Is D&D Too Focused on Combat?

Dungeons & Dragons' wargame roots are well-known, but what is sometimes forgotten is how much its origins influenced role-playing games. Although D&D has been a platform to tell many different kinds of stories, its mechanics focus on a few core themes and one of them is combat -- but it's not the only one.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

The Three Modes​

Jon Peterson in Playing at the World explained that there are three modes of D&D play, in which dramatic pacing is achieved by transitioning between the three:

...a mode of exploration, a mode of combat and a mode of logistics. Time flows differently in each of these modes, and by rationing the modes carefully a referee guides the players through satisfying cycles of tension, catharsis and banality that mimic the ebb and flow of powerful events.

These modes are interrelated in important ways, and modern role-players tolerance for all three has changed over time. Exploration has experienced a resurgence with sandbox-style play. Combat has been de-emphasized, particularly in story-telling games. And logistics are back in vogue thanks to the Old School Renaissance. Let's take a look at each in turn.

The First Mode: Exploration​

In the original boxed set of D&D, exploration was important, but beyond the scope of the rules. It was a key part of emergent play -- using basic guidelines to encourage creative strategies -- but it wasn't actually part of D&D itself. Instead, D&D encouraged players to buy Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival board game, as Peterson explains:

The object of Outdoor Survival is to navigate a wilderness, though there are five scenarios providing distinct justifications for doing so: for example, lost players returning to civilization at the edges of the map or racing to find the object of a search party. Given that the board itself is not a secret from the players (Outdoor Survival has no referee), some other means is required to simulate being lost in the woods, since the players necessarily command a bird’s-eye view of the environment. Dice therefore determine whether or not players are lost, and if so, in which direction they will wander. The board is overlain with a hexagonal grid, segmenting the board into hexagons about 1.5 centimeters across; as there are six possible directions on a hexagonal board to move, a six-sided die can easily dictate the orientation of lost players. Each hex contains a particular terrain type, in much the manner of Hellwig: there are mountains, swamps, rivers, deserts, plains and even roads (well, trails).

Evidence of D&D's interest in hexcrawling is strongly represented in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, which was published after the original set but before the rest of the AD&D line. Each monster has a few noteworthy statistics, particularly: frequency, number appearing, and % in lair. Much of these stats do not make sense in a typical dungeon context, where the rooms are planned out; DMs would likely know the monsters that were to appear in their dungeons, and in fact author Gary Gygax states, "...It is not generally recommended for use in establishing the population of Dungeon Levels." But when used in hexcrawling they're useful in describing the encounters there, beginning with frequency, then determining if the monster encountered is in its lair, and then concluding with number of appearing (which could sometimes be in the hundreds, befitting a camp but not a dungeon room).

For a time, hexcrawling and emergent play were out of favor as more scripted adventures came into vogue. The OSR has reinvigorated sandbox-style play, in which the players generate the world as they adventure, one roll at a time.

The Second Mode: Combat​

D&D's second mode is the one most gamers are familiar with: killing things. D&D grew out of Chainmail, itself a product of wargaming, so combat's relevance to D&D goes all the way back to its first iteration. Additionally, it mimics the style of the fiction that influenced it, including the violent Conan among other swords and sorcery novels. What's changed is how D&D scales combats. The emphasis on leveling up was treasure, as explained in a previous article, "The Original End Goal of Dungeons & Dragons." Kiva Maginn (Battletech design lead) on Twitter explains how this changes the style of play:

As a player, you could gain experience by fighting monsters or claiming treasure. You could lose it by dying in battle with monsters. You could encounter monsters without treasure, and you could encounter treasure without monsters. So there was an obvious 'best' path. Get in, get the treasure, get out. Do as little fighting as possible, because fighting risks XP loss. Avoid encounters when you can, and subvert them with clever tricks if possible. Money you find without a fight is free XP.

This changed with Third Edition, in which experience points were rewarded for defeating a monster:

Consider 3rd Edition D&D, by contrast. Gold provides no inherent advancement. At a certain point, you simply don't need it anymore. You have so much of it that it's absurd to bother picking up any more. So there's a new obvious 'best' path. Ignore tricks and clever solutions. Never avoid fights. Kill every single monster in the dungeon, with 'it's in the dungeon!' as your justification for doing so. Seek out harder fights with bigger monsters. Don't stop killing.

Ironically, D&D became MORE about killing than less, as PCs were no longer incentivized to just accumulate gold to advance. Third Edition also did away with name levels and retainers as being an end gold, so the purpose of spending gold had shifted from building strongholds and hiring mercenaries to personally enriching the character through acquisition of magic items. This change was a recognition that players were less interested in leading armies and transitioning back to a life of perpetual adventuring, and the game shifted gears to reflect that.

Of course, role-playing has since moved beyond combat -- relying more heavily on the narrativist style of play -- even if it started with the primarily tactical dungeon and overland exploration of D&D.

The Third Mode: Logistics​

Logistics have largely fallen out of favor today due to onerous nature of keeping track of encumbrance, equipment, and gold. These factors were all intentional controls on player greed, ensuring that PCs couldn't just cart out mountains of gold (and thus experience points) without some challenges. You can read a more detailed discussion of inventory management and encumbrance in a previous article, "The Lost Art of Packing it All In."

Third Edition's shift towards combat meant that the nature of logistics changed to be less about accumulating gold and more about personal advancement, exemplified by Pathfinder which spins out even more options than Third Edition for character development.

D&D Today​

So where does that leave us with D&D today? Kiva points out that the combat biases are still there, but now D&D has expanded to encompass other styles of play -- it just doesn't emphasize it equally:

The flaw in later D&D was that it was a game that was good at modeling killing, and spent a decade trying to be anything other than a game about killing.

Inspiration, Personal Characteristics, and Background were added to incentivize players to role-play but as the AngryDM points out, many players forget all about it because of the way it's implemented:

It’s just this thing that’s easy to forget and sits in the game not really doing anything. It feels tacked on. Vestigial. An afterthought. It certainly doesn’t seem to have a clear purpose, as evidenced by the fact that the DM and the players get different advice about it and how it is weirdly disconnected from the mechanics that it seems to be connected to. It seems thrown in. “People like Bonds in Dungeon World and Aspects in Fate, we should probably slap something like that in there.”

Fifth Edition D&D has also changed how experience points are gained, providing an option to level up through milestones instead. This shifts the incentives yet again away from combat.

Is combat overemphasized in D&D? Maybe, but that's at least partially due to the other two modes of exploration and logistics falling out of favor. If the eight pages detailing combat are any indication in the Basic D&D Rules, combat is still an integral part of the game, and many players are just fine with that.

 

[jmucchiello]

You can play any and all versions of D&D as a court intrigue game were no one attacks anyone with a sword 99% of the time.
You can play any and all versions of D&D as a kick in the door, kill the monsters, take their look game.
You can play any and all versions of D&D super serious where everyone stays in character 100% of the time at the table.
You can play any and all versions of D&D as a beer and pretzels game with Monty Haul (sic) loot and frequent Monty Python quotes.

The people sitting around the table (or sitting at the computer of a virtual table) and only those players determine what kind of D&D game is being played.

 

[Reynard]

I hear where you're coming from Reynard, but it's not the responsibility of the rules system to ensure that all players have fun. That's largely on the DM and players. What you're suggesting, to me at least, looks like the rules being responsible such that every player gets a "participation trophy" even if they aren't specifically geared for whatever is going on at the time.

I don't subscribe to that being a great way to structure a game and think it takes too much away from the actual people at the table. Balance doesn't have to mean, every character useful all the time. "Social combat" to me, means "Write better plot and take ideas from the players so they are engaged"

Thanks
KB

Do you feel the same way in regards to combat? Do you think the game is trying to give PCs "participation trophies" in combat, too? Do you think combat is a situation in which players should not expect to necessarily be able to participate or meaningfully contribute?

 

[Kobold Boots]

Do you feel the same way in regards to combat? Do you think the game is trying to give PCs "participation trophies" in combat, too? Do you think combat is a situation in which players should not expect to necessarily be able to participate or meaningfully contribute?

Yup. Characters are not going to be able to meaningfully contribute in all cases and all scenarios. That's why character generation and how you choose to build your character matter.
However, that's not to say that players don't think outside the box and make a difference or that if I run into a fully optimized team I'm not going to have done the math on their builds and know how to kill them.

 

[Reynard]

You can play any and all versions of D&D as a court intrigue game were no one attacks anyone with a sword 99% of the time.
You can play any and all versions of D&D as a kick in the door, kill the monsters, take their look game.
You can play any and all versions of D&D super serious where everyone stays in character 100% of the time at the table.
You can play any and all versions of D&D as a beer and pretzels game with Monty Haul (sic) loot and frequent Monty Python quotes.

The people sitting around the table (or sitting at the computer of a virtual table) and only those players determine what kind of D&D game is being played.

These statements are true, but it is undeniable that the game rules offer support for some of those over others. The questions seem to be whether that is as it should be, and if not how to go about changing it.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I am finding it too focused on combat, but that's not because of the amount of rules on combat. It's because of a general lack of rules in other areas and not enough effort to fix it.

Yeah they really lowballed non-combat areas. Just having some suggested tasks you can accomplish with skills helps provide structure and a tutorial for DMs who are relatively new. You don't need it to be tons and tons, just some lists of suggested DCs and some reasonably worked through examples. Nope. For example, I can't think of a much more useless skill in 5E than Medicine, which doesn't even have the decency to connect with the Healer feat, which is, from a game mechanical standpoint, vastly better. So what's the point of even having Medicine?

I've heard a bunch of post-hoc rationalizations about how this "frees the DM", but fundamentally I think the design team was just lazy on this.

 

[Kobold Boots]

These statements are true, but it is undeniable that the game rules offer support for some of those over others. The questions seem to be whether that is as it should be, and if not how to go about changing it.

Personally, I'm fine with it the way it is. I really don't want the designers telling me how to play the game beyond frameworks that already exist. Then again, I've spent tons of time filling in the holes over the years and feel that if I hadn't, I wouldn't have learned how to DM well.

Of course "well" is open to anyone's opinion once they play with me. I'm not gassing myself up, just stating how I feel about it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Seems like a lot of people are confusing what they want out of RPing vs what the D&D ruleset focuses on. GMs and players can make whatever they want out of their game but if using D&D rules, and they want non combat situations and challenges, they have to put in a lot more extra work on their own vs what is given in the rules.

D&D has always been a Monster Murder Simulator rule set. They toss in some non combat rules in sidebars.

I agree with you about the origin of the game, and its lingering impact, but I don't know if I agree about it requiring more work to add missing or less defined elements to the game. It may be so....coming up with entire modules of rules to add onto the existing chassis could be a very complex and difficult task. But that need not be the only approach. GM judgment can substitute for actual rules in cases where the existing rules don't serve.

 

[jmucchiello]

Yeah they really lowballed non-combat areas. Just having some suggested tasks you can accomplish with skills helps provide structure and a tutorial for DMs who are relatively new. You don't need it to be tons and tons, just some lists of suggested DCs and some reasonably worked through examples. Nope. For example, I can't think of a much more useless skill in 5E than Medicine, which doesn't even have the decency to connect with the Healer feat, which is, from a game mechanical standpoint, vastly better. So what's the point of even having Medicine?

I've heard a bunch of post-hoc rationalizations about how this "frees the DM", but fundamentally I think the design team was just lazy on this.

I'm more bothered by Perform. If you have a lyre and are proficient in Perform, can you play the lyre with proficiency? If not (and by the rules no is probably the answer), what does Perform proficiency do? If you are using Perform for acting, shouldn't you use Decpetion instead? If you are using Perform for giving a rousing speech, shouldn't you use Persuasion instead? When does Perform do something?

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I agree with you about the origin of the game, and its lingering impact, but I don't know if I agree about it requiring more work to add missing or less defined elements to the game. It may be so....coming up with entire modules of rules to add onto the existing chassis could be a very complex and difficult task. But that need not be the only approach. GM judgment can substitute for actual rules in cases where the existing rules don't serve.

I think there's an intermediate position between super detailed rule systems and nothing/leave it up to DM judgment. WotC erred on the side of nothing. 4E had some pretty good material in this, with some suggested tasks and DCs. Even just three or four possible tasks under each heading with some examples of consequences would be nice. It doesn't have to be complicated and over-burdened.

There are two reasons to flesh things out a little: Suggestions are helpful to both players and DMs, especially newbies, who may be wrapping their heads around how one would make use of skills and have little to work from. The other is that some players---including some folks I play with---are uncomfortable winging it on a lot of things. It doesn't make them bad players, but they like things a bit more cut and dried and laid out and it cuts way back on arguments when there are some rules to point to on common and/or life threatening tasks. My understanding is that the current WotC folks are a bunch of freeform drama types but not everyone is.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I'm more bothered by Perform. If you have a lyre and are proficient in Perform, can you play the lyre with proficiency? If not (and by the rules no is probably the answer), what does Perform proficiency do? If you are using Perform for acting, shouldn't you use Decpetion instead? If you are using Perform for giving a rousing speech, shouldn't you use Persuasion instead? When does Perform do something?

Very good point. It's one of the most useless skills and is totally undermined by tools proficiencies. It really should be connected to bard abilities, but it's not.