Weakness by Edition

[Hussar]

Not sure what else needs to be said really. So, what the heck, I'll just repeat stuff anyway.

B/E (1980 Moldvay) - What I started with. Looks like a lot of the boxed set games that came back then - Star Fronties, Villains and Vigillantes, etc. You got a whole game in a box (or two). But, you had to do most of the work yourself. They'd get you started, but, beyond some very, very basics, you were on your own.

AD&D 1e - Like has been said, organization was err, lacking? Stream of conciousness makes for interesting reading, but terrible rule books.

AD&D 2e - Power creep from Hell. Books that were just all over the place. 2e seriously lacked cohesion in its design. Compare the Complete Priest with Faiths and Avatars, or, heck, even Legends and Lore and you'll see a huge spread. Some very serious balance issues as well - 2 weapon fighting was just head and shoulders better than any other option.

AD&D 3e - TOO DAMN LONG. It should never, ever take that long to do a single round of a fight. High level D&D can be painful to run if everyone isn't on the ball. Plus, my biggest beef is a number of times that classes get "time outs" because of some sort of bizarre sense of balance where two points of imbalance makes it even. A rogue should not be screwed over going tomb raiding.

I'm not going to comment on any other edition since I haven't played them.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

It took me quite some effort but I really tried to recall what was each edition's weaknesses back when I ran it.

1e: Lots of rules and subsystems feel completely arbitrary. Racial level limitations only work out right when you run a campaign over a 'certified' level range. There are just too few options for the players (and NSCs).

2e: Racial level limits still apply. The Kit system is rubbish. Lots of additional options (spells) uninteresting. Options spread over too many books without any tool to organize it.

3e: Too much preperation work. Even with published scenarios, just preparing the opponents' tactics is a lot of work, when you've left the lowest levels behind. Too many Feats and PCs to ever use.

With time, all these failures became more and more important. The failures of 4e are different; ask me in 10 years again. ;-)

4e: No wound system. Combats take too long. (I know it's because of there being no unimportant comabts anymore, but still.) Some cool things hard to swallow.

 

[pawsplay]

AD&D - Clunky, a lot of arbitrary restrictions on how a game "should" be run, massive death rate

Basic D&D - Actually an astoundingly elegant game. Unfortunately, it was designed to completely hem in play to a certain style, where PCs were kept under control in terms of power, and the world was strangely designed to facillitate D&D style play, in the sense of "primitive cave crawling and occasional forays into building keeps with arbitrary GP costs." A precursor to 4e in terms of exceptionally artificial rules.

AD&D 2e - A certain blandness crept in, along with a collectability and power creep thing. Too much dumbing down of moral subjects like demons, the mercenary lifestyle, and the existence of half-orcs. Coloring book interior art, especially late in the run.

D&D 3e - Some people complain about the 15 minute workday; it was never a problem with my group. No, it was the 15 minute preparation for combat process, involving improvised spell cards, buffs, calculations, recalculations, etc. There were, basically, too many options to buff, so most of the time, people try to use them all. A more sensible "game world" also made random deadly encounters and pointless lairs of monsters less likely, which meant PCs had every reason to throw everything they had at actual threats, especially at higher levels when they became highly mobile.

D&D 4e - A return to Basic D&D in terms of options and realism. The first edition to significantly break with classic Greyhawk/Blackmoor/FR conventions. Combat turned into a minis game, to the point of removing creative options. Too many modifiers changing all the time. Really dumb compound words.

 

[Glyfair]

OD&D - As stated before, built on the assumption that you had a wargaming background. Clearly a very rough system, but as the first it is forgivable (and for some, it's a feature).

AD&D - The rules often seem like a dozen groups house rules (which were often major systems grafted on) were thrown into the core. Similar rules often had totally different bases (compare combat with weapons with non-monk unarmed combat).

The biggest sin, IMO, though is the concept of balance. Classes were balanced assuming a campaign would run through many levels. Magic-Users were the classic example. There were often very boring to play at low levels (and had high mortality rates) that was "balanced" by the fact that they were dominating at higher levels. Races were balanced by giving them loads of advantages at low levels (racial abilities, the ability to multi-class) and having them completely stop at mid-levels. Did anyone play non-humans in high level campaigns without major house rules?

2E - In my book the biggest flaw was failing to fix 1Es biggest flaws. I had mostly drifted to other game systems and was looking forward to coming back to D&D after they fixed flaws like level limits for non-humans. They did nothing more than slightly increase the possible levels (and usually only if you had a very high ability).

3E - The wide ability to customize changed the focus too often to creating ta character who is self-sufficient and away from the specialization of individual party members.

4E - Too early to tell for me. Right now I will pin the weakness down as being a big enough break that it might take all of 4E's life span (assuming the approx. 8 year life span Scott Rouse has suggested they consider appropriate) to test all the elements so they can be very well included in a 5E.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Best. Thread. Ever.

 

[ExploderWizard]

OD&D: Disorganized rules and layout. The rules seem like rambling of very wild and exciting ideas that are thrown together in a way that says "we know what we mean" A republished version with editorial cleanups would be cool.

Moldvay Basic D&D: A great starter set for beginners but lacking a wide variety of options for experienced players. The modular nature of the rules makes it easy to add stuff but the disadvantage is that you have to......add stuff.

Mentzer Basic D&D: No huge changes from Moldvay other than organization of the rules up through expert level. The Companion rules really added a new dimension of play that detailed the "you get a keep" part of the game. The Master and Immortals sets were merely there for powergaming and didn't add anything very meaningful.

AD&D 1E: A return to disorganized and hard to find rules. Lots more options than Basic but many more restrictions. I know level limits are needed to balance front end loaded races but they were still a PITA.
Lots of obscure rules that went unused and usually not missed. Unarmed combat.

AD&D 2E: A bland version of 1E that took out the edgy and cool features while trying to appeal to a broader audience. Rules were better organized but finding things means little when there is no joy in the experience.

D&D 3E: Should have been named Rulesmaster. Too many fiddly rules for everything. The beginning of combat balance becoming the focus of the game. NPC creation is a nightmare. The beginning of the game serving the rules paradigm.

D&D 4E: More fiddly rules for combat than even 3E, though non-combat fiddly rules were toned way down. Combat balance IS the game. Rules no longer attempt to make sense or explain themselves as they relate to the game world. Too far of a return to the game's roots as a wargame.

 

[billd91]

My take on weaknesses:

1e - lots of weird sub-systems that got rapidly unuseable as new options entered the system (weapon vs armor mods, surprise), disorganized, too many assumptions about the wargaming background of players, too many table-resolved combat issues

2e - strange reworkings of thing that weren't broken (ranger) and things that were (bard) but both ended up weak, clerical spheres were a nice idea but needed a LOT of work, option bloat and power creep through the supplements

3e - weak out-of-combat options for some characters, too many buffs, magic item creation a bit too readily available leading to Big 6 item strategy becoming dominant, option bloat and power creep through supplements, too much nerfing of cross-character role options

4e - myopic focus on encounters driving perception it's fundamentally a "skirmish" game, radical nerf of magic spells, monster hit point bloat, mysterious changes to core of D&D meta-setting implying change-for-sake-of-change rather than promoting continuity with previous editions

 

[Afrodyte]

I think a little context is in order. I don't view or use D&D as a generic fantasy roleplaying game. D&D, for me, is the system of choice when I want to do heroic action fantasy roleplaying. In other words - action movies with a fantasy twist. This keeps things in perspective for me as I decide whether to use D&D or another system for a game I have in mind.

Insofar as D&D is a heroic action fantasy roleplaying game, I have to decide which parts of the system support that and which detract from it. I only have extensive experience with 3.XE and some with 4e, so I'll limit my commentary to that. Since this is a thread about weaknesses, I'll focus on those.

The chief failing of both editions, IMO, is its focus on exception-based rules. Besides often being counter-intuitive, they lead to a kind of bloat that I loathe when I'm trying to create a fast-paced action scene. The weird thing is that the basic mechanic is so elegant and fluid, but the designers mess it up by creating more rules instead of showing us more options.

Everyone else pretty much hit on the problems I had with 3E and 4E in particular.

 

[Dragonbait]

And i loathe dragonborn for some reason. The cover of the PHB is horrible, so much so that i doctored another picture and i'm going to glue it over. Dumb, i know, but i really dislike the cover of that book.

I love dragonborn and yet I agree with you: The PHBI is a real fugly looking dragonborn.. Thing.. And the image that you provided is actually more appropriate with an adventuring group rather than two characters against a bland blue background.

Flaws of the D&D versions I have played:
D&D 2E: Arbitrary rules that often conflicted with each other. Classes become imbalanced by level 9 ro 10. Monsters no longer provide a challange by the same level. Splat book power slide insanity.

D&D 3/3.5E: Power slide (nothing like 2e, though), too many feats with too few chances to use them, cumbersome rules for a GM becuase he/she has been largely removed from the equation. Running combat by level 15+ becomes insane and inane, with two to four rolls per action. Fights end too quickly at high levels, or drag on for over an hour.

D&D 4E: Fights last too long. There is more things to do round-per-round but they rarely ever last less than 30 mins. The information presented in PH1 is too simplified for experienced players. Cookie-cutter characters are already appearing after the first two 4E campaigns. Not enough non-combat options.

In spite of these comments, D&D is my game of choice, and I'll still play in any edtion. I'm going to GM 4E very soon, and I'm looking forward to it.

 

[GlaziusF]

Unfortunately, sense motive suffers from the same problem that a lot of things in 3e suffers from and that's player entitlement. Okay, the king says "Please go rescue my daughter from the evil high priest". Player says "I want to make a sense motive check - why is he so willing to let us go do this when he just sprung us from the gaol?" Well...the king said what he said. Well no, no, the player rolled a "20" so you as the DM are bound to let the player know that no, the king's daughter is two kingdoms away getting married, he's just trying to send you to a more convenient doom since you're popular with the commoners. But how did you figure that out, all he said was "X"?

Sense motive only lets you read somebody's mind if you can manage a 100. Otherwise you'd just know the king wasn't being entirely truthful. But the wonder of argumentum ad baculum (argument by big stick) is that even if you call the bluff you still get baculumed.

Alternately, if the king was using Bluff (badly) to try and "code talk" to inform his court scribe about your eventual grisly fate while he was giving you your marching orders, you could pick that up with Sense Motive. But isn't that the sort of brazen Evil Overlord move the heroes are supposed to pick up on?

Though I do agree that player agency is a real problem with 3E, if only because as a DM you either bust your hump trying to model all the things players could wind up doing or try and ad hoc a ton of player requests. I appreciate the quick and easy ad hoc guidelines in 4E, even as it backpedals away from trying to simulate anything out of the PC's little bubble with furious speed.