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

 

[Shardstone]

I'm so confused by something.

Just because the new Dr. Who game uses 5E rules doesn't mean its going to have 5E's imbalance of stuff. They are likely making completely new character options and subsystems to go with those options that focuses more on Dr. Who. Why is the assumption that a OGL game has to stick strictly to 5E's gameplay loop?

 

[Tun Kai Poh]

They’ve made a Doctor Who RPG for over a decade with its own system. The 5E version doesn’t take away from that game. People can choose! But let’s not rehash that here; they’re getting a lot of toxic blowback on Twitter over that.

Whovians are a very passionate lot! I'm not so surprised. I bet a lot of the fans of the existing Who RPG are experiencing "edition war" feelings...

My two cents: D&D is about solving all kinds of problems, including combat. But the most involved part of the problem-solving engine is combat-focused - much of each class is about how it can contribute in combat! There is a whole core book full of enemies and how they can challenge the players - mostly through combat stats!

I wouldn't say 90%. But definitely a lot of the game material is combat-based.

 

[Thunder Brother]

Game rules don’t dictate play.

But they do wink suggestively.

 

[TrippyHippy]

But they do wink suggestively.

But the suggestion is open to interpretation.

 

[John R Davis]

Clearly for the majority it isn't 90%, and it's naughty and annoying they said this.
In a typical 3 hour in person session I'd say we have 3-5 fights, that take up 50% of time.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think that the way d&d is structured results in 90% combat with the other 10% being almost entirely dependent on the GM supporting it almost entirely to keep it from collapsing. The gm can stretch how much game time that 10% occupies up or down but still needs to carry it quite a bit. You can massively rebuild the system from the ground up like levelup did to support exploration & such rather than treat it like an interruption to combat that needs to be overcome but most d20/5e forks of d&d don't change the rules enough so you still have what is largely a combat engine with a few extra subsystems tacked on.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

They’ve made a Doctor Who RPG for over a decade with its own system. The 5E version doesn’t take away from that game. People can choose! But let’s not rehash that here; they’re getting a lot of toxic blowback on Twitter over that.

Come to think of it, maybe the fact that it's D&D will just make it easier to get people to give a Doctor Who game a shot. You can't beat the accessibility of D&D.

 

[Morrus]

Come to think of it, maybe the fact that it's D&D will just make it easier to get people to give a Doctor Who game a shot. You can't beat the accessibility of D&D.

I think that’s basically the point.

 

[payn]

I'm so confused by something.

Just because the new Dr. Who game uses 5E rules doesn't mean its going to have 5E's imbalance of stuff. They are likely making completely new character options and subsystems to go with those options that focuses more on Dr. Who. Why is the assumption that a OGL game has to stick strictly to 5E's gameplay loop?

I didnt expect it in my cyberpunk 5E reskin, but it happened. I don't necessarily blame the rules for it, but old habits die hard. People see 5E and start thinking murder and level.

In my experience, (this also held true for D20 era) the further away from the D&D system you get, the less people expect murder and loot as a primary drive of the game. YMMV.

 

[Malmuria]

People see 5E and start thinking murder and level.

Good point...I wonder how they will do XP rewards in the doctor who game