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

 

[FrogReaver]

To me the question that defines what an RPG is about is to look at what role it sets you up to play. In D&D the role everyone plays is that of an adventurer. So, what's an adventurer?

PHB: Introduction

In the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game, each player creates an adventurer (also called a character) and teams up with other adventurers (played by friends). Working together, the group might explore a dark dungeon, a ruined city, a haunted castle, a lost temple deep in a jungle, or a lava-filled cavern beneath a mysterious mountain. The adventurers can solve puzzles, talk with other characters, battle fantastic monsters, and discover fabulous magic items and other treasure.

PHB: Adventure section

Over the course of their adventures, the characters are confronted by a variety of creatures, objects, and situations that they must deal with in some way. Sometimes the adventurers and other creatures do their best to kill or capture each other in combat. At other times, the adventurers talk to another creature (or even a magical object) with a goal in mind. And often, the adventurers spend time trying to solve a puzzle, bypass an obstacle, find something hidden, or unravel the current situation. Meanwhile, the adventurers explore the world, making decisions about which way to travel and what they'll try to do next.

Your adventurer is further differentiated by class selection. You can take the role of a Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, Wizard or Artificer.

Sample Class Description: Rogue

Rogues devote as much effort to mastering the use of a variety of skills as they do to perfecting their combat abilities, giving them a broad expertise that few other characters can match. Many rogues focus on stealth and deception, while others refine the skills that help them in a dungeon environment, such as climbing, finding and disarming traps, and opening locks.

So, while I think the game can be viewed from a combat lens as so much often revolves around combat and combat considerations, it does purport to be about significantly more than combat - and IMO does a great job conveying that idea throughout it's pages.

With that in mind, IMO an even better description of the game than being about combat is that it is about adventuring. That's the lens to view the game in that ties everything together. The game is 100% adventuring. The only question is how much of adventuring is combat, and that's the part that varies so much from player to player. It's as if adventuring includes scenarios with 0% combat and others with 100% combat.

 

[Aldarc]

Plenty of support for that argument has been given. The vast majority of mechanics in D&D are combat based. The application of mechanics during play is mostly about combat. I don't even know why anyone would try to argue otherwise. It's not a bad thing. It simply is.

Major portions of D&D's design architecture from edition to edition in the WotC era - 3e to 4e and 4e to 5e - were even explicitly designed and redesigned around combat: i.e., making combat faster, bounded accuracy, X combat encounters per day, challenge ratings, magic items, etc.

 

[Older Beholder]

Which is fantastic.

Now, what part of D&D were you referencing there? What downtime rules were you looking at? And, how did he do a downtime activity without spending at least a week? That must have been one helluva sermon.

I guess it falls under 'Rulings not rules'?
It was based on the general principle of the downtime rules requiring 3 skill checks. It still feels pretty true to that, rather than it's own mini game.

As I mentioned, so far it was only used to gain entry into the church, and only a few people expressed an interest after the sermon, no one was fully converted or anything. I'll see how it pans out in future sessions, you're right, going forward it will require a week's worth of time to attract followers.

I didn't bring this up as support for an argument, I just thought people might find it interesting. I'm happy for feedback on it as an idea.

 

[Manbearcat]

What about this other "how combat-centric is D&D(?)" metric which is 5e specific?

6-8 (consequentially resource-ablating) Encounters per Adventuring Day (in order for Long Rest and Short Rest PCs to have any semblance of balance over the course of the Adventuring Day

Including the playtest, this has been a very intensive conversation for the last 10 years (and it was one of the most important things that I advocated against during the playtest - balance centered around the Adventuring Day rather than at the site of the Encounter - because it was obvious what the downstream effect of such design would be). If that foundational model doesn't speak to the bulk of table time across the distribution of 5e tables to be spent on combat, I don't know what does.

Because of the above (and other cultural factors), my guess is this is probably the reality for the significant majority of 5e tables out there:

* 3/5 to 4/5 spent on combat.

* 1/10 to 1/5 spent on consequence-light free play. You're talking minimal dice being rolled (overwhelmingly conversation + GM decides). There may be a very stray consequence-heavy roll, but typically, what dice are rolled are either relatively consequence-light (output impact on subsequent framing is overwhelmingly color), "access the plot dump", or outright GM Force to ensure plot trajectory/stability.

* 1/10 to 1/5 other. This might be overcoming stealth/wilderness/investigatory and perception/social/banish and adjure obstacles.

That looks right to me. I'd very surprised if the table time floor for most 5e tables out there was below 60 % combat and I'd be very surprised if it was greater than 80 % combat. The distribution almost surely would skew toward the 3/5 but 75 to 80 % would absolutely be healthily represented (of the 10 games I've borne witness to in real life, nearly all of them spend 3 of their 4 hours of play in combat...overwhelmingly these are teens to 20 somethings so that may be a Final Fantasy byproduct - very heavy on the intricate combats and then basically spend the rest of the time on chasing/following metaplot and what I'll call "conception play" which is a player taking on a very particular trope/archetype and playing it as pulpishly to the gills as possible and being heavily preoccupied by how they look, how they perceive themselves, and how they are perceived - all of this taking place in overwhelmingly consequence-light or consequence-free play)

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm going to disagree here. I think there is more than enough interest in something like this to justify at least a module or a supplement on it. Maybe a chapter in the DMG. I dunno. Throw me a frikkin bone here.

AIR, wasn't Matt Collville's Strongholds & Followers one of the top money making Kickstarters of all time? Something like 2 million dollars for a book? I'd say that there was some serious interest in this sort of thing.

Isn't S&F about building strongholds and recruiting adventuring henchmen, not running businesses? I'm confused what the popularity of a book that doesn't address your wants has to do with how many people want what you want?

Look, I'm perfectly happy to disagree here. I'm not the least put out that you want economy stuff as core. I don't. I don't think it aligns at all well with D&D's focus on adventuring, so adding it is splitting up the play focus and that's rarely a good thing. I just don't believe it's a useful core add to the game concept, even into new editions. Mileage may vary and all that jazz.

 

[Aldarc]

I have been thinking further about some of what @hawkeyefan has said. I'm reminded of discussions around language and vocabulary.

The below infographic shows the linguistic derivation of the English vocabulary. English is a (West) Germanic language. However, the vast bulk of vocabulary in the English language is non-Germanic in origin.

Words of French and Latin origin comprise roughly 60 percent of the total English vocabulary. Despite the strong influence of Romance languages on the English vocabulary, linguists still consider English to be a Germanic language. Why?

First, there is the recognized history of the English language from more recognizably Old English and Anglo-Saxon/Frisian languages. (1066, Tolkien weeping for the end of English literature, and all that jazz.) The language changes over time, but it traces its origins to a series of connected German languages/dialects from northern Europe around the North Sea (i.e., Germany/Netherlands/Denmark).

Second, looking at a language's vocabulary in terms of derived ethno-linguistic origin gives a superficial sense of a language. It does not give an accurate sense for what words speakers of the language use with the greatest frequency in daily life or the words that comprise the linguistic core, which are often the words we learn at a younger age (e.g., kinship nouns, pronouns, etc.).

Third, there is also the matter of grammar. (I know, fun.) A language is not just its vocabulary but also how it syntactically constructs ideas through grammar. If English were a Romance language, then we might expect, for example, a "noun adjective" word order, which is a common feature of Romance languages (among many others); however, English follows the pattern in Germanic languages of "adjective noun" word order.

This is all to say that if we were to look at "90 percent combat" claim leveled against D&D (5e), I'm not sure if disproving the claim on a simple basis of percentage gives a good picture of D&D as a "language." D&D (5e) may have adopted more "social" and "exploration" vocabulary over time and editions, but the question remains: are we looking at a game that is a "combat" language at its core vocbulary and grammar?

 

[Oofta]

So, I think that it's inarguable that D&D is combat focused as designed. A table could drift the game away from this, intentionally or unintentionally, but in doing so they have to provide the extra structure themselves. This is a large part of the homebrew aesthetic that permeates D&D -- it's the representation of this drift of the game from what it is as presented to what they try to get out of it.

The game as designed? What does that even mean? Are you talking about OD&D? Because D&D grew out of a wargame because people wanted something other than combat in their game. Are you talking about the written rules? Because that's about 50/50. The way it's discussed? Read the DMG sometime about world building, if the game is all about combat why would you need any of that?

We need concrete rules for combat. We get descriptive text, fluff and guidance for most of the out of combat stuff with a handful of rules. But we still get that out of combat stuff throughout all of he books.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The game as designed? What does that even mean?

It means we take the rules as they are and don't introduce house rules. Here it means we can see that combat is a primary expectation for conflict resolution, the primary source for XP, and the only challenge that receives lots of attention on how to structure it.

Are you talking about OD&D?

No? Why would I be?

Because D&D grew out of a wargame because people wanted something other than combat in their game.

Um, okay? I don't see why I've prompted a history lesson on something not being challenged.

Are you talking about the written rules? Because that's about 50/50. The way it's discussed? Read the DMG sometime about world building, if the game is all about combat why would you need any of that?

It's more that 50/50, but that's a quibble. That world building is in the DMG doesn't at all show that the game is not focused on combat. Worldbuilding is also an aspect -- I didn't say "all" or even "mostly" I said "focused." The majority of the structure of the game is about how to do combat. Many of the other things are orbiting around combat (exploration/social pillars encounters are often combat adjacent and about avoiding or manipulating the situation for better combat -- everything about going down a dungeon corridor looking for traps and secret doors isn't far from combat at all).

We need concrete rules for combat. We get descriptive text, fluff and guidance for most of the out of combat stuff with a handful of rules. But we still get that out of combat stuff throughout all of he books.

We don't need concrete rules for combat. It's not a requirement. D&D has chosen to put it's focus here, to provide detailed rules for combat. There are other systems that don't do this at all, and they work just fine, so it's not a need. And I didn't say anything at all that even remotely suggests that there aren't other things.

This is one of your odder strawmen.

 

[Oofta]

It means we take the rules as they are and don't introduce house rules. Here it means we can see that combat is a primary expectation for conflict resolution, the primary source for XP, and the only challenge that receives lots of attention on how to structure it.

No? Why would I be?

Um, okay? I don't see why I've prompted a history lesson on something not being challenged.

It's more that 50/50, but that's a quibble. That world building is in the DMG doesn't at all show that the game is not focused on combat. Worldbuilding is also an aspect -- I didn't say "all" or even "mostly" I said "focused." The majority of the structure of the game is about how to do combat. Many of the other things are orbiting around combat (exploration/social pillars encounters are often combat adjacent and about avoiding or manipulating the situation for better combat -- everything about going down a dungeon corridor looking for traps and secret doors isn't far from combat at all).

We don't need concrete rules for combat. It's not a requirement. D&D has chosen to put it's focus here, to provide detailed rules for combat. There are other systems that don't do this at all, and they work just fine, so it's not a need. And I didn't say anything at all that even remotely suggests that there aren't other things.

This is one of your odder strawmen.

You were the one who stated that " it's inarguable that D&D is combat focused as designed" and that there is no structure for anything other than combat.

There is structure and significant amount of effort put into things outside of combat. We just don't have many concrete rules like we do for combat. That's what I disagree with. If D&D was "all about combat" the DMG would be guidance on building combat encounters along with a list of combat related magic items, the PHB would be half the size it is, the MM would just be stat blocks.

The game is what each group makes it. Yes, I'm assuming D&D games will include combat, that doesn't mean it's the focus of everyone's game.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You were the one who stated that " it's inarguable that D&D is combat focused as designed" and that there is no structure for anything other than combat.

There is structure and significant amount of effort put into things outside of combat. We just don't have many concrete rules like we do for combat. That's what I disagree with. If D&D was "all about combat" the DMG would be guidance on building combat encounters along with a list of combat related magic items, the PHB would be half the size it is, the MM would just be stat blocks.

The game is what each group makes it. Yes, I'm assuming D&D games will include combat, that doesn't mean it's the focus of everyone's game.

Well, people do like context for their combat game. Like where and why you're fighting, for example.