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Is D&D Too Focused on Combat?
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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7733635" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>History shows us that a system which requires combat skills and non-combat skills to compete for character resources will almost invariably end with players investing in combat skills and ignoring the non-combat skills. Words don't work against zombies or otyughs, but swords are effective against everything. Games that use a unified system for everything tend to have worse balance issues than games which keep those activities segregated.</p><p></p><p>As long as you maintain the distinct resource groups, like 5E does with combat skills coming from your class while non-combat skills come from your background (mostly, at least - even 5E could stand to be better about this), it wouldn't <em>necessarily</em> be impossible for combat to be resolved through a small handful of die rolls. Honestly, combat does pretty much start out that way, at low levels while using Theater-of-the-Mind style; it just explodes into wild complexity as HP numbers inflate.</p><p></p><p>Of course, that gets into the matter of that <em>other</em> thread. Since D&D goes into more mechanical detail with combat than with the other pillars, it's mostly played by people who enjoy the combat part of the game, so simplifying that out to just a couple of die rolls would be counter-productive in terms of enjoyment for that group.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7733635, member: 6775031"] History shows us that a system which requires combat skills and non-combat skills to compete for character resources will almost invariably end with players investing in combat skills and ignoring the non-combat skills. Words don't work against zombies or otyughs, but swords are effective against everything. Games that use a unified system for everything tend to have worse balance issues than games which keep those activities segregated. As long as you maintain the distinct resource groups, like 5E does with combat skills coming from your class while non-combat skills come from your background (mostly, at least - even 5E could stand to be better about this), it wouldn't [I]necessarily[/I] be impossible for combat to be resolved through a small handful of die rolls. Honestly, combat does pretty much start out that way, at low levels while using Theater-of-the-Mind style; it just explodes into wild complexity as HP numbers inflate. Of course, that gets into the matter of that [I]other[/I] thread. Since D&D goes into more mechanical detail with combat than with the other pillars, it's mostly played by people who enjoy the combat part of the game, so simplifying that out to just a couple of die rolls would be counter-productive in terms of enjoyment for that group. [/QUOTE]
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