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

 

[tetrasodium]

Exploration including all those things @Campbell mentioned as dealing with combat, or not? I mean, are we still using a word to obscure things, or is this word meaning "absolutely nothing to do with combat" exploration? I'm trying to track the pea, here.

In the context of dungeon crawling where traps and such were a meaningful resource drain I'm going to agree with @Malmuria. That was still pretty heavily slanted more towards combat in a particular way. Specifically it was the setup to competence porn levels of combat. Back in those past editions a combination of things like flat footed surprise rounds and very powerful buff/debuff/control spells allowed the players to step up a few rungs on the ladder with ease if they could roll in with everyone on the same page of perfect strategy. Even if there were some hp losses from traps it usually paled in comparison to how much could be saved.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I agree that avoiding combat or strategizing out of initiative are activities that are still "about" combat and that take up a significant portion of time in classic play. But I think the real focus of play is exploration, rather than combat for combat sake. This is one reason "wandering monster" checks don't really work in 5e, because you want to encounter the monsters. Whereas if those monsters are potentially overwhelming and don't do anything other than tax your resources (at best), the drive in classic play is balance exploration (e.g. searching for secret doors) with the possibility of combat. Thus why osr people describe combat as a fail-state.

You're still using "exploration" as an undefined set of things and making an argument based on this unfixed foundational assumption. I can't make out the general shape of your argument here because I'm not really sure what you're saying.

 

[Ovinomancer]

In the context of dungeon crawling where traps and such were a meaningful resource drain I'm going to agree with @Malmuria. That was still pretty heavily slanted more towards combat in a particular way. Specifically it was the setup to competence porn levels of combat. Back in those past editions a combination of things like flat footed surprise rounds and very powerful buff/debuff/control spells allowed the players to step up a few rungs on the ladder with ease if they could roll in with everyone on the same page of perfect strategy. Even if there were some hp losses from traps it usually paled in comparison to how much could be saved.

That wasn't any part of the point I was making -- traps can be a meaningful resource drain and my asks don't change.

 

[Malmuria]

You're still using "exploration" as an undefined set of things and making an argument based on this unfixed foundational assumption. I can't make out the general shape of your argument here because I'm not really sure what you're saying.

In the context of classic dnd, I think of exploration as navigating a dangerous environment, usually for the sake of collecting treasure. The goal of exploring a dungeon is not to clear it of enemies or defeat the bbeg in a "boss" fight, but to get as much treasure while surviving. One of the obstacles to surviving are the potentially hostile monsters, and so combat is one mode or potential outcome of exploration. But there are other problems to be solved--traps, puzzles, secret doors--all of which are no less integral to the core gameplay than combat. All this varies by playgroup.

From the blog post I linked to earlier:

Exploration as the locus of play is perhaps this blog’s primary concern and repeated argument about the value of older fantasy RPGs and the Classic play style. The core of such Exploration focus is that decisions about where to move matter to the characters to the same or a greater degree as decisions about combat and NPC interaction. That is to say a game where navigation and supply use -- interaction with the Space described above -- matter to the same or a greater degree as choices about combat tactics such as spell and ability use is a game focused on Exploration.

Exploration isn’t really a complex concept, and I don’t mean to mystify it. At its core Exploration is a way of maximizing player choice about where the characters and adventure is headed and how they will get there. Which corridor to take, but also what schemes (faction intrigue, brute force, trickery, stealth, etc.) the party will use to take what they want from a location, or conversely the manner that they will fail to do so. Exploration rejects predefined narrative and hands it largely to the player - the nature of the adventure's conclusion is something that the players will determine through their actions and decisions.

To free movement and the ability to choose when and how to overcome obstacles, the Exploration style adds interaction and investigation - obstacles offer open- ended problems rather than a fixed skill challenge. The players are expected to unpuzzle them using the fictional environment as well as their character’s abilities and supplies, while the resources of the entire location are available . The red door may still open to the red key but the players are not restricted to searching it out and may: pick the lock using skills, negotiate for entrance from a dungeon faction, tunnel through the wall besides the door, grab a statue from another area of the dungeon to use as a battering ram, melt the lock with grey ooze, or use any number of schemes to overcome it. However, because the map of the adventure isn’t linear, they may also backtrack and go elsewhere: either to find another route or to challenge themselves with another obstacle.

 

[Ovinomancer]

In the context of classic dnd, I think of exploration as navigating a dangerous environment, usually for the sake of collecting treasure. The goal of exploring a dungeon is not to clear it of enemies or defeat the bbeg in a "boss" fight, but to get as much treasure while surviving. One of the obstacles to surviving are the potentially hostile monsters, and so combat is one mode or potential outcome of exploration. But there are other problems to be solved--traps, puzzles, secret doors--all of which are no less integral to the core gameplay than combat. All this varies by playgroup.

Again, I'm confused by the crossover, here. You seem to be trying to put combat related things into exploration and then wall them off from being considered as having anything to do with combat so that exploration gets the focus. But a number of the things involved are still related to combat. This feels a lot like a shell game.

And that's not me saying that other things don't exist, aren't important, or even that older editions don't have an much larger set of mechanical systems for exploration. It's saying that the root of your argument is that older editions don't have a combat focus but an exploration one only you're doing that by severing things that actually deal with combat and putting them solely in the exploration bin.

From the blog post I linked to earlier:

That blog post tries to stuff quite a lot of things into exploration. I'm not at all convinced by that arrangement.

 

[Malmuria]

Again, I'm confused by the crossover, here. You seem to be trying to put combat related things into exploration and then wall them off from being considered as having anything to do with combat so that exploration gets the focus. But a number of the things involved are still related to combat. This feels a lot like a shell game.

And that's not me saying that other things don't exist, aren't important, or even that older editions don't have an much larger set of mechanical systems for exploration. It's saying that the root of your argument is that older editions don't have a combat focus but an exploration one only you're doing that by severing things that actually deal with combat and putting them solely in the exploration bin.

That blog post tries to stuff quite a lot of things into exploration. I'm not at all convinced by that arrangement.

It's hard to disentangle combat and exploration in a classic game because their procedures overlap. A wandering monster check followed by a reaction role might immediately be a combat situation, but the ultimate goal of those procedures is to provide a timer for spatial exploration. In that sense the function is similar to a check to see if your torch goes out. So it's a question of priority, with exploration being the first priority, and that leading to a number of situations, combat included. This is backed up by the class design. For example, consider the Dwarf. Some combat related things in terms of what weapons and armor they can use, certainly, but also special emphasis placed on the ability to detect stone construction, detect traps, listen at doors. Whereas I think a 5e player would not find much use in detecting sloping construction.

I mean, how would you describe how combat is situated in a b/x game vs a 5e game? Or in your view does combat serve the same role in both games?

 

[Ovinomancer]

It's hard to disentangle combat and exploration in a classic game because their procedures overlap. A wandering monster check followed by a reaction role might immediately be a combat situation, but the ultimate goal of those procedures is to provide a timer for spatial exploration. In that sense the function is similar to a check to see if your torch goes out. So it's a question of priority, with exploration being the first priority, and that leading to a number of situations, combat included. This is backed up by the class design. For example, consider the Dwarf. Some combat related things in terms of what weapons and armor they can use, certainly, but also special emphasis placed on the ability to detect stone construction, detect traps, listen at doors. Whereas I think a 5e player would not find much use in detecting sloping construction.

I mean, how would you describe how combat is situated in a b/x game vs a 5e game? Or in your view does combat serve the same role in both games?

You're explaining something to me that I'm not arguing. What I'm arguing is that siloing off everything that touches exploration as "exploration" and then arguing that this siloing means that B/X (for instance) is about exploration and not combat is a terribly flawed argument -- it's assuming the conclusion in the premise. I've been pretty vocal before in saying that B/X has many more exploration pillar mechanics that are more robust than 5e, but that focus is also much more narrow. However, that fact doesn't mean B/X isn't, like all D&D, mostly focused around combat. It still is. I mean, when we get to B/X were, what, 3ish iterations out from pure wargame?

 

[Malmuria]

You're explaining something to me that I'm not arguing. What I'm arguing is that siloing off everything that touches exploration as "exploration" and then arguing that this siloing means that B/X (for instance) is about exploration and not combat is a terribly flawed argument -- it's assuming the conclusion in the premise. I've been pretty vocal before in saying that B/X has many more exploration pillar mechanics that are more robust than 5e, but that focus is also much more narrow. However, that fact doesn't mean B/X isn't, like all D&D, mostly focused around combat. It still is. I mean, when we get to B/X were, what, 3ish iterations out from pure wargame?

I'm confused as to why you say I'm siloing anything, as I am trying to do the opposite, that is show how combat and exploration work through overlapping procedures. To use my earlier example, the wandering monster check is both a key part of the exploration procedure and obviously related to combat, or at least potential combat. For a PC, in the short term that hostile wandering monster is a combat problem, but in the long term is a check on further exploration.

To put it another way, early editions used xp-for-gold instead of or alongside xp for defeating monsters. Per your thoughts earlier about experience rewards telling us about what the game incentivizes, clearly this difference tells us something significant about the focus of classic vs modern gameplay?

 

[FrogReaver]

I agree that avoiding combat or strategizing out of initiative are activities that are still "about" combat and that take up a significant portion of time in classic play. But I think the real focus of play is exploration, rather than combat for combat sake. This is one reason "wandering monster" checks don't really work in 5e, because you want to encounter the monsters. Whereas if those monsters are potentially overwhelming and don't do anything other than tax your resources (at best), the drive in classic play is balance exploration (e.g. searching for secret doors) with the possibility of combat. Thus why osr people describe combat as a fail-state.

I don't think it's fully accurate to describe combat as a fail-state in osr games. It can be a fail state. It's not necessarily one. The game is definitely more about exploration to make sure the combat you engage in doesn't become a fail state. Whereas many play 5e such that they can assume combat is mostly in the PC's favor.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm confused as to why you say I'm siloing anything, as I am trying to do the opposite, that is show how combat and exploration work through overlapping procedures. To use my earlier example, the wandering monster check is both a key part of the exploration procedure and obviously related to combat, or at least potential combat. For a PC, in the short term that hostile wandering monster is a combat problem, but in the long term is a check on further exploration.

To put it another way, early editions used xp-for-gold instead of or alongside xp for defeating monsters. Per your thoughts earlier about experience rewards telling us about what the game incentivizes, clearly this difference tells us something significant about the focus of classic vs modern gameplay?

The overlap is exactly what I'm pointing out. Combat bleeds into exploration, expanding it's footprint. Exploration does not bleed into combat. The overlap is in on direction and makes things that relate to combat much larger both in terms of rules and especially in terms of play. Combat is always an option, always on the table, always lurking. Exploration isn't.