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

 

[Hussar]

That claims does not mean, even if true, that the game is mostly about combat. "Will usually include some amount of X" does not mean that chocolate flavoured baked goods are largely about vanilla.

No, but, saying that chocolate flavored baked goods are largely about chocolate is a fair statement. D&D is largely about combat is not really much of a stretch, IMO. Everything else in the game is so skeletal compared to other systems.

So, if it's not about combat, what is it about? Romance? Nope. Diplomacy? Not really? I know, economics. Oh, right, 50 years of D&D and not once is an in-game economy given more than the slightest nod.

I'm really rather at a loss to say what D&D is about if it's not about combat. It's an action movie. That's the meat and potatoes of the game, to torture the food metaphor a little more. Sure, there's other stuff. No one eats JUST meat and potatoes. But, just because there might be broccoli or peas or whatnot on the plate, the one thing you can always count on is that meat and potatoes will be there.

 

[Parmandur]

No, but, saying that chocolate flavored baked goods are largely about chocolate is a fair statement. D&D is largely about combat is not really much of a stretch, IMO. Everything else in the game is so skeletal compared to other systems.

So, if it's not about combat, what is it about? Romance? Nope. Diplomacy? Not really? I know, economics. Oh, right, 50 years of D&D and not once is an in-game economy given more than the slightest nod.

I'm really rather at a loss to say what D&D is about if it's not about combat. It's an action movie. That's the meat and potatoes of the game, to torture the food metaphor a little more. Sure, there's other stuff. No one eats JUST meat and potatoes. But, just because there might be broccoli or peas or whatnot on the plate, the one thing you can always count on is that meat and potatoes will be there.

It's about roleplaying with friends, and pretending to be fantasy characters. Combat is a part of that experience, but jot always central.

 

[tetrasodium]

I can give another example of how a non-d&d system could handle @Hussar's growing congregation question. In levelup you have both strongholds & downtime activities. If a cleric had a "temple" type stronghold & wanted to grow the thing by preaching we could use the "work" downtime activity & apply the results towards improving the temple or the "religious devotion" activity & get results for how their god approves of their preaching as a couple easy ones. There are even a few journey activities with various benefits that might work if the party was traveling.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, @doctorbadwolf has a good adjustment to the analogy here. Sure, many concerts have dancing, some have none, some are actually just dances.

I will add that I think that making the design assumption of "D&D is largely about combat" is precisely the central mistake of 4E on the conceptual level (in terms of taking user needs into account, which for a game is everything).

LOL.

Sure, the game that has the MOST support for out of combat material is the one that is "largely about combat."

Hell, this is perfect for this conversation. 4e was rejected, partly anyway, BECAUSE it focused so much of the mechanics outside of combat. Speaks volumes for how important combat is to D&D gamers. Heck, my cleric question actually gets answered in 4e - you make it a skill challenge and work out, depending on the complexity, how many converts the cleric makes. It wouldn't actually be that hard in 4e. As an added bonus, you could turn it into a nice little mini game for the entire group, if you were so inclined.

 

[Hussar]

It's about roleplaying with friends, and pretending to be fantasy characters. Combat is a part of that experience, but jot always central.

So, it's about pretending to be fantasy characters. Okay. Now, when my fantasy character wants to do something perfectly in keeping with that character, that isn't related in any way to combat, how much does the system support my play? As in the cleric attracting new members of a congregation example.

Heck, WotC has banged out what, 10 modules for 5e - the big ones I mean. Out of all those adventures, AFAIK, only ONE has any rules for running a business. The rules are SKELETAL and very, very basic, but, Dragon Heist does have them, fair enough. But, if I want to use my ship in Ghosts of Saltmarsh to start a shipping company, what rules would help me here? How much does it cost to load a ship with salted fish from Saltmarsh, transport it to, say, nearby Seaton for sale at the market there? How much profit do I make? How do I determine that?

Again, this isn't some bizarre, corner case thing. This is a pretty standard idea I would think - I have a ship. I have a crew. I want to do some trading. But, outside of very handwavey sort of Downtime activities that are pretty much a very small step above straight up DM's Fiat, there's nothing in the game that will help me.

Ask yourself why buying a magic item in a downtime activity is detailed very explicitly. But running a business? Barely there.

 

[Malmuria]

It's about roleplaying with friends, and pretending to be fantasy characters. Combat is a part of that experience, but jot always central.

What trips me about 5e for this sort of thing is the amount of characterization that is tied to class, and the mechanical expression of that characterization is almost always through combat abilities. So there are aspects of 5e design that compete with the free form elements (which I do enjoy).

 

[Parmandur]

LOL.

Sure, the game that has the MOST support for out of combat material is the one that is "largely about combat."

Hell, this is perfect for this conversation. 4e was rejected, partly anyway, BECAUSE it focused so much of the mechanics outside of combat. Speaks volumes for how important combat is to D&D gamers. Heck, my cleric question actually gets answered in 4e - you make it a skill challenge and work out, depending on the complexity, how many converts the cleric makes. It wouldn't actually be that hard in 4e. As an added bonus, you could turn it into a nice little mini game for the entire group, if you were so inclined.

It had the most bumper rails and limits on what occurred outside of combat compared to other editions. Highly detailed and structured mechanics can, in fact, get in the way of freeform roleplaying. Oftentimes, less is more.

 

[Parmandur]

So, it's about pretending to be fantasy characters. Okay. Now, when my fantasy character wants to do something perfectly in keeping with that character, that isn't related in any way to combat, how much does the system support my play? As in the cleric attracting new members of a congregation example.

Heck, WotC has banged out what, 10 modules for 5e - the big ones I mean. Out of all those adventures, AFAIK, only ONE has any rules for running a business. The rules are SKELETAL and very, very basic, but, Dragon Heist does have them, fair enough. But, if I want to use my ship in Ghosts of Saltmarsh to start a shipping company, what rules would help me here? How much does it cost to load a ship with salted fish from Saltmarsh, transport it to, say, nearby Seaton for sale at the market there? How much profit do I make? How do I determine that?

Again, this isn't some bizarre, corner case thing. This is a pretty standard idea I would think - I have a ship. I have a crew. I want to do some trading. But, outside of very handwavey sort of Downtime activities that are pretty much a very small step above straight up DM's Fiat, there's nothing in the game that will help me.

Ask yourself why buying a magic item in a downtime activity is detailed very explicitly. But running a business? Barely there.

But it is there sufficiently for a group to succeed in doing anything, no matter what comes up. Skeletal systems scan easily be built in, even improvisationally. @Umbran laid out a ove how easy using the guidance in the DMG it is to follow through on the religous service example, and with minimal work.

 

[Malmuria]

It had the most bumper rails and limits on what occurred outside of combat compared to other editions. Highly detailed and structured mechanics can, in fact, get in the way of freeform roleplaying. Oftentimes, less is more.

I agree, but the same can also be true of combat. Overly codified abilities that work in one specific way can make combat less creative overall

 

[Manbearcat]

As for 4e, it had arguably the most robust non-combat mechanics of any edition. I would say that the game was heavily designed in all aspects, compared to other editions of D&D.

As a singular point of data, I've expressed this in the past regarding my (many) 4e games.

* My conflict breakdown was around 3 nonviolent conflicts (Skill Challenges) for every 2 violent conflicts (Combats).

* The Combats in my 3 PC groups took an average of 40 minutes (including setup/quick map-making) to resolve. Skill Challenges took about 30 minutes to resolve on average (with a distribution of probably 25 % Complexity 1, 40 % Complexity 2, 30 % Complexity 3 and 5 % 4 and 5).

* In between these were transitional vignettes. Those probably made up 15 minutes per 3 hour (and change) session.

That is pretty close to a standard 4e session that I GMed. 80 minutes Combat, 90 minutes Skill Challenge, 15 minutes transition/vignette. Manbearcat's 4e D&D = 43 % combat! Less than half as much as the scientifically vetted normal D&D mean of 90 %!

You shallow losers and your shallow combat and your knuckle-dragging propensity for violence! Feel bad about yourselves!

* Also, D&D is overwhelmingly about Combat…even my 4e games (despite the time spent breakdown)!