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

 

[Ovinomancer]

I mean, once you've made the change from "thousands of XP" or "one milestone" to "single- or low double-digit ticks" for leveling up, exactly what awards a tick is a matter of details.

That said, my personal preference would be to only award "ticks" for group achievements, and use role-playing awards for more ephemeral rewards – either in-game things or a meta-currency like Inspiration. But that's mainly because I like keeping the group at the same level, so individual awards have to do something other than level you up.

One could very easily say that the details of what awards a tick are of extreme importance. If you get ticks for killing monsters, that game is going to look very different in play from the exact same game that moves ticks to solving mysteries.

 

[Parmandur]

Oh hey, that is very similar to how xp works in my system, Quest For Chevar! Of course in QfC, XP is spent on traits and skills, and you gain a level when you've spent a number of XP, and gain a few small increases when you level, but the xp awarding paradigm is basically the same.

Yeah, the leveling up and what you get in DCC is a lot less involved than even 5E, not much of build at play. But other than Vall of Cthulu/Basic Roleplaying style experience for using a skill, I think it's just about the most elegant approach to XP that I've seen.

 

[pumasleeve]

critical role is about 25% combat, and more and more games are critical clones from fans of the podcast. 90% is way off

 

[payn]

critical role is about 25% combat, and more and more games are critical clones from fans of the podcast. 90% is way off

I dont know anyone who even knows what CR is outside of the internets.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I dont know anyone who even knows what CR is outside of the internets.

So, that would be people over 90.

 

[payn]

So, that would be people over 90.

There's over 90 people on the internets?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There's over 90 people on the internets?

Last I heard it was pushing three digits!

 

[Eric V]

Personally I've never cared much for the "reward players for doing what the DM wants them to do". I don't really care what my players do or do not do, the goal of the game is for all of us to have fun. I will draw some lines, I wouldn't enjoy running a game for evil characters so I just discuss that in our session 0. But in game? The players decide what the PCs will do and I do my best to enact that with consequences, obstacles and opportunities both good and bad.

So there will be in game rewards, but it will never be along the lines of gaining a level or XP. Nothing wrong with other approaches of course, I just want any carrots or sticks I present to be in-world so that the PCs make decisions that make sense for the PC without resorting to the metagame.

So when do the PCs gain levels, then?

 

[Jack Daniel]

There is definitely some of that, but it's also simply that not everyone benefits creatively from gating roleplaying behind mechanics and dice rolls, and for some people as a result, dnd facilitates RP more than games with more detailed social mechanics. Combine thatwith the tropes of the DnD player options that make it easy for casual and new players to slip right into the RP, and yeah, sometimes we go several sessions without any fights.

It seems weird to me to play a campaign of dnd and not have segments or groups of sessions that play very differently from other segments. I'm not going to switch games because my group wants to do something that is basically a heist, and I'm not going to tell them "well dnd is made for xyz, so we should just stick to that", either. The other people in the group feel the same way.

Well I agree with the sentiment at any rate, if not necessarily with any particulars that rely on a dichotomy between RP and mechanics and dice rolls.

 

[Oofta]

So when do the PCs gain levels, then?

We discuss it as a group. Basically we level every 2-4 sessions currently. Just depends on how fast everyone wants to level, for us it's after 10-20 hours of gaming.