D&D vs. Sports: Part 1

Whereas most people tend to think of the quintessential depiction of D&D as four or five adventurers sitting around a tavern, either getting the adventure given to them or celebrating their success, I'm apt to think instead about the above: the moment when the party, consequence be damned, hurls themselves into an enemy of unknown power and size, only to then let the dice sort it out. This is the game as originally conceived: a war game. This is the substance of the game when it really grabs at the emotional strings of the participants, when FEAR is actually something that's felt, because one's character, one's effort to reach this point with that character, one's faith that the party'll think their way through the struggle, whatever happens, is at it's peak.

Yet most game rule changes that have happened in the last four decades as been designed to alleviate that fear and, in consequence, make the above scene boring. Dice rolled in succession, to produce numbers that don't matter, in a procedure that's irrelevant because we know we're either going to win, or we know we're going to escape with our lives, even if one of us has to die and be raised, so we can come back and win. There is no "losing" here. The game is rigged.

Even if this is one of those campaigns where a group of characters CAN die, the next group of characters will get better die rolls when they try and they'll win. And that is the relevant point, because it's not that the next group of players will have learned anything, except maybe which enemy to attack first. D&D as written, early D&D, isn't a very tactical game. It is a very roll-and-slog designed game, which is why Chainmail never became remotely as popular as Squad Leader, Panzerblitz, System Seven, Axis & Allies or even RISK. Tactically, Chainmail sucks. Which is why the D&D combat system sucks. Which is why the game's combat system alone was not sufficient to maintain the game as it was... in the end, after all the cleverness with character class creation, spells, saving throws, to hit, hit points, levels, magic items and monsters... the actual combat system was a flop. Still is. But a flop that people pretend isn't, because all that other stuff is so cool.

Don't misunderstand me. I thought the combat system was awfully rich and neat when I first began to play; but the bloom was falling off the rose about four years later, which was something that my players and I, a group all raised on many tactical boardgames, began to discuss at length. It was clear that the error wasn't any of the things named above. And it was clear that the turn-based-system was not the issue. All strategic combat games are a turn-based-system... and it was possible, obvious even, that it was possible to simulate the sense of two great armies slamming into each other despite that. No, the problem was something else.

This post is not about the solution; I did solve it, ages ago, but that's not the subject material here. Rather, the subject here — to start — is to explain why the system as written, with the basic structure that has not been changed, because it's baked in, is fundamentally weak without appearing to be. I'll start with a portion of D&D that, at the time I began writing this blog in 2008, I still considered an excellent description of how combat should play out. Ah, how I have changed.

On page 71-72 of the original DMG, an example of melee is given, which I'd like to break down section by section. This will take a while.

"Party A (player characters) is composed of Aggro the Axe, a 4th level fighter; Abner, a 5th level magic-user; Arkayn, a 4th level cleric; and Arlanni, a 2nd level thief. They are hastening down a dungeon corridor in order to avoid an encounter with a large group of goblins, whose territory they are now leaving. It is a ten-foot wide corridor and they are moving with the cleric, fighter, and thief in a line in front, followed closely by the magic-user. Suddenly they round a bend and confront Party B, who are earnestly engaged in squabbling over some treasure. Party B is composed of Gutboy Barrelhouse, a 6th level dwarf fighter; Balto, a 1st level monk; Blastum, a 4th level magic-user; and Barjin, a 4th/5th level half-elf fighter/magic-user."

Let's start first by pointing out that most of the above is window dressing. "Hastening" is immaterial to the example, as are the goblins being left behind or the limits of "territory" the goblins have. The width of the corridor is mentioned but, as you'll see, it is irrelevant to the fight that's described. We are given everyone's class and level, which does matter... but as will be seen, again, these classes are more or less just shells that the players wear around their form of attack and the number of hit points they have.

So you can see, we're inventing a lot of prose that more or less romantises detail, which is then discarded almost immediately.

"The first thing the DM must do is determine if either party is surprised. He rolls a d6 for Party B (where the players can see it, since there are no secret modifiers) and a 2 comes up. The leader for the players rolls and gets a 4 for Party A. Party B is surprised (since they rolled a 2), and will be inactive for 2 segments."

The fact that Party A is "hastening" ought to make it clear how they are coming around the corner; the noise they're making in a 10-foot wide "dungeon corridor," almost always depicted at that time as stone, would announce their arrival at least a hundred, more likely two hundred feet away underground. Party B would not, in any realistic way, be surprised, since they'd have heard Party A coming and would be lying in wait. Even if they were arguing, the argument would be suspended at the sound of four persons, two in armour, coming closer and closer and closer. So, right off, "surprise" simply ignores reality. It is a die roll that permits no context.

Further, as written, the players have no engagement here. The DM rolls for both the players and the NPCs (whichever is which). Why not let the players roll for the players? It's more or less a largely meaningless roll, but hey, why not? And why would the DM want it? There is enough for the DM to do, that the DM can assign tasks to the players, such as rolling surprise dice.

As a small point, that does rack up with a lot of combat play, the round/segment separation (10 segments per round) was always confusing and never properly explained. Yet the game, as written, insisted on embracing it when other, far more complicated systems, understood that fixing TIME as a non-changing but CLEAR variable, allowed the players to comprehend more easily what was going on. The confusion of two or three kinds of "time" (the "turn" was 10 rounds) tended to create comprehension difficulties that merely urged many players to simply zone out... not because the system was too difficult, but because it was so unclear why these stipulations existed. As well, the value in game terms of knowing the distinctions was non-existent. One did not become a better tactician by understanding the difference between a round and a segment.

"Next the DM checks distance, and finds that the parties are only 10' apart—sufficiently near to close and strike."

The "distance checking" here seems to impose a strategic factor, but it really doesn't. The DM has not "checked" the size of the corridor, the presence of the characters in it or presumably anything else they haven't seen. Presumably, if the DM has designed the dungeon, and the dungeon has Party B in it, then the DM ought to have provided the exact location of Party B at that time, and not now when Party A happens to turn the corner. Presumably, the rest of the corridor's length is accounted for beyond Party B, and the DM knows that as well. Therefore, the distance check is just window dressing, again. In any case, even if Party A were moving silent, if Party B were ten feet from a blind corner, then presumably they'd have looked around this blind corner before stopping here to have a parley about treasure. There are four members of Party B. Presumably they are not all engaged in an argument so convenient that they are together all talking at the same time, while having forgotten they're in a dungeon where wandering monsters occur (as they do in all D&D dungeons).

"Party A immediately recognizes Party B as a group of "evil marauders" they were warned against and moves to attack. First, Arlanni the thief, who had her sling ready (as the player had stated previous to the encounter), fires a shot at Blastum, who is obviously a magic-user. A sling bullet gains +3 "to hit" vs. no armor. Arlanni would usually need an 11 to hit, but now needs only an 8. She rolls a 5, and misses."

Now, here the combat begins to resolve. What matters here isn't the procedure or the manner in which a "ready sling" is interpreted... let's wave all that as irrelevant. The larger reveal here is that the set up, two parties not in conflict, permits no real "tactical judgment" at all. The characters have one attack; Arlanni's is the sling she possesses. We create a "logic" for her to fire at Blastum ("obviously" the mage) except the "obvious" is a metagame knowledge, i.e., only a mage enters a dungeon without armour. No armour, ipso facto, must be the mage. It isn't that another class might have had their armour eaten away by acid or dragon breath, no; it isn't that the character might not be able to afford armour; or that they've simply chosen not to wear it for encumbrance purposes. No, it is pre-determined that the character without armour is the mage... thus, flattening the procedure by telling the character with the weapon that gets a bonus against AC 10 should obviously attack the opponent with AC 10.

That sounds like a tactic, but it isn't. When the rules exaggerate one specific action by giving benefits to that specific action, then taking that specific action isn't tactical, it's falling off a log. This is something D&D does again and again with its combat system. It works because there are a lot of specific tactical benefits, but once the players know what they are, it's plug-and-play, not a tactical endeavour.

Moreover, we can't even argue from the above that Arlanni uses the sling because it brings the benefit: it states plainly that she had it ready before meeting the enemy, before the surprise check, before coming around the corner. It was use the sling or don't attack this round.

All this together makes the succeed/fail roll look worse. Effectively, the attack could be carried out by throwing the die in front of a stuffed dummy with an Arlanni name tag. And this is how a lot of players come to feel when someone shoves a die at them, then roll it, they get a 5, they're told they missed, and the play moves on to some other player. There's no sense of "engagement," because the others at the table are telling the player "this is what you do here." Again, this is an example of play equivalent to turning a roulette wheel.

"Aggro the fighter rushes forward to attack the nearest opponent, who happens to be Balto, the monk. Balto is wearing no armor, so Aggro needs a base 8 to hit Balto. However, Aggro is using a + 1 hand axe, and furthermore an axe is + 1 to hit vs. no armor, so Aggro's adjusted amount needed to hit is only 6 (or, alternately, the cumulative +2 could be added to whatever he rolls to improve his chances of rolling an 8 or better). Aggro rolls a 14 and hits Balto, but only 1 point of damage is rolled, plus a 1 point bonus from the magic axe (2 points total), and Balto can take 4."

The fighter has little else he can do; he might throw a weapon but at this range it's fight anyway and his hand weapon has a potential for greater damage. "Happens" to be Balto is an expression of the way that D&D was played in those days: there's no battle map, so the DM just states the character in front of Aggro, either deciding arbitrarily or having the dice decide. Aggro is not asked, "Which do you fight," nor is it expected he will obviously state that from the above. Players always do state it, in which case DMs often simply say, no, you can't fight the mage, he's over there, you can fight the monk. This again removes any tactical relevance to Aggro's efforts other than rolling a die to see what happens. He might as well be sitting on the sidelines of a game and urging on a batter, for all the relevance his decision makes in the process. The procedure then also resolves without him: miss/hit with calculated modifiers, roll damage, record damage. 

"Meanwhile, Abner and Arkayn have been preparing short (first level) spells. The cleric shouts a command of "surrender!" at Gutboy Barrelhouse, but Gutboy is 6th level and thus gets a saving throw. Furthermore, he is a dwarf with a constitution of 16, and thus saves at +4. He therefore needs a 10 or better to save (instead of a 14). He rolls a 17 and saves easily. Unfortunately, he is almost simultaneously hit by two magic missiles from Abner, the magic-user. Against these there is no save, and Gutboy suffers 6 points of damage (from a possible 4-10)."

Again... Abner is a mage, Arkayn is a cleric. Within the rule set, casting a spell is mechanically no different from Arlanni's sling. There's no cost to casting, except a temporary loss of the spell (a loss that would be "fixed" by later systems); they are not made vulnerable by weaving magic. Thus, there's no sense to their not using their sharpest weapon at this time.

Arkayn even at 4th doesn't have a lot of attack options; hold person would be more effective; perhaps he's used it or hasn't "loaded" it, as they say. Command is a 1st level spell, allows the use of a subjunctive verb (look it up) and a single one at that: "surrender" is a fair option. There aren't many good ones. Kneel, collapse, sleep... some of my old timey players liked "defecate" or "urinate," which is reasonably something that effectively distracts the recipient for the one-round duration of the spell. It doesn't matter. Arkayn, like Arlanni, is using the best arrow in his bow at this point and it's subject to a saving throw... so, in effect, it is the most obvious action with a succeed/failure roll and... not tactical, since any other better option would have been used here. Later, Arkayn gives up magic and just fights.

Abner's two magic missiles are the same logic: the best bullet in his gun. The "hit" is bookkeeping, automatic: needed to win the battle, perhaps, but the obvious thing done at the most obvious time.

Abner doesn't target the other mage (for reasons that aren't clear, since he can "see" what Arlanni sees, that the obvious mage is the more dangerous enemy, but the example here needs everyone in Party B to be threatened so, there we are. Nothing tactical is taking place here except the example is arbitrarily assigning everyone their individual target.

Would targeting the mage be the better tactic? Well, that's worthy discussion. But it's not part of the discussion in the DMG. And it should be.

My opinion of it after 46 years of D&D is that the magic missile does not do enough damage to meaningfully change either option. Either Blastum is such a low level mage that six damage is effective enough to kill him, in which case he was never dangerous, or he's dangerous enough mage that he can shake off six or ten points and still cast as soon as Gutboy puts himself between the mage and whomever else. Either the spell you've got can do the job against the dangerous opponent, or it can't, and you have no tactical control over that. Which, again, is why the system has flaws. Most tactical games are fought on open fields: large scale maps, open plains, desert scapes, street battles fought at a difference over scattered terrain. D&D is normally fought in a tiny enclosed spaces where the fighters can block access to the mages who can blast whatever they can reach. So, effectively, it doesn't matter who Abner targets. It amounts to "let's see who gets lucky."

"As Party B is surprised for 2 segments, Party A has a chance to hit in each segment as if they were full rounds (this does not apply to spell use, of course). In the second segment, Arlanni chooses to set down her crossbow and unsheathe her sword.

The example has forgotten that Arlanni is using a sling. The crossbow would take time to load, so that is a tactical decision... but loading it in this closed space would, from experience with battle, be the wrong decision, so she's again just doing what she most obviously should.

"Aggro would normally get another chance to hit Balto, who would be inactive for another segment, but Balto's dexterity allows him a +1 reaction adjustment, which means that he personally will be surprised for one less segment than the rest of his party. So this segment he IS up and on his guard, and Aggro does not get another hit attempt this round."

By sheer chance, though monks must have a 15 or greater dexterity to be their class, Balto happens to be the one among the enemy who is exempt from this second attack. However, the rules don't explain why or how Aggro is "engaged" with Balto in such a manner that he cannot instead swing on Gutboy or someone else, in this cramped 10 foot wide hallway where presumably everyone arguing was together, and are now not close enough together to be targeted as a group, though they were "surprised." Normally in D&D, if attacking two or more opponents, the combatant is permitted to attack WHICH opponent they wish. But here there is nothing to tell Aggro how far away Gutboy is, or whether or not Aggro is allowed to move away or around Balto now that they're engaged... no, it's described above as though Aggro's feet (being the one not surprised) are now stuck in amber after having attacked one of the enemy's number.

This is the game strategic limitation imposed by non-map tactics. A segment is described as "six seconds." In six seconds, in my youth, I used to be able to run a distance of 40 yards easily. That's 120 feet, twelve times the distance between the parties at the outset of this fight. But my fighter can't reach Gutboy, who must be standing to the monk's left or right, because somehow he successfully blocks me despite being surprised enough for me to fight him one round?

"Arkayn the cleric readies his mace..."

Arkayn hasn't another attack spell; a mace makes sense. It inexplicably takes him six seconds to get the mace off his belt and "ready;" Arlanni has the same problem above finding her sword. These are not weapons designed to take more than a second or two to "get ready," but that draw speed for different weapons, say a dagger vs. a halberd, IS described on page 66-67 of the same DMG (five pages earlier), where it's said that the "speed factor" is indicative of "how long it takes to reading a weapon against an opponent," but then it fails to give any hard detail for this "how long" that is applicable here or anywhere else.

Speed factor on those pages is not translated into seconds or segments, and no rule uses it to determine how long Arkayn needs to draw his mace or Arlanni needs to put down one weapon and draw another. The number is only activated under special initiative circumstances after combatants are already prepared to fight. Reading the text reveals it's an idea of a rule that never resolves into anything that's comprehensible. Even the book's own example of combat simply causes the character's to both skip their attacks on account of drawing weapons.

"...as Abner steps back and begins to unroll a scroll for use next round."

This looks like a tactical decision; Abner does not draw a weapon, he chooses to seek out a resource, a magic item, and use that instead. However, there's no explanation of where this scroll was kept on his body; the scroll is apparently not in a case, which would have to be gotten, then the case opened, then the scroll taken out, then the scroll unrolled, and all this presumably with him moving backward so he isn't jostled by the fight while all this is happening. Or did he have it in his hand when casting magic missile, or running down the hall from the goblins? How is it this relatively fragile thing comes so easy to hand? Why he is left alone to do this is explained only by the 1 segment he has left before the enemy is no longer surprised — so what then? Is there a risk involved here? If there is, it's potentially tactical for Abner to choose this option.

The missing map matters again. How far does he "step back?" Is Arkayn now between him and Party B? Does the corridor permit Aggro and Arkayn to form a barrier? Can an enemy move around them? The sentence gives Abner the benefit of positioning without requiring anyone to establish or defend that position. In like manner the scroll is treated as an option on a menu rather than as a physical object.

"Now initiative dice are rolled, and party A's score is lower, so party B gets to react to the assault. Balto attacks Aggro (who is in AC 2) with his staff. He needs a base 18 to hit, and the -7 armor class adjustment for sword vs. plate mail and shield makes this a 20. He (the DM) rolls a 19 —almost, but not quite! Gutboy Barrelhouse and Barjin the fighter/magic-user both attack Arkayn. That cleric's AC is only 5. Gutboy has +l to hit due to strength, and his hammer's armor class adjustment vs. scale mail and shield is + 1, so he needs a 9 or better to hit (1 1 before bonuses). He rolls a 12 and hits for 5 points of damage (including 1 point of bonus damage from strength). Barjin, with a sword, needs a 13 or better to hit Arkayn. He rolls a 13 exactly, and hits for 6 more points of damage. Arkayn is starting to have second thoughts about this whole affair."

At this point, we can see that the attacks above are utterly procedural and not tactical. Plus Balto's not using a sword vs. plate mail and -7 from a base 18 means he needs a 25, not a 20, so... let's just skip that. The point is, none of this makes sense. Gutboy's teaming up with Barjin is arbitrary; it makes more sense for the 6th level dwarf to go after the heavily armoured fighter Aggro, sparing the 1st level monk from fighting him alone; Barjin the 4th/5th level can master a flimsy cleric who has one spell to cast, and command at that. These are the tactical choices here, but there being ignored because... the lack of a map? The DM throwing arbitrary choices at the NPCs? Who knows.

This is a good time to talk about game damage in the original system. Damage, when it occurs, is meaningless if it does not kill. Arkayn may feel unnerved by how many fewer hit points he has, but his effectiveness in combat is unchanged whether he takes 1 damage or 11, as he does here. All he need do is have "second thoughts." His body, presumably the thing taking the damage, is not physically affected by the hits, nor does it get in the way of Arkayn returning an attack as though he's just been landed on by a fly.

This makes combat into bookkeeping in a most extreme way. At lower level, the "zero" is closer, and thus every point feels a little more important... so long as we understand this feeling rests entirely in the player's mind. At higher level, the distance to zero is so great, and the effect so meaningless, that it actively makes playing higher level characters less interesting. Combine this lack of effect with the mass benefits of healing at higher levels, and the combat system is positively a snooze-fest.

"Meanwhile, Blastum has been preparing a shocking grasp spell, and now he steps forward and touches (rolls a successful "to hit" die score) Arlanni the thief, delivering 10 points of damage (1-8 + 4). There is no saving throw: Arlanni has only 8 hit points, and dies."

Again, as a tactical system, this simply blows through several processes. One segment before this "round" began, Blastum was so inert he could not move, he could do nothing but defend himself while Arlanni's sling stone flew past his ears. Now, instantly (so far at the game round matters), he has the spell cast, has it invested into his body, has moved forward to where he can reach Arlanni (presumably not behind anyone, despite the 10 foot corridor and the people fighting), so he can reach out his hand and touch her, killing her instantly. They haven't fought hand to hand at any point prior to this, but she lost initiative so the other can move anywhere on the battle map he wishes as a mage and kill whomever he can hit with his hand. We do not even have a declaration that Arlanni advanced after drawing her sword. So, while Aggro cannot attack someone other than Balto, Blastum can walk past Aggro, past Arkayn, past three of his own people, in a ten foot corridor, and attack the thief at the back.

Nice.

If he could do this, why didn't he go after the mage with the scroll in hand? Because Abner "stepped back"? Is that all it takes to avoid all fighting thereafter?

This is sufficient to make the point. We have something that pretends to be a combat system, but isn't. And since, the same sort of assumptions that exist in the above still exist in the later systems that have copied this procedure, only making it more obstructive by having everyone in the combat roll initiative every single round, as though in any way that improves the tactical structure lacking here. We are still running systems that are effectively instant magic in the place of instant sword swinging, however complicated the kind of sword magic being done, to produce non-tactical results that are just "the next thing to do is to attack the next person."

Fifth edition improves the scaffolding that is missing, yes: it establishes combatants’ positions, gives each creature a definite space, reach and movement rate, restricts movement through hostile creatures, permits movement before and after an action... and provides explicit rules for dash, disengage, dodge, ready, grappling, shoving, cover and opportunity attacks. In a ten-foot corridor, Aggro and Arkayn can occupy the two five-foot spaces across its width; Blastum cannot simply walk through them to touch Arlanni. That particular absurdity has been corrected.

But in many games the map remains optional... and the rules still begin by saying that the DM establishes where everyone is. Consequently, theatre-of-the-mind play can reproduce the same problem in a slightly better-regulated form: the player asks whether a target is reachable and the DM announces whether the imagined position permits it. Fifth edition gives the DM firmer rules for answering, but unless the battlefield is visibly recorded, the player may still be discovering spatial facts only after proposing an action.

And though damaging a caster can break concentration, that's still the most obvious choice to make. And while shoving can move or knock down an opponent, and grappling can stop movement, that's still usually the most obvious thing to do when an opponent needs to be dealt with in some other way than attacking. These are not really a collection of choices one makes, it's just the next obvious action when the enemy is somewhere that they need to be pushed or slowed or toppled or sapped. Fifth edition has increased the number of things an attack can do, but that is not the same as increasing tactical judgment. It has mostly enlarged the library of prescribed responses.

A caster is concentrating, so attack the caster. An enemy stands near a ledge, so push the enemy. Someone needs to be prevented from moving, so grapple or slow that person. An opponent relies upon accurate attacks, so sap the opponent. Once the relevant condition appears, the system often indicates the appropriate button plainly enough that choosing it is little more than recognising a cue.

Genuine tactical decisions require competing benefits; arrange these defenses and those attacks to drive this enemy in this manner there, so they can be trapped thusly or split apart and attacked in smaller groups. Unless the players have the rule sets that allow them to organise themselves in such a manner that they can move over a map that permits BOTH freedom of movement AND rational obstacles that prevent it, then every battle becomes close, fight until the hit points go away and then slog forward.

The most telling demonstration of this is, I think, that there is a tendency among "let's play" video content to "spice up" combat scenes with meaningless non-game cutscene dialogue that the DM indulges in to provide more context and meaning to the ongoing scene... while, in fact, the dice seem to matter less and less to the outcome. It's rather egregious but it's also evidence that battle, as the game rules dictate, is boring. That does not venture well for the value of D&D as a construction other than collaborative inventive role-playing dreck. Which is why, I feel, the concept has drifted without restraint into that direction. We're not here to fight the monster. We're hear to listen to the DM describe how we fight the monster.

All this begs the question: why go into this level of depth on this process? What is this post trying to prove? That original D&D failed? If so, then the news is a bit behind the times.

Granted. All this, however, is not to prove that the combat system as written sucks, but specifically how and why it sucks: because it is not sports.

I've been writing this post since yesterday; I'm going to post this and continue on part two.