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

 

[Micah Sweet]

Played it for about an hour, loathed it, turned it off and never looked at it again. And I’ve played baldurs gate and ice wind dale multiple times.

Proof positive that no cup of tea is right for everyone.

 

[Hussar]

100%

But this becomes useless when talking about how the game works. It's like if we're talking about how Monopoly plays, and I'm using the rulebook and you're telling me that putting fees/fines/taxes in the middle of the board and paying it out to whoever lands on Free Parking. Your house rule for this (while common) isn't actually part of the rules. So when I talk about how Monopoly does something, and am speaking to the rules of the game, interjections about how Free Parking house rules work are talking about a different game -- a slightly different game, but a different game. And that one change can, by personal experience, have large impacts on the game.

The conflation between “I play the game this way” and “this is the way the game is written” is extremely prevalent. People are almost incapable of separating the two.

It’s why these discussions and things like edition wars go on and on and on.

People just seem incapable of admitting that what they play at the table is not 100% by the book. It’s such a weird disconnect.

Saying you enjoy free form elements in the game is groovy. I do too. But I don’t pretend that my freeform gaming is actually doing what the game tells me to do.

It’s why I argue that rpg’s are game creation engines and not really games in and of themselves. It’s the Venn diagram of rules, campaign, and actual play that results inan idiosyncratic game for each table and each campaign.

 

[Hussar]

I think what the disconnect comes down to, is that some people value mechanical “teeth” to a degree and in a way that means that any part of a game that puts the consequences purely in the narrative via the conversational mechanic of the game, rather than prescribing any direct mechanical consequences, is a part of the system that essentially doesn’t exist.

I obviously find this position farcical, but it isn’t exactly unheard of.

Obviously I disagree.

But it’s not farcical. How can you point to a system and claim that that system is doing something when that system isn’t actually being used?

Put it this way. I’m trying to talk past a guard. I talk to the dm and we play it out, no dice, and the guard lets me pass.

What game am I playing? Am I playing DnD or Vampire or Fate or Chivalry and Sorcery?

Since it could be any of the above, how can you claim that one game is supporting this?

Now, other systems than DnD will have mechanical frameworks to resolve this. But DnD doesn’t. So again how do you claim that DnD supports this as much as or more than other systems?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Obviously I disagree.

Yeah I figured lol

But it’s not farcical. How can you point to a system and claim that that system is doing something when that system isn’t actually being used?

I wouldn't, we just have different perspectives on what constitutes "use".

Put it this way. I’m trying to talk past a guard. I talk to the dm and we play it out, no dice, and the guard lets me pass.

What game am I playing? Am I playing DnD or Vampire or Fate or Chivalry and Sorcery?

Try a scenario with high enough stakes that any game would bother engaging the mechanics, and the answer changes. And certainly, even here, there are games we could cross off the list.

Since it could be any of the above, how can you claim that one game is supporting this?

You could describe an actual skill check due to a more recalcitrant guard, and depending on how closely you hew to the linguistic style of a given game, it could be quite difficult to tell.

Now, other systems than DnD will have mechanical frameworks to resolve this. But DnD doesn’t. So again how do you claim that DnD supports this as much as or more than other systems?

But DnD does have a mechanical framework to resolve the situation. You've chosen a scenario in which many GMs wouldn't engage the mechanics regardless of the game. I'll use a more appropriate scenario.

Well, same scenario, different guard, higher stakes (for both the PC and the guard).

You approach the guard, clearly intending to pass through.

Let's say you want to try the "walk like you belong" trick. You describe your approach to the GM, and they think about what the guard is guarding, how much they care about their job, etc, and decide that this is possible, but not likely.

Now, if it's me, I tell the player roughly what their chances are, but not everyone likes that.

So you roll. Certainly Charisma, probably Deception, but literally any charisma skill could make sense in this specific instance. Let's say you roll poorly, to keep the scenario going rather than just bypass it in one.

Now, the guard challenges you, like he's supposed to. What do you do next?

Right off the dome, you could ask if you can discern anything about the guard that will help you decide on the best tact for getting past him, you could jump right to charming, intimidating, appealing to his moral nature, etc, you could use a deceptive manner to get close enough to knock him out. You could, I suppose, run and try to sneak past later.

All of those are likely to require an ability check. Using ability checks in 5e dnd is a conversational rules system. Other systems may have a conversational element, without using conversation to resolve the fictional events.

So, clearly, the game supports solving things nonviolently, using the rules. But lets say you for some reason think that low stakes resolution is required for the game to not be "mostly combat". (let us be honest, here, and note that this requirement would be absolutely bug circus on a hamster wheel silly)

We can go back to your first example. The GM almost certainly considered using a check to resolve the moment, and chose not to based on your roleplaying. So, you described an approach with no reasonable chance of failure, and the GM didn't arbitrarily make you roll anyway. Okay. Because 5e's resolution is mostly not strictly prescribed, figuring out to what degree to use any given mechanics, how much to zoom in on this scene in terms of how complex a challenge it should be, is all a conversation, but you aren't "not using the rules", and even if you weren't using the rules...the fact that you can resolve low stakes situations without the mechanics doesn't mean that those mechanics don't exist.

The real problem comes in when you talk about all of this with language that very much comes across as telling people who prefer the social pillar to function this way that they don't know what they're talking about, or that their perception of what they're doing is false.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Played it for about an hour, loathed it, turned it off and never looked at it again. And I’ve played baldurs gate and ice wind dale multiple times.

When I first got it I played it for 23 hours straight. I forgot to eat, sleep, or go to work.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Now, the guard challenges you, like he's supposed to. What do you do next?

Right off the dome, you could ask if you can discern anything about the guard that will help you decide on the best tact for getting past him, you could jump right to charming, intimidating, appealing to his moral nature, etc, you could use a deceptive manner to get close enough to knock him out. You could, I suppose, run and try to sneak past later.

I have a thought on this. Before I share I want to point out that the example has the threat of physical confrontation hanging over it; because of that, it’s difficult to see it as entirely separated from combat. I realize that you’re just taking @Hussar ‘s example and running with it. Maybe you have another example that shows a robust encounter that has nothing to do with combat?

That may be helpful, because my first take on this is you’re describing a kind of loose “skill challenge” approach, where the initial failed check did not signal the end of the encounter or the shift into combat, but instead just changed the situation and allowed for continued ability checks. And that’s fine…seems like a reasonable way to approach it. But the actual books do very little to describe this kind of approach. There’s not an example of such in the rules. At best, you could take some comments from different parts of the text and cobble them together to support this take.

But this is largely the point…. the combat rules are, by comparison, hyper specific. Once a DM says “roll initiative” everyone at the table shifts into a more regimented game where they have very quantifiable resources and clear moves to make. Non-combat encounters are very fuzzy by comparison. In the example above did the player have any idea how the DM would approach the encounter?

In other words, did they know how the encounter would function at the mechanical level as well as they would have if they instead chose to attack the guard? If they attacked, they have a really good idea how things will go; the guard will have an AC and HP and an attack bonus and saving throw scores and all manner of statistics that may come into play. If the PC engages the guard without fighting? Far less specific. Basically it could be anything from how @Hussar depicted where the DM didn’t even require a roll, or maybe one roll would have been called for with a binary succeed/fail state, or a series of checks being needed to convince the guard, and so on.

Now, I think you and many others see this lack of specificity as a feature not a bug. And that’s fine. You take the very basic approach from the book and you do something more with it. Another DM may keep it incredibly simple, calling for rolls as infrequently as possible. That’s fine. However, those of us who have been arguing that D&D is more concerned with combat are citing this as the reason. The game has super detailed rules and processes to follow when in combat. Non-combat encounters are far less distinct to the point that two different groups could have wildly different approaches to them.

The focus on combat… the perceived “need” for such rules as many in this thread have pointed out… is a clear indicator of where the game is focused.

All of those are likely to require an ability check. Using ability checks in 5e dnd is a conversational rules system. Other systems may have a conversational element, without using conversation to resolve the fictional events.

So I’m not quite sure I follow this; can you elaborate a bit? What is a “conversational rules system” versus a system with “conversational elements without using conversation to resolve the fictional events”?

What games are we talking about?

 

[Maxperson]

It seems like there are people who are forgetting that the 5e DMG itself(in multiple places) says that the "rules" there are guidelines, so when someone does something differently, no rules are being broken. If someone were to use the Role of the Dice guidelines, they aren't breaking rules. They're simply choosing other guidelines to use than the ones given earlier.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I don’t know if it’s about “breaking rules” so much as it’s about areas of the game that have very specific rules and procedures versus areas that are not specific at all.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

 

[Ovinomancer]

This is fun, because the source pretty much makes the case that the rules are breakable when it's convenient and usually self-serving. I mean, you're referencing pirates that say this so that they can easily double-deal when it's convenient! Why is this presented as good?!