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

 

[Morrus]

I can attest to this, given that I have been running a 5E game for over 2 years now and no one's bond/flaw/ideal has been mentioned even once - heck, I am not even sure the players chose any when they made their characters!

Yeah, in all the years since 5E came out, I've never seen anybody mention bonds/flaws/ideals in-game.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Yeah, in all the years since 5E came out, I've never seen anybody mention bonds/flaws/ideals in-game.

Again a nice thing but not connected to the main game loop.

 

[Parmandur]

So, you just refuse to recognize that differences of scale exist? Or that novelty isn’t binary?

You suggested extreme novelty. That isn’t the case.

And again, none of this means that the game is “90% combat”. It means, at most, that the adventures have so far been designed to require some amount of combat in order to complete by the book. Heck, it doesn’t even “prove” that the adventures are 90% (or even 50% or more) combat. It literally only shows that previous adventures requires some amount of combat. That’s it.

I'd say that in most published Adventures, it's less a need to be wall to wall combat, and more usually having high stakes and villainous NPCs that aren't really open to a reason. That's not the rules, that's just DMing priorities: give easy "bad guys" to DMs who can drive forward a narrative.

 

[overgeeked]

I was a fan of 4e but I could never get my head around how skill challenges were supposed to work. They never sat right with me.

They were presented much better in the DMG2, in the Dragon/Dungeon magazines, later supplements, and the Essentials line.

But I agree. As presented, even in their best version, they're incredibly restrictive. I like extended contests so I use a looser, more narrative-focused skill challenge system. Seems to work well enough.

 

[dytrrnikl]

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 about combat.

Head of D&D Ray Winninger tweeted:


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

I don’t believe the 5E D&D mechanics would be a good fit for Doctor Who. They’d be much better off using some form of Modiphius’ 2d20 mechanics, maybe something akin to the iteration used for Star Trek Adventures. Using 5E D&D mechanics just seems like a way to try to pander, but that’s me and by no means indicative of anyone else.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, in all the years since 5E came out, I've never seen anybody mention bonds/flaws/ideals in-game.

Wow, everyone I've ever played 5E with has leaned into those hard.

"There's nothing I like more than a good mystery" from the Sage Background has been a long running injoke for my friends & family.

 

[Morrus]

I don’t believe the 5E D&D mechanics would be a good fit for Doctor Who. They’d be much better off using some form of Modiphius’ 2d20 mechanics, maybe something akin to the iteration used for Star Trek Adventures. Using 5E D&D mechanics just seems like a way to try to pander, but that’s me and by no means indicative of anyone else.

Or maybe they could use their own system they developed for it and have been using for 10 years? Which they are.

The point wasn't 'what system would be best?', the point was 'they already use another system and people want 5E'.

 

[jmartkdr2]

The conflict between social resolution mechanics and D&D is not one of roleplaying, but rather one of control. If the GM is perfectly fine letting players direct the direction of play, then a mechanic is useful -- it resolves whether or not this interaction is one where the players get what they want or if it's one they don't and instead suffer a consequence. If there's a story, though, or a plan, or the GM has an idea they want to have happen with this guy, then such mechanics become a hinderance -- they reduce the ability of the GM to direct.

Note I'm not saying one of these is better or worse than the other -- that's up to individuals to determine their preference for themselves. I can defend the latter -- GM control is important if you do have a story to tell (and that's not a bad thing at all) and for things like pacing and balance of encounters, or if social engagements are not meant to be the primary flux of the game. Also, games like 5e actively punish "winging it" or letting play determine itself, because it serves no assistance to the GM to quickly be able to follow such play but rather works better when the GM has a strong framework of prep, including NPC motivations and activities.

This isn't wrong, but it isn't where I think the main issue with social systems lies: most social scenes aren't challenges, so even a great, well-understood and flexible skill challenge system would be inappropriate.

 

[overgeeked]

Doesn’t follow.

It does. You don't publish adventures that prominently feature 1/3 of your game design space and essentially ignore the other 2/3 of your game design space. Which is what the published 5E modules do.

Few 5e adventures are purely combat.

It's not about absolutes. Take it easy.

In fact, I doubt any are. They all require some combat, but how much combat is assumed by the adventure varies, and even the most violent adventures also require exploration and interaction.

And look at the amount of time those take compared to each other. A social interaction is maybe 5 minutes of roleplaying followed by a single die roll. Which represents anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 months to 5 years of in-game time. Exploration is maybe 5 minutes of back-and-forth between the DM and players (typical play loop) followed by maybe a single die roll. Which can also represent anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 months to 5 years of in-game time. Then there's combat. Depending on the group and their dynamic it can take 20-30 minutes or more to play through 6 seconds of in-game time. And combats often last an hour or more, unless they're comically easy.

Okay. But they aren’t. Every single aspect of the game’s player options has significant non-combat design space.

Only if you squint and hold it sideways.

The rest of the mechanics are also a mix. At most, it might be accurate to say that the monster mechanics are 90% combat. And a weakness of 5e is monster design specifically because the combat/non combat ratio doesn’t match the rest of the game, leaving NPCs nearly useful in the other pillars, and leaving PCs just vastly out of the league of most NPCs of appropriate CR for combat.

But that dynamic couldn’t be the case if the game mechanics were actually combat.

Because you're starting from a false premise and begging the question. You assume the conclusion, in other words. The majority of character stuff is specifically and only about combat. That you can get creative and use them in odd ways outside of combat doesn't change that. The majority of spells are pure combat. The majority of class features are pure combat. The default XP system is all about murdering things, earning meta-tokens, then when you have murdered enough things and gathered enough murder-token, you are rewarded with an increase in combat power that allows you to murder even tougher things, to collect even more murder-tokens. Yes, you can ignore that, but as said a dozen times or more, that cuts out the majority of the game. There are, of course, tucked away options to allow you to award XP based on milestones, but they're almost dead on the vine. "Go ahead and give out XP whenever you feel like it" compared to detailed maths to determine exactly how tough a combat should be for a given number of PCs of a given level, how many murder-tokens each monster is worth, how many murder-tokens each PC should get after murdering those monsters, how many combats should be in a day, etc. To say that D&D isn't a combat-focused game is to ignore all the bits of the game that are just about combat. Which is the majority of the game. Yes, non-combat things exist, but they take up a minimal amount of space. Hence the view that D&D is a largely combat-focused game. Because it is. And again, that doesn't mean people actually play it at the table that way.

 

[Greg Benage]

I'd say most of the rules are combat-related or combat-specific. Most of the rules for Diplomacy are about combat, even though combat may be the least important part of the game. "Structure" in general is more useful in some game spaces than others, and where you draw those lines is responsible for a lot arguments and edition warring.