Because D&D is a combat board game.
If you want to play roleplaying, try Dread. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dread_(role-playing_game)
> Making a lot of dice rolls can give a certain kind of player the illusion that they had agency in winning or losing (particularly important if you want them to accept the death of their character), but in reality it all averages out and who wins a given combat is largely a question of what everyone's stats look like going into it. (Or you allow the players to come up with tactics that you consider clever enough to give them advantages - but then we're back to you having to judge whether they've come up with something good or some bullshit).
That's like saying Chess or Backgammon isn't satisfying because you're just moving pieces around or rolling dice.
People can love the game itself. Positioning, selection of spells, cooperation with allies. Etc. etc. D&D 3.5 / Pathfinder is a good game at its core.
The same cannot be said of all systems of combat. (IE: World of Darkness). World of Darkness's dice seem more like a randomization element. But then again, this is a roleplaying game, rather than a rollplaying game.
----------
All the "roleplayer" wants is a random element. Someone to have randomly decided to have been the winner / loser, and then to roleplay the new situation. From this perspective, D&D is counterproductive.
So don't play D&D. Play the myriad of other, roleplay heavy games (like Dread, World of Darkness, Changeling, Vampire, etc. etc.). They're perfectly good games.
---------
> but it's not narratively satisfying
Don't turn D&D into something it isn't. If you're not satisfied by the combat of D&D, then do not play it. There are plenty of other games that have far better focus on the roleplaying aspect of this genre.
EDIT: Moods shift. Sometimes I feel like combat. I use D&D / Pathfinder / etc. etc. for that. Maybe Ikusa or Axis and Allies as well.
Sometimes I feel like roleplaying. I pull out World of Darkness instead
--------
Like, if the 400-pages of spell-interactions and obscure flanking rules is counterproductive to your enjoyment of the game... maybe don't choose that system? But I've derived plenty of enjoyment from these systems (3.5, Pathfinder, etc. etc.) so I can say its worthwhile... if you're into it. But don't force yourself to like it if you're not into it...
I enjoy playing Mordenheim-style small squad miniatures combat games (and that's what D&D is at its heart) on occasion. But I've never found a game that can succeed at being both a competitive game and a roleplaying game at the same time (not just RPG-style games, I had this problem with Android the board game too). One can't be a servant of two masters.
> So don't play D&D. Play the myriad of other, roleplay heavy games (like Dread, World of Darkness, Changeling, Vampire, etc. etc.). They're perfectly good games.
Right. You seemed to originally be claiming that having a less mechanically detailed, more roleplay-oriented system inherently made games less balanced and more unfair. "Lemme bullshit my own powers to be better than everyone else's, so that I'm the star of this show" is a problem in fully freeform systems, but you don't need a detailed combat system to resolve it; light systems where conflict is a simple roll (even WoD is a bit heavy for my tastes personally) handle fair conflict resolution just fine. (And I'd argue that they end up being fairer than mechanically heavy systems where the powergamers with min-maxed builds have an advantage over players who just picked a build that felt fun).
> The importance is that the players have agency in the process, as well as knowing the limits of their own powers and capabilities.
Sure; my point was: what is it that makes the difference between the players winning or losing? If it's about whether they spotted (narratively relevant) connections, understood things, had good ideas, that's interesting. If it's about whether they had a clever leap of genre-appropriate logic, that's interesting. If it's about whether they solved an abstract logic puzzle, that's less interesting; if it's about whether they out-argue you or browbeat you that's deeply uninteresting. But distinguishing between "came up with a clever way to use the detailed abstract magic system" and "came up with some bullshit" is, if anything, harder than distinguishing between "came up with a clever piece of imaginative improv" and "came up with some bullshit"; better for a powergamer to come up with something stylish and genre-appropriate that benefits them than for them to find some bizarre spell interaction that does something absurd that benefits them.
(If it's about whether they rolled higher or lower that's not really interesting, but it's quick and avoids interrupting the flow, so that's fine for a low-stakes moment. Certainly making one roll for a narratively unimportant encounter is better than making dozens).
> Generally speaking, social encounters shouldn't be high risk. The high-risk actions in my experience should be combat.
Why? D&D pushes you towards doing it that way, but it's not narratively satisfying. Making a lot of dice rolls can give a certain kind of player the illusion that they had agency in winning or losing (particularly important if you want them to accept the death of their character), but in reality it all averages out and who wins a given combat is largely a question of what everyone's stats look like going into it. (Or you allow the players to come up with tactics that you consider clever enough to give them advantages - but then we're back to you having to judge whether they've come up with something good or some bullshit).
> I don't need a story to play Axis and Allies, Chess, Go, or a myriad of other games though. When playing an adversarial game with my friends, its not about story. Its about combat and adversaries.
Right - but roleplaying and adversarial games go poorly together. If a game is adversarial then players have to do mechanically optimal things (and, as you say, will look for every excuse to give their characters a mechanical advantage) rather than the narratively interesting things. Why should a player to try to act in-character when it can only disadvantage them?