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

 

[DND_Reborn]

That's not really the flip side

Sure it is... just not the flip side you are looking at.

it's still saying that combat takes the most real time to resolve the least game time.

Not always. I have had players spend hours trying to solve puzzles, riddles, exploration and social challenges, too. Also, "easy" combat is usually simply narrated in my group because game time is too precious to waste on combat were there is little to no challenge. If other groups choose to do otherwise, I can't help that.

Another issue IME with groups who take a long time to resolve combat is because either:

1) they take too long to allow players to make decisions and many suffer analysis paralysis and/or
2) they are playing with minis or battle maps which take time to move figures in the field of combat.

So, I reiterate:
It is all simply an issue of spending game time on the aspects of play you enjoy the most, and finding a good balance with all the rest.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure it is... just not the flip side you are looking at.


Not always. I have had players spend hours trying to solve puzzles, riddles, exploration and social challenges, too. Also, "easy" combat is usually simply narrated in my group because game time is too precious to waste on combat were there is little to no challenge. If other groups choose to do otherwise, I can't help that.

Another issue IME with groups who take a long time to resolve combat is because either:

1) they take too long to allow players to make decisions and many suffer analysis paralysis and/or
2) they are playing with minis or battle maps which take time to move figures in the field of combat.

So, I reiterate:
It is all simply an issue of spending game time on the aspects of play you enjoy the most, and finding a good balance with all the rest.

Do you also narrate the resource attrition (tell them how many hit points they lost, or what spell slots were used)? Because mechanically, that's what easy fights are for.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Do you also narrate the resource attrition (tell them how many hit points they lost, or what spell slots were used)? Because mechanically, that's what easy fights are for.

If they actually accomplished that, I might agree, but IME hp loss is negligible in easy combats and with spamming cantrips, spell slots aren't an issue really either.

I use medium combats, which actually can present an element of risk, for attrition. I only run easy combats if there is an element of risk (such as a guard shouting an alert, etc.) or where it is part of a multi-encounter wave--where any attrition that does occur can't be easily recovered.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Sure it is... just not the flip side you are looking at.


Not always. I have had players spend hours trying to solve puzzles, riddles, exploration and social challenges, too. Also, "easy" combat is usually simply narrated in my group because game time is too precious to waste on combat were there is little to no challenge. If other groups choose to do otherwise, I can't help that.

Another issue IME with groups who take a long time to resolve combat is because either:

1) they take too long to allow players to make decisions and many suffer analysis paralysis and/or
2) they are playing with minis or battle maps which take time to move figures in the field of combat.

So, I reiterate:
It is all simply an issue of spending game time on the aspects of play you enjoy the most, and finding a good balance with all the rest.

If players are taking hours in real time to solve those things, what does it look like in game time? For my games, puzzle solving (back when I did it, I eschew puzzles these days as exercises for players and not for characters) was roughly one-to-one or in untracked time (ie, what did you do today type stuff). Same thing with riddles (also eschewed for the same reasons). Exploration tends to take more game time than real time, and social is very much one to one.

I absolutely use easy combat encounters, but probably not in a way most people think of using encounters -- they're usually stacked into a string of no rest/no recovery encounters (waves, etc), they usually are there not to remove hp or kill characters but to delay or complicate a different goal (ie the combat isn't about the race to 0 hps), or they're used to set tone and theme and/or foreshadowing. I find them quite useful and not a waste of time. Of course, if I were setting up race to zero hp encounters I would share your opinion of them.

My group works pretty quickly through combats. We spend around 5 minutes or so a round -- a 6 second round. A typical combat lasts about 30 mins of game time or less, with an average of about 5-6 rounds of combat completed. This is somewhat hard to tease out due to my fondness for strung together encounters, wave encounters, and keeping tension high and in rounds even between some combats, but it works pretty well. The time dilation point still stands. And we're fast(ish).

Yes, absolutely, I recommend spending game time on what aspects of play you find entertaining. I question the selection of a primary game (you've said you wish to play no others) where the game pushes so much time into something you seem to not like as much as other aspects of play?

 

[DND_Reborn]

I absolutely use easy combat encounters, but probably not in a way most people think of using encounters -- they're usually stacked into a string of no rest/no recovery encounters (waves, etc), they usually are there not to remove hp or kill characters but to delay or complicate a different goal (ie the combat isn't about the race to 0 hps), or they're used to set tone and theme and/or foreshadowing. I find them quite useful and not a waste of time.

I absolutely use them this way as part of a larger string, the "multi-encounter wave" as I call it.

I question the selection of a primary game (you've said you wish to play no others) where the game pushes so much time into something you seem to not like as much as other aspects of play?

Oh, please don't misunderstand me. I LOVE combat... when there is an element of risk. For instance, if I roll up a random encounter during travel, and it is "easy", I will most likely narrate it/ hand-wave it unless I think there is a story-reason to play it OR I want the players to experience that tingle of enjoyment when you absolutely overpower an opponent (I think it is a nice thing once in a while...). But, given how precious game time is, I do that sparingly.

Hard and deadly encounters can, literally, take hours sometimes depending on the scenario, because even using ToM most of the time, our combat is detailed and tactical. An once in a while I will drag out the battle maps... But my group understands that I blend those long combats with down-and-dirty ones and hand-waved ones. Frankly, IMO, most easy encounters really are so easy they should not even warrant awarding XP because, honestly, the PCs rarely really "learn anything" from it (aside from maybe story points).

But yes, I look for other games, but sadly just nothing else really appeals to me, not in the long-term anyway.

 

[DND_Reborn]

If players are taking hours in real time to solve those things, what does it look like in game time? For my games, puzzle solving (back when I did it, I eschew puzzles these days as exercises for players and not for characters) was roughly one-to-one or in untracked time (ie, what did you do today type stuff). Same thing with riddles (also eschewed for the same reasons). Exploration tends to take more game time than real time, and social is very much one to one.

I forgot to address this, sorry.

Actually, the in-game time is usually shorter because, honestly, many times the PCs in the game really would be smarter than many of my players... (ouch, huh?) I am sorry to say it, because it isn't that they are not intelligent, but no player in my group really would have an INT, WIS, or CHA of 16 or better, but many of their characters do.

Come to think of it, none of us would have STR, DEX, or CON of 16 or better, either.

 

[Campbell]

At the end of the day comparatively you would be hard pressed to find another roleplaying game more centered around combat (both strategy and tactics) then D&D-likes. That's not like a bad thing. It's just a thing. Every game has a focus. Sure you can drift any game somewhat, but at the end of the day we're talking about a game descended from a wargame built off attrition based combat. That's where D&D is strong.

That strength is a good thing by the way. Try running a D&D style Dungeon Crawl even in something like Conan 2d20, L5R 5e or Exalted 3e and see how little support the game provides you.

 

[Hussar]

That is a good point @Campbell.

Imagine trying to run a DnD style dungeon crawl in Star Trek. After all, there’s a game where exploration is the focus. It would be totally different. Ten combat encounters to gain a level? Good grief you’d need a hundred character sheets.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

At the end of the day comparatively you would be hard pressed to find another roleplaying game more centered around combat (both strategy and tactics) then D&D-likes. That's not like a bad thing. It's just a thing. Every game has a focus. Sure you can drift any game somewhat, but at the end of the day we're talking about a game descended from a wargame built off attrition based combat. That's where D&D is strong.

That strength is a good thing by the way. Try running a D&D style Dungeon Crawl even in something like Conan 2d20, L5R 5e or Exalted 3e and see how little support the game provides you.

You're right, it isn't necessarily bad if D&D is more combat focused. It's never been so bad (at least in most groups?) that it warranted the stereotypes people had about it in the 90s and early 2000s when other RPGs began to proliferate more, thanks to the rise of digital publishing. Back then it wasn't uncommon to hear from people who preferred, e.g., Masquerade, that D&D is only about kicking down doors and fighting.

There may be more rules for combat than RP but RP has always been crucial to the game, even back in the first generation when all players needed was a town and a dungeon for their setting.

 

[DND_Reborn]

At the end of the day comparatively you would be hard pressed to find another roleplaying game more centered around combat (both strategy and tactics) then D&D-likes

The only game I play which is more combat-centric is Shadowrun.