What lore from previous editions do you wish stayed?

DammitVictor · Jun 12, 2019

I'm gonna be a little bit all over the map with this one.

Primal and Shadow Power Sources.

Divine Spheres and Specialty Priests. Having different Priest classes for different settings.

Name Level and Divine Ascension. (With the former also being mechanically important.)

Race-as-Class and Racial Class Limits. These speak to the definition of non-human races.

Not an overall fan of the 4e Cosmology, but Shadowfell/Feywild/Far Realm are the bee's knees.

2e's settings, particularly my beloved Spelljammer, the FR sub-settings, Dark Sun, and Spelljammer.

Also... I wholeheartedly approve of the decision to discontinue Oriental Adventures after 1e and 3e, and assign Monks and Assassins to Psionic and Shadow rather than giving them their own Ki Power Source. But... there are a lot of things from those problematic tomes that I wish had become Core D&D: mundane and magical martial arts for every class, Kensei and Shaman and Shugenja, Nezumi and Tengu and Vanara.

Sacrosanct · Jun 12, 2019

Tony Vargas said:
...Gnome/Troll hybrids. Yeah, that was pretty amusing.

Huh? When where they ever that. I'm talking about how in AD&D, the gnoll/flind humanoids were more organized tribes (rather than roving bands of mindless killers spawned by demon creation like in 5e) with each tribe having an individual totem, and that totem set the hierarchy among tribes. I.e., If a tribe had a totem of a hill giant, they were highly revered while a tribe with a totem of goats was at the bottom of the pecking order because they had to offer sacrifice to Yeenoghu of whatever their totem was (and sacrificing a hill giant was much harder than a goat).

lowkey13 · Jun 12, 2019

*Deleted by user*

Sacrosanct · Jun 12, 2019

lowkey13 said:
See, I disagree. And that's fine!

Personally, I think that 5e, by moving in the direction of a toolbox, is going in the wrong way.

And allowing Clerics and Warlocks to multi-class together? That will just result in fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! 40 years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

And you don't want that, do you? What are you, a cat person?

Speaking of clerics and warlocks, I do miss the old days when role playing had an effect on your character. Meaning, if clerics didn’t follow the guidelines set by their god, they wouldn’t have spells granted. Similar to how if paladins and rangers strayed, they lost their abilities. Since then, the game feels like the role playing fluff is completely divested from the class, where each class is now just a box of stats and the role that class is inspired by doesn’t matter; where role playing doesn’t matter if you don’t want.

I’m probably not wording it well, but it seems the shift went from “I want to play class X because class X represents such and such flavor (heroic paladin defenders, righteous clerics, woodland protectors, etc) to “I want to play class X because of the following powers / DPR I can get”

*edit. I know those types of players have always been around, but back then, the game actually has guidelines and consequences if you didn’t play with the role playing aspect

lowkey13 · Jun 12, 2019

*Deleted by user*

Sacrosanct · Jun 12, 2019

lowkey13 said:
Bingo.

That's what I meant when I wrote the following-

A lot of players have the [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] philosophy (that D&D is just a bunch of mechanics that you mix and match to make your own concepts). Which is a fine way to play- but I prefer to have a tight integration of fluff and crunch; the RPing and the mechanics should feed on each other, not be divorced from one another.

But my view, looking at 5e, is clearly not the prevalent one.

5e certainly got rid of those rules that tied consequences to role playing, but 5e does put in a lot of that fluff on how it's meant to be played. Each class/race/monster has a pretty big section at the start of their entries that give all this info. Info that I think is just as important as a stat, but it sure seems like a lot of folks just ignore it completely and only focus on stat blocks, judging by past discussions.

flametitan · Jun 12, 2019

I never really played before 5e, so for the most part I'm fine with the current lore, but I wouldn't mind seeing the Quasielemental planes making a reappearance.

TwoSix · Jun 12, 2019

lowkey13 said:
A lot of players have the [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] philosophy (that D&D is just a bunch of mechanics that you mix and match to make your own concepts). Which is a fine way to play- but I prefer to have a tight integration of fluff and crunch; the RPing and the mechanics should feed on each other, not be divorced from one another.

But my view, looking at 5e, is clearly not the prevalent one.

I'm flattered!

But yea, the only real point of distinction I would draw is that it's not matter of "not roleplaying", it's that the roleplaying I do isn't bound by the flavor and the restrictions in the book. I have no problem running a cleric as a follower of a god, or they might just be a trained healer. As an example, in Eberron, I use cleric mechanics for House Jorasco all the time, and just say their powers come from their dragonmark.

Also, in the games I run, classes are purely a mechanical construct. They don't exist in the fiction. Even the PHB classes are pretty much just a starting point. People come to me with their concepts and we tweak the class structure to fit. The players can't assume that a spellcaster has a certain kind or number of spells, because every NPC is different.

Now, if you view the roleplaying restrictions in the PHB as part and parcel of the challenge in playing the class, that's fine, but I disagree. My players come up with pretty wacky restrictions on their PCs just by building out their concept.

lowkey13 · Jun 12, 2019

*Deleted by user*

Tony Vargas · Jun 12, 2019

Sacrosanct said:
Huh? When where they ever that.

Original D&D, of course! Might as well go full-retro.

And, I mean, just: green rubbery supernaturally-regenerating humanoid + ceramic lawn decoration come to life = hyena-morph (which puns with 'knoll')? Genius!

I'm talking about how in AD&D, the gnoll/flind humanoids were

Flinds? Really? Stocky hyena-übermenschen with nunchucks? Someone took those seriously?

lowkey13 said:
See, I disagree. And that's fine!

Personally, I think that 5e, by moving in the direction of a toolbox, is going in the wrong way.

Don't fret, it's not really a toolbox.

And allowing Clerics and Warlocks to multi-class together? That will just result in fire and brimstone coming down from the skies!

Well, that'd make sense, actually, sounds quite appropriate...

Rivers and seas boiling! 40 years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!

The RPG hobby is in it's 45th year of darkness, thankyouverymuch.

And you don't want that, do you? What are you, a cat person?

Hey, there's cat people, and the there's dog people.

But there's a reason nobody ever says "crazy dog lady..."

Sacrosanct said:
5e certainly got rid of those rules that tied consequences to role playing, but 5e does put in a lot of that fluff on how it's meant to be played.

To be fair, 5e just didn't put back /all/ the player-decision straightjacketing that prior eds had tried to remove.