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Is D&D Too Focused on Combat?
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<blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7733214" data-attributes="member: 37579"><p>While the origins of the game are in miniature wargamming, the same could be said about the hobby, which now includes a myriad of combat lite and storytelling games. </p><p></p><p>2e shifted towards a combat focus, as only the thief received experience for treasure and everyone gained it for defeating monsters. That did make combat more preferential. 3e just made this worse with the idea of "balanced" encounters, so PCs tended to assume they could overcome any fight. </p><p></p><p>D&D's focus on combat is paradoxical. On the one hand, the hobby has very much grown beyond its wargamming origins and has evolved in many new an innovative ways. But many of the things that make D&D into D&D rather than a generic fantasy RPG are its iconic and consistent elements, which typically tie into combat. You can never entirely divorce D&D from combat. And while you can play D&D without having combat or battles, so much of your characters just fall to the wayside and reduces the need to gain levels or be mechanically rewarded. And at that point, are you still playing D&D or just doing freeform storytelling with the names of your D&D characters?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jester David, post: 7733214, member: 37579"] While the origins of the game are in miniature wargamming, the same could be said about the hobby, which now includes a myriad of combat lite and storytelling games. 2e shifted towards a combat focus, as only the thief received experience for treasure and everyone gained it for defeating monsters. That did make combat more preferential. 3e just made this worse with the idea of "balanced" encounters, so PCs tended to assume they could overcome any fight. D&D's focus on combat is paradoxical. On the one hand, the hobby has very much grown beyond its wargamming origins and has evolved in many new an innovative ways. But many of the things that make D&D into D&D rather than a generic fantasy RPG are its iconic and consistent elements, which typically tie into combat. You can never entirely divorce D&D from combat. And while you can play D&D without having combat or battles, so much of your characters just fall to the wayside and reduces the need to gain levels or be mechanically rewarded. And at that point, are you still playing D&D or just doing freeform storytelling with the names of your D&D characters? [/QUOTE]
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