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.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure if adding these kinds of mechanics is worth it in DnD. The skill challenges in 4e always felt like just dicing your way through role playing, so I think if the social pillar were to be built up in DnD, it would have to be better explained.

I think the explanation, while perhaps not perfect, was not too bad:

* GM frames situation;

* player declares action;

* GM and player together make sure it's clear what exactly player wants his/her PC to achieve, in relation to the circumstances, by way of the declared action;

* player makes check;

* GM narrates outcome of check (as success or failure), thereby reframing the situation for the next check.​

To the extent that 4e player experienced the skill challenge as a "dice rolling exercise", I think it's because they were not being clear on the intention behind the action, and the GM was not reframing the situation in response to the outcome of the check.

For some reason, there seems to be a real issue, in mainstream D&D play, with the GM framing vibrant and challenging social situations. (Hence we get nonsense like PC persuading the king by showing off with cartwheels, rather than strongly framed situations where the PC actually responds in some interesting and engaged way to the situation as it has been presented.)

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

In an effort to simplify things, they over did it. There's no reason why the detailed skill descriptions found in 3.x could not have found their way into 5E. Replacing "ranks" with advantage is sufficient simplification. But losing all of the specifics found in a full skill description is not sufficient.

Yeah, I agree. I'm not sure I needed a ton of outcome labels and examples, but some would really have been nice.

I would even like to have seen the skill descriptions say "normal ability score" and "alternative ability score" to decouple skills from abilities a bit more, especially for Intimidation.

Yes, this is implied but it sounds like WotC assumes people do this. Again, more examples would have been VERY helpful. You could even really integrate it to the player's description. Big hulking barbarian starts growling and smacking his fist into his hand? Sounds like a Strength-modified Intimidation check. Need to deal with a long, stressful march? Constitution-modified Survival check might be reasonable depending on the description of the task or how the character handles it.

Again, this is totally within the realm of the DM and a clever DM will adapt, but it would be extraordinarily useful to have some worked-through examples.

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think that every sneak attempt needs a roll, because sometimes it really isn't interesting other than deceiving the players into thinking that there is something.

As the PCs in character don't know whether something's at stake until hindsight says it wasn't, the obvious default would be that something might be at stake - and as "might be" is enough to trigger a roll, then roll. Even if it's fake.

I prefer players knowing that things are at stake then having them roll needlessly for the sake of juking the players. And as the focus is on what characters should know versus what players should know, then if they are actually roleplaying then there is little harm in giving the players a sense of dramatic irony in recognizing things their characters would not. Sometimes I have achieved the best roleplaying results with a bit of transparency. For example, again with Fate, I created a character who hired them, and I showed them his aspects:
I was very forthright with that. It got the players wheels turning about who this might be, but never did the characters actually act on this or begin openly metagaming this. Player knowledge of this also forced them into a position of honesty about potentially metagaming on the part of their characters.

Good on your players!

Not all would take this approach.

I want the players to know that something is at stake. If nothing's at stake, why are we spending time on it at the table?

Because whether or not something is at stake is often an unknown variable until sometime after the fact.

Take the example of someone sneaking down a passage in a hostile castle. You-as-DM might know there's no danger, no traps, no monsters, and nothing at stake because the foes are all at dinner in the great hall on the other side of the castle - but the character doesn't know that and thus the player doesn't know that. From the player-and-character perspective there's doubt - so you can either DM-narrate an auto-success or you can go through the motions of rolling. Either way, I think the player (and the game) is being shortchanged if this is just handwaved or skipped over.

Even in your system, if they roll and fail that'll bring about some complication e.g. an unexpected guard walks around the corner ahead of the PC.

I guess that points to a rather nasty tradeoff in a system where dice can introduce complications - you can either roll for everything that really should be rolled for (i.e. anytime there's reasonable doubt as to whether something's at stake or not, along of course with when something really is at stake) and risk a series of failures bogging the game down; or you can skip these rolls at cost of realism and dramatic tension.

So, the sneak in the passage could be handwaved straight through to where she's searching the Duke's chambers while he's at dinner; or she can be made to roll for her sneaking (likely more than once, depending how far she has to go), her navigation (how quickly she finds the Duke's chambers), her care in hiding signs of her passage, and so forth...each of which could fail and introduce complications that'll slow her down or even prevent her from achieving her goal. To me this second option would be far more interesting and engaging.

Hell, if things go badly it might take half a session to sort out what becomes of her (so probably best done in a separate one-off session if there's any warning this is coming) and-or how many hornet's nests she stirs up that the rest of the party might have to deal with later.

Lanefan

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Would I? (Also, that is what passive perception is for, at least in the context of 5E.)

Passives are very useful as a way to help the DM adjudicate roleplaying without dice hitting the table. I like relying on them for other skills besides Perception. I generally prefer to use the passive score as a DC than having opposed rolls, which are inherently more uncertain than one roll due to the fact that two dice are rolled, not just one. If you know the PCs' passive values on relevant skills, just tailor answers accordingly and only require rolls when absolutely necessary.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

As Ratskinner mentioned FATE uses the same mechanics for social situations as for combat. The consequences for success or failure are just different. Losing a debate before the court, for example, could make you the laughing stock of the nobles and the target of a bard's cutting wit. Having rude songs about a player character circulating throughout the city is probably not something that should happen without some dice rolls involved...

100%.

Having said all this, I'm not sure if adding these kinds of mechanics is worth it in DnD. The skill challenges in 4e always felt like just dicing your way through role playing, so I think if the social pillar were to be built up in DnD, it would have to be better explained.

4E skill challenges were often poorly implemented IME, but that didn't make the basic idea a bad one. Long before 4E I used something vaguely similar and still use the X successes before Y failures. One thing I found that made them effective was not to tell the players they were in one. That helped keep it away from being "roll-playing". Someone I used to play with tended towards the mechanical side because he felt it ensured that no character could hide behind poor skills, but I was dubious of that viewpoint. I mean, why would this always apply? I mean, why would the dwarf fighter with a crappy Charisma do much talking anyway?

Maybe an urban intrigue supplement with all new classes like, courtier, playwright, duelist, investigator, cat burglar, spy, etc. "New robust social rules! Use it as stand alone game or combine it with your core 5e books!" Maybe?

These kinds of archetypes already exist in the books and there are several relevant feats. You could easily run a campaign with this kind of orientation, although the DM would have to do a lot of work at present given the lack of official support. Still, it could be done. I play in one where my character (a bard/warlock) is usually the "face". We end up in social situations fairly often due to being based in a large city so these skills prove to be useful.

4E had some useful spells that I wish WotC had kept in 5E. For instance, most charm type spells have the massive drawback of the person pretty rapidly figuring out they got gulled. This makes them pretty useless. I really wish they'd made Friends an actual spell that burned a resource and not a cantrip that ends up being only corner-case useful due to the fact that a mere one minute later the target knows magic was used. That would help the caster PC who suddenly needs to be socially strong be able to do it, but only at cost.

 

[Ratskinner]

Having said all this, I'm not sure if adding these kinds of mechanics is worth it in DnD. The skill challenges in 4e always felt like just dicing your way through role playing, so I think if the social pillar were to be built up in DnD, it would have to be better explained.

Maybe an urban intrigue supplement with all new classes like, courtier, playwright, duelist, investigator, cat burglar, spy, etc. "New robust social rules! Use it as stand alone game or combine it with your core 5e books!" Maybe?

I've sadly come to a similar conclusion and felt the same way about 4e. I twitch a little bit whenever somebody calls D&D a story game or quotes that "its about telling a story together with your friends". I just don't think the rest of the D&D chassis supports the idea very well. The "Hitpoints are meat" crowd would absolutely tear their hair out if you could do 3d8 psychic damage to a fighter by consuming him with self-doubt just by talking. The game would have to re-address the entire nature of conflict resolution (in the Forge sense), since it can currently only handle one type. By the time you're done working up all those special separate rules you'll basically be playing two games side-by-side...you might as well just play Fate or MHRP or some other game that set out to do story justice in the first place.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I've sadly come to a similar conclusion and felt the same way about 4e. I twitch a little bit whenever somebody calls D&D a story game or quotes that "its about telling a story together with your friends". I just don't think the rest of the D&D chassis supports the idea very well.

D&D certainly shows its wargame roots fairly clearly. But...

The "Hitpoints are meat" crowd would absolutely tear their hair out if you could do 3d8 psychic damage to a fighter by consuming him with self-doubt just by talking.

Vicious Mockery is a cantrip, though it never quite achieves that much damage and inflicts a somewhat meh status.... There are numerous other spells that do similar things, presumably by playing on the target's self-doubt: Dissonant Whispers and Phantasmal Killer both come to mind.

 

[Ratskinner]

I think the explanation, while perhaps not perfect, was not too bad:

I think the relative numbers of people who understood and used the 4e skill challenge stuff as well as you do/did, and those that gave up in confusion and frustration would argue otherwise. I mean, I consider myself fairly proficient at this sort of thing and I gave up on it. ....just saying.

To the extent that 4e player experienced the skill challenge as a "dice rolling exercise", I think it's because they were not being clear on the intention behind the action, and the GM was not reframing the situation in response to the outcome of the check.

In all honesty, compared to games like Fate or Cortex+, where the player can actually create mechanical artifacts in play.... I don't see a whole lot of mechanical difference between a 4e skill challenge and a sequence of 3e rolls towards a goal. There's a little bit of fluff in the rules, but to my eye its just telling the DM to be a little more upfront about how many rolls he expects to see before he lets the PCs succeed. AFAICT, and I know we disagree on this, its a minor fence around rule 0. After all, all this "interaction" stuff was just delay in the designers eyes, who wanted you to skip past the guards and get "straight to the action" or whatever that slogan was. ::shrug:: Water under the bridge.

For some reason, there seems to be a real issue, in mainstream D&D play, with the GM framing vibrant and challenging social situations. (Hence we get nonsense like PC persuading the king by showing off with cartwheels, rather than strongly framed situations where the PC actually responds in some interesting and engaged way to the situation as it has been presented.)

I think it has to do with D&D's basic deficiency in defining any "tactical" out-of-combat conflict resolution mechanics (as mentioned above.) To bring it back around to the OP, its really not that D&D is too focused on combat...its that its only focused on combat. Its the only sphere of play with strong, clear conflict resolution mechanics to cover almost every possible in-game situation. Until people start talking, then we drop into DM fiat, always have, and I see no signs that it will change.

In the end, mainstream D&D is rather like porn. Whatever "plot" there is really just dressing around the "real action" and carries about as much weight and depth. I've given up pretending otherwise, but hold out hope that maybe, just maybe, someday that might change.

...also, didn't that "Use acrobatics to impress the king" thing come originally from a WOTC employee talking about how to justify a skill use in a challenge?"

 

[Ratskinner]

Vicious Mockery is a cantrip, though it never quite achieves that much damage and inflicts a somewhat meh status.... There are numerous other spells that do similar things, presumably by playing on the target's self-doubt: Dissonant Whispers and Phantasmal Killer both come to mind.

Sure, but those are MAGIC!...at least so goes the usual argument. You just can't do it by reminding the fighter about that awkward encounter from summer camp when he was 13, or hitting on his girlfriend.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Sure, but those are MAGIC!...at least so goes the usual argument. You just can't do it by reminding the fighter about that awkward encounter from summer camp when he was 13, or hitting on his girlfriend.

Not generally, no, but I presume that's what Vicious Mockery and its ilk are doing. Somehow the bard knows about the person's weaknesses and mocks them, doing damage and a debuff. If damage for something non-magical is offensive, you can presumably apply conditions such as Frightened via use of the Intimidation skill and I could see using other skills such as Deception or Persuasion being used in combat in various ways. I'd seriously consider requiring that someone Helping make use of a skill of some sort so it's not just a generic "I helped, have Advantage."

Yeah there are some cro magnon players who will get offended but... whatever.