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.

 

[BenjaminPey]

Sure, rules can be taylored to a playstyle and favor one over the others. But who says one should always use the best-suited tool?Most of RPG actions take place outside the rules, anyway, especially with CaT. When the paladin has a choice between breaking is oath or killing his father, what rules are there to guide him? That's pure theatrics. The rules will just tell you the outcome (maybe that's the father who will kill his daughter after all). The drama is all yours and ripe for the taking. You just have to build the situations for it to flourish. (Prewritten characters are my secret sauce, there.)

And I'd argue 5e is quite fine as a CaT engine, as multiple APs showed us, even though one can of course get better suited tools, tools explicitly made for CaT. But you can make good races with ordinary cars, the existence of sport cars doesn't prevent this. 5e gives you flashy powers and times to shine (not a given in CoC), it ensures evevery character will be able to add something to a fight (again, not a given in many RPGs, think Shadowrun for instance), and of course it gives you the basic architecture needed: just tell me what you do, and we'll make it work (or spectacularly fail), with combat powers, skill checks, or saving throws.

Even a tool like CR, that one might put firmly in the CaS spot, can be useful for CaT. You just use it differently: to convey the good signals when, for instance, you're just playing an official campaign (so no CR calculations) and want to help the players acting along the disparity of power on display. Or you can use it to build encounters at the most suited and needed level of tension for such and such scene, rather than as a guide on "how to completly deplete PC's ressource in a day". Maybe the paladin's father is especially weak, making it all the most tempting to exert your power and become a faithful paricide, who knows?

I play in a lot of games and am not DnD-centric at all, but my DnD games are CaT all the way. That's just the way we play it, without adding anything, and playing more or less RAW.

 

[Scott Christian]

If CaT is the same as both CaW and CaS, as you state in the quote, that implies you see CaW and CaS as being the same.

They're not.

I think your inference is incorrect here. What I said does not imply that they are the same. As the OP said, there is crossover.

So picture the old Venn diagram. Now, where the two circles meet in the middle, that is where the circle for combat as theater is.

 

[Minigiant]

Sure, rules can be taylored to a playstyle and favor one over the others. But who says one should always use the best-suited tool?Most of RPG actions take place outside the rules, anyway, especially with CaT. When the paladin has a choice between breaking is oath or killing his father, what rules are there to guide him? That's pure theatrics. The rules will just tell you the outcome (maybe that's the father who will kill his daughter after all). The drama is all yours and ripe for the taking. You just have to build the situations for it to flourish. (Prewritten characters are my secret sauce, there.

I'd argue some of that isnt Combat as Theater. Its just Theater.

Combat as Theater still means Combat. Combat is still happening.

Its just that the mechanics help support it. There are still Combat rules being followed.

 

[BenjaminPey]

I disagree. There is combat still. And it is theatre.

 

[Steady Vane]

Agree on earlier editions focusing on Combat as War. They had multiple rules to avoid or handle combat. Reaction rolls meant every meeting was not a combat if you could help it, hard-coded fleeing rules meant you could escape if combat went poorly, and the morale rules helped as well. All meant to give multiple ways the multiple combats you were expected to overcome could go.

Combat as sport said forget that, every individual combat should be balanced upon. Why compare combats to each other when you can instead compare the combats to the player's build choices? Combat as sport has room for every PC's combat build to shine. Combat as War instead cared about making combat varied through other factors. 4e, the nadir of Combat as Sport, faced allegations of roteness and samyness in long stretches of combat encounters. The PC builds were rube goldberg machines meant to fire once, then level up and change.

Combat as Theater instead says that the story of combat is what matters. Focus can shift onto whom makes sense for the meta reason outside the combat. The combat is about being cool or highlighting a specific character or feeling aimed for. The combat is curated specifically, instead of being random as in War, or with clear even rules as with Sport. In theater, you shift to follow whomever is important for the scene. Daggerheart is probably the most Combat as Theater forward game currently out, while 5e kind of is since it says the DM should juggle combat to make it satisfying instead of letting the chips fall where they may. 5e lacks more formal support other than telling the DM to wing it however.

I will say there is enough randomness in how CR works with the monsters in the manual that 5e also can kind of approximate Combat as War's randomness. In a certain sense, but once again without the structural support. The style benefited from fleeing/morale/reaction roles in the early editions, as well as detailed leadership and group structure rules support.

5e does all the styles partly while lacking the support for each of them mostly. Famously called everyone's second favorite D&D edition for a reason. It gets halfway there in each style, so no matter which you want it gets halfway there