What is your Favorite Version of D&D?

Howdy-

Just curious to see who prefers which version on their table. For me, I think 5E with all of its warts is fast becoming my favorite version of D&D. 3.x and 1E would be personal runner ups no douldt. Anyway, Has 5E become your personal fav version of D&D or are you still holding out with other versions?

Scott

I think I like 3.Pathfinder, simply because those are the versions I played most. I like 4th when I just want to close my eyes and kill s(p)it and feel like a sexual rockstar badass. I've played 2E and Advanced, and those are fun and simple in places. Needlessly complicated in others.

I haven't played 5E yet, haven't even bought the books, waiting until I can get everything for like a dollar or something. But I've seen good stuff. In particular, I've already fallen in love with 'Versatile'.

5E.

I actually met another gamer last night who was quite a 4E fan (I’m looking to set up a local gaming group). He was a perfectly reasonable, educated person - but I did find he had a lot of misconceptions about the new edition and what was driving it. He’d downloaded the free Basic file, and felt that it lacked bells and whistles essentially. I’ll be seeking to convince him, in upcoming months, that D&D doesn’t need mechanical gizmos to be a fully immersive game….

3.X, for me, with this caveat: I haven't really looked at 5Ed beyond the odd thread here on ENWorld, and won't evlauate it until I have access to all 3 core books.

None of the above. I'm a fan of BECMI D&D more than any of the others.

Depends on what kind of game I want to run.

RC D&D is my favourite for inexperienced players, followed by AD&D 2e because of me owning the rules in my players' native language.

AD&D 2e is also my favourite for plot-based games.

4e is the most fun version with experienced players who know the rules and their characters well due to its very powerfull and flexible combat system.

3e has me groaning, AD&D 1e is reserved for special cases.

5e has still recieve some love from me. I don't see anything in it screaming "Play me!".

Dannyalcatraz said:

3.X, for me, with this caveat: I haven't really looked at 5Ed beyond the odd thread here on ENWorld, and won't evlauate it until I have access to all 3 core books.

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4e for me, with the same caveat.

What I find funny is that people who are in favour of 5e have tried to convince me that 5e is great because there's a lot of 4e mechanics (buried somewhere) in there. At the same time they're trying to convince 4e haters that 5e is great because it's a step back to older editions. Considering 5e's design goal that may even make sense, but I suspect it just means that while it has something to like for everyone it also has something to dislike for everyone, resulting in something that isn't truly great for anyone.

3.5e.

But I'm rather enjoying 5e - give it 6 months and I might have a new favourite.

I never much liked the D&D rules during 1E/2E era, although I loved the concept of tabletop RPGs and enjoyed a lot of the support material (World of Greyhawk, dungeons, etc.) and used them to play things like Tunnels and Trolls and later Fantasy HERO. 3.0 was my fave when it came out, 3.5 was my fave when it came out, and Star Wars Saga Edition beat them all, but I was not pleased w/ 4E and moved over to Pathfinder. I enjoyed that for a while, wouldn't say it was my favorite but it was feasible, but I was definitely getting burned out on it.

Just now getting into 5E and so far I love it! The character creation is robust enough to enable a wide variety of character concepts (I haven't thought of any game-breakers yet, and I'm famous for that), and the simplicity-plus-flexibility of the game mechanics make the 1E-style world and dungeons that I liked feasible again.

So yeah, 5E is my fave, so far.

-The Gneech

Jhaelen said:

What I find funny is that people who are in favour of 5e have tried to convince me that 5e is great because there's a lot of 4e mechanics (buried somewhere) in there. At the same time they're trying to convince 4e haters that 5e is great because it's a step back to older editions.

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Actually, both statements are reasonably accurate. A lot of the character abilities could be described using the "encounter" and "daily" language, if you wanted to do so (which I don't, but it could be done), short rests act a bit like healing surges, etc. So it did adopt a number of 4E's mechanics.

On the other hand, these are no longer disassociated mechanics, or at least, no more than Vancian magic always was, and their presence has largely been toned down so you don't end up with players saying things like, "All my powers are used up, I can't do anything." 5E doesn't feel like you've got arcane sorcerers and martial sorcerers and primal sorcerers (which is how 4E always felt to me), but rather than you've got a wizard and a fighter and a barbarian...

Also, bounded accuracy makes for a much flatter power curve, which means that characters of different levels are on more even footing– which in turn means that encounters now remain challenging (or at least interesting) for a wider variety of levels, which is much closer to the feel of old games where you'd take a 1st level cleric, 3rd level fighter, 2nd level wizard, and 2nd level thief into the dungeon and have a fairly easy time on the 1st level but then it would get tougher when you went down the stairs to the 2nd level, etc.

I am actually very impressed with the way 5E has managed to have their cake and eat it too, so to speak.

-The Gneech