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<blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6241025" data-attributes="member: 5143">But the fact that most of them are combat spells is kind of the point.&nbsp; When you look at a character sheet in D&amp;D or the rules in general, here's how the game looks:&quot;What can I do?&nbsp; Well, I can cast fireball, magic missile, burning hands, hold person, mage armor, hold portal, or comprehend languages, make a melee attack with my quarterstaff, make a ranged attack with my darts, have knowledge of magic, I can spot hidden things well, I have knowledge of religion, or I can do something else that I can think of that isn't on my character sheet.&quot;Thinking is hard, so most people default to the options on their character sheet, and when 80% of those options are combat options it looks like the game is a combat game.&nbsp; Especially given that over half the DMG in most editions is about how to plan proper encounters, how to use monsters, which monsters are most appropriate, which levels of the dungeon each monster should be on, how to make dungeons, how to make traps, how much xp monsters and traps are worth, how much treasure should you give out for defeating monsters, what the treasure that you find after killing the monsters does, and so on.&nbsp; Also, it should be noted that those magic items you find after killing monsters...the vast majority of them have abilities that are only useful for fighting monsters as well.I think that you might be able to make a case that 2e wasn't so much about combat.&nbsp; It was still heavily combat based but it was the one edition where the source material all kind of pointed to non-combat oriented adventures.&nbsp; There was a vast increase in the number of non-combat spells and magic items.&nbsp; The adventures that were published tended to have slightly less combat in them.&nbsp; There were books that focused more on world building for world building sake instead of couching everything in terms of &quot;and this is why PCs will want to go there and kill things&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Majoru Oakheart, post: 6241025, member: 5143"] But the fact that most of them are combat spells is kind of the point. When you look at a character sheet in D&D or the rules in general, here's how the game looks: "What can I do? Well, I can cast fireball, magic missile, burning hands, hold person, mage armor, hold portal, or comprehend languages, make a melee attack with my quarterstaff, make a ranged attack with my darts, have knowledge of magic, I can spot hidden things well, I have knowledge of religion, or I can do something else that I can think of that isn't on my character sheet." Thinking is hard, so most people default to the options on their character sheet, and when 80% of those options are combat options it looks like the game is a combat game. Especially given that over half the DMG in most editions is about how to plan proper encounters, how to use monsters, which monsters are most appropriate, which levels of the dungeon each monster should be on, how to make dungeons, how to make traps, how much xp monsters and traps are worth, how much treasure should you give out for defeating monsters, what the treasure that you find after killing the monsters does, and so on. Also, it should be noted that those magic items you find after killing monsters...the vast majority of them have abilities that are only useful for fighting monsters as well. I think that you might be able to make a case that 2e wasn't so much about combat. It was still heavily combat based but it was the one edition where the source material all kind of pointed to non-combat oriented adventures. There was a vast increase in the number of non-combat spells and magic items. The adventures that were published tended to have slightly less combat in them. There were books that focused more on world building for world building sake instead of couching everything in terms of "and this is why PCs will want to go there and kill things". [/QUOTE]

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