D&D 5E Is D&D 90% Combat?

I'm running a Detective D&D game. It's not even close to 90% combat. Probably a third of it is combat. Lots of investigation, clues, social situations, chases, research, etc. It can be done but you have to build around it and run it like a White Wolf game. Using Patrons and having the PCs run their own business goes a long way.

tetrasodium said:

What am I adjudicating? You are asking me to define a number for how many angels can dance on the head of a pin & giving the runaround when I ask why it's important

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You're not adjudicating anything. You're identifying what mechanical system you'll use to resolve "how many followers do I get for week's preaching?"

I feel the reason you're not picking this up is some need to make sure players don't get away with anything. Imagine, then, that they are not, that this is a pretty tame situation. What mechanical system would you use to resolve it? D20+stat+proficiency+other? Something else? Imagine that the results are well tuned to whatever needs you have. What is the system you will use?

Does the system you will use change based on what the scope of the ask is? Why or why not?

Ovinomancer said:

You're not adjudicating anything. You're identifying what mechanical system you'll use to resolve "how many followers do I get for week's preaching?"

I feel the reason you're not picking this up is some need to make sure players don't get away with anything. Imagine, then, that they are not, that this is a pretty tame situation. What mechanical system would you use to resolve it? D20+stat+proficiency+other? Something else? Imagine that the results are well tuned to whatever needs you have. What is the system you will use?

Does the system you will use change based on what the scope of the ask is? Why or why not?

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Assuming there was some form of performance (or whatever) check "give me an insight check for what you think". It's impossible to decide a number for how many unless you as a player have some particular skill or ability I'm unaware of. I can't even guess at what a dc might be because I don't know what it means to be a follower. If the insight check was reasonably decent there would be some vague nonspecific answer like "some people liked your sermons" "you feel like your god approves of your efforts" maybe things like "some" "the crowd seems larger than before after you guys saved the town" or "there's usually a bigger crowd when you do the preaching instead of the usual guy who reports to you because reveryone knows you were one of the five who took on TheBBEG & you know how folks like to talk". If the insight check was bad I might give misleading or even false information.

If it were my game and I had a player who said words like "Hey I just watched/read the faraway paladin & really like the way will is trying to bring back faith in gracefeel in the world through his oath, I want to do something like that, will that fit your game?" I have enough details on their goal to make some rulings. I'd still go with vague terms & estimations based off what the character thinks & would make it clear that deeds would probably weigh more heavily than standing in town preaching because the preaching is a passive activity no other player is likely to be particularly interested in very often. Those vague terms would probably get translated into fate style aspects & be pulled in with some kind of behind the scenes combo of the old bonus types/ DM's best friend if they ever became relevant.

In short, d&d fails so badly here that I need to rely on a different system that is rules light & flexible enough for me to easily run on top of d&d without giving it away while I'm running d&d. I lean closer to fate with more aspects of the game than he describes but here is a decent enough analogue that doesn't go into how fate works.

I have to say. It seems pretty odd to reduce the "what does a fantasy priest in a mythical setting successfully proselytizing yield (?)" question down to coinage (and away from the thematic questions of related to providence)?

How about first answering the below questions:

* “What does increasing followers do for my faith when it comes to both setting and situation?”

* “What does that setting/situation change do for/against specific characters? (PCs and important Cohorts)?”

* “Who does it moralize and who does it offend?”

* “Does it embolden the spread of further proselytization like social wildfire?”

* “Does this invite a collision of belief systems or even holy war?”

Then ask the question:

How can some/all of this be systemitized so that it has mechanical heft that intersects with the priest's subsequent decision-points as they pertain to the faith?”

One answer can be found in Blades in the Dark Cult games which engage with all this stuff the following way:

* You name your deity and give it two thematic tags which manifest in play when you deal with supernatural complications related to your deity's manifestation such as Alluring or Cruel.

* You gain a group of Adept Cohorts (ritualists, people that can attune to the supernatural, et al) that increase as the faith grows (your Tier increases) and your terrible God/dess becomes ever closer to manifesting fully.

* You choose a favored Operation type between Acquisition, Augury, Consecration, Sacrifice. These have mechanical benefit as well as thematic direction and feedback loops for play.

* Thematic xp triggers are carrots for play that both (a) complicate the cultists lives and (b) reward them for engaging with this. Example:

When you play a Cult, you earn xp when you advance the agenda of your deity or embody its precepts in action. Instead of hunting grounds, you have sacred sites that you use for your operations.

* The cultist PCs gain mundane upgrades throughout play like a Ritual Sanctum in their Lair which serves as an arcane workshop for occult practices and rituals or Ordained which gives them an extra Trauma box because their minds have been opened and conditioned to the great and terrible things beyond the mortal veil.

* The Cult itself (the faith here) is its own character which is built out with all manner of thematic abilities that augment the Cult's pursuit of spreading the faith and bringing their Forgotten God/dess back to Duskvol (or at least making it manifest to terrible ends, profoundly perturbing the status quo in the interim). Such as:

Conviction
Each PC gains an additional vice: Worship. When you indulge this vice and bring a pleasing sacrifice, you don’t overindulge if you clear excess stress. In addition, your deity will assist any one action roll you make—from now until you indulge this vice again.

What sort of sacrifice does your deity find pleasing?

* The Cult's Claim Map gives them thematic, mechanically potent and linked goals to pursue as below:



* The setting itself is deeply bent against your faith spreading and your God/dess manifesting as (a) there is a state religion (The Church of Ecstasy) dedicated to the Emperor (therefor what you're doing is heresy), (b) they are allied with powerful figures (the City Council, the Leviathan Hunters, the Spirit Wardens) but they also have enemies that you can ally with, and (c) there are other competing cults of demon and deity alike that you will compete with for spread of your faith and for ascendency. The Faction game will find you ticking +1s or -1s with these groups regularly so that you'll make allegiances of temporary convenience and enemies to go to war with and put down. You'll be dealing with multiple Faction Clocks for the machinations of all of these parties during Downtime and for the waves you make/damage you do to the setting. These Clocks will tick each play loop with each having entangled consequences for your Cult, your deity, your membership, bystanders, and the brick/mortar/filth (actual and moral) of the place you inhabit.


Dogs in the Vineyard handles this another way. Torchbearer another. Dungeon World another. Stonetop yet another (like Dungeon World but with a discrete playbook for your Steading and related moves just like your Cult playbook in Blades).


So 5e may want to ask and answer at least some of these kinds of thematically and logistically appropriate questions, systemitize them with conjoined mechanical and thematic heft (so decision-points are all fed by this stuff, intersect this stuff, and churn out this stuff) for a game interested in engaging with that sort of material in a meaty way.

I would think for 5e, something like the Blades route or Stonetop route with the Faith being an actual PC sheet and giving each member of the group some kind of gestalt abilities, attendant goals w/ thematically and mechanically robust rewards, and then attendant responsibilities and fallout related to it attaining those goals and spreading your faith (in a world that inevitably has supernatural competitors for that exact same space). And supernatural and logistical consequences should be always lurking, transparent (table-facing), and potent so the players know what is at stake as the push at the world and the world pushes back.

tetrasodium said:

Why does it matter? It seems like your missing a step. What impact on play does congregation size have on gameplay? Do they count as some kind of follower/henchmen type rules addition? Are they being used towards the old epic level handbook deific levels based on followers?... didn't that need huge numbers? Did I miss something?

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And, poof, we're right back at combat. After all, followers and henchmen are pretty much all about combat. "how does it affect gameplay" is pretty much a balance question related to combat in D&D.

The idea that a cleric in a D&D world would do something that has nothing related to combat and everything related to his or her faith is completely unanswered. As @Ovinomancer very rightly pointed out, a GP/Week answer doesn't actually do anything to answer my question. But, social mechanics in the game certainly could. There are a number of games where you can have lengthy social challenges (on the scales of days, weeks or even years) that will answer exactly this question.

Look, everyone has flat out stated that my question cannot be answered in 5e. It simply can't because there are no mechanics for it. It's 100% DM fiat. Which is fine if that's what you want, but, it does demonstrate pretty clearly that the game of D&D is mostly about combat.

Umbran said:

I've given a system that gives you four levels of result, which is sufficient for descriptive or narrative terms.

It is poor design to make up quantitative results before knowing what those quantities are supposed to be used for. You have not actually stated a problem that requires an exact headcount, so I don't see a need to give an exact headcount.

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Wait, what?

I asked How many people can I convince to come to my church? How is that not a need for an exact (or even approximate) headcount?

tetrasodium said:

If a player comes to me asking me to create some kind of whole new rules structure like you are asking for and keeps demanding I give them raw numbers while avoiding providing the sort of details I tell them I need about their goals before we can have a discussion I'll just flat out tell them no in no uncertain terms.

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And, therein lies the question. Why do you have to create a whole new rules structure?

Because there is nothing in D&D that answers the question. Whereas, in many other systems THERE ARE mechanics in place to do so.

Which is, rolling it back to the original point of the thread, why I brought it up in the first place. D&D will tell me a hundred different ways to kill a monster. I can engage in a shopping list of mechanics in every single combat. And, frequently, there will be answers for most of the questions that come up in combat. It's very rare that the rules are completely silent on something that comes up. It does happen, true, the rules can't cover everything, but, the rules do cover most of it.

But, as soon as we step away from combat, the rules are largely absent. A cleric proselytizing to the masses isn't some weird, corner case concept. This is a pretty common thing for a cleric to do. But, in D&D, it isn't. Heck, you're arguing why a player would even bother wanting to do this. Which is the point I was making all along - the system guides players towards what the system wants you to do. The D&D system wants you to go kill stuff. So, that's what you do. Asking to so something that has nothing to do with killing stuff, and D&D is zero help to you, and DM's are often openly hostile to the idea - to the point of flat out telling players no to an idea because the rules don't exist for resolving it.

This whole conversation is just proving the basic point I was making all the way along. That gamers who have grown up playing mostly or only D&D have a specifically locked in view of how RPG's work.

There are a bajillion free RPG's out there. For a long time, I made a point of trying to read a new one at least once a month, just to see what new ideas there were out there. It really, really is eye opening.

@Hussar seems to be saying the same things I would at this point.

As I've pointed out, it's all a cash cow milking anyways..
Example: My FLGS runs a full weekend of AL every other week. If it ran weekly, it would still be filled.
On an off week, in an attempt to pitch the C7 Doctor Who RPG, we had a demo game. I signed up because I was curious about the system and wanted to see it in action. We could barely run the game. The GM had to double up as a couple characters because there was almost 0 (zero) interest from the regular role players.
What I've learned from this, and interacting with other groups in my area , is that if it's not 5e or Pathfinder, there is absolutely no interest in any other RPG. I actually ran the AL for about the first month, with some help from the players, and I recieved high marks for what I brought to the table. When I've attempted to bring out other games, there has been no interest whatsoever. Nobody cares about the games unless you can be MURDER HOBOES I think that Hussar has it right when they point out that any form of DnD play locks you into the mindset, and the conditioning of such leads to getting the most XP from combat, something that's been built into the system since 1st Ed.
I may have to ping people elsewhere who were in since Day 1, or have long associations with the game(s) and see what they say.

FrogReaver said:

Out of curiousity. Suppose there was a single game out there that was significantly better than D&D for every player. What's a reasonable explanation for why such a game wouldn't became more popular than D&D?

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DMs can't stand it?