The D&Ds That Never Were

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[DND_Reborn]

Ugh.

Okay, so here's the thing. Unearthed Arcana, to the extent you viewed it as a selection of Dragon Magazine articles, was ... fine. Kind of like the old "Best of Dragon Magazine" anthologies.* (Hey, look, there's the Anti-Paladin and Samurai!). Pick and choose an idea, change it up a little as needed, and go to town. Most importantly, don't try more than one thing at a time.

But viewed as an expansion or as rules supplement ... oh no.

Obviously our experiences were (for the most part) vastly different.

The percentile abilities? But for cavaliers (and paladins) only? Because, reasons?

Because they were the only classes who continually focused on exercising their bodies. If you actually imposed the rule that hours had to be spent doing so, it works fine. The only sad thing about it was unless you got a good initial d100 roll, you would only ever likely see a single point increase since the 2d10s averaged 11 percent per level.

The increase in massively powerful classes, but gatekeeping them even more by making them really hard to get into by making the gatekeeping be really high ability scores? (Which makes as much sense as, "In order to be eligible for the million dollar prize, you must have a million dollar already.)

None of the classes were massively powerful. Even with their inclusion, people kept playing most of the other classes as well. And having rolled great ability scores (we only used 4d6 drop lowest) that allowed you to choose one of these classes made the option more special IME.

Oh, but wait, the continuation of another terrible idea for gatekeeping. I know, just like we made sure no one would play a Paladin with the whole, "Can't adventure unless in an good party thing (HA!), we will make sure no one will play a Barbarian with an inane restriction on magic that no one will follow."

LG Paladins were awesome because they were so difficult to play! Players really had to commit to it unless they would lose their powers and become cavaliers. Parties with Paladins were heroes and did the right things for the right reasons, sometimes making difficult choices in the process. We also followed and enforced the magic limitation on barbarians all the time. Made for some great and often hilarious role-playing!

Oh, but then realizing that this would just make everyone cheat, so helpfully including the infamous Method V? (I didn't cheat, I swear, I just used Method V!).

Or how about taking the racial limits and completely bollixing them (Hey guys, I'm a drow cavalier, so ... yeah, no limits for me! Because, you know, it's not like drow, or cavalier, is overpowered.) Don't get me wrong- racial level limits were always questionable, but at least there was an inkling of a reason behind them; now, it's just, whatever man.

Yeah, racial limits were pretty much ignored even before Unearthed Arcana came out, so making adjustments to them in it were also ignored. I don't think I ever met or played in a group that used them in any fashion anyway.

Seeing as how the original prestige class, the bard, worked so well (IT DIDN'T), why not have another one (Thief Acrobat) that sucks even harder? It's almost comical- hey, let's add a bunch of super heroes, like Barbarian and Cavalier with all sorts of crazy abilities that make no sense compared to the regular game, and then throw in a woeful class that makes no sense and no one will want to play, because WHEN WILL YOU TIGHTROPE WALK?

Bards in AD&D worked great! The best was a player in my game which ran for five years started as the fighter, went to thief, and finally to bard and made it to 12th level bard (I think he was 7/8/12 F/T/Bard IIRC). Awesome character and great player as well.

In the same campaign another player was a fighter/thief-acrobat. Awesome combination and he used all of the skills at least somewhat regularly. Admittedly, tightrope walking was one of the least used, but when he did need it was handy to have.

....comeliness......

No problems with it. Used it and enjoyed it in the game for what it was worth...

Also, the binding. Seriously ... the worst binding of any book ever made for D&D, ever, any edition. They should have just released it in loose leaf form. Then I could burn it more easily.

LOL can't argue with you there! One copy fell apart into "sections" of a book kept in order. Luckily, the other copy's binding is fine and I still have it. I got lucky there!

It was a grab-bag of half-baked ideas (and half-baked is putting it nicely). Yes, some of it continued on in later editions (cantrips, for example, and drow ... although you can guess my opinion on that ). But for the most part, this was a terrible, terrible supplement, and 1e (and later editions) would have been so much better served by a coherent expansion.

Heck, since we are doing alternate histories, that would be the one change I would make.**

I wish I could go back in time and remove the first UA from D&D history, and see what happens afterwards.

IMO.

*Mostly because, um, it was. With no playtesting.

**Okay, second. And no, no brownie points for guessing the first.

As I said, vastly different experiences and view points I suppose. Loved Unearthed Arcana, loved all it added to AD&D, and glad it was published.

 

[Zardnaar]

What if the actual 5ed have been release in place of the 4ed?
4ed produce a clash, but was it necessary to produce the 5ed?

Yeah we needed 4E to get to 5E. There's quite a bit of 4E in 5E but they went in a different direction with class design obviously.

Personally by late 3E I had worked out smaller numbers were needed and defense s needed to scale better vs offensive abilities but hadn't thought of going back to BECMI levels of numbers. I was thinking of 2E at the time.

4E did have everything scale but ended up with a treadmill so the numbers didn't matter to much.

4E also kind of came up with archetypes at least in the modern format as 2E kind of had the same idea with kits. 5E round structure is heavily based on 4E.

You could also do worse than using the 4E engine and rewrite parts of it to produce a clone of an OSR D&D or your own. I used it for a while before stealing the 5E system. Not so much because 5E is better but everyone is playing it so less explaining to do.

If you wanted to fix 3.5 looking at 4E would also be an option.

 

[Remathilis]

What if the actual 5ed have been release in place of the 4ed?
4ed produce a clash, but was it necessary to produce the 5ed?

Honestly, I think 4e is attempting to perfect what 3.5 was trying to do; balance the math via universal progression, provide dozens of choice-points for characters (per level), tighten class archetypes to reduce redundancy, reduce magic-item christmas tree (by assuming certain bumps by level), and make monsters simpler to run. 5e isn't 3.5 perfected, its 3.5 distilled.

This is doubly obvious when you watch Paizo attempting to do the same with Pathfinder 2e and making very similar decisions to what 4e did (though the big one, ADEU, isn't there, its uncanny how much PF2e feels more the a second try at 4e than anything else).

In short, if you are attempting to "fix" 3.5, you will inevitably make something resembling 4e. It seems necessary to get to 5e where the goal becomes "K.I.S.S." rather than balance the d20 System.

 

[Remathilis]

If you ever want to see what an edition of D&D "could have been", find the Space RPG that came out right before that edition (Alternity, Star Wars Saga, Starfinder) and you'll see the experimental lab for your next edition.

Worry if WotC releases a new edition of Metamorphsis Alpha.

 

[Greg Benage]

We used to joke that BECMI was EGG's Bachelor's Degree, AD&D was his Master's, and DJ was his Doctorate in game design (i.e. in levels of complexity that is).

Do you mean OD&D rather than BECMI? The latter was published 1983-85 and written by Frank Mentzer as a revision of Moldvay/Cook's B/X.

 

[77IM]

Such an edition would not have caused an edition war

HA HA

HA HA HA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

 

[Zardnaar]

HA HA

HA HA HA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

To extent 4E did. If they had made a 3.5 derived game Pathfinder would not exist. They basically designed 4E for online play/as an mmo according to the Art and Arcana book.

 

[pemerton]

Seeing as how the original prestige class, the bard, worked so well (IT DIDN'T), why not have another one (Thief Acrobat) that sucks even harder? It's almost comical- hey, let's add a bunch of super heroes, like Barbarian and Cavalier with all sorts of crazy abilities that make no sense compared to the regular game, and then throw in a woeful class that makes no sense and no one will want to play, because WHEN WILL YOU TIGHTROPE WALK?

I had players who liked the Thief-Acrobat because they weren't that excited by picking pockets or doing locks and traps (thief stuff) but liked the second-story elements of the T-A. Obviously not an overpowered class, but jumping from building to building is about as cool, or maybe even cooler, than disarming poison needle traps!

Also, the binding. Seriously ... the worst binding of any book ever made for D&D, ever, any edition.

This is true.

 

[gyor]

2e was the Setting Golden age, the mechanics might not be the best, but 2e was by far the richest in terms of setting lore. 4e was was mostly good for Nentir Vale Setting, 3rd Eberron, but 2e had a host of rich setting material.

5e sort of has Ravnica (or a part of it). It's got some good stuff, but in many ways 5e is even weaker on setting then 4e aside from fixing some mistakes that 4e made to FR.

So 2e while weak mechanically was amazing in terms of setting lore, legendary even. 2e is my favourite edition for pure reading. 5e is the best mechanically, but lore wise is starved.