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

 

[Micah Sweet]

Look, I'm not someone who can't concede a point and I can see and understand that you two are right about the MM and DMG being core rules. I also can see what you meant about my handling of the creatures and the social interactions, how the way those interactions went was us playing with homebrew rules.

But can either of you stop for a second and consider what it's like when you have people saying "nah that's not 5E you have not made a valid contribution to the thread" over nit-picking how I handled the interactions? How hard would it really have been to recognize and acknowledge that my main point, basically my entire point, was that there's no way D&D is 90% combat because presumably most DMs encourage non-combat solutions to encounters too?

What are you so dead set on me being wrong that you're never going to actually engage with the main point of my original comment in question?

I agree. No way is D&D 90% combat. I don't believe even the person who made that comment believed it literally. But the game as written is absolutely more about combat than it is about any other particular thing. Many DMs don't play it that way, and that is a wonderful thing. But it doesn't change how the game is designed and what that design encourages.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

I agree. No way is D&D 90% combat. I don't believe even the person who made that comment believed it literally. But the game as written is absolutely more about combat than it is about any other particular thing. Many DMs don't play it that way, and that is a wonderful thing. But it doesn't change how the game is designed and what that design encourages.

Do the core rules really make it so hard to avoid combat?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Do the core rules really make it so hard to avoid combat?

I wouldn't say it was hard to ignore combat, but you are also ignoring the bulk of the game's mechanics, including many class abilities and spells, if you do so.

 

[Hussar]

Do the core rules really make it so hard to avoid combat?

Honestly? No. They don't. My current Candlekeep Mysteries game features lots and lots of non-violent resolutions. And a group that is very willing to go that way. Basically, they almost always try to talk to stuff first. It's a refreshing change.

But, that's not quite the point though. It's not that D&D can't avoid combat. It certainly can. No one is claiming that people who are not engaging in lots of combat are doing something wrong. They most certainly aren't.

The point is, that D&D mechanics strongly incentivize combat and the basic presumption of many published adventures is that the party is going to kill it's way through the adventure. "The ((inhabitants of the location)) attack the party when they see them" is hardly a rare line in a module. It's pretty much the default. To the point where it's often specifically called out when it's not the default.

Again, when you have mechanics that differentiate between a dagger and a short sword, but, every single rogue since the dawn of time carries the same set of thieves tools, it does seem that the system leans pretty hard into combat.

 

[Hussar]

Just to add. If you look at the first page of this thread - how was your last session: D&D General - How Was Your Last Session?

There's, by my count, 10 answers that talk about their last session. 5 are straight up combats, 1 is kinda half and half, and 4 are non-combat, with one of those four straight up admitting that a non-combat session was a nice change.

So, it's not like combat is somehow rare in the game.

 

[Krachek]

I'm confused, and don't know what I'm supposed to say other than to restate that it's thoroughly within the rules of 5E to solve a combat through social interaction or the environment. I never made up rules to make either of those a thing, I made up my own monsters.

There aren't even any monsters in the PHB the MM is a splat book, it's not the core rules.

I agree that you don’t need the MM to play DnD, and create home brew monsters instead.
DMG can be mostly skip too, magic item can be home brew, advice for adventuring day and Xp budget don’t seem to work, world building can totally be home brew, and most advice to run the game can be found by experiment.

 

[Krachek]

Do the core rules really make it so hard to avoid combat?

Nothing in the rules force combat. The game by itself gave all the tools for a Dm to make a combatless adventure. that would be a niche play style, but perfectly possible with actual rules.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm confused, and don't know what I'm supposed to say other than to restate that it's thoroughly within the rules of 5E to solve a combat through social interaction or the environment. I never made up rules to make either of those a thing, I made up my own monsters.

There aren't even any monsters in the PHB the MM is a splat book, it's not the core rules.

The core books have been the PHB, MM and DMG since 1e.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Look, I'm not someone who can't concede a point and I can see and understand that you two are right about the MM and DMG being core rules. I also can see what you meant about my handling of the creatures and the social interactions, how the way those interactions went was us playing with homebrew rules.

But can either of you stop for a second and consider what it's like when you have people saying "nah that's not 5E you have not made a valid contribution to the thread" over nit-picking how I handled the interactions? How hard would it really have been to recognize and acknowledge that my main point, basically my entire point, was that there's no way D&D is 90% combat because presumably most DMs encourage non-combat solutions to encounters too?

What are you so dead set on me being wrong that you're never going to actually engage with the main point of my original comment in question?

Okay, as the subposted person here, I made absolutely clear that your play was great! However, mentioning how you used your own approach to play doesn't really address how 5e works within the topic of discussion, it just talks about your houserules for doing so. I don't think you're wrong to play this way at all, in fact I wholeheartedly encourage you to play your truth! I've run with heavy houserule as well, and played in extremely freeform games (in 3.x even!). I don't have a problem with your play, just the applicability of it to the topic of discussion in this thread.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Nothing in the rules force combat. The game by itself gave all the tools for a Dm to make a combatless adventure. that would be a niche play style, but perfectly possible with actual rules.

I disagree that all the tools are given. Many are not, and left up to the GM to figure out themselves. Some tools are given is where I'd land. I've played games that actually offer a more robust toolset for things, and even there there are holes where you have to wing it yourself. No system is complete, but 5e really chose to not do very much as far as rules outside of combat. You get a skeleton frame with ability checks and proficiencies, a light dusting of sprinkles with background abilities, a little bit on traps and exploration (pace, food, job in the wilderness, etc), and some interesting, if not universally useful, social interaction mechanics (really only useful for asks, which a lot of social encounters can be boiled down to). That's it. Ask questions about how many converts you can get for preaching on the street corner and 5e stays quiet. And yet the game features themes that make that action seem a very reasonable one to ask.