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

 

[Umbran]

Okay, I got 10 gp of people this week. How many was that?

I've given a system that gives you four levels of result, which is sufficient for descriptive or narrative terms.

It is poor design to make up quantitative results before knowing what those quantities are supposed to be used for. You have not actually stated a problem that requires an exact headcount, so I don't see a need to give an exact headcount.

 

[Malmuria]

I think that these conversations are so fundamentally grounded in this fact.

You know who says D&D isn't 90% combat? D&D players. You know who says D&D is 90% combat? Everyone else.

That's a bit tongue in cheek, but, there is a grain of truth there. It's very, very obvious from the questions that get asked and the points that are raised that those who think that social mechanics aren't needed or are restrictive or whatever, have very, very little experience with games which have social mechanics. D&D has never really had much in the way of social mechanics. Heck, one of the biggest complaints about 3e was how social mechanics actually appeared in any form in the game. There is a HUGE amount of inertia resisting the idea of social mechanics in the game.

But, to give an example of how social mechanics work -

My cleric wants to preach to the masses. He's going to spend a week (to pick a random number) preaching to the masses. Does he convince anyone to come to his temple?

In D&D, how would you even start to do that?

In games with social mechanics - it gets handled by the system at varying degrees of complexity depending on the system.

But, frankly, the point that was raised earlier pretty much says it all - D&D doesn't do that and it never, ever will. There is just no way that fandom will allow this into D&D. At least, not for a couple more decades anyway. The notion of "good roleplaying doesn't need mechanics" is too ingrained into the zeitgeist of D&D gamers.

Well, I think there is a version of what you are talking about in AD&D. One through followers, which was based on charisma. And then through building domains and strongholds. So you can imagine a Gygaxian version of this which would be a chart linking charisma scores to percentile rolls that you make to determine how many new followers you attract modified by various things. And the another chart listing prices for stained glass and so forth.

Obviously by itself this is tedious, and not en vogue. The more interesting question would be how this (or any other) downtime activity actually matters in the game. If the focus of gameplay is the adventure, how does having all those followers and a temple benefit/hinder you? What mechanic do you use to represent that effect (if any)?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Why does it matter? It seems like your missing a step. What impact on play does congregation size have on gameplay? Do they count as some kind of follower/henchmen type rules addition? Are they being used towards the old epic level handbook deific levels based on followers?... didn't that need huge numbers? Did I miss something?

The character clearly feels strongly enough about gathering people to his faith that they are proselytizing for more. I dunno what that means, but, in general and even in D&D, it's a good idea to do things with what the characters care about. Perhaps that's also why this bothers me, it's taking something that the character cares about, and the player find it worthwhile to expend time on, and turns it into the least interesting thing in 5e -- money. And then discards it as worthy of further consideration!

 

[Ovinomancer]

I've given a system that gives you four levels of result, which is sufficient for descriptive or narrative terms.

It is poor design to make up quantitative results before knowing what those quantities are supposed to be used for. You have not actually stated a problem that requires an exact headcount, so I don't see a need to give an exact headcount.

Four levels of gold coins given out (or lost), sure. You're the one claiming this is a proxy, why am I on the hook to clarify your proxy? You've provided a proxy answer, claimed it's good because levels, and then freely acknowledged that it can't answer the question because the question wasn't clearly stated? I mean, at that point, what was the point of going to the proxy if the original question needs clarification? And you speak of poor design!

I mean, I would have very much respected (and it was my first thought) an interrogation to the questioner about what they wanted out of it. Instead, we got a glibly provided useless proxy -- useless because you still have to ask this question to get anything useful from the proxy and, when that happens, I'm wondering what the proxy actually adds to the resolution?

 

[Umbran]

I appreciate the example. But why the attitude? I was just trying to give some friendly feedback.

Your "feedback" did not relate to the point I had made. So, clarification was called for - I felt being blunt would make sure there was zero mistaken apprehension going forward. Beyond that, I'm happy to discuss out of thread, but we shouldn't clutter this discussion with it.

 

[Umbran]

Four levels of gold coins given out (or lost), sure. You're the one claiming this is a proxy, why am I on the hook to clarify your proxy?

Because you are the one insisting on more than a qualitative answer.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, I think there is a version of what you are talking about in AD&D. One through followers, which was based on charisma. And then through building domains and strongholds. So you can imagine a Gygaxian version of this which would be a chart linking charisma scores to percentile rolls that you make to determine how many new followers you attrack modified by various things. And the another chart listing prices for stained glass and so forth.

Obviously by itself this is tedious, and not en vogue. The more interesting question would be how this (or any other) downtime activity actually matters in the game. If the focus of gameplay is the adventure, how does having all those followers and a temple benefit/hinder you? What mechanic do you use to represent that effect (if any)?

I think bluntly stating that the unit of play in 5e is the adventure has some strong sectors of pushback. Well, I know, because I've seen it. And, if we're following what has become the required piety of ENW, you can't make bold pronouncements like this without heavy caveats of "not all the time, YMMV, fun is what matters."

But, that said, I can see multiple ways that a character may be trying to establish a larger church presence to provide a base of operations, tools to use to further the character's god's goals, and even as a point of dramatic tension. Entire adventures could revolve around these things.

 

[tetrasodium]

The character clearly feels strongly enough about gathering people to his faith that they are proselytizing for more. I dunno what that means, but, in general and even in D&D, it's a good idea to do things with what the characters care about. Perhaps that's also why this bothers me, it's taking something that the character cares about, and the player find it worthwhile to expend time on, and turns it into the least interesting thing in 5e -- money. And then discards it as worthy of further consideration!

This is begging the question though & pretty much amounts to "how many plot coupons do I get, I'll decide what they do later but the gm should be specific first before I figure it out." Questions like "why?.." "What does it matter?" "What do they do mechanically" & so on are critical to answer before the gm can be expected to adjudicate the numbers. Take the deific levels numbers Those numbers work great for followers with lots of other priests but would be game collapsing if the number of followers are some kind of personal henchmen/follower/minion mechanic for the players. Your question is like wanting specific MPG for a vehicle without deciding the vehicle or parameters of the test used to measure MPG.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Because you are the one insisting on more than a qualitative answer.

You haven't even given a qualitative answer to the question, though. You've answered a different question and can't even relate the proxy you claim into a qualitative answer for the question asked! I mean, you might have said is 1-2 people per gold piece, and that would be an actual qualitative answer, but then why go through gold pieces?

 

[Ovinomancer]

This is begging the question though

No, it's not. Begging the question means that there's circular logic involved -- that the conclusion is assumed in the premise. What you mean is "This makes me think of a question."

Sorry, I usually let that slide, but for some reason I'm extra pet peevy today.

& pretty much amounts to "how many plot coupons do I get, I'll decide what they do later but the gm should be specific first before I figure it out." Questions like "why?.." "What does it matter?" "What do they do mechanically" & so on are critical to answer before the gm can be expected to adjudicate the numbers. Take the deific levels numbers Those numbers work great for followers with lots of other priests but would be game collapsing if the number of followers are some kind of personal henchmen/follower/minion mechanic for the players. Your question is like wanting specific MPG for a vehicle without deciding the vehicle or parameters of the test used to measure MPG.

Yes! These are important questions. We should ask them. So, let's say you have answers to them -- how does this change how you would approach answering the question? You know why the question is being asked, and what the answers might mean, but the question wasn't about this, it was about how you actually answer the question! Which is part of the reason why the gold piece proxy doesn't do the job -- it doesn't answer the question.