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

 

[Lyxen]

I also admit, that a big part of the rules is written to resolve combat.

This is just because combat takes more time to explain, but note for example that the number of pages about combat in the PH went down from 30 in 3e to 10 in 5e.

 

[TheSword]

Based on my groups

Time taken up in a session - 40% Combat 30% Exploration 30% Roleplay
Rules in the game - 70% Combat 20% Exploration 10% Roleplay

I think my newer groups tend towards a greater proportion of combat 50-60%.

Groups of more experienced players have more Roleplay. Probably because they’re more comfortable with it.

More experienced DMs can make the exploration experience far more engaging.

That said. I have played in groups that were 90% combat. It was almost like a board game. I didn’t last long with them.

 

[Ixal]

D&D is a combat game, pure and simple with only a very simplistic mechanic for anything non combat related.
You can of course run a game without combat, but then you are ignoring 90% of the system and you have to ask yourself why you even use D&D when nearly every other system would work better?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

D&D is a combat game, pure and simple with only a very simplistic mechanic for anything non combat related.
You can of course run a game without combat, but then you are ignoring 90% of the system and you have to ask yourself why you even use D&D when nearly every other system would work better?

You don't need much in the way of rules for roleplaying. It's only when a fight does break out that the rulebooks are cracked open.

Systems that attempt to gamify the role-playing element aren't really role-playing at all, they are roll-playing.

 

[Lyxen]

D&D is a combat game, pure and simple with only a very simplistic mechanic for anything non combat related.

Then why does combat oppupy on 10 pages out of the whole PH ? There's actually more pages dedicated to exploration, magic and skill use, especially if you count the DMG in. You should try some TTRPG with much more tactical combat to know what you are speaking about.

You can of course run a game without combat, but then you are ignoring 90% of the system and you have to ask yourself why you even use D&D when nearly every other system would work better?

And maybe you should actually read the books before saying that 90% of the system is ignored when playing with much fewer combat.

 

[Older Beholder]

So again, that they did this proves the point. The designers of the game think not having to murder everything is a mind-blowing revelation.

Wild beyond the Witchlight was designed as not having to murder anything. Which is very different than not having to murder everything.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

That is actually what we found out years before. It is always the variance of the roll in relation to the modifiers that defines a game.

In a game where you only want highly specialized people to try things, then you need low variance and relative high DCs (above die range) and few characters that can overcome the difference to assure a win. (shadow run 20years ago)

If you however want everyone to be able to contribute and try cool things, a higher variance with rather low DCs (within the die range). Then everyone can succeed and everyone can fail which results in a bit more chaos and more dynamic stories.

3.0 in the beginning leaned more towards the latter, but had seeds that pointed towards the former and 3.5 took that approach and made it the rule rather than the exception. And the later splat books made it worse and had DCs in the 40 range IIRC.

That actually solidified the idea, that you need certain party compositions to be able to succeed. You leanred that unless you have high charisma and diplomacy you should never try to do diplomacy, that made sneaking for heavy armor users impossible, and so on.

I am more than happy, that 5e dialed back. Probably this is the reason why it feels so old school (ADnD2e) to me. Because you are rewarded more for trying cool things than to be punished.

On a side note:
4e was so close to play cool too. But because you were considered untrained in "cool things", that were not your special powers, you learnt to use only those powers...

First off a shout out to @Aldarc for the link to Rob Donoghue's tweets. very informative. The solution to making travel interesting could be in there. I would love to see skill challenges reworked with those ideas.


@UngeheuerLich I agree with your analysis above and it lead to the acceptance of unreasonable high DC for common tasks and to gatekeeping things behind dice rolls, for which there was often no need. Use Rope, I am looking at you.

 

[BrokenTwin]

The conceit that combat requires more rules than non-combat activities is an incredibly D&D-centric take, and what I believe is the primary disconnect between people arguing that D&D is a combat engine and those that are arguing it's not.

For people who are used to systems where combat as a whole is resolved in a few rolls, D&D's combat focus feels incredibly obvious. Discrete movement distances defined by a grid, multitudes of distinct mechanical bits that essentially boil down to different ways to hurt someone, and an advancement system that primarily focuses on causing and surviving violence. You CANNOT play a character who does not get better at engaging in violence in D&D without completely ignoring massive chunks of the system.

That's not a flaw or negative about the D&D system, it's just what it is, and it does a fine job at what it does.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

My response to this question generally follows something I heard game designer John Wick say, and I'm sure he's not the only, or even the first:

Look at the system and what does it incentivize? That's what the designers think gameplay should be like because it rewards the players.

In 1e, you were supposed to get more reward from bringing loot back than you were from combat. Did a lot of tables play that way? No, it doesn't seem like it.

I do feel 5e does/can support more pillars other than combat. I don't know that it's that apparent to people. I think that using milestone for levelling is a step in the right direction because it shows you can set a goal (defeat Lord Badbreath the dragon) and have that as your objective endpoint for a level. Of course, your mileage may vary

 

[Lyxen]

The conceit that combat requires more rules than non-combat activities is an incredibly D&D-centric take, and what I believe is the primary disconnect between people arguing that D&D is a combat engine and those that are arguing it's not.

No, actually, it's not a D&D thing. As soon as the system is a least slightly more technical than narrative, that focus exist. Look at Runequest, Shadowrun, Rolemaster and derivations, etc. Even CoC has quite a bit of combat rules amongst the rules part.

For people who are used to systems where combat as a whole is resolved in a few rolls, D&D's combat focus feels incredibly obvious. Discrete movement distances defined by a grid

3e and 4e only required grids, and that made these editions more boardgamy and combat-centric, but it's not the majority of editions.

, multitudes of distinct mechanical bits that essentially boil down to different ways to hurt someone, and an advancement system that primarily focuses on causing and surviving violence. You CANNOT play a character who does not get better at engaging in violence in D&D without completely ignoring massive chunks of the system.

And in many, many systems out there, again, it's not a pure D&D thing.