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

 

[Parmandur]

What trips me about 5e for this sort of thing is the amount of characterization that is tied to class, and the mechanical expression of that characterization is almost always through combat abilities. So there are aspects of 5e design that compete with the free form elements (which I do enjoy).

But as has been pointed out, all of the Classes have just as many non-combat abilities. Most non-combat flavor is, granted, tied up in Backgrounds, which is I think a good thing. An Acolyte Fighter should share more in co.mon culturally with an Acolyte Cleric than with a Sage Fighter.

 

[Parmandur]

I agree, but the same can also be true of combat. Overly codified abilities that work in one specific way can make combat less creative overall

Sure: I'm a big fan of Dungeon Crawl Classics for precisely that reason.

I'd say thst 5E having structured combat is precisely because the game isn't primarily about combat: the combat rules are geared to fast, violent resolution so that the game can get back to the real meat of the experience, roleplaying.

 

[Hussar]

But it is there sufficiently for a group to succeed in doing anything, no matter what comes up. Skeletal systems scan easily be built in, even improvisationally. @Umbran laid out a ove how easy using the guidance in the DMG it is to follow through on the religous service example, and with minimal work.

You do realize that @Umbran didn't actually answer my question right? That this fact has been repeatedly mentioned. I asked how many people came and he told me how much money I made. So, no, the mechanics, in no way, actually served my purpose.

And, "sufficient" is a LONG way from making up most of the game. That's damning with faint praise. "D&D isn't about combat. Look at all these minimal, skeletal systems for stuff outside of combat compared to excruciatingly detailed systems for anything related to combat".

Like I said, why are the rules for buying a magic item about twice the length of determining how much money you make at a profession and far more detailed? In a game that's not about combat, shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the characters spend far more time doing mundane things like a profession rather than spend most of their time leading up to, engaging in and then dealing with the results of combat?

 

[Cruentus]

But as has been pointed out, all of the Classes have just as many non-combat abilities. Most non-combat flavor is, granted, tied up in Backgrounds, which is I think a good thing. An Acolyte Fighter should share more in co.mon culturally with an Acolyte Cleric than with a Sage Fighter.

Which Classes have just an many non-combat abilities as combat? Or were you referring to Backgrounds, which are not Classes.

I have a Fighter in my campaign who wants to become a trader. He's buying carts, hiring hirelings and such, but there is next to zero in any of the books about how to actually do this mechanically. Now, as a DM and player for 40+ years, I can absolutely make up something on the fly and roleplay the haggling of prices, and I already know what items are traded from region to region due to my worldbuilding, but none of that is spelled out in the DMG or PHB (although thanks for the Dragon Heist shout out @Hussar, I'll check that out to see what it says).

Yes, its about hanging out with friends pretending to be fantasy characters, but some of us want to build a domain, become merchants, and explore the non-combat, non-travel the world-save the world side of our characters, and at that point the 4 skills and background sketch stuff is a fine, if limited, starting point, but insufficient.

And, of course, there is always 3rd party stuff. But if the non combat stuff is 50% of the DnD experience, why do I have to either make it up wholecloth, or go 3rd party?

 

[hawkeyefan]

As a minor note, most tables don't use combat XP anymore. apparently WotC has found that milestone has become the norm among players, hence the move more and more in that direction.

Sure, I can see that. I don't think it changes all that much. I mean, my group abandoned XP in favor of doing things at our own pace in the 2e days and never looked back. That's how we handle leveling up in 5e, too; we use what's come to be known as milestone leveling.

In our case, it just means we don't like tedium, not that we don't focus on combat.

It's like trying to decide what % of the rules are combat. Is the MM 100% combat related? Yes and no, because about 50% is spent on fluff, the only thing you need for combat is the stat block. So I think the whole conversation is a bit iffy. Combat is very important to D&D but about the only thing I can tell you is what % of our game time is spent from "roll initiative" to "their dead Jim". That's about 50% for me.

The percentage isn't really relevant. It was hyperbole used to make a point.

Imagine you were going to play a game where there would literally be no combat. Like, in the setting there may be conflict and violence, but as characters, fighting cannot solve your problems. Think of something like Stranger Things or E.T. or maybe most episodes of old school Star Trek..... anything similar. The PCs are incapable of punching their problems away.

If that's the setting you want to play, and you decided to use the 5e D&D system.... would you expect that game to be very satisfactory? I would think for most, the answer would be no. Because the rules don't do much to make the non-combat part of the game any fun on its own.

This is the challenge facing the Cubicle 7 design team to match Dr. Who with the 5e system.

Nothing about the 5e social pillar has anything remotely like the complexity and wealth of options and actions for players compared to even the most boring instance of combat. The back and forth pacing of turns, the decision to use an ability or not... the countdown of hit points and spell slots spent.... that ticking clock that serves as mounting pressure, can we do this or no?!?! That's where much of the drama of play comes from.

There is nothing like that in having a player state the character's case in-character, have the DM consider it, and then assign a DC, and then call for one Charisma (Persuasion) check....and that's the scene. It's not even remotely satisfying as a game. It needs more if that's going to be the main focus of play. It needs to compete with combat.

So far, the best that's been said about the social pillar in D&D is that the "rules get out of the way". I don't think that's a desirable quality for an engaging game. No need for rules at all if that's the way you want things to be. Just have a chat and have one person decide how things go.

Could 5e be tweaked or altered to become more satisfying in this regard? Possibly. Would that require more work than would be needed if another system was used? Almost certainly.

 

[Cruentus]

You do realize that @Umbran didn't actually answer my question right? That this fact has been repeatedly mentioned. I asked how many people came and he told me how much money I made. So, no, the mechanics, in no way, actually served my purpose.

And, "sufficient" is a LONG way from making up most of the game. That's damning with faint praise. "D&D isn't about combat. Look at all these minimal, skeletal systems for stuff outside of combat compared to excruciatingly detailed systems for anything related to combat".

Like I said, why are the rules for buying a magic item about twice the length of determining how much money you make at a profession and far more detailed? In a game that's not about combat, shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the characters spend far more time doing mundane things like a profession rather than spend most of their time leading up to, engaging in and then dealing with the results of combat?

Why not leave out the magic item creation rules, and allow the DM to figure that out? What's the design thinking there? Why not use that space for social and exploration rules?

 

[Umbran]

You do realize that @Umbran didn't actually answer my question right?

I answered it. Just not in the way folks assumed it would be answered.

"How many slices of pepperoni are on this pizza?"
"Lots!" or, "Just a few," are viable answers.

I submit that expecting quantitative answers, without giving a reason or context for needing them, is a path to over-specifying, which eventually leads to design conflicts, as the left design hand doesn't know what the right design hand is doing.

 

[Parmandur]

You do realize that @Umbran didn't actually answer my question right? That this fact has been repeatedly mentioned. I asked how many people came and he told me how much money I made. So, no, the mechanics, in no way, actually served my purpose.

I'm terms of a profession result simulation, money = people in this case, and can easily be converted by a DM on the fly. Straightforward and easy to run, precisely because it does come up.

why are the rules for buying a magic item about twice the length of determining how much money you make at a profession and far more detailed?

You might be confusing Editions: 5E has no "rules" for buying magic items, just pure DM fiat. In contrast, there are rules

 

[Ovinomancer]

You do realize that @Umbran didn't actually answer my question right? That this fact has been repeatedly mentioned. I asked how many people came and he told me how much money I made. So, no, the mechanics, in no way, actually served my purpose.

And, "sufficient" is a LONG way from making up most of the game. That's damning with faint praise. "D&D isn't about combat. Look at all these minimal, skeletal systems for stuff outside of combat compared to excruciatingly detailed systems for anything related to combat".

Like I said, why are the rules for buying a magic item about twice the length of determining how much money you make at a profession and far more detailed? In a game that's not about combat, shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't the characters spend far more time doing mundane things like a profession rather than spend most of their time leading up to, engaging in and then dealing with the results of combat?

@Parmandur tossed me on ignore about 10 pages back, so he probably didn't notice any real pushback on the issue.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I answered it. Just not in the way folks assumed it would be answered.

"How many slices of pepperoni are on this pizza?"
"Lots!" or, "Just a few," are viable answers.

I submit that expecting quantitative answers, without giving a reason or context for needing them, is a path to over-specifying, which eventually leads to design conflicts, as the left design hand doesn't know what the right design hand is doing.

Your answer wasn't "lots" or "just a few", though, it was "racecars."