Is D&D Too Focused on Combat?

Dungeons & Dragons' wargame roots are well-known, but what is sometimes forgotten is how much its origins influenced role-playing games. Although D&D has been a platform to tell many different kinds of stories, its mechanics focus on a few core themes and one of them is combat -- but it's not the only one.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

The Three Modes​

Jon Peterson in Playing at the World explained that there are three modes of D&D play, in which dramatic pacing is achieved by transitioning between the three:

...a mode of exploration, a mode of combat and a mode of logistics. Time flows differently in each of these modes, and by rationing the modes carefully a referee guides the players through satisfying cycles of tension, catharsis and banality that mimic the ebb and flow of powerful events.

These modes are interrelated in important ways, and modern role-players tolerance for all three has changed over time. Exploration has experienced a resurgence with sandbox-style play. Combat has been de-emphasized, particularly in story-telling games. And logistics are back in vogue thanks to the Old School Renaissance. Let's take a look at each in turn.

The First Mode: Exploration​

In the original boxed set of D&D, exploration was important, but beyond the scope of the rules. It was a key part of emergent play -- using basic guidelines to encourage creative strategies -- but it wasn't actually part of D&D itself. Instead, D&D encouraged players to buy Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival board game, as Peterson explains:

The object of Outdoor Survival is to navigate a wilderness, though there are five scenarios providing distinct justifications for doing so: for example, lost players returning to civilization at the edges of the map or racing to find the object of a search party. Given that the board itself is not a secret from the players (Outdoor Survival has no referee), some other means is required to simulate being lost in the woods, since the players necessarily command a bird’s-eye view of the environment. Dice therefore determine whether or not players are lost, and if so, in which direction they will wander. The board is overlain with a hexagonal grid, segmenting the board into hexagons about 1.5 centimeters across; as there are six possible directions on a hexagonal board to move, a six-sided die can easily dictate the orientation of lost players. Each hex contains a particular terrain type, in much the manner of Hellwig: there are mountains, swamps, rivers, deserts, plains and even roads (well, trails).

Evidence of D&D's interest in hexcrawling is strongly represented in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual, which was published after the original set but before the rest of the AD&D line. Each monster has a few noteworthy statistics, particularly: frequency, number appearing, and % in lair. Much of these stats do not make sense in a typical dungeon context, where the rooms are planned out; DMs would likely know the monsters that were to appear in their dungeons, and in fact author Gary Gygax states, "...It is not generally recommended for use in establishing the population of Dungeon Levels." But when used in hexcrawling they're useful in describing the encounters there, beginning with frequency, then determining if the monster encountered is in its lair, and then concluding with number of appearing (which could sometimes be in the hundreds, befitting a camp but not a dungeon room).

For a time, hexcrawling and emergent play were out of favor as more scripted adventures came into vogue. The OSR has reinvigorated sandbox-style play, in which the players generate the world as they adventure, one roll at a time.

The Second Mode: Combat​

D&D's second mode is the one most gamers are familiar with: killing things. D&D grew out of Chainmail, itself a product of wargaming, so combat's relevance to D&D goes all the way back to its first iteration. Additionally, it mimics the style of the fiction that influenced it, including the violent Conan among other swords and sorcery novels. What's changed is how D&D scales combats. The emphasis on leveling up was treasure, as explained in a previous article, "The Original End Goal of Dungeons & Dragons." Kiva Maginn (Battletech design lead) on Twitter explains how this changes the style of play:

As a player, you could gain experience by fighting monsters or claiming treasure. You could lose it by dying in battle with monsters. You could encounter monsters without treasure, and you could encounter treasure without monsters. So there was an obvious 'best' path. Get in, get the treasure, get out. Do as little fighting as possible, because fighting risks XP loss. Avoid encounters when you can, and subvert them with clever tricks if possible. Money you find without a fight is free XP.

This changed with Third Edition, in which experience points were rewarded for defeating a monster:

Consider 3rd Edition D&D, by contrast. Gold provides no inherent advancement. At a certain point, you simply don't need it anymore. You have so much of it that it's absurd to bother picking up any more. So there's a new obvious 'best' path. Ignore tricks and clever solutions. Never avoid fights. Kill every single monster in the dungeon, with 'it's in the dungeon!' as your justification for doing so. Seek out harder fights with bigger monsters. Don't stop killing.

Ironically, D&D became MORE about killing than less, as PCs were no longer incentivized to just accumulate gold to advance. Third Edition also did away with name levels and retainers as being an end gold, so the purpose of spending gold had shifted from building strongholds and hiring mercenaries to personally enriching the character through acquisition of magic items. This change was a recognition that players were less interested in leading armies and transitioning back to a life of perpetual adventuring, and the game shifted gears to reflect that.

Of course, role-playing has since moved beyond combat -- relying more heavily on the narrativist style of play -- even if it started with the primarily tactical dungeon and overland exploration of D&D.

The Third Mode: Logistics​

Logistics have largely fallen out of favor today due to onerous nature of keeping track of encumbrance, equipment, and gold. These factors were all intentional controls on player greed, ensuring that PCs couldn't just cart out mountains of gold (and thus experience points) without some challenges. You can read a more detailed discussion of inventory management and encumbrance in a previous article, "The Lost Art of Packing it All In."

Third Edition's shift towards combat meant that the nature of logistics changed to be less about accumulating gold and more about personal advancement, exemplified by Pathfinder which spins out even more options than Third Edition for character development.

D&D Today​

So where does that leave us with D&D today? Kiva points out that the combat biases are still there, but now D&D has expanded to encompass other styles of play -- it just doesn't emphasize it equally:

The flaw in later D&D was that it was a game that was good at modeling killing, and spent a decade trying to be anything other than a game about killing.

Inspiration, Personal Characteristics, and Background were added to incentivize players to role-play but as the AngryDM points out, many players forget all about it because of the way it's implemented:

It’s just this thing that’s easy to forget and sits in the game not really doing anything. It feels tacked on. Vestigial. An afterthought. It certainly doesn’t seem to have a clear purpose, as evidenced by the fact that the DM and the players get different advice about it and how it is weirdly disconnected from the mechanics that it seems to be connected to. It seems thrown in. “People like Bonds in Dungeon World and Aspects in Fate, we should probably slap something like that in there.”

Fifth Edition D&D has also changed how experience points are gained, providing an option to level up through milestones instead. This shifts the incentives yet again away from combat.

Is combat overemphasized in D&D? Maybe, but that's at least partially due to the other two modes of exploration and logistics falling out of favor. If the eight pages detailing combat are any indication in the Basic D&D Rules, combat is still an integral part of the game, and many players are just fine with that.

 

[pemerton]

To me, the big flaw of 4e was that it was only about combat.

Skill challenges are the tightest form of non-combat resolution - especially for social encounters - that D&D has ever had.

The spells that helped in strategic (exploration or otherwise) activity disappeared

And yet in my 4e game the use of spells like Object Reading, Phantom Steeds, Hallowed Temple, varios wards and magic circles, etc is very common. Perhaps you didn't read the rules for rituals?

To the wargamers, the extreme story-telling games aren’t even games, let alone D&D. And most wargamers want to feel in control of what happens to their characters, as much as possible, so they don’t want to be told a story, they want to write their own story. Non-wargamers are less likely to feel this way.

This reads a bit like you've missed the last 20+ years of RPG design.

The whole rationale of games like Burning Wheel, HeroWars/Quest, Dogs in the Vineyard, Cortex+ Heroic, etc, is that the story is generated in play, rather than being told to the players.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Rules can totally influence how people role play. For example, Gygax made the exp for gold rule to encourage players to act more like swords and sorcery protagonists that were in for the money.

Sent from my [device_name] using EN World mobile app

 

[Thomas Bowman]

It also encourages building a fief and commanding armies at higher level, Generally the higher level you are the richer you are. I'll give you a counter-example, one of the most famous Forgotten Realms characters is Drizzt Do'Urden, Drizzt has been adventuring for quite some time, by now he ought to be quite high level, by the old rules, he would have accumulated a lot of treasure, he would have built or acquired his own keep, he would have retainers and men at arms guarding his castle, and he would be a general of his army while often going toe to toe with the various beasts and monsters encountered on the battlefield.

 

[Lanefan]

Uh, how is this contentious. In one cogent sentence, you've neatly captured the beating heart of roleplaying games! Or if you want to expand it further:

"Here's what I want to do, let's see if the dice (cards, jenga tower, or whatever fortune mechanic the game possesses) let it happen or if something less desirable happens!"

Ideally this is true for nearly all combat situations, for some exploration and other situations, and for no interaction situations (to use 5e's three pillars). Anything that inserts dice into what players can instead roleplay their way through is a discouragement to roleplaying, as the dice almost invariably act - or are seen by the players - as more or less of a shortcut. This is where it gets contentious.

Dice come in when something the players can't do (swing weapons or sneak down hallways or whatever) needs to be resolved.

This reads a bit like you've missed the last 20+ years of RPG design.

This'll sound harsh, but from what I've seen - with a few exceptions - the years between about 1996 (nadir of TSR) and 2016 (5e) didn't provide much of any worth at all; with the exception of 3e/PF which at least gave us a few good things and ideas to chew on if we were patient enough to dig 'em out.

Sure lots of experimental games came out in that time, and lots of little niches were created and-or filled...but that's all. And 4e came, made a pretty big splash, and then went; and by 'went' I mean within a few more years on its current trajectory it'll likely just be another niche game unless it somehow enjoys a rather big resurgence. Meanwhile the OSR, welcome though it was and is, has merely more or less replowed fields already harvested long ago; and generated yet a few more niches.

Lan-"shields up"-efan

 

[Shasarak]

It also encourages building a fief and commanding armies at higher level, Generally the higher level you are the richer you are. I'll give you a counter-example, one of the most famous Forgotten Realms characters is Drizzt Do'Urden, Drizzt has been adventuring for quite some time, by now he ought to be quite high level, by the old rules, he would have accumulated a lot of treasure, he would have built or acquired his own keep, he would have retainers and men at arms guarding his castle, and he would be a general of his army while often going toe to toe with the various beasts and monsters encountered on the battlefield.

Actually you are right, that does sound exactly like almost every Drizzt book ever. He has treasure, keep, retainers, armies and still manages to find time to go toe to toe with Demogorgon!

 

[Aldarc]

Dice come in when something the players can't do (swing weapons or sneak down hallways or whatever) needs to be resolved.

Lan-"shields up"-efan

Presumably they can swing weapons or otherwise they wouldn't be trying. Admittedly, mileage may vary, but I don't see things that way. Dice for me, or even most of players, is not a shortcut for anything. For me at least, dice come in when there are interesting consequences for success or failure. If my players want to sneak down the hall, but the failure to do so adds nothing of value or consequence, then I would not see the point in having the players roll for it. That, to me, seems like an extraneous roll. But there may be interesting consequences at stake in social situations that should require a roll or a series of skill-challenge rolls. I don't think that discourages bad roleplaying unless your own bad GMing provides incentives for that sort of behavior. It can even heighten roleplaying as failure creates new complications or challenges, and this pushes the players to roleplay for what they need. The dice roll also means that the players are not having to mind read the GM's desires for what constitutes "good roleplay" in a social situation. Often the GMs "The NPC is not convinced" is like roleplaying without dice resolution mechanics "Your weapon does not hit." Again, I'm not arguing that dice resolution mechanics should be used for every social, combat, or exploration situation, but, rather, - and I quote again from Fate - "Roll the dice when succeeding or failing at the action could each contribute something interesting to the game."

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ideally this is true for nearly all combat situations, for some exploration and other situations, and for no interaction situations (to use 5e's three pillars). Anything that inserts dice into what players can instead roleplay their way through is a discouragement to roleplaying, as the dice almost invariably act - or are seen by the players - as more or less of a shortcut. This is where it gets contentious.

Dice come in when something the players can't do (swing weapons or sneak down hallways or whatever) needs to be resolved.

This'll sound harsh, but from what I've seen - with a few exceptions - the years between about 1996 (nadir of TSR) and 2016 (5e) didn't provide much of any worth at all; with the exception of 3e/PF which at least gave us a few good things and ideas to chew on if we were patient enough to dig 'em out.

Sure lots of experimental games came out in that time, and lots of little niches were created and-or filled...but that's all. And 4e came, made a pretty big splash, and then went; and by 'went' I mean within a few more years on its current trajectory it'll likely just be another niche game unless it somehow enjoys a rather big resurgence. Meanwhile the OSR, welcome though it was and is, has merely more or less replowed fields already harvested long ago; and generated yet a few more niches.

Lan-"shields up"-efan

Mechanics are role-playing, too, though. I don't stop playing the role of Bob the Fighter every tine I roll to hit. In fact, rolling to hit is a pretty good example of me role-playing Bob.

 

[Sunseeker]

Ideally this is true for nearly all combat situations, for some exploration and other situations, and for no interaction situations (to use 5e's three pillars). Anything that inserts dice into what players can instead roleplay their way through is a discouragement to roleplaying, as the dice almost invariably act - or are seen by the players - as more or less of a shortcut. This is where it gets contentious.

Dice come in when something the players can't do (swing weapons or sneak down hallways or whatever) needs to be resolved.

I agree and disagree with this.

The rules say the players can do a lot of things. The players can hide any time they want. But that doesn't necessarily mean they will become the game status of Hidden. They need to roll for that. But they can role-play up hiding all they want.

More specifically, lets look at the Monk's "Tongue of Sun and Moon", which lets you be understood and understand any creature which can speak a language. You can role-play this up all you like, but there is some built-in vagueness to "understand". Does understanding imply perfect comprehension? Does "understanding" mean you get innuendo or implication? Or is it simply literal translation, which could lead to a lack of understanding. Does it mean you understand slang? Does it provide context as well as comprehension? These things you may have to roll for.

Also, swinging a sword is completely within the purview of the player. Hitting with a sword requires a roll. You can role-play your swing all you like, THAT is under your control. You cannot role-play through the attempt to hit with your sword, that requires a roll. You can certainly role-play the outcome of that roll though.

So, I agree that if it is within the player's power to do, I will not stop them. The rules say they can, so unless there are extenuating circumstances imposed upon them, they can. But being able to do something doesn't guarantee them an outcome. There are very few things which are completely under the player's control to determine an outcome. That is largely the purview of the dice.

This'll sound harsh, but from what I've seen - with a few exceptions - the years between about 1996 (nadir of TSR) and 2016 (5e) didn't provide much of any worth at all; with the exception of 3e/PF which at least gave us a few good things and ideas to chew on if we were patient enough to dig 'em out.

Sure lots of experimental games came out in that time, and lots of little niches were created and-or filled...but that's all. And 4e came, made a pretty big splash, and then went; and by 'went' I mean within a few more years on its current trajectory it'll likely just be another niche game unless it somehow enjoys a rather big resurgence. Meanwhile the OSR, welcome though it was and is, has merely more or less replowed fields already harvested long ago; and generated yet a few more niches.

Lan-"shields up"-efan

And I think you're exaggerating, but w/e.

 

[Lanefan]

Presumably they can swing weapons or otherwise they wouldn't be trying.

Gah!

By players I mean the people sitting at the table.

If I'd meant characters I'd have said characters.

Admittedly, mileage may vary, but I don't see things that way. Dice for me, or even most of players, is not a shortcut for anything. For me at least, dice come in when there are interesting consequences for success or failure. If my players...

You mean characters

...want to sneak down the hall, but the failure to do so adds nothing of value or consequence, then I would not see the point in having the players roll for it. That, to me, seems like an extraneous roll.

Except in most such cases neither the characters nor the players know whether anything's at stake, meaning you'd still go through the motions of rolling anyway (otherwise you're giving away info they shouldn't have yet).

But there may be interesting consequences at stake in social situations that should require a roll or a series of skill-challenge rolls. I don't think that discourages bad roleplaying unless your own bad GMing provides incentives for that sort of behavior. It can even heighten roleplaying as failure creates new complications or challenges, and this pushes the players to roleplay for what they need. The dice roll also means that the players are not having to mind read the GM's desires for what constitutes "good roleplay" in a social situation. Often the GMs "The NPC is not convinced" is like roleplaying without dice resolution mechanics "Your weapon does not hit."

If the players are actively roleplaying their way through the situation and the dice are only occasionally being used as a backup, I can live with that.

It's the attempted use of die rolls by players - and sometimes DMs! - who want to skip or circumvent the whole scene that annoys me to no end; and the only surefire way to prevent this is to remove those mechanics.

Again, I'm not arguing that dice resolution mechanics should be used for every social, combat, or exploration situation, but, rather, - and I quote again from Fate - "Roll the dice when succeeding or failing at the action could each contribute something interesting to the game."

I disagree with Fate, then; in that if dice are only rolled when something's at stake it far too soon becomes obvious in the metagame when something's at stake vs. when it isn't even though the in-game situation is the same; and players will pick up on this and metagame it.

"Hey, why are we rolling to sneak down this hallway when we didn't have to roll for the last three? There must be something here. On guard, everyone!"

Bleah.

Lan-"then again, IMO the DM should be making such rolls behind the screen to avoid giving away extra information"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

Mechanics are role-playing, too, though. I don't stop playing the role of Bob the Fighter every tine I roll to hit. In fact, rolling to hit is a pretty good example of me role-playing Bob.

Which backs up my point.

You-as-Ovinomancer, the player at the table, aren't (I hope!) whaling away with a sword - but Bob the Fighter is; and this player-character disconnect is taken care of by dice. All is good.

But you-as-Ovinomancer, the player at the table, can (I hope!) talk and think - which means you can more or less speak as Bob would and think as Bob would. There's much less* player-character disconnect and thus much less* requirement for dice to bridge it.

* - the ideal state here is zero.

I agree and disagree with this.

The rules say the players can do a lot of things. The players can hide any time they want. But that doesn't necessarily mean they will become the game status of Hidden. They need to roll for that. But they can role-play up hiding all they want.

More specifically, lets look at the Monk's "Tongue of Sun and Moon", which lets you be understood and understand any creature which can speak a language. You can role-play this up all you like, but there is some built-in vagueness to "understand". Does understanding imply perfect comprehension? Does "understanding" mean you get innuendo or implication? Or is it simply literal translation, which could lead to a lack of understanding. Does it mean you understand slang? Does it provide context as well as comprehension? These things you may have to roll for.

Also, swinging a sword is completely within the purview of the player. Hitting with a sword requires a roll. You can role-play your swing all you like, THAT is under your control. You cannot role-play through the attempt to hit with your sword, that requires a roll. You can certainly role-play the outcome of that roll though.

So, I agree that if it is within the player's power to do, I will not stop them. The rules say they can, so unless there are extenuating circumstances imposed upon them, they can. But being able to do something doesn't guarantee them an outcome. There are very few things which are completely under the player's control to determine an outcome. That is largely the purview of the dice.

For the hiding and sword-swinging examples you're quite right: these are both things the characters can (try to) do but the real players at the table probably won't, and dice are the bridge.

As for the Monk ability - were I a DM faced with that I'd try to adjust my speaking as the target NPC to match what the Monk would actually hear/comprehend and let the Monk's player roleplay from there. Failing that, all the rolling for the variables you note would only be done once - the very first time the ability came into play - after which the capabilities of Tongue of Sun and Moon would be pretty much locked in, to be noted for future reference in whatever rulings or houserules setup we're using.

Lanefan