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

 

[Older Beholder]

The question has come up a few times: why play a non combat focused D&D when other games do non combat better?

D&D is still a roleplaying game first. There are people that enjoy the roleplaying side of the game more than the combat. D&D is more than rules, it is characters and worlds.

When I choose a character, I make the choice based on the character I want to roleplay, the story I want to tell, the world I want to explore, etc. All these things D&D does in a unique way. These things are as important to some people as the rules.

Can I play a Tortle, a Yuan-Ti or a Githyanki in another game? Because these are the things that D&D offers for me to roleplay.

Can I play in Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft or Eberron in another game? Because these are the worlds I enjoy exploring.

 

[Maxperson]

well we already have a miss understanding... because you are talking session and I am talking yearish campaigns.

I can run or play a campaign with minimal hassle that is 90% combat... infact I would say that is close to a default D&D game.

This is a mistaken impression that a lot of people get due to the 6-8 encounter adventuring day. A lot of people seem to drop "adventuring" from the term and think that you have lots of encounters every day, which just isn't the case. You can have 89 days of roleplaying and exploration before you get to the tomb(typical adventuring conditions) where you hit the 6-8 encounter adventuring day, making combat a small minority of the game. 3 months of in-game time and only 1 day of encounters.

I can run or play a campaign with almost no combat (most likely even less then 30%) with slightly more hassle/house rules then the above but not much.

If you realize the above, combat can be anywhere from 0-90%+ of the game.

I think that WotC thinks it is closer to 60% combat and 30% exploration and 10% social for the pillars based on things I have read/seen.

I wouldn't take the published adventures for what WotC thinks should happen. People write adventures that vary in degree between the three pillars.

 

[Parmandur]

This is a mistaken impression that a lot of people get due to the 6-8 encounter adventuring day. A lot of people seem to drop "adventuring" from the term and think that you have lots of encounters every day, which just isn't the case. You can have 89 days of roleplaying and exploration before you get to the tomb(typical adventuring conditions) where you hit the 6-8 encounter adventuring day, making combat a small minority of the game. 3 months of in-game time and only 1 day of encounters.

If you realize the above, combat can be anywhere from 0-90%+ of the game.

I wouldn't take the published adventures for what WotC thinks should happen. People write adventures that vary in degree between the three pillars.

It's really a guideline for building a dungeon that's appropriate for a party, that can be applied to a non-dungeon-y situation if needed to help with XP budgeting (less and less relevant for that over time, with milestones rising: still helpful for Dungeon building).

 

[DND_Reborn]

I only made most of a character for it, but wasn't Phoenix Command really combat heavy? Twilight 2000?

Oh, man Twilight 2000!? I totally forgot about that game. It was pretty combat heavy, too, IMO.

But, as others have said, the problem with Shadowrun and other other games is they are known to many gamers (at least by name), but not to any sort of mainstream like D&D is.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Oh, man Twilight 2000!? I totally forgot about that game. It was pretty combat heavy, too, IMO.

But, as others have said, the problem with Shadowrun and other other games is they are known to many gamers (at least by name), but not to any sort of mainstream like D&D is.

The rather popular (got three games) set of Shadowrun CRPGs set aside, of course. You know, the one's launched via Kickstarter that brought in fans of the property? Yes, no, not terribly mainstream, what with crossover success.

Of Call of Cthulhu. Not mainstream at all. I mean, how much work has it done to expose people to Lovecraftian mythos, which otherwise would be niche old horror stories?

Yeah. I'm not sure what the value is to insisting that only D&D can be mainstream.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The question has come up a few times: why play a non combat focused D&D when other games do non combat better?

D&D is still a roleplaying game first. There are people that enjoy the roleplaying side of the game more than the combat. D&D is more than rules, it is characters and worlds.

When I choose a character, I make the choice based on the character I want to roleplay, the story I want to tell, the world I want to explore, etc. All these things D&D does in a unique way. These things are as important to some people as the rules.

Can I play a Tortle, a Yuan-Ti or a Githyanki in another game? Because these are the things that D&D offers for me to roleplay.

Can I play in Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft or Eberron in another game? Because these are the worlds I enjoy exploring.

This is... huh? Here, let's engage in a bit of a thought experiment:

Here's Extremely Simple RPG. You have a character. Name your character. Describe a thing about them that's cool. During play, alternate with the other players to say what your character does and how it turns out. If one of the other players challenges your call, flip a coin. If you get a head, you get to say what happens. Otherwise, the other player gets to say what happens. If the action involved your character's cool thing, flip 2 coins.

Okay, stupid simple RPG there. And I can absolutely use it to play a Tortle, a Yuan-Ti, or a Githyanki. I can play any of these characters in the Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, or Eberron.

You've picked settings and setting details and confused them with the game. You can use Forgotten Realms in any game that supports the tropes (I wouldn't pick Star Trek RPGs, for instance).

 

[DND_Reborn]

Yeah. I'm not sure what the value is to insisting that only D&D can be mainstream.

No one did, did they?

 

[Ovinomancer]

I do...

Really? I actually find that very exciting, and would (honestly) love to hear about a time in your game that it worked really well. Also one you thought didn't work well, but less interested in that.

go read the new Strixhaven book, and the Wild Beyond the Witchlight both can be run within rules (some new) and have 0 combats

I have no interest in either of those as a product -- the Witchlight adventure doesn't appeal to me and the Stixhaven setting doesn't either. Meanwhile, I own all of the core rulebooks and the splats (Volo's, Tasha's, etc.) It seems odd that they've hidden the answer to all non-combat resolutions in those books.

those spells are still rules, and I rarely see them used to skip whole sections... but I mean if we are talking spells ending challanges, I have seen a well placed fireball end a fight before it even starts in every edition I have played (2e, 3e, 3.5, PF,4e, 5e)

Sure, spells are still rules, but the spells mostly solve exploration/social challenges, they don't aid them. I've seen fireballs not end a fight more than I've seen them end fights. Meanwhile, Fly almost always solves the problem it's cast for (it takes special GM anti-fly action to not to). Charm Person does the same. Read Thoughts skips a lot. Water Walking, Water Breathing, the list is long that totally solve many things in the exploration and social pillars. I don't know why this is a challenged thing -- these spells are meant to do this very thing!

so when I roll to search the desk. When I roll to talk to the guard to get word to the queen. When I roll to put together an improvised explosive so my artificer can cause a cave in and cut off the drow from coming back this way... when I take a tent and roll to make it into a kite, then cast reduce on the halfling npc put him on side kite and convince him to let me fly him up to the window... then remeind the DM I actually had fly preped and just did it for giggles...

I'm trying to parse your point from the sentence fragments here. I think it's something along the lines of "but I've made rolls, so that's mechanized, then." Well, no, because each of those rolls was up to the GM, who could have just done whatever they wanted to -- said no, said yes, said maybe and, said maybe but, etc. The only consistent point that this gets shorted out is when the PC casts a spell -- then we go check on the bit of authoring that the spell allows and do that without the GM having to Say.

 

[Ovinomancer]

No one did, did they?

Cool. So there are other games that are mainstream. Glad that's settled!

 

[DND_Reborn]

Cool. So there are other games that are mainstream. Glad that's settled!

No problem, I am glad I could help you with that.