What is your campaign balance? Combat vs Social?

[5ekyu]

Social encounters kill lots of characters. There have been many poor social interactions with people and creatures more powerful than my group that have gone badly. Some of those resulted in PC deaths. And optimization is less important than most optimizers think. The game is designed around non-optimized PCs, so while it becomes easier for optimized PCs, optimization is not required to easily survive the game.



Because I'm not mistaking all the extra rules for combat as meaning the game should revolve around combat. The extra rules are there because combat is much more complicated than exploration and social interaction, so it needs all the extra rules and abilities to be able to handle it, not because the game should be mostly combat.



This is your personal choice, not one the game is making for you. If you like to play a mostly combat game, that's great. For my part, I understand that the pillars are equal, and therefore strive to give them equal time in my game.

Yeah... my bet is the guides on heart surgery are lots longer than those on colds but that doesnt mean the former are more frequent.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

@Maxperson You seem to come to a lot of wrong conclusions and assumptions from everything I write, so I'm not sure it is worth my time and effort continuously trying to correct you. I am not advocating one play style over another. I don't believe I would enjoy a purely combat-centric campaign. I much prefer roleplaying with like-minded players, but also enjoy some hack-n-slash fun with friends who enjoy that more.

What I am advocating in this thread is for players to have their choice and not be criticized or shamed because the bulk of unthinking people who think the majority must be right. D&D has always been more focused on the combat and encounters, this edition is no exception. To its credit, it has increased some emphasis on the other pillars, which have always existed in every edition. But those areas have largely been left to individual groups to handle themselves.

So if I, or anyone else, feels that combat options are more interesting or combat has more representations in a campaign, we should not be made to defend our personal preferences. Play as you like. Let others play their way, too.

 

[Maxperson]

@Maxperson You seem to come to a lot of wrong conclusions and assumptions from everything I write, so I'm not sure it is worth my time and effort continuously trying to correct you. I am not advocating one play style over another. I don't believe I would enjoy a purely combat-centric campaign. I much prefer roleplaying with like-minded players, but also enjoy some hack-n-slash fun with friends who enjoy that more.

What I am advocating in this thread is for players to have their choice and not be criticized or shamed because the bulk of unthinking people who think the majority must be right. D&D has always been more focused on the combat and encounters, this edition is no exception. To its credit, it has increased some emphasis on the other pillars, which have always existed in every edition. But those areas have largely been left to individual groups to handle themselves.

So if I, or anyone else, feels that combat options are more interesting or combat has more representations in a campaign, we should not be made to defend our personal preferences. Play as you like. Let others play their way, too.

The only thing I disagree with is the bolded portion. If a game of D&D is more focused on combat, that's the doing of the DM, not the edition. The disparity in the amount of mechanics is just due to the complexity of combat vs. the complexity of the other pillars, not because combat should be greater than the other pillars.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah... my bet is the guides on heart surgery are lots longer than those on colds but that doesnt mean the former are more frequent.

Exactly. Colds are a much bigger part of life, even though they are less dangerous than heart attacks. It's a good analogy for how combat works in D&D in relation to the other pillars. Combat gets more book rules due to its complexity, but exploration and social still combine to make a bigger part of the game than combat. Unless the DM goes out of his way to make it more combat focused of course.

 

[Inchoroi]

If I had to give an overall ratio, I'd probably say 55 combat, 20 exploration, 25 social. But, it does vary session to session by quite a bit; some sessions are all combat, but some sessions there's no combat at all. I generally have a few sessions, like a dungeon crawl or similar thing, and then I've written the campaign in such a way that they can take some downtime and/or do social stuff for a while before the other various plot hooks they have become more relevant.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

The only thing I disagree with is the bolded portion. If a game of D&D is more focused on combat, that's the doing of the DM, not the edition. The disparity in the amount of mechanics is just due to the complexity of combat vs. the complexity of the other pillars, not because combat should be greater than the other pillars.

I see what you're saying. That is one way to look at it. From my own perspective, I would amend that statement: The game has a stronger emphasis on combat, but the DMs can influence the play for their games. So without DM guidance or influence, a player looking just at the rules might assume that combat has the lion's share of the attention, and he would not be wrong. Rules are just rules. But the beauty of RPGs is the rules are just tools to be used as needed. Thus a campaign with heavy social interactions would make less use of the combat rules, which make up the majority of the game. That doesn't make it greater or better. It's just the way it is. DMs should inform their players what to expect as many will just assume combat will be in the cards regularly.

 

[Maxperson]

I see what you're saying. That is one way to look at it. From my own perspective, I would amend that statement: The game has a stronger emphasis on combat, but the DMs can influence the play for their games. So without DM guidance or influence, a player looking just at the rules might assume that combat has the lion's share of the attention, and he would not be wrong. Rules are just rules. But the beauty of RPGs is the rules are just tools to be used as needed. Thus a campaign with heavy social interactions would make less use of the combat rules, which make up the majority of the game. That doesn't make it greater or better. It's just the way it is. DMs should inform their players what to expect as many will just assume combat will be in the cards regularly.

I definitely agree that no way is greater or better than another. As long as the group is having fun, that's really the only thing that matters.

This is what I am seeing. Let me try to explain it in more detail. When it comes to beginning some exploration, all you really needs is for the players to let you know that they are going down the steps into the tomb. When you begin a social interaction, all you really need is for the players to let you know that they are walking up to the bar to ask the barkeep if he has seen the mysterious stranger. When you begin a combat, you need rules for surprise, distance, movement, perception, and initiative. Then you need to know how to attack, what attacks there are(grapple, tripping, disarming, etc.), rules for damage, hitting, unconsciousness, and much more.

Once you're done with that whole combat section, you need to come up with mechanics for all three pillars for the various classes, and again combat surges ahead due to the complexity. You not only have the combat abilities in the classes themselves, but dozens of pages of spells for the various spellcasting classes. On the other hand, for exploration you just need a few rules on skill checks and some skills. The same for the social pillar.

That's why the game has the vast majority of the mechanical rules in it relate to combat. I think the default assumption is that the pillars will be roughly equal. I think the game expects that you will be invited to the King's banquet and shmooze socially with him and the other nobles for a while(a third of the night), then after you go to your rooms you sneak out and begin exploring to find the way to the vault to steal the crown jewels(a third of the night), and lastly when in the vault some guards burst in and you get into a fight to escape with the bounty(a third of the night).

Again, I agree that it doesn't have to be that way and you can have any weighting of those pillars the players are going to enjoy. There's no wrong way to do this as long as you are having fun. However, I don't think that the rules intend for combat to be the primary of the three pillars. I can also see how a new player flipping through the rules could get the wrong impression of what the game intends to happen.

The DMG also seems to agree with what I am seeing. When it comes to designing adventures it tells you to get to know your players and give them what's interesting. Fighting is just one of seven categories with no particular emphasis on it over any of the others. And the creating adventures section tells you to blend social, exploration and combat into a unified whole, also with no particular emphasis on any one pillar.

 

[Hussar]

The trick is [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], you don’t need any of that complexity in the combat rules. Lots of rpgs don’t have any of the rules for combat you’ve listed.

The reason why dnd does have all these rules is because combat is quite clearly the most important pillar.

 

[5ekyu]

I see what you're saying. That is one way to look at it. From my own perspective, I would amend that statement: The game has a stronger emphasis on combat, but the DMs can influence the play for their games. So without DM guidance or influence, a player looking just at the rules might assume that combat has the lion's share of the attention, and he would not be wrong. Rules are just rules. But the beauty of RPGs is the rules are just tools to be used as needed. Thus a campaign with heavy social interactions would make less use of the combat rules, which make up the majority of the game. That doesn't make it greater or better. It's just the way it is. DMs should inform their players what to expect as many will just assume combat will be in the cards regularly.

The thing is this and I think [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is inclined to agree with this...

In play are there "solutions" and paths to achieve the goals and objectives (whether these problems or goals/objectives come from GM quests or PCs preferences - no matter) that rely on, require and/or benefit from explore, social and combat pillars or are these strongly biased to only feature one with the other two as fillers?

That is a campaign defining "balance that is absolutely in the GM hands to most extent but driven by player choices as well and it is **not** really set by the rules or the page counts of rules in one book or another.

The only case IMO for "combat pillar" import as system-defined top doggie would be a GM only giving xp for killing monsters by the rules and ignored all the other xp options - which is kind of within the rules but basically applying them rather myopically.