Why do people still play older editions of D&D? Are they superior to the current one?

Saelorn said:

I suppose, but you're expected to die in those cases, in which case your accuracy isn't super relevant. Anyone can trip over the Tarrasque, regardless of your level or the edition you're playing.

The meta-game guidelines for 4E are that you should encounter monsters that are within two levels of your own (IIRC). The meta-game guidelines for 5E are that you should encounter a certain XP budget worth of monsters and that none of those monsters should be higher level than the PCs. You're free to ignore the guidelines, but whether the encounter turns lethal because a single monster is higher level, or whether it's because the XP budget for that fight is too high, both cases are because you've ignored the guidelines. The XP budget guidelines aren't somehow more canon than the level-limit guidelines. They're all just suggestions.

Click to expand...

Nope you are transplanting 3E/4E expectations into 5E. Level has nothing to do with 5E encounter building guidelines. It's xp but a CR 15 critter is not for lvl 13 to 17.

Even a "deadly" encounter in 5E isn't that hard. For example assuming a 5 person party. The budget for a deadly encounter is 5500 xp CR 9 is 5000xp CR 10 is 5900.

At level 10 the budget is 14000 xp. CR 15 is 13000 xp CR 16 is 15000.

Level 15 is 32000xp CR 20 is 2500p CR 21 is 33000.

Level 20. Xp budget 63500 xp. That's roughly CR 24.

Things also don't really get deadly as such until you go triple to X5 over the xp caps. If you do exceed it reduce the number of encounters per day. CR 25+ is for high level play where you only have a few encounters so nova away.

Personally I think the guidelines are trash but I share the same opinion of the 3E and 4E ones. CR 13 can be fine on level 7 PCs and it's only a few points over the xp cap.

The encounter guidelines are basically gamist all editions. The old wandering monsters tables from AD&D are more for living world type games. Just because PCs are level 4 they can still encounter old dragons. Suggestion be very polite and persuasive.

Much like the real world don't go to certain parts of the world as a civilian.

Zardnaar said:

Nope you are transplanting 3E/4E expectations into 5E. Level has nothing to do with 5E encounter building guidelines. It's xp but a CR 15 critter is not for lvl 13 to 17.

Click to expand...

There are a few relevant bits of text here:

When putting together an encounter or adventure, especially at lower levels, exercise caution when using monsters whose challenge rating is higher than the party’s average level.

Click to expand...

You can build an encounter if you know its desired difficulty. The party’s XP thresholds give you an XP budget that you can spend on monsters to build easy, medium, hard, and deadly encounters.

Click to expand...

Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.

In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress.

Click to expand...

There's a guideline for how strong of a monster is likely to not overwhelm the party, and then there's a guideline to estimate the difficulty of an individual encounter, and finally a guideline for how far a party can progress in a day. These correspond to the monster's level, the encounter experience budget, and the daily experience budget.

The game doesn't expect you to break any of those limits. They don't expect your level 13 party will face a level 15 monster, anymore than they expect your party will face an encounter that's beyond Deadly on the scale, or that they'll encounter more than their daily budget worth of monsters in a single day.

You're free to have your party face a high-level monster, in the exact same way that you can have them break their encounter or daily experience budgets. That's what it means to be a guideline, rather than a rule. You're making it sound like the experience budgets are actually rules, and the level limit is just a suggestion, but they're all just guidelines.

Zardnaar said:

Even a "deadly" encounter in 5E isn't that hard.

Click to expand...

This isn't a question of how hard it is. It's a question of guidelines and expectations.

Saelorn said:

There are a few relevant bits of text here: There's a guideline for how strong of a monster is likely to not overwhelm the party, and then there's a guideline to estimate the difficulty of an individual encounter, and finally a guideline for how far a party can progress in a day. These correspond to the monster's level, the encounter experience budget, and the daily experience budget.

The game doesn't expect you to break any of those limits. They don't expect your level 13 party will face a level 15 monster, anymore than they expect your party will face an encounter that's beyond Deadly on the scale, or that they'll encounter more than their daily budget worth of monsters in a single day.

You're free to have your party face a high-level monster, in the exact same way that you can have them break their encounter or daily experience budgets. That's what it means to be a guideline, rather than a rule. You're making it sound like the experience budgets are actually rules, and the level limit is just a suggestion, but they're all just guidelines.
This isn't a question of how hard it is. It's a question of guidelines and expectations.

Click to expand...

Had not finished typing. CR 15 is roughly a medium encounter for level 13 PCs. And you can do a few of them in a day.

Zardnaar said:

Nope you are transplanting 3E/4E expectations into 5E. Level has nothing to do with 5E encounter building guidelines. It's xp but a CR 15 critter is not for lvl 13 to 17.

Even a "deadly" encounter in 5E isn't that hard.

Click to expand...

Oh, CR still maps to level. As in 3e, 5e CR = level means the party can take on a lone creature of that CR as a sort of speedbump challenge. 5e skews significantly easier than 3e, in spite of that assumption, especially once magic items come into it, but it's there. In 3e, if you went against a too-high-level opponent it'd get too hard for everyone (possibly even the fighter) to hit, too easy for it to save, it would have special abilities you couldn't cope with, and it'd hit too easily for too much damage - TPK in short order. In 5e, you'll still be able to hit it, it still might miss you, but it'll hit way too hard, while your best shots barely make an impression on its mountain of hps - TPK in short order. 5e scales more dramatically on the hp/damage side than 4e/E did or 3e/PF1 does, to make up for hardly scaling at all on the d20 bonus side. It still scales, though, monsters of a given CR pretty closely approximate the proficiency bonus corresponding to that level if you care to reverse engineer them.

Everything I play is superior to whatever I'm not playing at the time. At least, that is my hope as I spend more time playing one thing and not something else.

Celebrim said:

On the other hand, compared to earlier editions, 4e modelled expertise as universal, in the manner of action heroes or Star Trek bridge crew, where your expertise increased over time in all fields regardless of whether it was your field. A 30th level Wizard in 4e isn't merely competent in Arcana, but universally competent in everything. Again, whether that appeals to you depends on what you want from the system.

Click to expand...

It is really strange that a 20th level PCs would ever be assumed to not improve at things that they saw for 19th levels, even if they themselves didn't do that. I think it is abundantly realistic that a 20th level incompetent is roughly as skilled as a 1st level expert in all things. Sure, the 20th level Fighter with an 8 Int isn't trained in Arcana. But they've seen all kinds of strange things that if they were adventuring with a party of 1st level PCs, would be awesomely useful. But then again, they're not doing that. You watch a Cha-Bard negotiate his way out of every mishap, you're going to pick some of that up after again, 19 levels of it. Sure, you might not be able to do it with an expert negotiator, but convince the low level peasant to tell you about their day? Why wouldn't you know how to do that?

You can pretty much apply this to any skill in the book.

Celebrim said:

Let's not start that again....defend it without resulting to spurious claims that it isn't any different than the one modelled by 1e...The last thing we need is to resurrect one of the great battles of the edition war, namely, that 4e was actually truer to 1e than 3e had been.

Click to expand...

You're arguing here with someone else that isn't me who said things I didn't say.

MwaO said:

It is really strange that a 20th level PCs would ever be assumed to not improve at things that they saw for 19th levels, even if they themselves didn't do that. I think it is abundantly realistic that a 20th level incompetent is roughly as skilled as a 1st level expert in all things.

Click to expand...

The problem with the word realistic is the same that it has been since its ubiquitous use in the 1980's, namely that too often 'realistic' is used to pretend that subjective preferences are objective truths.

Can you rationalize the 4e system to create in game meaning for the rules? Sure. You can go further and suggest it has verisimilitude to certain sorts of genre. But you can't actually prove that it is 'realistic'.

You can pretty much apply this to any skill in the book.

Click to expand...

Or not.

You're arguing here with someone else that isn't me who said things I didn't say.

Click to expand...

That's quite possible, but whether you are aware it or not, you are edging into one of the most divisive issues on the EnWorld forums. You asserted: "All 4e does is represent the mechanical reality of hp in D&D as per Gygax." That's not a statement that there is remotely universal agreement on, and it tends to be one that causes absolutely explosive arguments.

I did not actually intend to spark a discussion regarding the various criticisms or angst about 4e.

I was answering the question of WHY someone chose 4e or leaped into it. AS such, I was simply giving out reasons why someone might have done so.

We get too engaged in dissing on a favorite edition as well at times (for example, I may diss hard on 3e or 3.5 or Pathfinder), but not sure that was the intent of the thread and sorry if my post derailed it to that degree.

On that note, I thought about putting a poll, but instead how about we rank which editions we like the most in order. I expect 5e may be in the top 3 of most people's lists...but it could be interesting.

My list changes depending on what I'm playing and how I feel about it. Some editions will move up or down depending on the day. I'll list my favorites in order today.

The choices could be (and sorry if I miss any)...

OD&D, OD&D w/ Supplements (aka Greyhawk), Holmes Basic, AD&D, BX, BECMI, AD&D 2e, RC, 2.5 (combat options/skills & Powers), 3e, 3.5, 4e, 4e Essentials, 5e.

So mine currently (today, could be different tomorrow so don't hold me to these)...

1. AD&D
2. AD&D 2e
3. RC
4. BX
5. BECMI
6. OD&D w/ Supplements
7. Holmes
8. 5e
9. 4e
10. 3.5
11. OD&D
12. 4e Essentials
13. 3e
14. 2.5

You can tell I really enjoy/enjoyed AD&D.

5e is pretty much middle of the pack for me, meaning it beats out many of the newer editions. As you can also tell, OD&D doesn't really light my fire as much as some others. It may be that Greyhawk was the one that I really got into (a supplement of OD&D) and with the supplements it actually is very close to AD&D in many ways. AD&D solidified and consolidated OD&D, and basically was OD&D on steroids. I'm trying to think of another D&D type analogy that could fit, but cannot think of one off the top of my head. Maybe, sort of like the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting which really gathered up a lot of various FR information over the years and put it in one book, or perhaps the Grand History of the Realms is to a general timeline of the Realms.

Ah, I got it. It's so obvious looking at it. When they did AD&D it was like a consolidation of OD&D and all it's supplments and dragon articles into one set of books.

In that way it is sort of like the Rules Cyclopedia for the BECM sets. It doesn't have EVERYTHING from them, but has a LOT of the highlights and basically gathers it into one place.

This also brings up the thing that appears on my list of favorites above...why the RC is rated above BECMI?

For me, it is that many things were simplified and more direct in the Rules Cyclopedia. In addition, some of the more wonky listings that were harder to gather are better organized. A good example is the mystic which you could play a monk like character as it was listed in the Master Set but it meant that you had to gather information from several different parts of the book (the Monster listing as well as the other information) where as in the Cyclopedia it is all neatly packaged into one place with the rest of the classes.

GreyLord said:

My list changes depending on what I'm playing and how I feel about it. Some editions will move up or down depending on the day. I'll list my favorites in order today.

Click to expand...

Mine would be:

1. 3e/Pathfinder (I have an existing homebrew rules set)
2. 5e
3. 1e/2e (any attempt to run this would result in a game so house ruled it would be difficult to determine which rules set I was playing)
4. 3.5e (I'd run this as basically core only to avoid the issues of bloat.)
5. 4e/4e Essentials (At this point and below I can't see myself ever running or playing a game.)
6. BECMI/RC/BX/Holmes
7. 2.5
8. OD&D (I'd reinvent AD&D before even trying to play this game.)