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

 

[Ovinomancer]

Option C.1 - Most folks have so little experience with extensive social mechanics that they don't know what they want from them, so that it is hard to make any of them seem good.

Not sure what you're responding to, but there are plenty of pretty good games that deal well with social encounters via mechanics out there that I don't think this is the case. Most of the arguments I see in this space are "we roleplay* this, and that's good enough." It's mostly being totally unaware and assuming that D&D is the best game so it already has the best methods. This is, of course, not true at all. D&D is the most popular game, but it's methods aren't therefor the best. I like 5e, run it, and enjoy it for what it does and for the growing community it fosters, but there's a strong trend to treat fandom of 5e like fandom in major sports -- your team is the best, you'll fight if you hear otherwise, and you can't even watch those other guys.

 

[Ovinomancer]

As does D&D.

So, those other games are just like D&D, now? I'm confused, I don't know what to think.

 

[hawkeyefan]

As does D&D.

Only if you’re doing it wrong!!

I’m just being cheeky. But I will say that the D&Dness of D&D isn’t much of a strength.

 

[Oofta]

I'm very late to the party, and someone has probably mentioned this, but you can look at the data to make that call. If you took the basic set of books needed to play, let's say Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide and Monster Manual, and took out all information related to combat, how much of the content would you have left. You could choose either word count or page number to determine how much the game is designed around combat.

The other thing you could use is player data. Didn't Wizards release a whole bunch on data a few years back. You could correlate player choice with intent to play. So if the most popular class was fighter, well, you have your answer...

I did a quick count ... somewhere ... and came up with 50% being primarily only useful in combat. I mean, you could say that the MM is 100% combat, but if I look at the entry for the [picking a monster randomly] the word count is about 50% fluff and description. Assuming that holds true for most monsters, that if you only count the stat block as being necessary for combat then I would say all of the core books are around 50/50.

But why have an entry on a hydra unless it's to face it in combat? For that matter, people use stealth both in and out of combat, where does that fall? I will say that IMHO the text is far, far less than 90% strictly for combat. I'm also not sure it matters. They decided to go with a ruling over rules and leaving a lot of things in the hand of the DM and group so there's not much in the way of hard-and-fast rules for the game outside of combat where you need more clarity.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

My players have a tendency to over-react to that sort of hint! Tell them they are playing Rime of the Frostmaiden and you get a bunch of rangers and survivalists, tell them it's haunted house in Ravenloft and you get a bunch of clerics and vampire slayers!

I had this in my Winter Eternal game setting I ran. Basically, winter + post-apocalypse (Ymir's corpse crashed to the planet causing 'impact winter'). So I wonder if there's something in my elevator pitch for the game, or the session zero, that is keying a certain repeatable response

Two groups of players, with zero overlap (in fact, none of the players even knew the other players), both created similar parties: a techie (Party A: gnome artificer with a shotgun. Party B: clockwork soul sorceror), a wilderness guy (Party A: Warforged ranger. Party B: eladrin druid) and a half-orc (Party A: a half orc fighter/wizard. Party B: half-orc barbarian)

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I did a quick count ... somewhere ... and came up with 50% being primarily only useful in combat. I mean, you could say that the MM is 100% combat, but if I look at the entry for the [picking a monster randomly] the word count is about 50% fluff and description. Assuming that holds true for most monsters, that if you only count the stat block as being necessary for combat then I would say all of the core books are around 50/50.

But why have an entry on a hydra unless it's to face it in combat? For that matter, people use stealth both in and out of combat, where does that fall? I will say that IMHO the text is far, far less than 90% strictly for combat. I'm also not sure it matters. They decided to go with a ruling over rules and leaving a lot of things in the hand of the DM and group so there's not much in the way of hard-and-fast rules for the game outside of combat where you need more clarity.

Exactly this.

I haven't done a thorough count, but it seems to me that at most half the player options are about combat, and you only hit half if you count the stuff that isn't just for combat, but is useful in combat sometimes, like stealth and athletics, or the plant growth spell.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think it's funny that so many old school players refer to everything combat related as "murder xyz".

Like, XP is useful for determining relatively accurate combat challenge, and that's about all it's good for IMO, but by the book it certainly isn't just there as "murder tokens" to turn in to get better toys for murdering, even if we ignore the absurdity of characterizing the general thrust of dnd play as involving "murder".

I mean look at the adventures. Were we overdue for some adventures focused on exploration and interaction? Sure! And we have gotten both recently, although certainly not for the first time. Before that we got plenty of all three pillars in most adventures, but they all required violence to solve, because the evil cult was trying to bring Tiamat into the world, or whatever, so Witchlight is a nice change as an adventure that can easily feature no combat at all.

But having most adventures require all three pillars, with some focusing hard on one pillar and some on another, is....good design. Like obviously good design.

 

[Parmandur]

Not sure what you're responding to, but there are plenty of pretty good games that deal well with social encounters via mechanics out there that I don't think this is the case. Most of the arguments I see in this space are "we roleplay* this, and that's good enough." It's mostly being totally unaware and assuming that D&D is the best game so it already has the best methods. This is, of course, not true at all. D&D is the most popular game, but it's methods aren't therefor the best. I like 5e, run it, and enjoy it for what it does and for the growing community it fosters, but there's a strong trend to treat fandom of 5e like fandom in major sports -- your team is the best, you'll fight if you hear otherwise, and you can't even watch those other guys.

The proper analogy isn't between differentials of the same sport, but between different sports entirely. If people are into Basketball, it's not necessarily a selling point to say that Soccer also has running and might have rules more conducive to running. Both have running. They are different games, with different rules and a different appeal, but harping on what they have in common isn't going to win people over to another sport.

 

[Parmandur]

So, those other games are just like D&D, now? I'm confused, I don't know what to think.

In terms of being games with roleplaying, yes. The rest is details.

 

[Parmandur]

Only if you’re doing it wrong!!

I’m just being cheeky. But I will say that the D&Dness of D&D isn’t much of a strength.

On the contrary, that ineffable quality of deeendee might be the greatest strength the game has.