OSR D&D 5e OSR backwards compatibility

[darjr]

http://ragingowlbear.blogspot.com/2014/06/d-5e-backward-compatibility-and-combat.html

Raging owl bear does the math for backwards compatibility.

Charts and direct stat comparisons.

I've tried a few things with some of the play tests but his analysis is interesting

 

[Morrus]

That needs to be a graph!

 

[TerraDave]

so just give monsters max hp...

you have to think some things are being left out. Ability score boosts and feats for the 5E fighter, though spells and items could cover the same ground for the OSR fighter, but of course the 5E fighter can also get those.

Still, interesting start.

 

[tuxgeo]

Worth quoting from the article:

In the following chart, I compare the relative "to hit" bonus of the Fighter class (THAC0 has been translated into its equivalent "to hit" bonus). D&D 4th Edition numbers have been left out of this comparison since 4e content would take significant alteration to play under any other edition. . . . In the spreadsheet above you can see, the Fighter's combat efficacy is relatively unchanged from AD&D through 3.x, but is adjusted significantly downward in 5th edition.

Thanks to Morrus for the neat graph.

 

[MerricB]

MAJOR, MAJOR EDIT to remove stupid statements on my part. My profound apologies to Marty Walser for them.

I have some objections to some of the analysis in this article. (of which possibly the most important is that we haven't actually seen what the final 5E monsters stats are yet - we're over six months out of date!)

Comparing Base Attack bonuses is problematic, as the additional bonuses are much more significant in 3E. It is quite possible for the actual attack bonus of a 20th level fighter in 3E to be very close to 40, although I'd say it's often closer to 35.

The attack bonus of a AD&D fighter at 20th level is actually quite difficult to evaluate, as it depends greatly on magic items (as there are no "expected" wealth tables). Perhaps +21 to +25?

D&D combat isn't just attack bonuses though - the actual relationship between attack bonuses and armour class changes between editions. In AD&D, higher-level monsters tend to still have ACs in the 2-9 range, which is, in a lot of ways, similar to 5E's bounded accuracy system. However, the attack bonuses (particularly of the fighters) have continued to increase, so high-level fighters hit quite often. Meanwhile, 3E increases ACs of high-level monsters significantly. Later monster manuals increase them even further. AD&D does have a few exceptions to this rule, generally powerful extra-planar creatures, but the actual implications of a negative armour class in AD&D are worthy of much more analysis than I have space for here.

Likewise, the relationship between damage dealt by weapons and hit points needs to be taken into consideration. AD&D, once again, has fairly static damage codes for the fighter. The girdles and gauntlets could boost that damage significantly, but there's no expectation that they'll be discovered. A fighter could quite well be doing no more than 1d8+5 damage with each of his two attacks at very high levels - but he'd be hitting most of the time. In contrast, 3E has some significant bonuses to damage - consider properties of flaming and frost, as well as weapon specialisation bonuses and the effects of Power Attack. The amount of damage a high-level fighter deals in 3E is significantly higher than in AD&D, and creates conversion problems there. 3E tends to devalue hit dice as a level of threat compared to AD&D, as well as adding in large constitution bonuses to hit points.

D&D Next (playtest version), in contrast has fighters attacking more often and dealing more damage than AD&D, but to nowhere the extent of 3E. It will be well worth doing a full evaluation in a month's time when the Basic Game is out.

 

[Umbran]

The analysis is worthless. Anyone who can argue that a 20th level Fighter has a "to hit" bonus of +20 in 3E doesn't have a clue how the game works.

Merric, how about we hold off on the aspersions, please?

I would argue he knows how the game works, but he's trying to compare apples to apples - *BASE* attack bonus.

The total, effective attack bonus used to hit each round is a different beast, and depends on too many variables (magic items available, feat choices, and so on) to do a solid mathematical comparison on the general case in a short article.

You may still argue that this comparison is not really useful, but I'd ask you not question people's knowledge or intelligence in the process - much as you'd like to have them do if you were wrong, hm?

 

[Halivar]

I would argue he knows how the game works, but he's trying to compare apples to apples - *BASE* attack bonus.

The problem with that is the BAB is only one component of a character's actual effective attack bonus. And not all editions are equal in what they pile on top of the BAB.

For instance, 1E, 2E and 3E all are pretty similar on the chart, right? But 1E, minus supplements does not really stack as much on top as the other rulesets. And without a point-buy system, that 18 in Str is a lot rarer.

I would be more interested in either a statistical survey of effective attack bonuses of real characters, or a comparison of optimized characters for each edition.

 

[Wyckedemus]

Merric, how about we hold off on the aspersions, please?

I would argue he knows how the game works, but he's trying to compare apples to apples - *BASE* attack bonus.

The total, effective attack bonus used to hit each round is a different beast, and depends on too many variables (magic items available, feat choices, and so on) to do a solid mathematical comparison on the general case in a short article.

You may still argue that this comparison is not really useful, but I'd ask you not question people's knowledge or intelligence in the process - much as you'd like to have them do if you were wrong, hm?

Umbran, I think what set Merric off is the fact that the author used his incomplete data to ultimately make what we believe to be an inaccurate conclusion, which comes off as purposefully misleading and harmful. Either he knows what he is doing, and is trying to paint 5E in a bad light with incomplete info, or he's unaware of how his conclusion is misrepresenting his research. If we let that point of view stand uncontested, it may mislead others into believing it to be true. The combat efficacy of the 5E Fighter cannot be judged solely on BAB alone.

I'd love to see a study that compares average attack mods vs. ACs. But that is a big research project.

... in my opinion.

 

[Nagol]

In 1E the most heavily-optimised Fighter I saw was a dwarf who used Wish to become 6'1", acquired a Hammer of Thunderbolts, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, and had a Girdle of Giant Strength (Fire) commissioned. That increased his to-hit bonus by a net of +12. Typically, he fought under the effects of Prayer for an additional +1 giving him +13 for a typical bonus in a serious combat.

By contrast, my last 3.5 core-only campaign had a Dwarf Fighter/Dwarven Defender with weapon focus, +3 dwarven war axe, Strength of 32 (22 base Strength, Girdle of Giant Strength + 6, , +4 inherent bonus to strength) for a net bonus of +15 before other effects increased it (typically running effects included morale bonus +4, haste +1, +2 from using dwarven defender strength boost, +2 situational modifier (flanking)) giving a +24 for a typical bonus in a serious combat. The only other thing to note is he typically took a penalty of around -12 from Power Attack in order to increase damage since the to-hit far exceeded his foe's AC. That dropped his net bonus back to +12 or about that of the 1E Fighter.

 

[Dausuul]

I started crunching the numbers to see how AD&D and 5E monsters lined up, but stopped for a couple of reasons. First, those numbers are from the public playtest, and one thing we have definitely had confirmed is that they made big changes to monster stats. So any conclusions I drew would be invalid for the final game.

Second, and more importantly, even if we did have the current numbers, the result of any such comparison would be highly misleading. Let's say we determine that an owlbear is a "good fight" for a 3rd-level party in both 5E and AD&D*. You know that two owlbears are a "good fight" for a 6th-level party in AD&D, so you would be tempted to conclude that two owlbears are a "good fight" for your 6th-level 5E party. You'd be wrong, however, because the PC power curve has changed between editions. Among other things, 5E characters see a massive power spike at 5th level; fighter damage output literally doubles when you reach 5th, and other classes see similar gains. So you might well find that your 6th-level 5E party turns two owlbears into mincemeat without breaking a sweat.

Does this mean you can't import pre-5E adventures into 5E? Not at all! It just means you can't rely on threat estimates from earlier editions**. The great thing about bounded accuracy is that it makes 5E tremendously flexible when it comes to what monsters you can use. The 6th-level party may be able to destroy those two owlbears in short order, but for the brief time the combat lasts, it will be a proper combat with hits and misses. There won't be anybody who hits only on 20 or misses only on 1.

The inaccuracy of threat estimates means if you expect the adventure to contain mostly level-appropriate encounters, you will have to do some work to make sure the encounters are on the right level. 5E may or may not maintain the power levels of monsters relative to each other--we won't know for sure till we see the final numbers, but crunching a few numbers from the playtest suggests that this is not a 5E priority. However, if you follow a more old-school approach, where encounter levels vary widely and PCs are well advised to stop and assess the opposition before they charge into battle, 5E conversion ought to work splendidly. You just need to make sure that the crucial encounters (e.g., the final showdown with the BBEG) are at the right power level.

[SIZE=-2]*I'm not trying to claim this is actually the case. I have no idea how many owlbears are a good fight for anybody, in any edition.
**Of course, for anything before 4E, you couldn't rely on them anyway. 3E's CR system was a noble effort, but never worked well and broke down completely at higher levels. AD&D didn't even try.[/SIZE]