How important is combat?

[mmadsen]

Man I miss that type of gaming. Somehow the magic disappeared for many of my groups and its really hard to get back

You might want to play a free Kriegsspiel-style game, where the DM adjudicates everything, with the help of a die roll, but without rulebooks.

 

[billd91]

I think it's important to have a robust combat sub-game within D&D. It has pretty much always had one. But even more important is the need for D&D, as a whole, to have something else to it that firmly distinguishes it from a tabletop skirmish game. It needs ambition to be something other than just combat and that means inclusion of the elements necessary to simulate a fantasy story with players taking the part of personalized elements in that story. The exact elements necessary may be up to debate, individual gaming groups may choose to de-emphasize them to focus on the combat sub-game, but without them I think D&D would fail to achieve the ambitions that got people playing individual figures instead of full army units in the first place.

 

[Mengu]

This completely depends on play style. In the last 3 sessions of my campaign, we had one combat encounter, which took about an hour and a half to resolve. One combat encounter a session is otherwise fairly typical, occasionally two, never have time for three. It's definitely not 90% of our time. But there are games that are combat 90% of the time, which is also perfectly fine and enjoyable.

I don't think an edition of D&D will ever dictate the amount of time spent role playing vs combat. That's always up to the group. What it can dictate is the amount of time it takes to resolve an encounter. And in that area, there is certainly room for improvement.

As for the title of the thread... Yes, combat is important, likely the most important component of the game regardless of how much time is actually spent in combat. That set of rules is vital for conflict resolution.

 

[Keldryn]

Combat is important, but it's far from the most important aspect of the game. I certainly don't want to spend the majority of the game session engaged in combat.

I just saw a quote in a thread where someone said combat occupied 90% of their campaign. This comment jarred me a bit, because in my best campaigns I think we are pushing 20-30% combat. It makes me wonder how it is possible to unify these two play styles.

I think 4e sort of exacerbated the problem my mostly only providing rules for combat and adventures that provided little in non combat challenge (except for the odd skill challenge).

I think that 4e exacerbated the problem, not because of a focus on combat rules, but simply because combat takes a very long time, even at 1st level. Grid-based combat, frequent forced movement, interrupts and triggered actions, high monster hit point totals, and each player having half a dozen options each turn make for a tactically rich game, but it also makes combat take a very long time.

In the first few 4e sessions that I ran, I don't think that we were able to finish any combat encounters in less than an hour. Some of them took 90 minutes. After a bit of a break, I incorporated some of the Essentials material and newer monster math. We all had a bit more experience with the game and these changes probably helped, but the encounters were still taking about 45 minutes on average (level 2 party at this point).

We would play for about 4 to 5 hours, once every two or three weeks. Three encounters in a session would end up taking 75% of the time we had available. Because each combat took the better part of an hour, the players would often have a discussion about "okay, so what were we doing again?"

I ran a couple of sessions of Basic D&D and one session of AD&D 1e for this same group, and we didn't have any of these problems. Battles took about 10 to 15 minutes on average, and we could have half a dozen combats in a session without taking more than about 25% of the total play time.

The format used in published 4e adventures also bears some responsibility, as the presentation really draws focus to the encounters. Even one of the better 4e adventures has a situation where the PCs fight a group of enemies outside a portal, then use the key on the portal to teleport into a room and fight some more enemies. Then they go into the adjacent room and fight the "boss" encounter. There are no other rooms in this "dungeon," so they just teleport back. That sequence would take us an entire evening to play through, and there is virtually no gameplay outside of three back-to-back encounters.

 

[trancejeremy]

At the risk of making a video/computer game analogy, I think 2e and previous editions were more akin to Wizardry or Bard's Tale or Might and Magic.

You fought a lot, but it was over very quickly.

3e/4e is more like Tactics Ogre (or Final Fantasy Tactics or most tactical RPGs).

Neither is bad, it's just different.

Actually, the same thing has sort of occured in an MMORPG I play - Atlantica.

The original combat system was sort of a graphical representation of the old Wizardry style games - you had 9 characters in your party, lined up in three rows, facing off against opponents that were the same. Only the front row could attack with melee weapons, so you had casters and ranged guys in the back.

Battles take anywhere from about 2 minutes to 15 minutes (if you are fighting someone else)

But then a couple years ago they introduced a Tactical Battle System, where you had a big map and moved your guys freely. It sort of split the base of the game - some people liked the new system, others hated it. But at any rate, it simply too much longer because it made combat much deeper.

 

[Lwaxy]

With the exception of epic battles, most of my players dislike combat. In the last seasons, the only real combat we had was a massive siege encounter, everyone against some bad dragons and a skirmish with some orcs-gone-mad.

So we'd really like more development in non-combat areas.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Is D&D "about" combat? An interesting poll and discussion from not too long ago. The prevailing answer was no, but there was a significant dissenting opinion, and strong arguments presented on both sides.

I think that D&D wouldn't be complete without a substantial combat element, but I don't think it's inherently the center of the game. Compare to the fiction it's based on. Would a LotR movie be complete without some big battles? No. But the story is about many other things; the battles are more of a backdrop.

You can play a D&D game that's a straight dungeoncrawl or gladiatorial championship or what have you, but you can also play a political intrigue story or exploration/investigation or any number of other styles that have little to no fighting.

As a whole, I think D&D is a mix of combat and non-combat elements; I would say it's typical to spend anywhere from a 20% to 80% of game time on combat. If combat rules aren't dynamic, exciting, plausible, and user friendly, there's going to be a lot of angry D&D players. If you create a game that's just about combat, you're not going to have a lot of players at all.

 

[Frostmarrow]

Combat dots the i. Note that the i is taller than the dot.

 

[pemerton]

I just saw a quote in a thread where someone said combat occupied 90% of their campaign. This comment jarred me a bit, because in my best campaigns I think we are pushing 20-30% combat. It makes me wonder how it is possible to unify these two play styles.

One way is via a universal conflict resolution mechanic. HeroWars/Quest is an example of such a mechanic.

But I think this would be an unlikely direction for WotC's designers to take.

I think 4e sort of exacerbated the problem my mostly only providing rules for combat

I am correct in stating at least that 4e greatly diminished the out of combat rules and powers players had, right?

What you say here is pretty contentious. I'm of the view, for example, that 4e has the strongest non-combat action resolution mechanics of any edition of D&D, because of it's comprehensive stystem for DC-setting and conflict resolution via skill challenges.

But some people think it is weak in this department because (for example) it lacks a particular action resolution subsystem for weaving sails and building ships.

It depends, in part, on your comparison class. I was re-reading my Moldvay Basic book the other day, and it has action resolution mechanics for finding secret doors, for opening doors, for finding and triggering traps, for NPC reactions, and for combat. It also has some fairly loosely described spells and magic items, and thief abilities. Everything else is to be adjudicated by the GM, either on a percentile roll basis or a stat check basis.

Despite the greater length of the books, the AD&D rulebooks don't add a great deal to Basic as far as action resolution is concerned, and especially non-combat action resolution, other than increasing the length of the spell lists.

 

[Ahnehnois]

What you say here is pretty contentious. I'm of the view, for example, that 4e has the strongest non-combat action resolution mechanics of any edition of D&D, because of it's comprehensive stystem for DC-setting and conflict resolution via skill challenges.

Well there's definitely two sides to the issue. Skill challenges and rituals, for example do codify noncombat actions arguably more than other versions of D&D. There's two other big issues that I see. One is that resolution mechanics can actually discourage roleplaying the underlying action and reduce the amount of game time spent on it. This has always been the argument with the 3.X Diplomacy skill. If it is implied that a successful skill challenge can resolve a situation, there isn't much incentive for a player to think about or act out the scenario (obviously DMing will greatly affect how this plays out).

Another is that while the system as a whole describes noncombat actions, the characters themselves are more combat oriented by default. As is being discussed extensively elsewhere, 4e redefined the classes using a new set of combat roles; the roles now being postulated as the fundamental basis of the classes. Character classes classically seen as less combat oriented (rogue and bard, for example) were remade under these combat roles, while NPC classes like expert and aristocrat were not included. Also, skill points were replaced with a less robust system of of trained skills, and there was a substantial degree of skill consolidation-especially of noncombat skills. Many non-combat spells were changed to rituals, and thus were no longer part of the typical caster's daily repetoire. Great complexity was added to combat and combat abilities; fighters were required to select from an extensive list of powers, tactical movement and modifiers were emphasized by these powers. NPC and monster stats were redefined to focus on combat statistics. On the whole, the rules for characters were greatly shifted towards combat.

So while the statement about non-combat resolution mechanics is true, I think the broader reality is thus:

I am correct in stating at least that 4e greatly diminished the out of combat rules and powers players had, right?