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

 

[Hussar]

Is the lack of social rules due to freeform being the defacto method?

Or do the social rules relate to D&D like cabbage salad relates to a steak house?

And how can we tell the difference?

Considering the resistance to the notion of adding social rules - remember even 3e was routinely strongly criticized for adding what basic social rules it had - to D&D, I would say that the lack is due to freeform being the defacto method. ((On a funny note, my autocorrect keeps trying to correct defacto to defect )

People really, really don't like the idea of adding social mechanics to the game. 3e adds in social skills and is routinely criticized for it. 4e adds in skill challenges and ties them to social encounters and is routinely criticized for it.

The basic criticism seems to be that any social mechanics stifles creativity. I don't think so, personally, but, that seems to be the basic criticism. That only free form resolution, or minimal mechanical frameworks, allow for the satisfactory resolution of social or exploration scenarios.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Social rules are broad, not "limp and barely existent". You keep mistaking your personal preference for something more than that.

No. Don’t tell me what my preference is. I like D&D’s system just fine for D&D.

The mechanics are minimal. That aspect of the game is minimal.

lol it's "readily apparent" to you, but you're making a mistake in thinking (or at least implying, here) that it's objectively true.

How do you disagree? How are the social mechanics as robust as the combat mechanics?

It seems to me that the best way that the social mechanics of D&D enable play is by being virtually non-existent. They get out of the way. Which, without rules or some sort of procedure, I’m not sure what you can point to as being a strength since any game can ignore rules and procedures to simply allow freeform roleplay and GM decides resolution.

So I don’t really see that as a strength of the system.

 

[Hussar]

To do otherwise, it would have to describe something like making a single stealth check to set up your disguise, sneak past outer guards, hide your darker outwear to be dressed in the disguise, act the part to get to the locked room, unlock it quietly without being seen, get what you need, and reverse that whole process to get back out and away.

What the play loop actually leads to, if followed even fairly loosely, is making a check for each of those actions within the scene as it unfolds, with potential complications should any of the checks fail.

But, therein lies the rub.

What are those potential complications? In combat, the mechanics tell you. If you are hit by an attack, you lose HP. You can regain HP in specified ways. If you lose too many HP, your character is down. Every single step is clearly outlined by the mechanics.

But, in your example, there are no mechanics that determine "Potential complications". Which is a huge problem in D&D because "potential complications" is typically defined as "complete failure". In your example, any failure at any point in your chain - disguise, get to the room, unlock the room, get what you need, and then the reverse - almost universally defaults to combat.

Your disguise fails - the guards attack/the alarm is raised and the guards attack.
You are too loud opening the lock - the alarm is raised and the guards attack.
So on and so forth.

And, because there are no actual mechanics for defining the fail state, any DM that does this is 100% in line with how D&D resolves fail states. Yes, the DM doesn't have to do this, that's true. But, dollars to donuts, this will be how it plays out. The "stealth mission" has closely a 100% fail rate and that failure will result in combat far, far more often than it doesn't.

 

[Krachek]

Considering the resistance to the notion of adding social rules - remember even 3e was routinely strongly criticized for adding what basic social rules it had - to D&D, I would say that the lack is due to freeform being the defacto method. ((On a funny note, my autocorrect keeps trying to correct defacto to defect )

People really, really don't like the idea of adding social mechanics to the game. 3e adds in social skills and is routinely criticized for it. 4e adds in skill challenges and ties them to social encounters and is routinely criticized for it.

The basic criticism seems to be that any social mechanics stifles creativity. I don't think so, personally, but, that seems to be the basic criticism. That only free form resolution, or minimal mechanical frameworks, allow for the satisfactory resolution of social or exploration scenarios.

The Dev team have certainly the skill to develop complex social and exploration mechanics, they decide not to do so, so we can consider this as a part of the game to have free form minimalist social and exploration mechanics. It’s not of lack or a flaw but a deliberate choice.

 

[Hussar]

The Dev team have certainly the skill to develop complex social and exploration mechanics, they decide not to do so, so we can consider this as a part of the game to have free form minimalist social and exploration mechanics. It’s not of lack or a flaw but a deliberate choice.

Oh, absolutely. Sorry if I implied otherwise. It absolutely is a part of the game and deliberately so.

But, that choice does mean that the game is very focused on combat and not particularly focused on anything else.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The Dev team have certainly the skill to develop complex social and exploration mechanics, they decide not to do so, so we can consider this as a part of the game to have free form minimalist social and exploration mechanics. It’s not of lack or a flaw but a deliberate choice.

If I choose to not put pepper in my mac and cheese, then it's perfectly fine for someone else to note that my mac and cheese lacks pepper, even though I deliberately chose to not include it. (I absolutely put pepper in my mac and cheese -- I'm not a barbarian!)

 

[Hussar]

If I choose to not put pepper in my mac and cheese, then it's perfectly fine for someone else to note that my mac and cheese lacks pepper, even though I deliberately chose to not include it. (I absolutely put pepper in my mac and cheese -- I'm not a barbarian!)

But, but... it's a strength of Mac and Cheese to not include pepper. If you include pepper, even if it was a side packet that you could add yourself, then it would ruin Mac and Cheese for everyone. Mac and Cheese must never, ever include pepper or it is no longer Mac and Cheese.

 

[Ovinomancer]

But, but... it's a strength of Mac and Cheese to not include pepper. If you include pepper, even if it was a side packet that you could add yourself, then it would ruin Mac and Cheese for everyone. Mac and Cheese must never, ever include pepper or it is no longer Mac and Cheese.

Even in jest I find this to be in poor taste.

Edit: perhaps this needs a pun tag? I always deadpan these too much.

 

[Hussar]

Even in jest I find this to be in poor taste.

Edit: perhaps this needs a pun tag? I always deadpan these too much.

Well, we have to be careful not to be too salty. Lest the mods descend upon us to spice up the proceedings.

Too much?

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Yeah, I personally see a difference in the degree of rules in combat vs. outside of combat as being the designer opting to deploy negative space. The experience people have when they sit down and do freeform roleplaying without the system stepping in and structuring it (into say, moves or otherwise) is useful in it's own right. I'm actually inclined to see rules as solutions to problems, rather than essential structures, with the core experience of roleplaying being freeform acting and storytelling where the participants take on parts they have agency over. So you apply rules, or make the rules denser in an area, where you need those rules to solve a problem. Fewer problems to solve means less necessary structure, and fewer rules in that area of the game. Obviously there are designers who operate very differently, and they make great stuff too, but that's how my sense of game design is oriented, and I think its sort of an aesthetic principle of game design in its own right that has a lot of explanatory power for why DND works the way it does, and remains popular for areas it doesn't structure as closely. A lot of people like freeform roleplaying and the simple skill system for a lot of out-of-combat stuff, while liking the denser structure for when they do fight, even if they only fight sparingly-- they like that there's so much detail in how that kind of scene resolves.