as Sport," with how the "two equal-ish teams" analogy demonstrably breaks down in all but occasional instances, one has to wonder: what is this analysis achieving? Its alleged "war" prong holds no water because it is blatantly artificial, allowing only one side to behave as though the conflict is like actual warfare.
My problem with using this term for this concept (as opposed to the one I outlined) is that a performance is something where the performers wish to be seen.I like "combat as performance" for this, because it creates a new acronym.