D&D 5E Combat as war, sport, or ??

[tetrasodium]

To my mind the "combat as..." framework, such as it is, is a particular way of "packaging" gameplay preferences. That's fine as far as it goes, but it goes from "interesting way to think about how you like to play table-top RPGs" to obnoxious once anyone tries to assert the superiority of their particular preference writ large. As appears to be happening in this thread.

I don't think there's anything about any version of D&D that inherently precludes playing "combat as war" or "combat as sport" (or what-have-you) - and indeed, I would not say that any version of D&D is intended to be played with either (or an alternative) approach (*); say rather that the specifics of the mechanics of a given version of D&D tend to enable one over the other.

(*) Gygax's DMG has a discussion about balancing combat encounters, and the wandering monster tables in, say, the Moldvay Basic rules will lead to encounters that are balanced against the level of the PCs more often than not, for instance, and nothing's stopping you from consistently running encounters with either too many enemies or over-leveled enemies in 4e if you want the players to turn to alliances and the environment to even the odds or tilt them in their favour.

There's also grousing about having their preference excised by the system. Seems a fairly reasonable quibble.

 

[Composer99]

There's also grousing about having their preference excised by the system. Seems a fairly reasonable quibble.

Indeed, especially in the context of the biggest game in the market and a game that markets itself as having pretensions to near-universality (the "world's greatest roleplaying game" and all that), even granting that no game can be all things to all people.

 

[Malmuria]

I don't think there's anything about any version of D&D that inherently precludes playing "combat as war" or "combat as sport" (or what-have-you)

Indeed, especially in the context of the biggest game in the market and a game that markets itself as having pretensions to near-universality (the "world's greatest roleplaying game" and all that), even granting that no game can be all things to all people.

These two claims somewhat contract. I don't think 5e is a universal system, but with regards to dnd-style combat it does cast a wide net, and thus can be played in a variety of styles, as you indicate in the first quote above

 

[FrogReaver]

And they pay the price in blood and gravestones; 'cause if not, it really has become sport.

Why do you believe the defining feature between whatever you are classifying as combat as sport and combat as war is that encounters in a combat as sport game are easier than those in a combat as war game?

 

[Lanefan]

Why do you believe the defining feature between whatever you are classifying as combat as sport and combat as war is that encounters in a combat as sport game are easier than those in a combat as war game?

Because in sport the intent is to win fairly and lose with grace. Surviving to play another game is assumed, win or lose. Hence, the encounters must generally be easy enough to allow the assumption of survival to hold, and rarely if ever will the PCs find themselves in something they can't handle.

In war the intent is to win, by whatever means you have available, and not to lose at all. Surviving to play another game is not assumed unless you win. Hence the encounters may be hard enough to put the PCs in over their heads, and it's on the players/PCs to find a way to survive if this turns out to be the case.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Because in sport the intent is to win fairly and lose with grace. Surviving to play another game is assumed, win or lose. Hence, the encounters must generally be easy enough to allow the assumption of survival to hold, and rarely if ever will the PCs find themselves in something they can't handle.

In war the intent is to win, by whatever means you have available, and not to lose at all. Surviving to play another game is not assumed unless you win. Hence the encounters may be hard enough to put the PCs in over their heads, and it's on the players/PCs to find a way to survive if this turns out to be the case.

That simply isn't true.

I played in a campaign that focused on heroic combat but was extremely deadly (averaging one or two deaths every game session). I've played in a few other campaigns that involved heroic combat but were quite deadly nonetheless (not quite as deadly as the aforementioned campaign, but lots of deaths).

What you call "combat as sport" can involve any level of challenge/deadliness. You're simply choosing to put an arbitrary (easy) challenge level on it. Otherwise, we need to come up with some new names for a sport game that's hard, or a war campaign that's easy (which seems like it would undercut the usefulness of using such a framework in the first place).

 

[TwoSix]

You cannot, however, stop using 4E's tactical combat system without some serious rejiggering of the mechanics.

I mean, you can, but the gameplay will mostly be discussion broken up by skill checks and ritual use. And a lot of people do seem to prefer that mode of play!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

To me, combat as war and combat as sport is a useful distinction, and the distinction rests on the importance of what happens in or outside of initiative. The more that actions taken outside of initiative matter to achieving the eventual outcome, the more that the encounter could be characterized as "combat as war." Including:

• holistic encounter environments. There are two lizardmen in room A, but that's just down the hall from room C, where there are four more lizardmen. Noise from room A might attract the occupants of room C; if this leads to a wildly unbalanced encounter, so be it. Meanwhile, the DM is better off preparing adversary rosters than discrete encounters. This is also why a "dungeon crawl" is more than just going through a series of encounters in a dungeon environment; the environment incl things like noise, light, etc is an important part of the challenge.
• running away, sneaking past, negotiation and diplomacy are valid strategies for dealing with encounters. PCs can avoid combat by making allies or otherwise talking themselves out of a situation. For example, by making friends with the goblins in one part of the dungeon, the PCs might be better able to defeat the ogres in a different area. In this sense the phrase "combat-as" is misleading because the encounter might actually be about avoiding combat.
• choosing equipment (while managing encumbrance), bringing hirelings, and choosing spells are key to success. By choosing spells in the dnd context I mean true vanican casting, where you have to decide to prepare two magic missles or one MM and one sleep, etc.

Whether those outside-of-initiative things matter will be dependent more on the the group and preferred playstyle than system. That said, 5e doesn't force me as a player to think too much about what I'm doing outside of initiative; for example, cantrips + spontaneous casting + rituals mean I can just choose the best option in the moment, and the fact that encounters will be balanced for my level plus death saves has usually meant that brute forcing our way through them is actually the easiest method.

This twitter thread and the reaction in this video crystallized what these expectations are for 5e/pathfinder players. In the video at the linked time, the speaker complains that wotc random encounter tables are not necessarily balanced for PC level, and that the advice that players should parlay doesn't work because "that's not how players think." Seemingly, the desire is that combats are tactically challenging and that the PCs should only risk death if their in-initiative tactics are poor, but that in most cases the combats will feel challenging but not be deadly. Pathfinder 2e is cited as a game that provides tools for the DM to "balance" encounters in this way without resorting to fudging.

I have been mulling on this as a result of these threads and a Matt Colville video. I am thinking that it is not really about combat but combat is the bifurcation point. One play style "Combat as War" is really about Operational Resource Management. By that I mean the use of diegetic resources (Inventory, environment, allies, intelligence (as in information about the enemy) to leverage an advantage in combat.
This supports a number of playstyles but the emphasis is on gritty. Combat is dangerous, the environment is dangerous and poor planning will kill you.
It is also about using resources not native to the character to prevail.

The other playstyle is what I call Protagonist style. This is the character is a hero, has a certain amount of plot protection and has the internal resources to prevail.
This supports any kind of narrative or story focused play (even if that story is an emergent story from some kind of sandbox) it is not easy for the DM to accidentally kill the PCs but still possible to set up challenging encounters and that 5e strongly supports this style. Particularly since I think this style strongly supports casual play.

I also believe that as long as D&D is designed with public playtesting it will favour this type of game.

I think to shift the game toward Operational Play, a number of steps would have to be taken. Separating hit point recovery from power recovery and rule options for both.
More detail on the math of the game, what is the expected damage output of a party per level and that of a CR x encounter and how to take into account action stealing effects to allow DMs to more finely tune encounters and to tell if their party is punching over its weight and by how much.

Finally, a word on the issue of combat lethality. Initially in 5e I mostly ran games as a DM, mostly published adventures. Though at a slow rate compared to many here because my group has very limited play time. So, by the standards of this group, I am quite an inexperienced DM, despite all my years in the hobby. I believe I can offer a few insights.

It is easy to accidentally kill parties below level 3 or so and I suspect that level 1 to 3, are the levels where 5e supports gritty play. Perhaps you could stretch it out to level 5.

At about level 7 is where for me as a DM combat got boring and seemed trivial but my players seemed happy. I started to take measures to spice up encounters by triggering adjacent encounters when it seemed appropriate.
By level 15 or so I was deliberately spicing up boss encounters a lot, after level 18 I confess I was guessing.

Having played mostly as a player for a couple of years, now, I can state that encounters look a lot scarier on the players side and are more exciting than for the DM.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That simply isn't true.

I played in a campaign that focused on heroic combat but was extremely deadly (averaging one or two deaths every game session). I've played in a few other campaigns that involved heroic combat but were quite deadly nonetheless (not quite as deadly as the aforementioned campaign, but lots of deaths).

What you call "combat as sport" can involve any level of challenge/deadliness. You're simply choosing to put an arbitrary (easy) challenge level on it. Otherwise, we need to come up with some new names for a sport game that's hard, or a war campaign that's easy (which seems like it would undercut the usefulness of using such a framework in the first place).

As I said above: the model is used (amongst other things) to push a narrative about one style being easy mode, and the other being "real" or "serious" etc. One is allegedly kid gloves, and the other is no-holds-barred.

This is why I favor the "strategy vs tactics" presentation. It ditches the implicit (or, as shown in the post Fanaelialae replied to, explicit) derogation of either style, in favor of a valid and worthwhile look at two kinds of focus a game may have: the "big picture"/"campaign" perspective, or the "little picture"/"skirmish" perspective. Further, unlike the hard dichotomy presented by the "War vs Sport" model, "tac vs strat" recognizes that a game can have both (whether to equal or differing degree), lack both, or focus more on one than the other.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Because in sport the intent is to win fairly and lose with grace. Surviving to play another game is assumed, win or lose. Hence, the encounters must generally be easy enough to allow the assumption of survival to hold, and rarely if ever will the PCs find themselves in something they can't handle.

In war the intent is to win, by whatever means you have available, and not to lose at all. Surviving to play another game is not assumed unless you win. Hence the encounters may be hard enough to put the PCs in over their heads, and it's on the players/PCs to find a way to survive if this turns out to be the case.

i disagree with this assessment because since the character are ALWAYs in combat as war even if the players are in Combat as Sport mode... the death is just allowed cause that is a loose condition of the sport