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

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

Um, if I can look at a described bit of play and don't see anything in the 5e rules that allows it, but they present their house rule that does, it's fairly easy to tell how play ended up there. I mean, if I'm playing football/soccer by the rules of the game published by FIFA, and you receive a forward pass from a teammate while ahead of the last defender, you're offside. If, in the game you're telling me you played, you say that you received that pass, and scored, because you have a house rule that you don't play with offside rules, then I can absolutely tell you the reason that goal counted.

You seem to want me to tell you the point at which using a house rules makes the game not 5e as a whole. I'm not interested in that at all -- it's not something I care to even consider. So you won't get an answer on that from me. I do care about what's happening in play in a given moment -- what's happening? How was it resolved? And there, in the moment of play, it's pretty easy to tell what rule is governing that resolution.

Not exactly. I'm telling you that when it comes to that you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't merely ask "how was it resolved" when BOTH homebrew and 5E came into play. Whether or not you're interested in that has no bearing on whether it's a real issue for your POV.

What "given moment" can you show me where it was only homebrew being used to resolve something? And remember, it was your claim that I credited that homebrewing back to 5E. In what way exactly did that happen? What did I credit back to 5E and how? I ask these questions because you haven't made it clear.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Not exactly. I'm telling you that when it comes to that you can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't merely ask "how was it resolved" when BOTH homebrew and 5E came into play. Whether or not you're interested in that has no bearing on whether it's a real issue for your POV.

I can ask. Why couldn't I ask? If you tell me "we ignored offside but kept the handball rule, so when the player caught the forward pass while ahead of the last defender it was still a foul," then I know how that worked out. There isn't really a mystical mixing that prevents anyone else from looking and saying "you can't get that result using book rules only."

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

I can ask. Why couldn't I ask? If you tell me "we ignored offside but kept the handball rule, so when the player caught the forward pass while ahead of the last defender it was still a foul," then I know how that worked out. There isn't really a mystical mixing that prevents anyone else from looking and saying "you can't get that result using book rules only."

Focus on the keyword there, 'merely', I said that you "can't merely ask" that question. When you give a question that has an underlying false presupposition, that presupposition must be qualified or at least agreed upon for the sake of argument in order for the question to be valid (i.e. something reasonably within the expected means of the other person to answer). So the fact that you can't merely ask that question that way means that there are assumptions underlying the question which must first be discussed in order to establish any kind of fruitful universe of discourse.

What is the false presupposition? It is the presupposition that there must be an answer either way to the question of "did he resolve that using 5E or homebrew". It simply isn't the case that such an answer always exists.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

Another troublesome false presupposition that you may or may not think but which seems an apparent conclusion from what you said: "it is always one rule which determines how something is resolved; there are not cases where multiple rules come into play when resolving something."

 

[Ovinomancer]

Focus on the keyword there, 'merely', I said that you "can't merely ask" that question. When you give a question that has an underlying false presupposition, that presupposition must be qualified or at least agreed upon for the sake of argument in order for the question to be valid (i.e. something reasonably within the expected means of the other person to answer). So the fact that you can't merely ask that question that way means that there are assumptions underlying the question which must first be discussed in order to establish any kind of fruitful universe of discourse.

What is the false presupposition? It is the presupposition that there must be an answer either way to the question of "did he resolve that using 5E or homebrew". It simply isn't the case that such an answer always exists.

I did a lot of slow blinking here, trying to figure out exactly what you think my points are. You're proposing that there's some case out there where you cannot tell if play was resolved using a houserule or the 5e rules, and that asking the person who was involved in resolving the play cannot provide an answer. This is saying that the people involved in resolving the play don't know what rules they are using to resolve the play. While I guess I have to concede that this might be possible, I'm not sure what use it has to the point. If I'm asking you how you resolve your play, the answer should always be definitive -- you should know how you resolved the play!

If you mean that mere observation could be hard to tell, then, sure, that's true. But we're talking about asking, and if someone is going to tell me that they don't know what they used to resolve some moment of play, then I'm not sure the fault lies in my logic but in the choice of my conversation partner -- I would seem to have failed before I even get to the question!

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

I did a lot of slow blinking here, trying to figure out exactly what you think my points are. You're proposing that there's some case out there where you cannot tell if play was resolved using a houserule or the 5e rules, and that asking the person who was involved in resolving the play cannot provide an answer. This is saying that the people involved in resolving the play don't know what rules they are using to resolve the play. While I guess I have to concede that this might be possible, I'm not sure what use it has to the point. If I'm asking you how you resolve your play, the answer should always be definitive -- you should know how you resolved the play!

If you mean that mere observation could be hard to tell, then, sure, that's true. But we're talking about asking, and if someone is going to tell me that they don't know what they used to resolve some moment of play, then I'm not sure the fault lies in my logic but in the choice of my conversation partner -- I would seem to have failed before I even get to the question!

Nope, I'm not saying that the individuals/individual involved in resolving the play cannot provide an account of how it was done. I'm saying it's entirely possible, and flat out true in practice, that there are scenarios where both are used to resolve the same play.

I do know how I resolved the play. I didn't just forget rules concerning interaction, I took some of the mathematical frame of the picture and tweaked it. The rules came into play and my tweaks came into play.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Another troublesome false presupposition that you may or may not think but which seems an apparent conclusion from what you said: "it is always one rule which determines how something is resolved; there are not cases where multiple rules come into play when resolving something."

Let's assume that we have game rules a, b, and c. And lets further assume we have houserule x. In a given multipart resolution, if the rules used are a and c, then we're not talking about using any house rules. If the resolution is a and x, even if it's a, b, c, and x, then we have a case where the outcome is not dependent on the rules of the game, but the rules of the game as modified by the houserule -- the outcome cannot be reached merely by use of the game rules because we expressly used a non-game rule!

So, no, this isn't a valid argument that shows one of my conclusions to be false. Complex resolutions that do not include houserules are distinguishable by the person doing the resolution from those that do.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Nope, I'm not saying that the individuals/individual involved in resolving the play cannot provide an account of how it was done. I'm saying it's entirely possible, and flat out true in practice, that there are scenarios where both are used to resolve the same play.

You mean that you use a game rule and you use a house rule, yes? The only case that the outcome would be the same would be a case where using the house rule is unnecessary. If you're proposing that house rules are at least sometimes unnecessary, then sure, you're right. I am assuming that house rules have a purpose and effect. If they do not, like say requiring the using of a d40/2 round up instead of a d20 for rolls, then yes -- pointless house rules that don't change anything would indeed be indistinguishable.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

Let's assume that we have game rules a, b, and c. And lets further assume we have houserule x. In a given multipart resolution, if the rules used are a and c, then we're not talking about using any house rules. If the resolution is a and x, even if it's a, b, c, and x, then we have a case where the outcome is not dependent on the rules of the game, but the rules of the game as modified by the houserule -- the outcome cannot be reached merely by use of the game rules because we expressly used a non-game rule!

So, no, this isn't a valid argument that shows one of my conclusions to be false. Complex resolutions that do not include houserules are distinguishable by the person doing the resolution from those that do.

This isn't accounting for cases where a, b, and c are coming into play while x also has an influence, yet x doesn't somehow invalidate a through c just because x tweaks the way that a through c are applied.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

You mean that you use a game rule and you use a house rule, yes? The only case that the outcome would be the same would be a case where using the house rule is unnecessary. If you're proposing that house rules are at least sometimes unnecessary, then sure, you're right. I am assuming that house rules have a purpose and effect. If they do not, like say requiring the using of a d40/2 round up instead of a d20 for rolls, then yes -- pointless house rules that don't change anything would indeed be indistinguishable.

I literally gave a concrete case already. Just because my "death knights" weren't death knights, my Undead language "isn't a language", and "the DC should have been higher", that doesn't somehow cancel out how I used ability checks, set DCs, used a language that a character can speak, in order to resolve the scenario. The former are homebrew the latter are just 5E, so you tell me where it became not 5E.