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

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Are DCs to be shared with players prior to a roll being made? What do the robust rules say?

There are several options. I’m very close to being done with this interaction. You don’t seem to be willing to accept that you have a different fundamental perspective from the people you’re arguing with, and keep trying to drive the argument down avenues that just don’t have much relevance to what I’ve said.

The rules don’t need to be highly specified and tightly defined to be robust. They need to be sturdy, which they are.

 

[hawkeyefan]

There are several options. I’m very close to being done with this interaction. You don’t seem to be willing to accept that you have a different fundamental perspective from the people you’re arguing with, and keep trying to drive the argument down avenues that just don’t have much relevance to what I’ve said.

The rules don’t need to be highly specified and tightly defined to be robust. They need to be sturdy, which they are.

I would take sturdy to mean reliable. The text doesn’t even tell you if you should or should not share DCs with players. Or what factors to consider when deciding to do so. It’s silent on the matter. I could play in one game where every DC is shared by the GM and another where none are shared.

That seems to me the opposite of sturdy or robust or reliable.

A positive quality may be that the flexibility is intentional to allow different personal approaches to play. I think that’s one of the strengths of such an approach that’s been cited in this thread. And that’s fine… but I don’t know if I’d say flexibility and sturdiness tend to go hand in hand.

 

[Oofta]

I just tried to show you. I asked a few questions. If you answered them, then I think you’d see how competitive integrity applies to D&D. Or at least, you’d have a starting point for discussion.

But instead of considering the questions and how you’d answer them, you opted to challenge why I’d even ask them.

I thought I did answer.

Are you interested in having the events of play be challenging to the players? Do you select opponents for them that are dangerous? That are suitable challenges to whatever level the characters are?

Yes.

Do you ever find yourself softballing things? Where for whatever reason, you ease up on them?

Occasionally. As a DM I have infinite dragons. I wouldn't call it softballing, more adjusting encounters to an appropriate level. On the other hand there are certain circumstances where the outcome will simply be decided by the dice whether that's in combat or not. That's a complex topic though and depends on group preference.

Sure, we’re all pretending and doing so to have fun. That goal is present in every RPG. But somehow I doubt that you’d continually throw CR 1/2 goblins at a party of 10th level characters because it wouldn’t constitute a suitable challenge and because challenge is part of what makes the game fun.

Start there and then maybe you’ll see the points being made.

The way this relates to D&D, and at least relating to some of what @Manbearcat was talking about, do you think the different roles of the DM in 5e can at times be at odds with one another? And if so, do you think having clear rules and processes help mitigate that conflict or somehow make it worse?

As I've stated, I think that no matter what rules you have in place unless they're 100% transparent from both the side of the player and DM that the DM can always put their thumb on the scale. If you have 100% transparency it would start to feel like a glorified board game in some ways* and I don't want to play that kind of game. I don't personally want more rules. I also don't see how it would make much difference.

As a DM I have infinite dragons. Outside of combat those dragons can have (in D&D terms) infinite levels of insight, deception for whatever contest you want to utilize. In other games they can have endless resources, have loopholes big enough to fly an ancient red through. The DM can always cheat, or at least creatively interpret the rules, to "win" without 100% transparency. Being adversarial was a thing in old school tournament type games. If a DM has that adversarial attitude they are not the DM for me, which is fine. I'm sure some people enjoy the challenge. It only becomes a problem if the player's expectations are not in line with the DM or if the DM crosses the line of fair challenge into unfair challenge or foregone conclusions.

Is there conflict at times? Hopefully not. At one point I had to sit newbie DMs down and explain that the goals of the game and that it felt like they were trying to win and not work with the players to ensure everyone is getting what they want out of the game. What would make the game worse is a set of rules so inflexible and transparent that would stop those DMs that push the boundaries of challenge beyond the expectations of the players.

*that's probably not the exact term to use because people will start complaining about how I'm saying RPGs with more rules are board games but on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is improv with no constraints and 10 is a board game it would be far closer to a 10 than D&D to me.

 

[Oofta]

Are DCs to be shared with players prior to a roll being made? What do the robust rules say?

I'm reminded of the rules for climbing in 3.5. The rules gave DCs based on different types of walls rough surface with plenty of handholds or a brick wall. The problem with it was that it only gave the impression of impartiality and fairness. The type of wall was still determined by the DM. What it a well constructed brick wall or a brick wall that had been sloppily constructed, perhaps had taken damage over time so it no longer used the brick wall DC but the rough surface DC.

Unless the target number is somehow determined by some game mechanic, the DC will be whatever the DM decides. Oh, and in my case, I don't tell people a specific number other than to give them a general idea perhaps based on some other check (perception, insight, etc.).

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I would take sturdy to mean reliable. The text doesn’t even tell you if you should or should not share DCs with players. Or what factors to consider when deciding to do so. It’s silent on the matter. I could play in one game where every DC is shared by the GM and another where none are shared.

That seems to me the opposite of sturdy or robust or reliable.

I don’t even know how to respond to this other than “okay.”

A positive quality may be that the flexibility is intentional to allow different personal approaches to play. I think that’s one of the strengths of such an approach that’s been cited in this thread. And that’s fine… but I don’t know if I’d say flexibility and sturdiness tend to go hand in hand.

As I said. Your starting point is too different for me to really usefully engage with this. If you think sturdiness and flexibility are complimentary, that they don’t go hand in hand, we are speaking different languages.

One last attempt. Cars. Some cars are more tightly tuned than others. Some are made to essentially perform in a single way, but cannot be easily modified without having to remake the entire system.

A 90’s Honda is essentially the opposite. They are so flexible in design, in terms of ease of modification, that I regularly have to look up three or more Hondas from 3 different years to find all the parts a customer needs, because the car has been modified using 3 similar platforms that are made to be “mix and match” in the hands of a knowledgeable owner.

The 90’s Honda is vastly sturdier, and more reliable, than most “super cars”, largely due exactly to the fact that it is simpler and built to be easy to work on, and the more complex less flexible cars have twice the moving parts per sub-system.

Game rules are essentially the same. The 5th Edition skill system is more robust than the 5e combat system, because the goal of combat is exactly to have a decent number of moving parts, but that isn’t what best serves social scenes.

 

[Maxperson]

I just tried to show you. I asked a few questions. If you answered them, then I think you’d see how competitive integrity applies to D&D. Or at least, you’d have a starting point for discussion.

But instead of considering the questions and how you’d answer them, you opted to challenge why I’d even ask them.

I can see why he used competitive integrity, but I don't think it matches up all that smoothly to what the DM does when planning encounters. While I do want to challenge the players, I do so to make it fun for them, not to make sure that the earn their way to being top players based purely on merit. I also present medium encounters and even some very easy or even trivial encounters, since it can be very enjoyable to just curb stomp some bad guys every once in a while.

The way this relates to D&D, and at least relating to some of what @Manbearcat was talking about, do you think the different roles of the DM in 5e can at times be at odds with one another?

I don't think so, or at least I've never encountered a time where my various roles were at odds with one another, and I've been DMing for almost 40 years now. It might be possible for it to happen, but if it can it would be so rare as to not even be worth thinking about in advance.

 

[Oofta]

I can see why he used competitive integrity, but I don't think it matches up all that smoothly to what the DM does when planning encounters. While I do want to challenge the players, I do so to make it fun for them, not to make sure that the earn their way to being top players based purely on merit. I also present medium encounters and even some very easy or even trivial encounters, since it can be very enjoyable to just curb stomp some bad guys every once in a while.

I don't think so, or at least I've never encountered a time where my various roles were at odds with one another, and I've been DMing for almost 40 years now. It might be possible for it to happen, but if it can it would be so rare as to not even be worth thinking about in advance.

I will say that there used to be old school tournament play. The DM devised fiendish tricks and traps with the goal of killing off PCs. I played one such game eons ago at GenCon. Interesting but definitely not for me. Also completely different from practically every other D&D session I've ever played.

 

[Maxperson]

I will say that there used to be old school tournament play. The DM devised fiendish tricks and traps with the goal of killing off PCs. I played one such game eons ago at GenCon. Interesting but definitely not for me. Also completely different from practically every other D&D session I've ever played.

Yeah. Tournament play is a different beast.

 

[Mordhau]

If D&D was instead Law and Order the Rpg you would absoultely need there to be mechanics to deal with a courtroom climax scene. It would just be too hard on the GM to run a game week in, week out without it, they'd have to do all the work of prepping details and pacing the climax themselves.

This tells us something. D&D is not a game that is intended to have it's climactic events occur in courtroom confrontations but (usually) in violent confrontations.

And this goes for sandbox games too - it's just that climactic moments tend to be emergent from player choices rather than scripted.

The mechancis of the game don't just tell us what things games tend to focus on - they also tell us what role these things take within the game.

 

[Oofta]

If D&D was instead Law and Order the Rpg you would absoultely need there to be mechanics to deal with a courtroom climax scene. It would just be too hard on the GM to run a game week in, week out without it, they'd have to do all the work of prepping details and pacing the climax themselves.

This tells us something. D&D is not a game that is intended to have it's climactic events occur in courtroom confrontations but (usually) in violent confrontations.

And this goes for sandbox games too - it's just that climactic moments tend to be emergent from player choices rather than scripted.

The mechancis of the game don't just tell us what things games tend to focus on - they also tell us what role these things take within the game.

I have climactic scenes in RP on a regular basis. Not sure why you think it doesn't happen, to me having detailed rules and how people actually play the game are different things. For me combat in D&D is enjoyable (if it wasn't I'd play something different) but in many ways it's not the focus of the game.