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

 

[Aldarc]

Systems that attempt to gamify the role-playing element aren't really role-playing at all, they are roll-playing.

And people who claim that other people playing these systems are roll-playing and not role-playing are called "Gatekeepers," and they are likely trying to sell you on their toxic ideas on the "One True Way" to roleplay. I think our hobby would be much better off without people trying to police what does or doesn't count as roleplaying.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Yep, my pet peeve with D&D is that (depending on edition ofc) you can get really creative in terms of combat and be rewarded for being prepared, using clever tactics etc. On top of combat having good dynamics and being statistically more even by requiring multiple die rolls.
And that all of this is strongly supported by the rules.

But as soon as you're trying to persuade someone with a good tale, you better have trained persuasion + high cha or a really good die roll or else you'll probably fail instantly in a single roll. Which is not really dynamic or interesting. Unless you have a DM who can handle skill rolls in an engaging way.

In 5e, this is easily cured by a DM granting auto-success when a PC tries to persuade an NPC with a good tale that hits upon points that are important to the motivations and bond/ideal/flaw of said NPC.

 

[Nebulous]

Have a look at "The Role of Dice" in the 5e DMG and in particular "Ignoring the dice". We play mostly that way, reserving the dice rolls for when there is something to be gained by being more random.

I think many tables would be better off by ignoring the dice. I have seen way too many instances where the DM asks for a roll - it ends poorly because of d20 - and something that should have been simply logical to know or interpret is ruined. I think part of this is due to that skills are listed on the sheet, and people want to use their assets, but the applying that same random chance to skills as you do to swinging a sword has detrimental effects sometimes.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I guess the question is what percentage of combat is MtG?

Well, you could easily run a campaign where your planeswalker spends most of their time travelling the planes and engaging with the locals. You don't need rules for that, it can all be handled with roleplay. Thankfully the rules of the system get out of your way for that, so it can be handled organically through the player and GM. Acquisition of new spells and summons can be handled the same way. Then when you do get into a fight with another planeswalker, you can bust out the mechanics of the game. Clearly, MtG doesn't have a focus on combat, it's just how most players play the game.

Okay, that started out as a joke, but now I'm seriously seeing potential for that kind of game system...

 

[Lyxen]

I didn't say D&D was the only system that has a mechanical focus on combat, I meant that for people who have played systems where combat has the same level of abstraction as other areas, the focus that D&D has on combat feels incredibly obvious.

It's not exactly what you said, you said: "The conceit that combat requires more rules than non-combat activities is an incredibly D&D-centric take"

And the only thing I've shown is that lots of games, including games whose traditional focus is not combat (e.g. CoC) have actually more rules for combat than other activities. And that's simply because combat is inherently more complex unless in very abstract games.

Call of Cthulu may have detailed rules for combat, but it's quite possible to make a character who starts terrible at combat and NEVER gets better, despite improving in other areas. And the system strongly implies through its words and mechanics that engaging in combat is a failure-state.

You certainly can, and despite this, there are lots of rules from combat, they are more detailed and take more space...

 

[Scott Christian]

In 5e, this is easily cured by a DM granting auto-success when a PC tries to persuade an NPC with a good tale that hits upon points that are important to the motivations and bond/idea/flaw of said NPC.

This is always a good idea.

 

[Lyxen]

I guess the question is what percentage of combat is MtG?

100% PvP.

 

[Lyxen]

But mechanically I think it still favors combat (not surprising, for a game derived from wargames).

Just pointing out that almost every single RPG is derived from wargames at this stage, since they derived from D&D...

Potentially unpopular opinion -- I think older D&D versions ( BX D&D and its OSR clones) might be better choices for combat-lite games. Fewer combat mechanics on a character sheet make fewer demands on "I have this cool ability I never use" for players.

But also no skills (which are mostly non-combat), also the general tone of the rules was way more about combat (Not even mentioning the incentives for experience). For me, 5e is about the same as BECMI / AD&D in terms of combat, which is why we fell back into 5e with glee.

 

[Lyxen]

I think many tables would be better off by ignoring the dice. I have seen way too many instances where the DM asks for a roll - it ends poorly because of d20 - and something that should have been simply logical to know or interpret is ruined. I think part of this is due to that skills are listed on the sheet, and people want to use their assets, but the applying that same random chance to skills as you do to swinging a sword has detrimental effects sometimes.

It's certainly our perspective, the section on the Role of Dice is actually nice in that it also points out the drawbacks of that approach, and in particular a DM's arbitrariness. It depends very much on the DM, but some tables seem to be very concerned by a DM's impartiality, in particular, in an age where "player agency" has become very important to some...

 

[Lylandra]

Have a look at "The Role of Dice" in the 5e DMG and in particular "Ignoring the dice". We play mostly that way, reserving the dice rolls for when there is something to be gained by being more random.

Yep, we do that as well and it is satisfying. But if you look at this from another perspective, then it is yet another step towards D&D rules being all combat, no skills