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

[Oofta]

Personally I think combat is macaroni salad. Does it have anything resembling a garden salad? Heck no! But it does have a pasta of some sort and a bunch of other stuff thrown in depending on what you do. It can be bland, it can be spicy, it can be whatever you want as long as it has macaroni-adjacent base.

Same way with D&D combat. There's a core we all adhere to but beyond that? Difficult? Easy? Staic? Dynamic? All just depends on what people enjoy. Just like macaroni salad.

 

[overgeeked]

I find it telling that the attempts at versimilitude always in D&D stop short of anything that would represent the downsides of war other than giving the player the immense hardship of getting a new character to play. In WFRP my characters get injured. In Blades in the Dark characters get more and more traumatised until they retire. D&D it's pretty much pure power-and-progression fantasy where you don't even really get hurt.

Weird that you assume I don't use WFRP2E's injuries in my D&D games. Well, technically I don't. I use the Winds of Chaos Critical Hit Charts. They're based on WFRP2E's critical hit and injuries, but they're much, much worse. Every natural 20 is a critical hit. Characters rack up a lot of injuries. I also make casters roll to cast, just checking for a natural 1. On a natural 1 they miscast and I bust out Orrex's Net Libram of Random Magical Effects.

And there's a distinct "We are manly men doing war and thus look down on those people just doing non-serious sport" issue in the framing. As befits it as terms from the anti-4e whaaargabl it dates back to. (And it's already been checked it doesn't date back earlier).

Again, weird. 4E is my favorite WotC edition of D&D.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Weird that you assume I don't use WFRP2E's injuries in my D&D games. Well, technically I don't. I use the Winds of Chaos Critical Hit Charts. They're based on WFRP2E's critical hit and injuries, but they're much, much worse. Every natural 20 is a critical hit. Characters rack up a lot of injuries. I also make casters roll to cast, just checking for a natural 1. On a natural 1 they miscast and I bust out Orrex's Net Libram of Random Magical Effects.

In short you heavily house rule to get closer to the grit that older D&D simply doesn't do. I don't think it's weird to not assume you don't do something that's not in any official D&D rulebook and as such isn't anywhere near standard D&D.

Again, weird. 4E is my favorite WotC edition of D&D.

It is however why the descriptions were created.

 

[RuinousPowers]

Weird that you assume I don't use WFRP2E's injuries in my D&D games. Well, technically I don't. I use the Winds of Chaos Critical Hit Charts. They're based on WFRP2E's critical hit and injuries, but they're much, much worse. Every natural 20 is a critical hit. Characters rack up a lot of injuries. I also make casters roll to cast, just checking for a natural 1. On a natural 1 they miscast and I bust out Orrex's Net Libram of Random Magical Effects.

Again, weird. 4E is my favorite WotC edition of D&D.

Wouldn't it be weirder to assume that everyone used a modified WHFRPG crit table in their D&D games?

Did you also remove all the spells to repair blindness and limb loss? Otherwise all those tables just become spell taxes for high level characters and the consequences of battle just become things that happen to poor people.

 

[Malmuria]

- The combat as war/sport distinction arose to describe the relative differences between editions of dnd. To the extent that system is important in influencing playstyle--perhaps it isn't so much--it seems to me helpful to have some way of describing how combat varies across the design of the different editions. This framework was also helpful for OSR designers in accentuating features of combat as war; for example, into the odd and derivative games 'attack the character sheet' in ways that make characters who suffer wounds less effective.

- The "as" in combat as war/sport is not an equals sign. It's not, "in this version of dnd, combat=war." It's a simile, a figure of speech. In no version of dnd is combat exactly a sport, outside of the dm setting up some narrative contrivances. The terms "war" and "sport" are used to indicate a set of differences, as the op describes.

In Blades in the Dark characters get more and more traumatised until they retire. D&D it's pretty much pure power-and-progression fantasy where you don't even really get hurt.

I don't know; Blades in the Dark characters can get pretty powerful after a few advancements. Generally you can avoid retiring a character until you feel ready to have them drop out of the story. Meanwhile, in my OSE games several characters have suffered permanent injuries (not houseruling anything, using necrotic gnome modules).

One oddity of this conversation is that it seems the differences between different editions of dnd--which are different systems--are being described as unimportant, whereas differences between "dnd" and other systems are described as very important. I don't know what to make of that, but it seems very inconsistent

 

[overgeeked]

In short you heavily house rule to get closer to the grit that older D&D simply doesn't do. I don't think it's weird to not assume you don't do something that's not in any official D&D rulebook and as such isn't anywhere near standard D&D.

I find it telling that the attempts at versimilitude always in D&D stop short of anything that would represent the downsides of war other than giving the player the immense hardship of getting a new character to play. In WFRP my characters get injured.

You assumed that my game didn't have gritty injuries. You are wrong.

Wouldn't it be weirder to assume that everyone used a modified WHFRPG crit table in their D&D games?

It's weird to assume and then attack. Best to do neither as that easily slips into strawmanning. Asking generally works better.

Did you also remove all the spells to repair blindness and limb loss?

Nope.

Otherwise all those tables just become spell taxes for high level characters and the consequences of battle just become things that happen to poor people.

Another instance of verisimilitude. That's how you can tell the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Another instance of verisimilitude. That's how you can tell the rich and powerful from the poor and powerless.

I would make another comment about the horrors of the V-word, but... jaysus.

 

[billd91]

One oddity of this conversation is that it seems the differences between different editions of dnd--which are different systems--are being described as unimportant, whereas differences between "dnd" and other systems are described as very important. I don't know what to make of that, but it seems very inconsistent

It is at least a bit inconsistent. However, for those who view the difference between combat as war vs as sport as a play style issue rather than a hard-coded rules issue, it's not that odd. You can bring the war play style to pretty much any edition of D&D even if there are editions that tend to push toward the sport direction. And you could, at least theoretically, transport the sport style back to 1e/2e where the encounter balancing tools are more primitive.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the claims that any form of D&D is "Combat as War" are ridiculous. Different fantasies can and should be allowed. But oD&D is only remotely gritty when put on a pure D&D spectrum but is highly artificial, protected, and one-sided compared to most RPGs I've played.

What type of games do you play? I know you like 4e, so are your preferred games more narrative or story game than trad D&D?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I find it telling that the attempts at versimilitude always in D&D stop short of anything that would represent the downsides of war other than giving the player the immense hardship of getting a new character to play. In WFRP my characters get injured. In Blades in the Dark characters get more and more traumatised until they retire. D&D it's pretty much pure power-and-progression fantasy where you don't even really get hurt.

And there's a distinct "We are manly men doing war and thus look down on those people just doing non-serious sport" issue in the framing. As befits it as terms from the anti-4e whaaargabl it dates back to. (And it's already been checked it doesn't date back earlier).

Level Up uses Fatigue and Strife to represent the kind of trauma you're talking about, all within a mostly-5e framework. It doesn't have to be the way you're saying.