overgeeked
B/X Known World
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.
Here’s a Web DM video on the topic. The video does a good job explaining things. It’s really worth the watch. I especially love the intro.
One of the big divides between the two styles is that combat as war is about gaining as many advantages as you can to win the fight as ruthlessly and efficiently as possible before initiative is even rolled. The goal is to have the outcome be a foregone conclusion because you stacked the odds so drastically in your favor in-game/in-the-fiction through planning and cunning that the actual combat, if there is any, is a formality. Whereas combat as sport is two roughly equal opposed forces clashing in a fun and engaging bit of interesting gameplay where both sides get to show off their cool stuff.
So, looking at 5E combat, it seems to be…neither. The default assumption clearly is not that you’ll treat combat as war as you would with an old-school game, but it’s also clearly not really combat as sport. Sure, the PCs get to show off their cool stuff, but most official monsters are famously lackluster, and most combats are in no way contests between two roughly equal sides.
Any fight that’s four on one (typical for PCs vs solo monster) in 5E is lopsided due to action economy. Even higher level solo monsters typically have fewer that four actions per round. Legendary actions help mitigate this, but most monsters are big bags of hit points rather than an opponent roughly equal to the PCs. Most monsters lack bonus actions or reactions, so action economy is heavily in the PCs’ favor.
Even having fights be equally sized doesn’t help much. The classic party of four is cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard. Between them they’ll have at least 32 HP at 1st level (plus whatever CON mods they have), a +5 or +6 to-hit, and deal 1d8+4 damage on average. A pack of four goblins (a medium CR1 encounter), will have 28 HP (if you take the average), a +4 to-hit, and deal 1d6+2 damage. So HP, to-hit, and damage all favor the PCs. AC is a bit varied, but also tends to favor the PCs. And again, most monsters don’t have bonus actions or reactions.
The above assumes medium combat encounters, which is the default. DMs can easily crank up the difficulty to deadly by adding monsters to a fight. But that is problematic as 5E’s action economy severely punishes whichever side has fewer actions.
Then there’s healing magic and death saves. Most monsters get neither. So another big advantage to the PCs.
Add this all up, and clearly 5E’s combat is neither war nor sport. So what is it? What’s the right word to describe something so dramatically lopsided towards one side? Spectacle maybe?
Here’s a Web DM video on the topic. The video does a good job explaining things. It’s really worth the watch. I especially love the intro.
One of the big divides between the two styles is that combat as war is about gaining as many advantages as you can to win the fight as ruthlessly and efficiently as possible before initiative is even rolled. The goal is to have the outcome be a foregone conclusion because you stacked the odds so drastically in your favor in-game/in-the-fiction through planning and cunning that the actual combat, if there is any, is a formality. Whereas combat as sport is two roughly equal opposed forces clashing in a fun and engaging bit of interesting gameplay where both sides get to show off their cool stuff.
So, looking at 5E combat, it seems to be…neither. The default assumption clearly is not that you’ll treat combat as war as you would with an old-school game, but it’s also clearly not really combat as sport. Sure, the PCs get to show off their cool stuff, but most official monsters are famously lackluster, and most combats are in no way contests between two roughly equal sides.
Any fight that’s four on one (typical for PCs vs solo monster) in 5E is lopsided due to action economy. Even higher level solo monsters typically have fewer that four actions per round. Legendary actions help mitigate this, but most monsters are big bags of hit points rather than an opponent roughly equal to the PCs. Most monsters lack bonus actions or reactions, so action economy is heavily in the PCs’ favor.
Even having fights be equally sized doesn’t help much. The classic party of four is cleric, fighter, rogue, and wizard. Between them they’ll have at least 32 HP at 1st level (plus whatever CON mods they have), a +5 or +6 to-hit, and deal 1d8+4 damage on average. A pack of four goblins (a medium CR1 encounter), will have 28 HP (if you take the average), a +4 to-hit, and deal 1d6+2 damage. So HP, to-hit, and damage all favor the PCs. AC is a bit varied, but also tends to favor the PCs. And again, most monsters don’t have bonus actions or reactions.
The above assumes medium combat encounters, which is the default. DMs can easily crank up the difficulty to deadly by adding monsters to a fight. But that is problematic as 5E’s action economy severely punishes whichever side has fewer actions.
Then there’s healing magic and death saves. Most monsters get neither. So another big advantage to the PCs.
Add this all up, and clearly 5E’s combat is neither war nor sport. So what is it? What’s the right word to describe something so dramatically lopsided towards one side? Spectacle maybe?
