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- Thread starter Whizbang Dustyboots
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First of all, that "90%" is just a number you made up.
More importantly, word count on rules doesn't reflect what is important, it reflects what is difficult to parse. More words/pages on combat doesn't mean that's more important, it just means it is that much more difficult to arbitrate. This is mostly due to the war game origins of the TTRPG hobby, which has a hard time divorcing itself from granular combat rules.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
The forum goes around and around about this. No point rehashing the whole "what precise percentage is D&D about combat" argument here.
No, it reflects what's important to the game. You can have combat rules that are simple and easy to parse. The devs chose not to do that. Not because simple, streamlined combat is impossible, rather because D&D is a game about combat and the fans would not accept simple, clean, and easy rules. They want crunchy invovled combat. That every class is combat focused, the vast majority of spells are combat focused, the vast majority of feats are combat focused, that there have been four 280-350 page books dedicated to monster statblocks, etc are all clues. Where you focus the rules is what's important to the game. The rules literally tell you what the game is about. Which is why wargames have rules for war and no rules for harvesting or romance, for example. How can you tell a game is about the zombie apocalypse? Because it has rules pointing directly to a zombie apocalypse.
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Plenty of RPGs have far fewer pages devoted to combat, some even have none at all. It's not an inherent part of RPGs, it's something that D&D chooses to focus on.
Because it has wargame roots. But you can tell, quite easily, from the very earliest rules that combat was just one aspect of play. Possibly even the least desirable aspect. It is ridiculous and silly to maintain that D&D is "all about combat" based on its rules word count given its origins in war gaming. Just read the AD&D DMG. It is explicit about not being just a game about combat.
jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
Balance (mechanical or otherwise) is way overrated. I mean, the first long running AD&D campaign that I played in gave no care at all to balance. AD&D 1e and 2e mechanical bits were mixed based on what we felt was fun, and monster encounters were either entirely random (although those tables that we rolled on could be considered somewhat balanced) or hand-designed by the DM based on what made sense for the situation in the game world, not necessarily what presented a 'fair' challenge. Sometimes (often), our party would have to flee from certain encounters/situations only to return much later, after we had toughened up a bit.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
You might be right about most of TSR-era D&D, except of course all the mass combat rules, minis wargames, stacks of dedicated monster books, monsters in most of the other books, all the modules with even more monsters...I mean, hell...even the gods in TSR-era D&D have AC, hit points, and damage. It's a totally normal thing to give your gods hit points. Makes perfect sense. Nope, not because they're designed to be fought. Couldn't be that. Definitely not a combat game.
Even if we ignored all that (which is silly to ignore), you're still dead wrong about WotC-era D&D.
MGibster
Legend
Those are 40k orks. You know, science fiction orks. The fantasy orcs were made the old fashioned way. Blood Bowl even had orc cheerleaders.
Eh, I was going to post a picture of one, but I think the miniature violates the terms of services here.
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