D&D 5E Is D&D 90% Combat?

In response to Cubicle 7’s announcement that their next Doctor Who role playing game would be powered by D&D 5E, there was a vehement (and in some places toxic) backlash on social media. While that backlash has several dimensions, one element of it is a claim that D&D is mainly about combat.

Head of D&D Ray Winninger disagreed (with snark!), tweeting "Woke up this morning to Twitter assuring me that [D&D] is "ninety percent combat." I must be playing (and designing) it wrong." WotC's Dan Dillon also said "So guess we're gonna recall all those Wild Beyond the Witchlight books and rework them into combat slogs, yeah? Since we did it wrong."

So, is D&D 90% combat?



And in other news, attacking C7 designers for making games is not OK.

D&D 5E - Doctors & Daleks - Cubicle 7 Brings Doctor Who to D&D 5E

Cubicle 7 -- makers of the official Doctor Who roleplaying game -- has announced that the Doctor will officially be coming to 5E soon under the name Doctors and Daleks. There are no dates or details yet, over than that the Doctors and Daleks Player's Guide will launch 'soon'. A NEW COMPANION...

www.enworld.org

 

[tetrasodium]

Talking and running require little or no rules.

That's a d&d conceit. Fate effectively treats both physical combat and social interactions with the same set of rules just with different stress tracks. Blades in the dark likewise has more rules for social stuff.

Where d&d fails miserably here though is Mary Sue style liberties where players simply declare any relevant character history details useful to the situation whenever they please with no cost to them & nothing but fiat for the gm to use against an out of control player holding up the "I'm a role player" shield to automatically put the gm on bad footing when it happens & they want or need to slap it down .

 

[antiwesley]

Two words:

MURDER HOBOES

I've played since First Edition, and the majority of my friends were indeed, murder hoboes. Any attempt at role playing were mainly related to in-character discussions on who to kill next, or how to do something with maximum blood shedding, really. This is why I stopped playing DnD and with that particular group, because they didn't want puzzles or mysteries. They just wanted combat.

Even to this day, a friend who was active in the development of DnD back in ye olden days, who has a name that rhymes with "MyMax" and hangs out with sordid individuals, refuses to role play, and DM's roll play, both in combat and INT checks for puzzles. "I don't run 'Theatre of the Mind' games" was his comment on that.

Yes, DnD is combat oriented, both because it was how it was created, and how a lot of people play it. It is guilty of having a mechanic that a lot of games do, where your 'role' rolls and your 'combat' rolls are the same mechanic.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If one counts by the number of words spent on the rules for a given pillar, then yes.

If one counts by how frequently given rules are invoked, then no.

D&D spends many many pages on rules that will rarely be used in any given game, and but a few sentences on rules that will be used over and over and over. Such is the way of things.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

No. Nowhere near.

Average game in 5e 30% - 40% of time spent in combat. And it was about the same in 1st edition. A lot more in 3rd edition, because 3rd edition combat was slow.

In Wild Beyond the Witchlight, which I am currently playing, so far around 10% of the time has been in combat.

 

[John R Davis]

To answer the question in the OP, IMO, D&D is all about combat. It's about avoiding combat, talking your way out of it, deciding when to initiate it, deciding how to win it once it's broken out, etc. Nearly everything in D&D revolves around combat in some sense. That doesn't mean you are fighting or in combat all the time, or even most the time. It's just the backdrop upon which everything else in the game revolves.

This probably very true. Maybe conflict is a better word. In Dr Who less than 50% is conflict ( running from the conflict, outwitting in the conflict etc) with a lot of mystery/discovery and social pillars

 

[Aldarc]

Most of the rules in D&D focus on combat because...that is what we need rules for.
Talking and running require little or no rules.

But does combat need comparatively more rules? It seems like an incredibly D&D-influenced idea that combat needs more rules for it. Other TTRPGs get along swimmingly with far less rules for combat, occasionally using the same rules for martial and social combat.

For example, in D&D there is often page after page of rules for various combat situations (e.g., grappling, disarming, tripping, etc.), particularly in 3e D&D and Pathfinder. In contrast, in Fate nearly all of this falls under the Create an Advantage action, which can be used equally for combat, exploration, or social scenes. It's all the same.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The thing a lot of people don't notice about Doctor Who - especially those too young to remember the classic series - is that whilst the Doctor prefers non-violent conflict resolution, it often comes down to fighting anyway.

The Doctor even has had several combat focussed companions - Jamie (fighter), The Brigadier (Warlord), Leela (barbarian/rogue), K9 (Steel Defender) and Ace (artificer).

James T. Kirk has a much better track record for successful non-violent conflict resolution than the Doctor!

 

[Aldarc]

Also, I enjoyed reading Rob Donoghue's take on what the d20 means for the design of a game. I'll link to the start of this thread, but some of the better points don't come until later.


You know what? I'll whet your appetite with a bit at the end of this thread as well:

 

[UngeheuerLich]

“One of the many novelties of this adventure is that the characters can accomplish their goals without resorting to violence—but only if they're clever. They can fight their way through the adventure as well, but the odds won't always be in their favor.” WBtW, p4

So either the designers know what the word novelty means or they don’t. I’m going to assume they do know what the word means, considering they are, in fact, professional writers.

That still does not equal to 90% combat before then.
Before that, maybe 90% of all premade encounters in adventure books were designed to be primarily resolved by combat.

That is something very different. In most of our games combats are far less common. Many situations that were planned for combat in premade adventures were actually resolved without one in our 5e party. In PotA many combat encounters were skipped by diplomacy or sneakyness, and actually I think any combat would have killed them.

I also admit, that a big part of the rules is written to resolve combat. That actually is a strength in my opinion. I have played games with more rules for out of combat and I find the "just set DC and roll" mechanic is so fast that out of combat really feels like out of combat and not combat by different means.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Also, I enjoyed reading Rob Donoghue's take on what the d20 means for the design of a game. I'll link to the start of this thread, but some of the better points don't come until later.


You know what? I'll whet your appetite with a bit at the end of this thread as well:

That is actually what we found out years before. It is always the variance of the roll in relation to the modifiers that defines a game.

In a game where you only want highly specialized people to try things, then you need low variance and relative high DCs (above die range) and few characters that can overcome the difference to assure a win. (shadow run 20years ago)

If you however want everyone to be able to contribute and try cool things, a higher variance with rather low DCs (within the die range). Then everyone can succeed and everyone can fail which results in a bit more chaos and more dynamic stories.

3.0 in the beginning leaned more towards the latter, but had seeds that pointed towards the former and 3.5 took that approach and made it the rule rather than the exception. And the later splat books made it worse and had DCs in the 40 range IIRC.

That actually solidified the idea, that you need certain party compositions to be able to succeed. You leanred that unless you have high charisma and diplomacy you should never try to do diplomacy, that made sneaking for heavy armor users impossible, and so on.

I am more than happy, that 5e dialed back. Probably this is the reason why it feels so old school (ADnD2e) to me. Because you are rewarded more for trying cool things than to be punished.

On a side note:
4e was so close to play cool too. But because you were considered untrained in "cool things", that were not your special powers, you learnt to use only those powers...