D&D 5E Is D&D 90% Combat?

In response to Cubicle 7’s announcement that their next Doctor Who role playing game would be powered by D&D 5E, there was a vehement (and in some places toxic) backlash on social media. While that backlash has several dimensions, one element of it is a claim that D&D is mainly about combat.

Head of D&D Ray Winninger disagreed (with snark!), tweeting "Woke up this morning to Twitter assuring me that [D&D] is "ninety percent combat." I must be playing (and designing) it wrong." WotC's Dan Dillon also said "So guess we're gonna recall all those Wild Beyond the Witchlight books and rework them into combat slogs, yeah? Since we did it wrong."

So, is D&D 90% combat?



And in other news, attacking C7 designers for making games is not OK.

D&D 5E - Doctors & Daleks - Cubicle 7 Brings Doctor Who to D&D 5E

Cubicle 7 -- makers of the official Doctor Who roleplaying game -- has announced that the Doctor will officially be coming to 5E soon under the name Doctors and Daleks. There are no dates or details yet, over than that the Doctors and Daleks Player's Guide will launch 'soon'. A NEW COMPANION...

www.enworld.org

 

[Aldarc]

I cannot imagine wasting a bunch of time on non-combat rules in a game where the point is to do a wargame but you're one guy. Your conclusion being true seems damn near impossible, to me. I don't think anything but the earliest hand-written in notebooks versions of DnD would look like they do if the point wasn't pretty strongly to play a character, not just a unit. (before anyone can nitpick wording, "unit" is not a term which necessarily refers to multiple things, and in this case is being used to cover both "warband/platoon/whatever in a wargame" and "a knight on a chess board".

DnD has very clearly always been striving to be more than just "warhammer, but you just control a hero unit".

I explained my position. You may still disagree. Even if I clarified further and corrected some possible misperceptions of my argument, I doubt that this back-and-forth will bear fruit. Have a nice day.

 

[Oofta]

Sure. But D&D at least in part is about dangerous monsters that try to kill you.

But it's also like different horror movies. For some it's all about establishing a creepy atmosphere, establishing characters and building suspense. In others it's all about the exact method Jason is going to use to kill off his next victim. Who of course decided that because since bodies are piling up decide to split up because that way they'll cover more ground.

Personally I prefer the former but the latter can be fun as well.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I cannot imagine wasting a bunch of time on non-combat rules in a game where the point is to do a wargame but you're one guy. Your conclusion being true seems damn near impossible, to me. I don't think anything but the earliest hand-written in notebooks versions of DnD would look like they do if the point wasn't pretty strongly to play a character, not just a unit. (before anyone can nitpick wording, "unit" is not a term which necessarily refers to multiple things, and in this case is being used to cover both "warband/platoon/whatever in a wargame" and "a knight on a chess board".

DnD has very clearly always been striving to be more than just "warhammer, but you just control a hero unit".

You don't, perhaps. They obviously did.

It really would. A 5e game that was mostly combat would be pretty boring, even speaking as someone who enjoys 5e combat.

That's my point. Regardless of what they have said, the combat rules are not designed to be quickly moved through so you can get to the parts of the game you actually enjoy. They are a large part of the enjoyment, as the game is written. 90% is certainly an exaggeration, but they are considerably more than the 33% they should be if the pillars really were considered equal.

 

[Parmandur]

It really would. A 5e game that was mostly combat would be pretty boring, even speaking as someone who enjoys 5e combat.

Indeed! By way of contrast, both 3E and 4E actually made great miniatures combat games: the 4E board games, which are 100% combat, are still in print!

 

[Ovinomancer]

You were the one who stated that " it's inarguable that D&D is combat focused as designed"

Yes.

and that there is no structure for anything other than combat.

No.

I said that there's a lack of support for a lot of things that happen to be outside of combat (and some of those have been well covered already in this thread), but never would I say none. And I haven't. Heck, man, I'm the one that's routinely brought up the non-option social interaction rules in the DMG, rules that, as I recall, you've explicitly said you don't find useful and don't use. If I was going to say D&D had no structure outside of combat, why would I be pointing out the structure that's actually there (and usually ignored)?

D&D doesn't have robust structure outside of combat is a thing I would say. It's pretty bare bones, has quite a few holes, and doesn't incentivize it.

There is structure and significant amount of effort put into things outside of combat. We just don't have many concrete rules like we do for combat. That's what I disagree with. If D&D was "all about combat" the DMG would be guidance on building combat encounters along with a list of combat related magic items, the PHB would be half the size it is, the MM would just be stat blocks.

The game is what each group makes it. Yes, I'm assuming D&D games will include combat, that doesn't mean it's the focus of everyone's game.

I'm pretty sure I laid the strawman to rest above.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Is D&D mostly a combat simulation?
Is D&D mostly a cooperative storytelling game?
Is D&D a perfectly balanced mix of the two?

My answer to each question is "Do you want it to be?"

Yes. No. No. And you can ask that, but it doesn't mean that it will deliver. Instead, you can do extra work to fill in the spaces and make question 2 or 3 deliver, but that's not 5e doing that for you -- it's you. I don't understand why people put effort into fixing the game so that they can do what they want and then credit the work to the game. It's a tad baffling.

I mean, there are a number of model kits that are good at what they are, but you can buy aftermarket bits and do some conversion/kit-bashing and get it awesome and exactly how you want it. I don't usually see a modeler tell me that it's Tamayo (a model manufacturer) that's did all that work -- they say they started from this Tamayo kit (or whatever) and then tell me proudly all the extra work they did and how. But, in D&D, when you've made some significant changes to the game to enable what you want, it's still D&D that gets talked about for being awesome enough to let you do all that work.

 

[CleverNickName]

Yes. No. No. And you can ask that, but it doesn't mean that it will deliver. Instead, you can do extra work to fill in the spaces and make question 2 or 3 deliver, but that's not 5e doing that for you -- it's you. I don't understand why people put effort into fixing the game so that they can do what they want and then credit the work to the game. It's a tad baffling.

Eh, if you say so. This doesn't match my own experience, and that's really all I can speak to.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Combat is a matter of life and death. To many that requires, if not complexity per se, at least a certain... rigidity. If your PC should die, it should be because the rules say so, not because the DM felt that way. And this desire for clearly defined rules easily becomes a desire for more detailed and complex rules.

A coin flip is a clearly defined rule. Head you live, tails you die. I can make the same thing stand for whether on not you win your debate against the evil duke in front of the king. Both of these could be complicated, but nothing demands or requires that combat be more complicated that anything else. The idea that death is the only meaningful consequence just isn't true.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Eh, if you say so. This doesn't match my own experience, and that's really all I can speak to.

I don't follow your answer. It doesn't match your experience that extra work is needed to get D&D to do things as well as it does combat? Or it doesn't match your experience that people credit 5e even when what they're doing includes a lot of their own work?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

90% is certainly an exaggeration, but they are considerably more than the 33% they should be if the pillars really were considered equal.

Well, no, not necessarily. They're dealt with differently, which means they can't meaningfully be compared simply on page/word count, or number of features, or similar.