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

 

[tetrasodium]

off the top of my heads doing ANYTHING in rifts is hard, but combat can last longer then a 4e fight, and be WAY more fiddly. I love the setting but hate the rules (I have 2 attacks, plus martial arts, and 3 other actions, but I can only take 1 action then have to wait until everyone takes 1 then I can take my next... but I can interrupt there action by sacrificing my next action....)
WoD (especially anything mortal) is great at social but terrible in a fight unless you REALLY like dark souls/hard mode 1 hit kills.

I can't remember the game, but the one where you are an ascended being and you use a deck of cards instead of dice (The world ended in 2000 and we are all living in hell...we just don't know it yet, is the concept and boy does it strike a nerve today) had great quick play exploration rules and some descent social rules... but fights pretty much came down to (not unlike 3e rocket tag) "If you have the right skill/key word you just need to draw a royal card or a number higher then 5 and you end the fight and win" and BOTH NPCs and PCs get those skill/key words at character creation

Mutants and Masterminds is close to D&D (it is a super hero D20) but it has the problem many point buys do (and maybe I should have included this in WoD) that you can't really tell how powerful your PCs are with out REALLY studding the numbers and it's way too easy to make an encounter (any type) too hard or too easy.



I don't think D&D is the only one (see TORG) but it is both the most well known, the front runner, the creator, AND is at least close to the best.

yes and no... like I have said before my group tried (end of 3e) to walk away from D&D and we found that no 1 system really grabed the same way...

TORG was the closest (and in some ways is BETTER then D&D...but it suffers from built in setting)

WRT rifts it actually does a few things with d&d social pillar type stuff better than d&d, 5e especially Take the totally not absolute morality but still basically absolute morality alignment system & compare it to the one in rifts/palladium that concerns itself with the kinds of things players do. Yes rifts is more crunchy than 3.x was but having played and run it back in the day I didn't have trouble doing social & exploration type stuff or find the combat as difficult as you make it out to be... players were expected to read the rules back then & they were the one being unreasonable when they obviously were not even skimming their own character's stuff.

 

[HammerMan]

WRT rifts it actually does a few things with d&d social pillar type stuff better than d&d, 5e especially Take the totally not absolute morality but still basically absolute morality alignment system & compare it to the one in rifts/palladium that concerns itself with the kinds of things players do.

Yup... every system I listed are ones I liked for one reason or another... rifts get mentioned not as a "this is bad" but as "this is one that does somethings better some things worse"

Yes rifts is more crunchy than 3.x was but having played and run it back in the day I didn't have trouble doing social & exploration type stuff or find the combat as difficult as you make it out to be... players were expected to read the rules back then & they were the one being unreasonable when they obviously were not even skimming their own character's stuff.

just FYI I both ran and played Rifts for years... I know I exaggerated a little (and I am sure I am miss remembering some) but I have never met (IRL or Online) anyone that suggested combat was EASY to run in Rifts...

 

[Ovinomancer]

I never made any claims about other systems. Speaking from personal experience my game sessions the amount of combat varies dramatically.

You did, though. You pinned D&D's popularity, which includes considering the field, partly to it's ability to swing session by session combat. This isn't unique to D&D, so it doesn't have much explanatory power for it's popularity.

 

[Ovinomancer]

One could argue that D&D is the only mainstream system.

One could, what would be the point, though, except to artificially restrict discussion. We have Vampire -- not as popular but once at least at the same popularity levels. Call of Cthulhu is another very popular system most everyone's heard of. Pathfinder. I mean, D&D isn't the only mainstream system.

 

[Ovinomancer]

off the top of my heads doing ANYTHING in rifts is hard, but combat can last longer then a 4e fight, and be WAY more fiddly. I love the setting but hate the rules (I have 2 attacks, plus martial arts, and 3 other actions, but I can only take 1 action then have to wait until everyone takes 1 then I can take my next... but I can interrupt there action by sacrificing my next action....)
WoD (especially anything mortal) is great at social but terrible in a fight unless you REALLY like dark souls/hard mode 1 hit kills.

I can't remember the game, but the one where you are an ascended being and you use a deck of cards instead of dice (The world ended in 2000 and we are all living in hell...we just don't know it yet, is the concept and boy does it strike a nerve today) had great quick play exploration rules and some descent social rules... but fights pretty much came down to (not unlike 3e rocket tag) "If you have the right skill/key word you just need to draw a royal card or a number higher then 5 and you end the fight and win" and BOTH NPCs and PCs get those skill/key words at character creation

Mutants and Masterminds is close to D&D (it is a super hero D20) but it has the problem many point buys do (and maybe I should have included this in WoD) that you can't really tell how powerful your PCs are with out REALLY studding the numbers and it's way too easy to make an encounter (any type) too hard or too easy.

This isn't addressing the claim -- these systems can all easily swing from 30% combat to 90% combat, just like D&D. You seem to have jumped to "how hard is it to run combat?"

I don't think D&D is the only one (see TORG) but it is both the most well known, the front runner, the creator, AND is at least close to the best.

yes and no... like I have said before my group tried (end of 3e) to walk away from D&D and we found that no 1 system really grabed the same way...

TORG was the closest (and in some ways is BETTER then D&D...but it suffers from built in setting)

This is about you finding the entire system acceptable, which wasn't the point. Systems you find enjoyable are not really something that addresses the discussion, but I'm glad you're finding your gaming needs met. There's no doubt that 5e is the 800lbs gorilla, and there's no doubt it a good game and one that many enjoy. Those are not being challenged -- I will absolutely discuss many games I find fun, but I get nothing much from people liking or not liking them. I will challenge arguments that are incorrect, but if you just "I don't like it" then I've no complaints.

 

[tetrasodium]

Yup... every system I listed are ones I liked for one reason or another... rifts get mentioned not as a "this is bad" but as "this is one that does somethings better some things worse"


just FYI I both ran and played Rifts for years... I know I exaggerated a little (and I am sure I am miss remembering some) but I have never met (IRL or Online) anyone that suggested combat was EASY to run in Rifts...

Nothing was "easy" to run back then, by the standards of the day* though it was kind of "ok so it's like that but a twist here... yea character creation is kinda crazy too". Even if someone was trying to go back to it today as their first rpg though that doesn't make rifts incapable of doing social stuff or only capable of doing combat just because it was not "easy". Why did you jump from the quoted statement of "What is one of these other systems and why are you only able to do combat with it? Which one can you not do combat with and why?" to the ease of running a system with what you yourself admit is an "exaggerated" description?

*Some people were still playing ad&d, still moving to 3.x, or the old shadowrun/CoC/etc

 

[HammerMan]

This isn't addressing the claim -- these systems can all easily swing from 30% combat to 90% combat, just like D&D. You seem to have jumped to "how hard is it to run combat?"

then what do YOU think it means to be able to swing from 30% to 90% if NOT the ease of doing both (and I think most of those systems are better at non combat)

This is about you finding the entire system acceptable, which wasn't the point.

yes it was... there is no mathmatical facts you can bring... so what WE (my group, your group, other peoples groups) can only messure how acceptable it is...

Systems you find enjoyable are not really something that addresses the discussion, but I'm glad you're finding your gaming needs met. There's no doubt that 5e is the 800lbs gorilla, and there's no doubt it a good game and one that many enjoy. Those are not being challenged -- I will absolutely discuss many games I find fun, but I get nothing much from people liking or not liking them. I will challenge arguments that are incorrect, but if you just "I don't like it" then I've no complaints.

I can go as detailed as you want... but this is a D&D board on a mostly D&D site in a D&D thread... so I was just generalizing. Each system could have it's own thread (and again I only named a few) with pro cons

 

[Oofta]

You did, though. You pinned D&D's popularity, which includes considering the field, partly to it's ability to swing session by session combat. This isn't unique to D&D, so it doesn't have much explanatory power for it's popularity.

Dude, I'm not doing this song and dance with you again.

 

[HammerMan]

Nothing was "easy" to run back then, by the standards of the day* though it was kind of "ok so it's like that but a twist here... yea character creation is kinda crazy too". Even if someone was trying to go back to it today as their first rpg though that doesn't make rifts incapable of doing social stuff or only capable of doing combat just because it was not "easy". Why did you jump from the quoted statement of "What is one of these other systems and why are you only able to do combat with it? Which one can you not do combat with and why?" to the ease of running a system with what you yourself admit is an "exaggerated" description?

1) I exaggerated a bit for levity
2) the question of "What is one of these other systems and why are you only able to do combat with it? Which one can you not do combat with and why?" seems to me to be an opinion based question on how easy or hard it is to do combat/social/exploration (I mean you can break down even more granular)

 

[Micah Sweet]

One could, what would be the point, though, except to artificially restrict discussion. We have Vampire -- not as popular but once at least at the same popularity levels. Call of Cthulhu is another very popular system most everyone's heard of. Pathfinder. I mean, D&D isn't the only mainstream system.

Well, are you talking about the gaming community, or the actual mainstream in pop culture? If the latter, it's just D&D.