D&D General A History of Violence: Killing in D&D


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In it's essence, D&D is about conquering the wild frontier. Adventurers go out of comfort of civilization and deal with problems people have there cause there are no one else to deal with it.

Also, since it's game, we have benefit of emotional and mental detachment. It's just pixels on the screen, it's just some numbers on the piece of paper. You have fun, make pretend, "kill" stuff, have some fun, go home.

Violence as form of entertainment has been part of our civilization since forever. This is just "pretended" violence.
 

I got to thinking about combat as skill challenge and from there getting rid of the attack roll entirely.

If PCs need to infiltrate a giants fortress, rescue the prisoners and recover the stolen artifacts, they could use stealth to sneak pass the monsters or diplomacy/intimidation to cower them or architectural skills to navigate or they could use Athletics to muscle their way through - which is the nearest you'd get to violence - You're emphasizing skillfull choices to achieve goals rather than violence merely to slay the enemy
 

I got to thinking about combat as skill challenge and from there getting rid of the attack roll entirely.

If PCs need to infiltrate a giants fortress, rescue the prisoners and recover the stolen artifacts, they could use stealth to sneak pass the monsters or diplomacy/intimidation to cower them or architectural skills to navigate or they could use Athletics to muscle their way through - which is the nearest you'd get to violence - You're emphasizing skillful choices to achieve goals rather than violence merely to slay the enemy

Except on days when the dice gods frown upon you, and you fail your stealth, diplomacy, intimidation and athletics roles. ;)
 

Good thing we're talking about an imaginary world then, where we're all acting like fictional characters and no one is actually getting hurt.
And yet...

We've been having lots of discussions about the systems of violence that exist in the game. Genocide. Slavery. Red cards. Implied SA in the origin of half -orcs. You can't say there ain't nothing there.

And to be clear, I don't believe that the game itself is harmful to its players. But I do have concerns that Western media is quick to justify lethal force against people it deems Evil, and D&D is built squarely on the tropes of violence being the best solution to the majority of conflicts.
 



And yet...

We've been having lots of discussions about the systems of violence that exist in the game. Genocide. Slavery. Red cards. Implied SA in the origin of half -orcs. You can't say there ain't nothing there.

And to be clear, I don't believe that the game itself is harmful to its players. But I do have concerns that Western media is quick to justify lethal force against people it deems Evil, and D&D is built squarely on the tropes of violence being the best solution to the majority of conflicts.
maybe violence is not the best choice always or anytime, but it's sure fastest and most efficient most of the time.
 

And yet...

We've been having lots of discussions about the systems of violence that exist in the game. Genocide. Slavery. Red cards. Implied SA in the origin of half -orcs. You can't say there ain't nothing there.

And to be clear, I don't believe that the game itself is harmful to its players. But I do have concerns that Western media is quick to justify lethal force against people it deems Evil, and D&D is built squarely on the tropes of violence being the best solution to the majority of conflicts.
I understand your concern, but quite frankly I don't see a solution to it, other than abandoning D&D and a lot of other TTRPGs descended from its philosophy. There's nothing else to be done IMO, since changing the game sufficiently to alleviate your concern would render it a fundamentally different and, I feel, less generally fun and therefore salable to the number of people required for financial viability. In short, it wouldn't be D&D anymore even to the degree the current edition is compared to editions past.

My suggestion is to change the game at your table to suit you, or play something that fits your concerns better than a game founded on killing your enemies and taking their stuff.
 

On topic of why combat rules dominate PHB(and other books)

Combat in D&D is very defined and PR part is very loose.

Most DMs will give room to improvise in most RP situations but at combat, what you have on your character sheet is what you have.

That is why most players when they have a choice in what to spend class resources, they spend it on combat feat(ures) or spells.

One house rules would be to give a number of RP focused feats to all characters equal to prof bonus.
Extra skills, extra expertise, non-attack cantrips, exploration mechanics.

when you have tools to use outside combat, you might just want to sometimes think about using them.
 

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