What proportion of your D&D game is combat?

[Shemeska]

I'd guess at maybe 30%? This varies by session obviously, with some having much more and some having much less (last session had no combat during a 6 hour game).

 

[kenobi65]

As far as time spent, over the long term, it probably works out to half or so, but that's largely because resolving combat takes considerably longer than resolving skill use, or roleplaying.

But, that's a long-term average. We do have sessions with little or no combat, as well as sessions that are devoted to big combats.

 

[Doghead Thirteen]

I play a different (home-grown) system, but I put a reply since I think the question applies to any RPG.

And my answer was the 'roughly 50%' one. Most of our campaigns are combat-centric, but the combat is given form by the investigative work. The best it's ever got was a cyberpolice campaign where we pretty much swapped back and forth between 100% combat in one session to 100% non-combat the next.

Fighting is (in my experience) vital to the survival of a campaign. But so is non-combat activity, and neither is more important than the other.

 

[Piratecat]

I'm at about 20%. There's more roleplaying, politics and mystery solving than there is combat. I'd say we have a decent fight about every other game.

 

[Voadam]

Once a session at least. Not sure about how much that is in percentage of game time.

 

[Mandeville]

I said 80%. If I don't have a good fight in a session, I count the night as a failure. 80% of the rules are geared toward resolving combat, thus 80% of the game needs to be combat. I run a very "comic book" like game. That is not to say that we never have all role-playing nights, but they are few and far between...and even then I can identify when a session is walking down that path and I throw a random attack in to spice things up.

I know that played in one game and I was surrounded by the most pretentious "acting". Several nights would go by with every inconsequential action being played out. It got to the point that I dreaded going to the game (in fact I finally just quit).

Now I love role-playing, I'm an actor IRL. I love my games and I love to convey my NPCs though dialog rather than exposition...but the game is about adventure and that is what we do.

 

[kenobi65]

I'm at about 20%. There's more roleplaying, politics and mystery solving than there is combat. I'd say we have a decent fight about every other game.

I honestly wouldn't mind playing in a game like that, but, in the games I run, most of my players get boooooooored if they don't get to stomp on something at least once a night.

 

[Roman]

In my own games, I think it probably averages about 50%.

 

[3d6]

I'm actually pretty surprised at the results. I always thought that I ran a pretty combat-heavy game, but I would estimate only about 1/3 of the session is actual combat.

 

[FireLance]

About 80% - currently, my games tend to be quite combat-focused due to player preference, but I try to throw in at least one non-combat challenge (puzzle, trap, interaction, or other skill use) per session.

I also try to tailor the challenges to the PCs, so if someone is playing a character with trapfinding, there will be more traps, and if someone is playing an interaction-focused character, there will be more interaction-based challenges, etc.