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

 

[Argyle King]

90%? No.

But I do think that a few central pieces (HP, 1-20 levels, etc) do skew toward a playstyle which favors direct combat as a primary method of problem solving and advancement.

 

[plisnithus8]

The game mechanics in the books, mostly yes.

The game as people actually play it at the table, mostly no.

As discussed in the Doctor Who thread, the fact that Wild Beyond the Witchlight had to be marketed as having the potential to be completed without combat and apparently has special rules written to allow this proves the general point.

What special rules are you talking about? And what do you mean by “apparently”?

 

[MichaelSomething]

When it comes to non combat, many people seem to want no rules/free form improvisation.

How do you write 50 pages about doing that??

 

[payn]

To me, this is the single biggest area of potential group incompatibility. If the 5e skill system feels like it was designed “wrong” to a given player, they are never going to have the same play experience as someone for whom it feels like the best iteration of skills in a D&D so far.

For me, the 5e skills are exactly right. Making them more detailed or specific would decrease their utility, IMO.

It's true, one man feature is another's bug.

 

[Cruentus]

When it comes to non combat, many people seem to want no rules/free form improvisation.

How do you write 50 pages about doing that??

Maybe through example? More explanation of "designer intent" as to how or why to apply principles that support social and exploration pillars? More detail on "journeying" or sandbox play? Suggestions on different ways to do social encounters using existing structures and then how to approach it without them? It does also go back to the "rules versus rulings" stuff. Do you want step by step on how to do something, or guidelines? Most of 5e is pretty specific in its language about how things work, but people are free to change it as they see fit.

Since a lot of discussions about 5e focus on DPR and optimized builds, and sussing out the multiclass combos that do more damage/lock down/control the field, etc., I'd say a preponderance of the evidence says its about combat. No one is asking how do "win" negotiations or even how to track. Skills like that are useless for DPR, unless it ties back to enhancing combat somehow.

I'd actually prefer the skill lists to be larger, and for characters to get more of them as they play (something I'm working on for my game). BUT, I also ascribe to the "don't roll unless you want to deal with a failure". Climb a wall, no problem. Talk your way past a guard, sure. Talk your way past a suspicious guard, that might be a roll if the result has consequences. Try to talk your way through a crowd that is already against you, nothing you roll will help them to change their minds. Etc. Offering more "answers" on the character sheet other than: Stat Bonuses, Damage, Damage Bonuses, Abilities (about doing damage and moving around the battlefield), Magic and Magic Items (about damage), would help players to think outside the combat box in tough situations. And then, you reward that. But its a slog to get past the kill everything mindset.

+edit+ Oh, and the ease of healing definitely feeds into the "combat is the way to go". There isn't much of a disincentive when you can heal up after a long rest, and most spells and impacts are but a save away from disappearing.

 

[RobJN]

From memory roughly 40% of every D&D PHB before 4e was made up of spells.

To be fair, most of that was minutiae about Wish and the various flavors of Polymorph spells.

 

[Staffan]

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)

This is a really good point, and probably part of why level-based skill DCs in Pathfinder 2 rub me the wrong way. They're designed so that you will have about a 50% chance of success with a moderate investment (and need to keep investing at least a little bit to maintain that). That's fine for combat when each individual roll is a small part of the whole fight, and having a small advantage in your favor over multiple rolls leads to almost certain victory. But when you're looking at a one-and-done roll like most skill checks, it feels extremely swingy.

 

[overgeeked]

What special rules are you talking about? And what do you mean by “apparently”?

I mean apparently as in I was told this info but had not read the module myself. But I have since read the relevant part of the module and found the information I was told was false. I’ve quoted the relevant bit of text at least three times in the thread already.

 

[Staffan]

Since a lot of discussions about 5e focus on DPR and optimized builds, and sussing out the multiclass combos that do more damage/lock down/control the field, etc., I'd say a preponderance of the evidence says its about combat. No one is asking how do "win" negotiations or even how to track. Skills like that are useless for DPR, unless it ties back to enhancing combat somehow.

I would argue that a large portion of this is that DPR is an easy measurement. For example, it is easy to compare the impact of going from Str 18 to either Str 20 or taking Great Weapon Mastery. So it's a good topic for people who want to hit each other over the head with numbers and show that they're right – something I've done myself more than once.

But "softer" things are hard to discuss. You can't really point at a thing and say "this is how persuading a guard to let you pass works", and you can't measure the impact of various feats and class features on it. So that's not where the big internet discussions tend to happen.

 

[MGibster]

When someone on the internet said that D&D is 90% combat is there any chance that was intentional hyperbole rather than a conclusion based on careful study and data?