Weakness by Edition

[Oni]

I've seen threads talking about the greatest strengths of each version of the Dungeons & Dragons game we all know and love. I thought it might be instructive to see what people generally considered to be the greatest weakness of any given edition. Also feel free to elaborate on how you addressed those issues.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I've only played 3E and 4E

3E:
Stat Blocks for monsters to complex to create and to use
Math doesn't work out well.
A strange and too often not quite working out mix of operational/strategical play and tactical (encounter based) play (people focusing on operation play will notice less problems then "encountards" with their 15 minute adventuring day)

4E:
Too little attempts to transfer the "stream-lining" and concepts of combat to non-combat aspects. Why are there only combat roles, and no non-combat or "adventuring" roles?
I suppose more will crop up eventually, but at this point, this is my only real issue with the system where I think the designers should have invested some more design-time into.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

OD&D/1E--Parts of it were clunky/weird/arbitrary
2E--It had some glaring holes that needed to be patched over by DM fiat
3E--Cumbersome and often at odds with itself, and often worked far worse in practice than in theory
4E--Is very defined and specifc. System is difficult to customize, as while adding to or tweaking the system works fine the system is tough to fundamentally change.

 

[frankthedm]

1E--Learning Curve
2E--Rehashed and material Glut
3E--Numeric complexity, Magical Arms Race & PC damage output fluctuates wildly.
4E--Very Rigid class design, Some mechanics are painfully artificial,

 

[deadsmurf]

I've only played 3/3.5 and 4th and here are my observations:
3.X - generating high level characters/monsters takes a lot of time.
battles more often than not are won before the battle begins, so strategy and not tactics are important. relitively small 'sweet spot' of levels of play.
(for some groups) too much railroading of 'roleplaying' into skills (craft, perform, bluff etc)
4 - (for some groups)Ignores simulationist's play for the benefit of gamist's and (some) narrativist's play.
Unifying concepts make sweeping house rules (say like changing the way classes heal) possibly difficult to implement without breaking the game.

Though I've never played really them, from what I've read:
OD&D/BD&D - (for some groups) Lots of adjucation must be made by DM fiat as no rules cover them.

AD&D (1&2) - too many tables to look things up.

all the old editions: No definining unifiying rules system - more a series of systems and rules engines rather than a intuitive single one.
(some groups) expectation of randomly choosing monsters etc rather than story based encounters.
Many arbitrary restrictions based on 'game balance' or implied world.
(some groups)Lack of 'roleplaying skill' rules (bluff, diplomacy etc)


I'm sure there are many others but I can't think of them off hand.

 

[hewligan]

1e: The simplicity and focus of the system could make it difficult to focus on anything other than combat.

2e: A great game with some horrible elements (THACO).

3e: Magical item dependency, and a bit of an ugly marriage between the tactical combat system and the rest of the game.

4e: Heavy combat focus and over-balancing have removed flavour.

Those are the negatives for me distilled down to 2 sentence a piece. I have played 1 through 3.5, and have read 4 but didn't like it so have no play experience. The good points of 1 are that it was just freaking awesome at the time. 2 was my game as a teenager, and thus, despite the flaws, holds endless warm memories. 3 is my current game and could quite happily be my system for life (until Pathfinder comes along, and then I will take a look).

 

[Hawke]

2E - Too much of a requirement to look stuff up in the books mid-game

3E - DMing was a pain with complex monster statblocks, Players could easily build their characters to take up 50% of the tabletime, tons of splatbooks for only two major settings with too much time spent on each

4E - Bloated monster HP, Milestone system is lame, too many powers provide numerical bonuses that aren't that exciting, Dark Sun isn't coming out soon enough

 

[RFisher]

B/X: Quick! Is this monster going to be in the Basic book or the Expert book? (^_^)

BECMI: Stretched the progression out over way too many levels. Everyone at TSR (including Frank) really played AD&D. Some of it seems not very well play tested. (^_^)

1e: Tried to make a game that should never be played as a tournament something that could be played as a tournament. (^_^)

2e: The optional rules. Too many of them went only half-way combining the worst of both worlds. (^_^)

3e: Took the DM out of the equation. Expanded the combat system to emphasize that when we complained earlier editions were too focused on combat, we really didn’t know what we were talking about. (^_^)

4e: If 3e hadn’t already carried unification for the sake of unification too far, 4e made sure it took it the rest of the way. (^_^)

 

[thedungeondelver]

Original D&D: The basic assumption that the players are wargamers and that some of the concepts of combat are universally understood. The rules were spread out across one set of rules in a box, half of the combat rules were in CHAINMAIL, the rest in supplements I-IV and THE STRATEGIC REVIEW.

ADVANCED D&D (1st edition): Organization. I learned to love the way AD&D is organized but from a cold, critical outside view it is very messy. The PLAYERS HANDBOOK for example lacks an index altogether. While each section of the DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE is well done the organization seems haphazard. Initiative and surprise are screwed six ways to Sunday.

ADVANCED D&D (2nd edition): in "fixing" AD&D, 2nd edition sterilized the game and made it pretty bland seeming. Sure, DMs could (and many did) just stick the assassin and half orc right back in, along with demons and devils. The shift of focus to adventure-as-story was cruddy, too. Too many campaign worlds. Fewer should've been published and more attention should've been given to developing a "proper" 3rd edition but I think that was probably beyond the abilities of TSR (financially) at that point.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (1999): I'm going to level my biggest criticisms of this version of the game right here...firstly the "anyone as an anything" was a huge error, IMO. The want or need to play a human just went out the door. The addition of a hard and fast skillset took the game from being based on archetype to being based on how smart you could "build" a character. The CR system. The all-as-one experience table. The negation of the fighter class. The further (and, in my opinion, needless and baffling) division of the magic-user class (something that should've been left to a campaign rather than hard-coded into the rules).

EDIT: I forgot one of my favorite whipping boys of this version of D&D and it's that god-damned "Sense Motive". But I'm split on it. On the one hand I could totally get in to playing a character cast in the mold of William of Baskerville from THE NAME OF THE ROSE, except I'm not really as smart as Baskerville was portrayed in the book. However, with a good DM, sitting down and going "Okay, I've bought up sense motive and I want to use it at the appropriate time, when everyone else is maybe doing spot checks and so on" (or the DM basing it on the prerequisite that you have to have a WIS of a certain score to use it or so on).

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"? Doesn't matter - you sensed motive! There's no good mechanical reason (I mean game mechanics) behind why that damn skill should work at all other than the player going "WOO ROLLED A 20!" It can be a game-wrecking roll. Of course, DM fiat you could either lie to the player (and they'd possibly complain at you later when they found out that the king sent them to The Swamp of No Possible Return instead of the Dungeon of Papier-Mache Armored Sickly Kobolds) or you could tell them that they couldn't use sense motive under these conditions for whatever reason, and the entitled-feeling player has a thrombo because dammit they spent all those points jacking up sense motive for just such circumstances! This isn't unique to latter-day D&D - players who moved from one original D&D game were just as subject to the whims of DMs who thought one thing or the other would wreck their game, but ultimately I think the biggest sinner is sense motive. It's about as bad as HACKMASTER's "Change the Campaign" spell or card or coupon or whatever it is.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (1977):

Poor J. Eric Holmes - tasked with writing what was supposed to be three games at once: a separate D&D ruleset, an introduction to ADVANCED D&D, and a clarification of original D&D. Unfortunately, as cool as it is, it doesn't do any of those things well. Extending only to 3rd level in character advancement, it "clarifies" the combat system by introducing elements used nowhere else in D&D, plus it includes audaciously powerful monsters that, assuming this was your only D&D ruleset, were wholly unusuable.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (1980): Well, Tom Moldvay's re-invention of the rules were a little better, but they kept race-as-class, dropped back to the three alignments system, removed most of the cool "flavor" stuff like Paladins, devils, demons, rangers, assassins etc. There's a time when being basic was too lean, and that set was it.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (1982): Frank Mentzer's set kept all of the sins of the past and worsened them somehow. Now the basic set came with a sort-of "Players Handbook" and a sort of "Dungeon Masters Guide" which was all well and good, but again with all the blandness of earlier "basic" editions. The Companion, Master and Immortal sets were IMO needless addons that strayed so far from the very notion of D&D that I really scratch my head at them.

RULES CYCLOPEDIA. I'm gonna get rotten tomatos thrown at me for this but you know what? This is one bland rulebook. It just leaves me utterly flat. They reintroduced subclasses but in a weird (and weirdly presaging) way that was similar to prestige classes in 3rd edition. Also, did nothing to improve upon the funky systems put in place in the original Moldvay basic D&D.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (2008): Good lord, where to start? This seems more and more like Hasbro/WotC is driving the game into the ground and trying to turn it into DESCENT: JOURNEYS IN THE DARK. 3e was touted as "Back to the dungeon!", so what's this supposed to be? Back to the single skirmish? The whole game has lost focus on exploration and now just seems like "hey let's hop from battle to battle who cares about what's in between". I'd also like to find the person responsible for that idiotic youtube promo they did and smack them.

Phew.

 

[der_kluge]

Some interesting takes on the problems. thedungeondelver has some good insights, though I'm not sure I agree with his criticisms of 2e, though.

1e - I admit I'm not terribly familiar with 1st edition. But here's a start: The rules are sort of all over the place and some of the rules like the combat round, and initiative, and things of that nature are horribly confusing. A lot of the system required a lot of house rules to make coherent. Playing a cleric really sucked.

2e - 18/00 strength was weird. No strength could be over 25. They "dumbed" down demons and devils to appeal to Church mothers. It failed. Race/class restrictions, level limits. There were no actual grapple rules, and the wrestling chart meant that if you wanted to slug someone, you might end up performing a completely different result if you rolled on that chart. Very strange. Like most editions, 2nd edition had a massive problem with higher levels being way out of control, and wizards especially became unstoppable gods at the later levels.

3rd edition - the system is quite a bit more complex than what 2nd edition was. The power creep is still a problem, and wizards and sorcerers are gods at higher levels. Some of the same problems that have always existed still exist - "15 minute adventuring day", etc. The ruleset is also heavily codified and consistent, which a lot of feel tends to create a sort of "blandness" over everything.

4th - slaughtering cows is one thing, but 4th edition kills the whole damned ranch. The consistent rule "blandness" now blankets every class, and now every class looks and feels and plays almost like every other class, except the powers all have different names. Spells that have existed since 1st edition are now gone. Some "fluff" aspects are removed (Perform skills, for example), and the core rules removed certain classes (bards, barbarians, etc.) and added completely unnecessary races (dragonborn, eladrin).