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

 

[Staffan]

86.37% of statistics are made up on the spot.

It was 88.7% combat, anyway. They just rounded up.

 

[FrogReaver]

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.

If there were actual mechanics for persuading a guard and failing to do so every time would lead to PC death I think you'd see discussion on it as well. It's just as of right now, persuading a guard is 90% DM fiat (whether you succeed, get to roll at X DC, or flat out fail) and 10% your skill bonus. Kind of hard to have a productive discussion on something based so much on DM fiat and especially when the stakes of failure range from, you don't persuade the guard, to the guard sounds the alarm and attacks you.

 

[darjr]

But, that's my character class!

 

[Malmuria]

If there were actual mechanics for persuading a guard and failing to do so every time would lead to PC death I think you'd see discussion on it as well. It's just as of right now, persuading a guard is 90% DM fiat (whether you succeed, get to roll at X DC, or flat out fail) and 10% your skill bonus. Kind of hard to have a productive discussion on something based so much on DM fiat and especially when the stakes of failure range from, you don't persuade the guard, to the guard sounds the alarm and attacks you.

I'm currently running a roll-under osr system (whitehack). It works like black jack: you have to roll equal to or under the appropriate ability score, but rolling high is better than rolling low. The advantage of this is that when the player rolls they immediately know whether they succeeded and the quality of their success. Whereas in 5e, success is treated either as binary or is in relation to the DC, which is unknown. As a DM in 5e, I would have to quickly improvise a DC for a given action, and then one or more players roll and shout numbers at me, and I have to determine success/failure, quality of success/failure, and the stakes of the roll all at the same time.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

No, they don’t.

It's not about absolutes. Take it easy.

Okay?

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.

This is the strangest argument I’ve ever seen on this topic. Nothing about it has any clear link to what the rules are about.

Only if you squint and hold it sideways.

Or just…read the books. Feel free to tell me how getting a tool proficiency, or the Unseen Servant spell, or the Linguist feat, or Favored Enemy and Natural Explorer, or any of the skills, are combat features.

Because you're starting from a false premise and begging the question. You assume the conclusion, in other words.

Not even a little bit

The majority of character stuff is specifically and only about combat.

No, it isn’t.

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.

I’ll get on DDB and check that later, but I’m fairly certain that if it is a majority, it’s a very small majority. Sure as hell nowhere near “90%”.

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.

None of this is remotely true. This is, at best, a carryover in your perception from past editions.

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.

Oh good lord. I come here for discussions, not whatever this is.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

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.

Exactly.

 

[overgeeked]

Oh good lord. I come here for discussions, not whatever this is.

No, you clearly haven't. At this point I expect you'd argue that the Combat section of the PHB isn't actually about combat. Tschüss.

 

[teitan]

Just to chime in here since I spent all that time reading the thread.

Saying D&D is 90% combat is pretty much like saying rain is wet. It's true on its face. Sure, we can quibble about the actual percentage, but, it's just two smurfs arguing over who is more blue. The point is, smurfs are blue and D&D is focused on combat.

I'm really not sure how anyone could look at D&D and think, "Hey, here is a game where combat isn't going to happen a lot." A game where the weapons table is two full pages long and the equipment for EVERYTHING ELSE in the game is less than a page. A game where we actually spend time to differentiate between the damage dealt by a longsword compared to a spear, but, everyone speaks a single language.

When your most popular class in the game is called a FIGHTER, it's not really a shock that combat is a big part of the game. D&D is an action movie game. That's a big part of play. You are heroes in a fantasy action movie.

Can you go in different directions? Sure. No problem. But, for every Strixhaven or Witchlight, you have five modules that are pretty much nothing but strings of combat encounters.

I have no dog in the race about the Doctor Who game. I'm not a consumer. But, on this specific point about D&D? Yeah, that's pretty accurate. And frankly, AFAIC, it's a feature.

I will one up you, Vampire: The Masquerade. Lots of rules for combat, not intended to be a combat heavy game at all. Lots of Equipment, whole books of equipment and in detail combat rules as well. Even more in depth combat system than D&D, attack, defense, soak, damage categories like Bashing, Piercing etc. Different tracks to keep track of for how you are affected outside of combat. Not perceived of as a combat heavy game but just as in depth as D&D on those rules.

 

[antiwesley]

Someone a few pages back used "Critical Role" as an example of 'typical' game play.
Believe that, and I've got some swampland in Florida or a Bridge in New York for you.

CR is a filmed, edited audio-visual experience, most likely scripted to a certain point by people who are now ACTORS, ie people paid to provide entertainment. If CR wouldn't have multiple contributors/outlets, like official DnD supplements, comics, podcasts, etc.. I'd believe you.
Those shows are now about as real as beauty pageants, Lizard Lick Towing, Keeping up with the Kardashians, and Jerry Springer.

Our own personal experiences can only allow for a certain sample size. I played with all MURDER HOBOES. That means every game I played with them, regardless of game, were COMBAT oriented. But that's not the same experience that any previous commenter may have had.
Play with brain dead Hippies, it's going to be about peace, love and flowers.
Play with brain dead murder hoboes, it's all about min/maxing your XP to get your levels quicker.

KOTD, Order of the Stick, etc... most scenes feature combat more than anything else. for KODT, more character development occurs outside of the game table with the various stereotypes of gaming that Jolly features...

We can only truly quantify this by looking at the Pavlovian rewards that the game system offers. More often that not, DnD has, in no arguement, provided the MOST rewards based on combat and the spoils of combat.

 

[Hussar]

I will one up you, Vampire: The Masquerade. Lots of rules for combat, not intended to be a combat heavy game at all. Lots of Equipment, whole books of equipment and in detail combat rules as well. Even more in depth combat system than D&D, attack, defense, soak, damage categories like Bashing, Piercing etc. Different tracks to keep track of for how you are affected outside of combat. Not perceived of as a combat heavy game but just as in depth as D&D on those rules.

It’s been a very long time since I played Vampire, but when I did, it certainly did feature tons of combat.