When did mixing editions become unusual?

Man in the Funny Hat said:

In 1E? This is part of your confusion I think.

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He keeps insisting on saying things like AC 5 is higher than AC 0 even after I quoted the DMG showing it using the normal, natural, correct way of talking about 1e AC. And he keeps correcting people for using the terminology that AC 5 is below AC 0 that is right there in the DMG even after I showed him its in the DMG.

It's not that he's confused about AC 5 being better than AC 0 - he understands it's actually worse. It's not even that he is confused about your understanding of the game or my understanding of the game. He knows that I know how it works, and he knows now - because I've quoted the book - that I had it right all along.

So, there is no use following up on this.

Also remember, 1e and 2e had a lot of really wonky rules like weapon speed, level limits for non humans, and horrid dual classing mechanics.

People were right for taking what they wanted, discarding the rest.

As far as my campaign, I use a lot of stuff from 4e and 3e in my 5e game. I use 4e's disenchantment and residuum. I use a variation of 3e's epic feats for more epic boons, divine ranks, and divine powers. Works well enough. I am assuming I am not the only one..

Side note: I can think of very few nerdier things that arguing over the attack matrices from a game published in 1979. Perhaps only exceeded by arguing over proper nested loop control in the ALGOL 60 programming language, or something...

I have to agree with others that "rules gumbo" seemed to disappear inthe early 2000s, replaced with today's "carefully crafted supplementary subsystems" where people argue about tight math and game balance. I'm not saying it was for the worse, though, because due to the internet "world sizes" are larger, the pool of gamers we interact with over our lifetimes is larger than back in the pre-internet era, and homogeneity between tables is something people actively look for more than years past, when the only people really interested in that were from organized play.

I know thirty years ago, we'd use 2e Ranger class structures with 1e Ranger perks like the giant-class bonus, because we didn't like what 2e did there, or we used the 1e magic-user spell progressions for our 2e specialist wizards, because stopping at 20th level sucked. 3e really stressed tight integration and modular class/level benefits, which meant that mixing weird class feature A with crazy class feature B spelled trouble for a sane campaign, whereas it was rare in 1e and 2e to mix homebrew class feature A with homebrew class feature B; now, it will happen the minute someone dreams it up, and DMs feel they have to be wary of players "gumbo"-ing their way into something game-breaking.

3E more or less killed it off. I did use some AD&D subsytems on occasion and towards the end or just after I stripped out entire parts and plugged AD&D ones back in (magic item creation used 1996s Spells and Magic).

You could mix and match AD&D 1E and 2E adventures along with B/X for the most part just using the class you preferred or the editions THAC0 table which did vary between the 3.

Some adventures were easier than other say Keep on the Borderlands vs Against the Giants.

Henry said:

I know thirty years ago, we'd use 2e Ranger class structures with 1e Ranger perks like the giant-class bonus, because we didn't like what 2e did there, or we used the 1e magic-user spell progressions for our 2e specialist wizards, because stopping at 20th level sucked. 3e really stressed tight integration and modular class/level benefits, which meant that mixing weird class feature A with crazy class feature B spelled trouble for a sane campaign, whereas it was rare in 1e and 2e to mix homebrew class feature A with homebrew class feature B; now, it will happen the minute someone dreams it up, and DMs feel they have to be wary of players "gumbo"-ing their way into something game-breaking.

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I notorious for house ruling the heck out of any game that I run, and the longer I run it the more I want to house rule it to smooth over any friction I've encountered in running a system. So every single system I run ends up borrowing liberally from original ideas, supplemental rules, or ideas I stole from other systems.

I won't even begin to describe the rules I was using at my 1e table. It would take too long, some of it was embarrassingly bad, and much that was good was done more cleanly in 3e (hence my love of 3e). At the 1e table where I was a PC rather than the DM, we kept to the core of 1e but were using 2e initiative rolls, 2e bards, 2e specialist mages instead of Illusionists, 2e dragons, plus a ton of supplemental rules from Dragon Magazine from both 1e and 2e. Plus some house rules I'd written for the DM when the DM realized that some of the rules he liked from Dragon magazine weren't well play tested.

My 3e house rules are a hodge podge of 3.0e and 3.5e, plus homebrew first aid rules similar to BRP, size rules partially inspired by 4e's decision to multiply starting HD and implemented in part based on my experience with GURPS, fear/horror/madness rules for 3e era Ravenloft supplement, and a ton of original rules with inspirations that borrow lightly or very heavily from third party and Dragon rules supplements. The Explorer homebrew class for example has inspirational Legacy going back to Dragon #116's(?) Mariner class for high seas adventures.

I'm running 5e Call of Cthulhu right now. I strongly suspect that at some point I'm going to want to migrate most of the rules over to 7e, while leaving in place a 5e concepts that were the reason I initially rejected 7e wholesale (unfairly, I'm beginning to feel as I struggle with some pain points I hadn't remembered or really felt decades ago).

So I guess for me, the answer to the question is probably "Never", though I also suspect that I am unusual.

OverlordOcelot said:

I wonder what would have happened if someone dropped 5e back in time and the progression went 1e, 2e, then 5e, skipping 3e, Pathfinder, and 4e entirely. 5e feels a lot more like a 'modern 2e' to me than 3e did, and certainly is closer to old D&D than 4e, I wonder if that would have led to more people using 2e splat books or using Battlesystem mostly intact (other than tweaking THAC0/AC)

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I think the very first thing they would have had to do was change how the proficiency bonus works. Players would have been MUCH MORE resistant to the entire bounded accuracy idea if Fighters could not hit a LOT BETTER than other classes...meaning they would have to have Fighters have a much better Proficiency bonus advancement with weapons than they do with 5e currently.

They would have had to simplify (I know people think 5e is simplified, but compared to how easy it was to make most characters for pre-2000 AD&D/D&D it is STILL complex) character creation. I'd say they probably would have needed to have one base race selection for each race (more similar to what you find in the Basic 5e rules) and killed the backgrounds idea. They could have allowed each character to select two more skills to recompense that loss.

I think character abilities would have had to be streamlined (more like what they have with the 5e SRD) and that the abilities would have needed to be started at 1st level.

In this I think it would have looked slightly different, but other than that I think they could have kept it largely the same.

Celebrim said:

He keeps insisting on saying things like AC 5 is higher than AC 0 even after I quoted the DMG showing it using the normal, natural, correct way of talking about 1e AC.

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I think the issue is that the "natural" way goes counter to the "correct" way. Which way can be considered "normal" will depend entirely on the individual, and whether they spent a lot of time quoting the original text, or whether they automatically flipped everything in order to make sense in conversation at the table.

I'm having trouble in following this thread, because every time someone uses one of those words, I can't be sure what they mean. I had the same issue when reading the books, back in the day, and it was a major factor in why we never used that chart which adjusted attack rolls based on damage type and armor type.

wingsandsword said:

Where are you reading some THAC0 table that says it started at 21 for anybody?

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Yes, that's the thing that I keep pointing out and certain people keep wanting to say doesn't count as taking the '6 20s' section of the table into account. I had responded again to some other stuff, but I'm really done with them at this point, I've reposted enough times.

GreyLord said:

I think the very first thing they would have had to do was change how the proficiency bonus works. Players would have been MUCH MORE resistant to the entire bounded accuracy idea if Fighters could not hit a LOT BETTER than other classes...meaning they would have to have Fighters have a much better Proficiency bonus advancement with weapons than they do with 5e currently.

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That's an interesting point. I like 5e's system better, but it might have been a hard sell without 4e to get people somewhat used to the idea.

They would have had to simplify (I know people think 5e is simplified, but compared to how easy it was to make most characters for pre-2000 AD&D/D&D it is STILL complex) character creation. I'd say they probably would have needed to have one base race selection for each race (more similar to what you find in the Basic 5e rules) and killed the backgrounds idea. They could have allowed each character to select two more skills to recompense that loss.

I think character abilities would have had to be streamlined (more like what they have with the 5e SRD) and that the abilities would have needed to be started at 1st level.

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Completely disagree with this, because 3e was wildly popular (ie not hard for people to swallow), but was more complex than 5e in these areas, and even 1e and 2e were often more complicated. Races and subraces have been around since at least the 1e PHB. Picking X skills, then a background for two more is simple compared to picking an arbitrary number of skills and assigning various amounts of points to them the way 3e did, or the convoluted NWP rules that you'd deal with in 1e from dungeoneer's and wilderness survival guides. 1e and 2e already had character abilities that appeared at higher levels, so I don't think that would be a hard sell - after all 3e, had abilities that appeared at later levels, core abilities wrapped up in feats that you got by leveling, and even abilities that you had to multiclass to get.

The bounded accuracy might cause problems, but I don't think that 5e would need to simplify in areas where it is already simpler than 1e, 2e, or 3e.

OverlordOcelot said:

That's an interesting point. I like 5e's system better, but it might have been a hard sell without 4e to get people somewhat used to the idea.



Completely disagree with this, because 3e was wildly popular (ie not hard for people to swallow), but was more complex than 5e in these areas, and even 1e and 2e were often more complicated. Races and subraces have been around since at least the 1e PHB. Picking X skills, then a background for two more is simple compared to picking an arbitrary number of skills and assigning various amounts of points to them the way 3e did, or the convoluted NWP rules that you'd deal with in 1e from dungeoneer's and wilderness survival guides. 1e and 2e already had character abilities that appeared at higher levels, so I don't think that would be a hard sell - after all 3e, had abilities that appeared at later levels, core abilities wrapped up in feats that you got by leveling, and even abilities that you had to multiclass to get.

The bounded accuracy might cause problems, but I don't think that 5e would need to simplify in areas where it is already simpler than 1e, 2e, or 3e.

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3E feats and skill system made prop appearances in 2E under different names. Hell some WP were ported into feats as is in 3.0 such as the Complete Fighters TWF feat chain. Difference was in 2E they got 4 WP at level 1 + optional rule for more for high intelligence. 3.0 you only got the 1 feat level 1+ any a class gave. You could run around with a high dex moderate intelligence fighter as early as 1989 and not suck.