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

 

[Oofta]

Yeah. Tournament play is a different beast.

Also the only type of play that I can think competitive integrity comes into play because it really is an adversarial relationship in many ways.

 

[Mordhau]

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.

I didn't say it never happenned.

But are your non-combat climactic scenes
1. As regular as combat ones?
2. Of a kind in the way that combat is? Eg "Courtroom drama" is a specific kind of scene not a general kind of non-combat scene, therefore if you're doing it week in and week out you'd need specific rules in the same way you don't use a genralised resolution system for combat.
3. As easy to automate as a combat scene is so that even an inexperienced GM could make them work?

My experience is that if I want to do something climactic in D&D that's not combat, than, if I want a game element to it, I need to do some kind of prep (effectively homebrewing something like a skill challenge.) If I want it to be a combat then I just run a combat.

To me it seems pretty obvious. Any set of rules, or just basic approach to skill use that I might use to say model a difficult mountain traverse, or preparing a city to withstand a siege could also be used to do combat. But it isn't. Because we have specific rules for combat and not the other things.

But you don't have a specific set of rules for handling courtroom dramas in D&D. For obvious reasons. You may do it. But probably only once. There is a very specific rules for handling small squad based violent conflict (not mass battles, not skirmishes, not duels - non of which the D&D combat system does particularly well - specifically 3-5 vs about 3-10 enemies). This ought to tell us a lot about the game.

 

[Oofta]

I didn't say it never happenned.

But are your non-combat climactic scenes
1. As regular as combat ones?
2. Of a kind in the way that combat is? Eg "Courtroom drama" is a specific kind of scene not a general kind of non-combat scene, therefore if you're doing it week in and week out you'd need specific rules in the same way you don't use a genralised resolution system for combat.
3. As easy to automate as a combat scene is so that even an inexperienced GM could make them work?

My experience is that if I want to do something climactic in D&D that's not combat, than, if I want a game element to it, I need to do some kind of prep (effectively homebrewing something like a skill challenge.) If I want it to be a combat then I just run a combat.

To me it seems pretty obvious. Any set of rules, or just basic approach to skill use that I might use to say model a difficult mountain traverse, or preparing a city to withstand a siege could also be used to do combat. But it isn't. Because we have specific rules for combat and not the other things.

To me it's pretty obvious that the important turning points in a game depend on the group. Even if a combat is a climactic scene, it's usually only climactic because of things done out of combat. That, and truly climactic battles are frequently influenced by out-of-combat actions for me.

Lack of rules volume is no indication of importance.

 

[Mordhau]

To me it's pretty obvious that the important turning points in a game depend on the group. Even if a combat is a climactic scene, it's usually only climactic because of things done out of combat. That, and truly climactic battles are frequently influenced by out-of-combat actions for me.

Obviously true but also I would have thought, obviously irrelevant?

Honestly, I think a step back is needed. I don't know what's going through your head if that's a reply.

My point was that combat is frequently the climactic event. The fact that non-combat events lead to violent climaxes surely strengthens that yes?

As I was saying. The percentage of time spent doing combat is not the only thing to consider. If you spend four sessions investigating a mystery only to discover the ritual and burst into the warehouse for a final boss fight at the climactic moment of the adventure then the combat has a level of importance greater than the amount of actual time it takes in the game.

 

[Hussar]

/snip nope

Sorry, nothing to see here. My bad.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Can you explain? I’m not really seeing what you mean reading it. Again, I suspect that what you are trying to communicate is not what is coming across.

/snip

I don't have the module in front of me at this moment, but, here's the basic gist. The module is about ten, fifteen pages long AIR. It's not a particularly long module. And, it's very much set up as an infiltration scenario. Overwhelming opposition and the goal is information gathering/targeted assassination rather than "clearing the dungeon". A frontal assault will very likely fail.

Now, the module spends about a paragraph on how you could infiltrate the dungeon. it then spends the entire rest of the module on what will happen after the PC's are discovered and how things will fall out. The entire scenario, as written, will result in abject failure on the PC's part because they have zero chance of successfully infiltrating and will likely have to slog it out in massive combat after massive combat.

And the whole adventure is designed that way. I'd point out that this is hardly a new idea either. Look at the reddit for Ghosts of Saltmarsh and search for The Final Enemy and you'll see this issue brought up repeatedly. It's not like it's "just my group" or "just me" having this experience. It's pretty common, or at least, not apparently some corner case result that never actually happens in play.

So, you're whole "well, this never happens and I don't know why you'd play D&D if it does" seems a bit strange to me, considering that it's very common and happens all the time apparently to many groups.

 

[Mordhau]

 

[Mordhau]

Honestly, one of the most frustrating things about being a player in D&D is skills.

Or perhaps more specifically the fact that DM's in general (and it seems adventure writers) don't really understand that skills don't work the way they seem to believe they do. They mistake high level of skill for a player being able to do something reasonably reliably and they think a skill role is a meaningful challenge rather than a mere randomiser.

They also seem to think that D&D is like other games and that being good or bad at a skill is a strategic player choice, rather than just a basic outcome of which broad kind of character you chose to play. A Barbarian or Ranger (Fey one's aside) has to invest an awful lot to be meaningfully good at social skills, for example. Likewise a Paladin is not going to be good at stealth. It's not the player's fault they didn't take stealth proficiency. If they did it most likely wouldn't have helped.

You also have limited ability to address skill shortfalls over the game. It's not like many other games where if a low skill is proving to be a liability you can chuck some XP into it reasonably quickly and bring it up.

 

[Oofta]

Obviously true but also I would have thought, obviously irrelevant?

Honestly, I think a step back is needed. I don't know what's going through your head if that's a reply.

My point was that combat is frequently the climactic event. The fact that non-combat events lead to violent climaxes surely strengthens that yes?

As I was saying. The percentage of time spent doing combat is not the only thing to consider. If you spend four sessions investigating a mystery only to discover the ritual and burst into the warehouse for a final boss fight at the climactic moment of the adventure then the combat has a level of importance greater than the amount of actual time it takes in the game.

What I'm trying to say is that A) Climactic events an turning points happen outside of combat in my games. It may not be universal, but in my games they are important. B) Combat is only climactic in my games because of what happens outside of combat - stuff that happens investigating the mystery is just as important as everything that happens after "roll for initiative"

But at a certain point it doesn't matter. You place a greater value on the importance of combat than I do, I generally place roughly equal importance.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Yes.

Thank you.

This is all that's meant by competitive integrity. That challenges match the skill and capability of the players. It's not about adversarial GMing or tournament play or any of that.

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.

So think of sports. Imagine that the guy who coaches the opposing team is also the guy officiating the match. Seems to kind of conflict, right? That's why it doesn't happen in sports.

Now, in D&D, the same person does perform both of those roles. Now, there isn't the adversarial angle of opposing teams, but there is still the possibility of conflict. Having clear procedures in place can help avoid or at least lessen that conflict.

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.

No, it can also be a problem if the GM goes the other way and makes things too easy. When I play, I want the opposition to be legit... I want to play with the competitive integrity that's being described. That the challenges are valid to my skill and character level and so on. I don't want the GM to have the game on Easy mode probably even more than I don't want him to have it on Insane mode.