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

 

[Oofta]

As others have stated, the rules are combat heavy but my games are definitely not 90% combat. As far as whether there should be more rules around non-combats stuff, well that's a whole separate topic. My personal preference is no, I don't want or need it. Non combat stuff is the most dynamic and varied, I don't want to be beholden to rules.

 

[Malmuria]

Dnd is invariably going to involve a lot of just hanging out and talking to people, so ymmv. But what are the things the 5e community is concerned with? Battle maps, vtt support, encounters per day, encounter balance, martials vs casters, customization, etc. All of these things suggest a game that places a lot of emphasis on the encounter, where the encounter is mostly combat.

Winneger is being sarcastic, but maybe he is "designing it wrong," if he is aiming for the game to have mechanical support for things outside combat ("exploration," "social," however you define it). For example, if you play 5e theater of the mind, you invariably come across situations in the rules that depend on 5' units of space. Or, all the focus on class features that make use of your bonus action or reaction--things that only have relevance in combat. Or, as has been commented on extensively, the exploration/survival aspects of earlier editions become somewhat reduced to class features that allow you to skip those elements of play. Oftentimes the best answer is on your character sheet, even for social encounters.

To be clear, I don't really mind "lack of support" in any edition of dnd. I prefer more open osr rulesets where the focus is on "playing the world" rather than looking to your character sheet. But for 5e to work in that way, you need to disregard the fact that the tools players have at their disposal are a) hard coded class features and b) push toward combat as the default solution to many problems.

 

[overgeeked]

Thanks to Critical Role and the wonderful maths nerds at critrolestats we have some real numbers on at least one group and how they play. Quoting myself from March 2021:

“The Critical Role crew seems to average one combat every three to four episodes. So they typically have between 1-3 hours of combat in every 12-16 hours of roleplaying.

According to critrolestats.com, Campaign 1 has a total gameplay time of 373:22:38 and of that 110:37:58 is combat...or about 24%. Campaign 2 has a total gameplay time (so far) of 443:43:11 and of that 94:14:25 is combat...or about 21%. [Again, this is from March 2021, a few months before C2 ended.]

They just sit around talking in character the majority of the time. For Campaign 1 that's about 76% of the time and for Campaign 2 that's about 79% of the time. They just sit around talking in character a lot. Like a lot a lot.”

If we did an analysis of the PHB I doubt it would be literally 90% of the text is combat focused, but I’d be willing to bet it’s quite high.

 

[Neonchameleon]

From memory roughly 40% of every D&D PHB before 4e was made up of spells. Combat is also a much much bigger part of the 5e rules than anything else (except arguably spells are - and big overlap). And the non-combat rules are almost invariably simple pass/fail mechanics with limited unfolding structure.

No D&D games aren't 90% combat - but 5e doesn't have that much support for anything else.

 

[overgeeked]

As others have stated, the rules are combat heavy but my games are definitely not 90% combat. As far as whether there should be more rules around non-combats stuff, well that's a whole separate topic. My personal preference is no, I don't want or need it. Non combat stuff is the most dynamic and varied, I don't want to be beholden to rules.

Personally, I wish they’d take the same less is more attitude and apply it to combat.

 

[eyeheartawk]

This is only somewhat related, but can we all take a minute to reflect on the time that ol' Ray here was so passionate about a commercial property he made a whole game for it but never got the license, and took the ol' legally distinct eraser to it.

Good times.

 

[overgeeked]

This is only somewhat related, but can we all take a minute to reflect on the time that ol' Ray here was so passionate about a commercial property he made a whole game for it but never got the license, and took the ol' legally distinct eraser to it.

Good times.

What property / game was that?

 

[GMMichael]

50% Doritos and Mountain Dew, 30% pop culture references, 15% rules bickering, 20% exploration, 90% combat.

Your math hurts my eyes.

D&D is about resting, too. Which isn't combat. Wait... that resting is about getting your hit points and combat powers back...okay yeah, it's close to 90% combat.

 

[Von Ether]

Regardless of system, my group leans toward a combat every other session (these days our session are about 2.3 hours long) I feel that is more in the vein of providing action like a TV show or a movie vs feeding a wargaming lite appetite.

How long the combat sections go IRL, though, is dependent on the system. 5e and other editions are longer, say, than Cypher.

That's based on if the 3e-5e combats are balanced-ish encounters. Since 3e onward suggested 4 players to be the standard, the best way to make encounter an encounter go faster is to add a player or two. (Unless player analysis paralysis/lack of focus slows it back down again.)

 

[eyeheartawk]

What property / game was that?

Marshal Law/Underground