D&D General Lethality, AD&D, and 5e: Looking Back at the Deadliest Edition

[Voadam]

4. Less resources at low levels. A 1st level magic user had 1 spell a day. Period. No cantrips, they needed to use darts, a quarterstaff, dagger or crossbow for the rest.

I think you are conflating 3e memories with AD&D ones. Wizards did not get crossbows until 3e. Dagger, Dart, Quarterstaff was a 1e Magic-User list.

 

[Hussar]

I think you are conflating 3e memories with AD&D ones. Wizards did not get crossbows until 3e. Dagger, Dart, Quarterstaff was a 1e Magic-User list.

I liked darts. 3 attacks per round. Your wizard had a decent chance of actually hiring something at low levels.

 

[Maxperson]

When it comes to rules lawyers, I saw them more in previous editions, then again the games I've been involved with use DndBeyond so it's pretty easy to look up a rule for a PC. It feels like there are fewer true exploits than previous editions, with a lot of the power creep stopped by simply disallowing optional rules. It helps that feats and multiclassing are optional.

I saw rules lawyers in 1e and 2e, but 3e was where "law schools" started churning them out by the hundreds. That edition dwarfed 1e, 2e and 5e combined for me personally. It's still my favorite edition, though, for other reasons.

 

[Maxperson]

What planet did you live on that a kid of 13 in the 80's had downed a buck with a bow and arrow? ROTFLMAO. I grew up about as rural as you can get in Canada and I guarantee that ZERO people in my town had done that. Never minding a kid of 13. "Trapped a rabbit"? Good way to get a visit from the game warden.

I think you maybe, just maybe, projecting just a teeny bit.

I grew up in rural southern Michigan and was hunting squirrels when I was 10 with a .22 that my dad bought me. If I had a bow, I'd probably have used it.

 

[Hussar]

I grew up in rural southern Michigan and was hunting squirrels when I was 10 with a .22 that my dad bought me. If I had a bow, I'd probably have used it.

Kinda the point though. You didn't have a bow, did you? And there's a significant difference between picking off squirrels and hunting a deer with a bow, skinning it and dressing it, when you're 13. I was doing the same with a pellet gun as well - although you needed one hell of a shot to kill a squirrel with the old piece of crap pellet gun I had.

But, again, let's keep in mind the claim - that a 13 year old was routinely bow hunting deer such to the point where doing so wasn't considered unusual.

 

[Maxperson]

Kinda the point though. You didn't have a bow, did you? And there's a significant difference between picking off squirrels and hunting a deer with a bow, skinning it and dressing it, when you're 13. I was doing the same with a pellet gun as well - although you needed one hell of a shot to kill a squirrel with the old piece of crap pellet gun I had.

But, again, let's keep in mind the claim - that a 13 year old was routinely bow hunting deer such to the point where doing so wasn't considered unusual.

Yeah. No bow, but a few farm hands, including the guy who was full blooded Cherokee and taught me how to track(though I can't remember squat after 40 years in Los Angeles), went bow hunting.

I remember borrowing one of their hunting arrows and making a "bow" out of a stick and some string. I actually managed to hit a squirrel after what seemed like a hundred attempts. The very tip of the arrow even had a dot of blood on it. It was at that point that I gave up "bow" hunting since I obviously wasn't going to do well.

I did skin and dress the squirrels we managed to hunt, though.

 

[Necrofumbler]

So funny to read your post. Thanks!

> Heck, that is right up there is the wrongest opinions, like (...) and "Bards don't seem so bad."

"And unmodified vanilla 5e PHB Core Book Rangers are by far the most powerful class to play, bar none, in all and any situations or campaign type".

would also be a nice contender here.


>> then I would walk five miles back.... uphill again

Definitely a possibiility in a magical world, though that doesn't decrease in the least the impact here lol.


I DMed and played AD&D at our school D&D gaming group for a long long time.

We had an ENTIRE WALL of "RIP" handwritten postcards, or even entire typewriter-written campaign sheets, filled with "How He Died". Each listed character name level class at death, and a single paragraph of text. Lots of very humourous and even some quite sad entries. The campaign I was playing in had already a full page filled with over 12 PC Deaths. After only 4 game sessions. And that was quite TYPICAL of all the gaming groups. We stopped after a while because the "obituary wall" was starting to lack room for more.

Great post !

 

[Necrofumbler]

We may see the pendulum swing the other way.

I started enforcing encumbrance more strictly when D&D Beyond and Foundry character sheets made it easier to do so.

But I don't see 5e mechanics bringing older style resource-management into play in other areas. Most notably, food and water. I think that 5e just isn't a great system for a gritty survival game without a lot of homebrewing.

But even in video games, tastes differ. Some people love having to forage and craft and take care of their weapons. Others find it grindy and not fun. I hope and expect that the WotC VTT will give options for choices for how to treat encumbrance, healing, etc.

Doubt it about the pendulum swing. If anything, the game is moving to an even greater level of "epic unkillable superheroes" play style.

My main beef with 5E is that there are way too many "story tropes" that get utterly broken by commonly available very low level spells. The game is HEAVILY geared towards a "Let's sweep all that Social and Exploration pillar stuff under the rug so that we can get to the next fight ASAP" type of playstyle.

Any "Gritty Survival" style campaign simply gets kicked in the balls, hard. Infinite Light Cantrips = No more light management required.
Tiny Hut = no more finding a good campaign site required.
Create Food & Water = No more hunting forgaging or fishing required, and deserts stop being any threat.
Mending = no more dealing with broken gear required.
Speak with dead = No more need to capture an enemy then interrogate him through good roleplaying, just kill him then "read its memories like an open book".
Actually needing to Travel somewhere? Nah. Overland Flight the party, Summon a few Pegasi, or outright Teleport.
Crafting stuff and needing to find, and roleplay with, a master NPC artisan? then waiting weeks and also payng him for his work? Nah that's stupid just Fabricate it in 1 round, for FREE. Basically making the wizzy the best uber artisan in the entire world, for all crafts, instantly.

Why build a thick walled medieval castle for TONS of thousands of gold pieces when... Transmute Rock to Mud, Spider Climb, Fly, Passwall, etc. meanwhile poor mister Fighter will "break his sword". If you allow a magic user to do all those things, then allow my fighter to be just as badass and able to do just as legendary epic stuff, and slice that castle's high tower in HALF with a single sword strike. allow my rogue to pass easiily under doors and through tiny wall cracks using "mere shadows".

And so on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

Magic would be ok if the magic user was good at ONE type of magic, not a uber god for almost EVERY type of magic in existence. Or if magic actually "only" somewhat boosted something already there, by a small but reasonable factor, instead of being so many orders of magnitude better that it ends up completely stealing the show.

For example with Fabricate, it could make an artisan work better and faster, and for a lower cost. Even a mere "Artisan rolls with Advantage, working twice as fast for half the price", that would already be a HUGE effect.

What's the point of being a Rogue trying to climb a high wall with a dangerous hard Climb DC, for a bit of movement over several rounds, when the party Wizard can just cast Spider Climb or Fly and 100% safe run accross the distance in a dinslge round, no check needed or danger involved? Trying to open a very hard trapped locked chest, when the wizzy can just 100% no check required just Knock it open from a distance? Trying to Stealth when magic gives invisibility instead?

Magic should BOOST a prexisting cappacity by some amount. And not by "several orders of magnitude", but a reasonably low (but still noticeable) factor.

Just go to TV Tropes, find a few nice story tropes, and then see how many low levels spells utterly ruin it.

If you run a D&D campaign as a series of predetermined-story-driven battles, with the style of "PCs as greater than life superheroes", with next to no downtime in between the battles, then yeah, it works. But not other types.

My main beef is thhe casters totally nuking that "secondary random encounter o nthe way to the dungeon", making it 100% a trivial waste of time. Nah. Make that choice to "waste" spell slot there actually COUNT. Wizards should be likec in the Gauntlet video arcade game, casting spells one after another almost nbon-stop, but using their brains and using their precious spell slots only where they count most. But with only 1-2 enncountewrs per long rest, those sppell slots aren't "precious" nor actually require any brains at all as you can just spam them most of the time. Not at level 1, sure. But even by level 5, even casting spells as much as they could every round, PLUS using multiple spells per each non-combat encounter, our Dragon Heist casters were NEVER lacking for spell slots.

Now, if the game made sure the "per long rest" capabilities were recovered only once over 4-8 encounters occured, suddenly that changes a lot how the casters would behave.

Bbut that ain't gonna happen, if anything 1DnD iss addding even more power creep. "Player feedback" uses a "1 feedback, 1 vote" approach. But there are at least 5 times as many players as DMs, and DMS are way better placed to determine what is good for a campaign, and work way hardewr to make campaiggnbs more succesful, than players mainly just comin to play and tending to focusing a lot more on what feels good for their own character aka more even more powerful options, rather than on what is good for the campaign as a whole. Try it, ask your players what they want, then add it all, straight up. Lather rinse repeat. And watch your campaign inevitably and quickly crash & burn. Then the players blame the DM. PLAYERS JUST DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY REALLY WANT.

So IMHO actual DM feedback should count as about 20-30 times "more important" than normal players feedback.

But that ain't what's happening. Catering to PLAYERS always sold a lot more books DMs than catering to DMs.

 

[Lanefan]

I liked darts. 3 attacks per round. Your wizard had a decent chance of actually hiring something at low levels.

You threw darts at your potential henches and hirelings?

Or is this just another glorious typo?

 

[Velderan]

Your other examples are much more problematic. I was just putting in new stairs in my home, which I had never done before - know what I did? I watched a 5 minute Youtube video, and it taught me what I needed to get the job done. I didn't need to purchase and read books on the subject, and I don't want to be an expert on stair installation - I'll probably never do it again. You have the skill of "hunting?" Good for you. We hunted, too, when I was a kid. I haven't used those skills once since I was thirteen. Kind of a waste, really. Whereas my computer skills? Use them everyday. I'm typing right now. Seems pretty "valid."

IMO this is what YouTube is for! My garage door opener stopped working a few years ago. 5 minutes on YouTube gave me a couple theories to test and with $6 in parts I figured out I needed to replace a couple gears. Took me about 20 minutes thanks to a guide. A coworker said they had wished they thought of that because they got talked into replacing the entire thing when the called a repairman for the same thing.