D&D General Combat as War vs. Sport and a Missing Third Mode

[Umbran]

You don't need to tweak the rules, go easy on the players or allow for receoveries or whatever to go full Combat as Theatre, IMO. It's a state of mind rather than a bending of the rules.

Taken to its logical conclusion, this suggests that rules are always playstyle agnostic.

But, they are not.

 

[Umbran]

The way the different combat types are described are also kind of the way the editions are presumed to approach the game in general

Go figure. The initial game was made with some assumptions of play. Later games, were built with new assumptions, to explore playstyles not yet considered in the early years.

 

[Aldarc]

Edit: Removed any mention of "Professional Wrestling" from my original post because some people can't let it go.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Taken to its logical conclusion, this suggests that rules are always playstyle agnostic.

But, they are not.

I think one can argue that5e, at least, doesn't really push you toward any of CaW, CaS, or CaT - other editions certainly did, but 5e manages to split the difference.

Early editions definitely favored Combat as War, by making actual fighting something you didn't want to do. It was brutal, expensive in terms of resources, and not directly rewarded. XP for gold is one of the main factors here - combat will cost you hit points (which were harder to recover) and skipping it didn't reduce your overall rewards. I'm not sure if this is fully intentional or just the only way Gary imagined the game being played.

4e was certainly deliberately written with a Combat as Sport playstyle in mind - the strong focus on balance really emphasizes this.

And while I suppose 5e does the most to support Combat as Theater, that's only because earlier editions did nothing. You need to look outside of DnD to find real mechanical support for CaT - Masks: A New Generation really goes all-in on the idea with several core mechanics (such as their attributes) that really lean into it.

You can, of course, play in an unintended style, but with 5e I don't think any of the three require fighting against the system itself. This may have even been the intent of the design team.

 

[Umbran]

I think one can argue that5e, at least, doesn't really push you toward any of CaW, CaS, or CaT - other editions certainly did, but 5e manages to split the difference.

Nah. 5e is pretty well targeted at Sport.

You can probably get to War by removing a lot of healing elements. Getting to Theatre takes more work, as it calls for adding stuff that isn't native to the engine.