What is the essence of D&D

[Zardnaar]

When you have to virtually take Dungeons out of Dungeon and Dragons because no cleric ie this super sized impact on the game... Yeh that means more important.

It wasn't even me saying that but one of those arguing that primacy of magic isn't the thing... because you could adjust the game to deal with lack of X. The adjustment is over the top.

Further from all I have heard a party of clerics and druids in 3e... make the party of fighters or even the Fighter that joins look worse than the Druids bear. So I think there may have been more importance.

Actually I think Zard was saying that 3e might be the only edition where magic was that much more important but the lack of cleric goes all the way back.

You'll hear all sorts if crap online. It a big world someone somewhere will have tried something.

You keep contradicting yourself. You claim you can't play without clerics when in fact you can. 2E even had things like all fighter games or all thieves.

The Dungeon hack only as the one true way hasn't really been D&D since about 1981.

And when we point out that yes you can play D&D without a cleric you claim we're not playing D&D because the game is different in tone.

Erm probably playing a game like that because we want a different tone.

You keep being objectively wrong. Some things are subjective others not so much while others fall somewhere in the middle.

 

[Campbell]

I want every class to be capable of things that shock and amaze us when played well. You should be able to play a fighter or rogue skillfully in a way that makes people stand up and take notice. This need not come from daily rationing, but not every "Damn. That happened." moment needs to come from a spell caster.

 

[Garthanos]

Erm probably playing a game like that because we want a different tone.

Thought them thar Dungeons might be one of them thar essense of Dungeons and Dragons...since it was suggested that even decaying ability of attrition fights MUST BE done well but since you can also play the game without that. Must not be so.

 

[Nagol]

ff

I don’t see how casters are more important than fighters under any edition of d&d.

Here's a quick anecdote from a 3.5 game I ran:

The group has cleared an ancient monastery of bandits and are doing a final pass to clean up/check for secrets before heading out. They notice via the Druid's Detect Magic that one of the mosaics in the living areas is a magic item. The Wizard casts Identify and discovers it is a teleport link to somewhere and learns the command word. The Wizard has other interests he wants to get to, but the group decides to scout it out.

A quick recon of the arrival point area doesn't find a matching magic portal to bring them back to the surface, but by talking to a friendly spirit they discover it is a forgotten city of the dwarves lost since the Great War. The Druid, the Fighter, and the Barbarian strongly want to explore further, the Wizard strongly wants to leave and the other two PCs have no opinion. The Wizard is the only character with long distance travel capability. He announces he is leaving and anyone who doesn't want to be trapped with unknown dangers with no known escape route are welcome to join him. They return home.

Quiz time!
How was the magic discovered? How would a fighter find it?
How was the magic unlocked? How would a fighter do it?
Who decided the group needed to leave regardless of what the other members wanted? What gave him that power?

 

[Zardnaar]

ff


Here's a quick anecdote froma 3.5 game I ran:

The group has cleared an ancient monastery of bandits and are doing a final pass to clean up/check for secrets before heading out. They notice via the Druid's Detect Magic that one of the mosaics in the living areas is a magic item. The Wizard casts Identify and discovers it is a teleport link to somewhere and learns the command word. The Wizard has other interests he wants to get to, but the group decides to scout it out.

A quick recon of the arrival point area doesn't find a matching magic portal to bring them back to the surface, but by talking to a friendly spirit they discover it is a forgotten city of the dwarves lost since the Great War. The Druid, the Fighter, and the Barbarian strongly want to explore further, the Wizard strongly wants to leave and the other two PCs have no opinion. The Wizard is the only character with long distance travel capability. He announces he is leaving and anyone who doesn't want to be trapped with unknown dangers with no known escape route are welcome to join him. They return home.

Quiz time!
How was the magic discovered? How would a fighter find it?
How was the magic unlocked? How would a fighter do it?
Who decided the group needed to leave regardless of what the other members wanted? What gave him that power?

So, who stopped him getting chopped into bits or loses initiative and chopped into bits. Grapple in 3E also= dead wizard very fast.

Also I don't think you'll find to many people defending 3E it's the prime example of most things wrong with modern D&D.

That level of magic isn't the essence of D&D it's why it's gone and didn't come back. Much like THAC0 and powers.

Not being able to by magic seems to be the essence of D&D 5/7 editions and it's goneburger because it sucks the fun out of the game and the exploration/discovery side if things.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So far I've been assuming your main beef is that you think Wizards > Fighters. But does it bother you that a Fighter/Barbarian/Rogue kind of needs to have a magic weapon? Is that part of your complaint about the role of magic?

The Primacy of Magic is not a complaint, but an observation.
Up to 3.5, at the earliest, having a magic weapon at some point became absolutely critical - without it, you'd be completely unable to affect a variety of not-that-uncommon enemies who were quite hard to escape and could do /horrible/ things to you. In 3.5 and 5e, it's still /highly/ desirable, compared to punching through resistance, but 3.5 had the added layer of weapon composition to consider (you could end up with quite the golf-bag). In 4e, even a trait like insubstantial doesn't convey utter immunity, and resistances are rarely to untyped (which includes weapon) damage (ironically, in 4e, more than any other edition, you're virtually guaranteed that magic weapon, unless Inherent Bonuses were in use - C'est la D&D).

So, a non-magical class generally needing magic weapons to contribute meaningfully/at-all to certain combat encounters is support for the Primacy of Magic.

Both magic items and casters figure into the Primacy of Magic - or Magic Dependency, if you prefer. They figure a little differently in different still-D&D editions. Magic items are more a build resource in 3e than in any other really-D&D game (unless you count PF1 as separate from 3e), for instance, but they're still /very/ important, and, yes, can be especially so when there's no casters to provide magic. By the same token, casters are very important, but in a setting where magic items are extremely rare, even for PCs, or even non-existent, they're that much /more/ important.

In your ideal world, is the Fighter supposed to be as effective as the Wizard without any magic items?

Ideally, I'd prefer "balanced with" to "as effective as" - I'd expect the effectiveness of a wizard & fighter to be very different in nature. But, yes, ideally class balance should not be contingent upon one class having access to found items. For instance, the effectiveness of a Ranger vs Warlock or Artificer vs Warlord or Fighter vs Paladin, assuming corresponding 4e-style formal Roles, should be quite comparable, whether both had items or neither did.

 

[Nagol]

So, who stopped him getting chopped into bits or loses initiative and chopped into bits. Grapple in 3E also= dead wizard very fast.

Also I don't think you'll find to many people defending 3E it's the prime example of most things wrong with modern D&D.

That level of magic isn't the essence of D&D it's why it's gone and didn't come back. Much like THAC0 and powers.

Not being able to by magic seems to be the essence of D&D 5/7 editions and it's goneburger because it sucks the fun out of the game and the exploration/discovery side if things.

Assuming you are asking why the group didn't kill their Wizard -- for the same reason they left when he wanted to. He was their only known route home.

Can one or more PCs of any class kill a PC? Sure! Combat-wise, most of the classes are decently balanced in DPR and resiliency.
Can one or more classes dominate decision-making by simply being the only ones who can literally do something about a situation? Absolutely.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Assuming you are aking why the group didn't kill their Wizard -- for the same reason they left when he wanted to. He was their only known route home.

Can one or more PCs of any class kill a PC? Sure! Combat-wise, most of the classes are decently balanced in DPR and resiliency.
Can one or more classes dominate decision-making by simply being the only ones who can literally do something about a situation? Absolutely.

No, he was asking who kept the wizard from dying to mooks in combat.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

All I can say is that I disagree.

Some powers were different, but others ... meh. Didn't feel distinct to me.

In other words stop telling everybody what their opinion is.

I never told anyone what their opinion is. I told people that certain aspects of their complaints are based on objectively false premises.

The powers do different things in play. That's fact. They make the classes play differently in a fight, or in the case of utility powers, give very different tool kits outside of combat, even to two classes with similar skill lists. Rangers and Rogues just fight and overcome obstacles differently, even if they choose the same skill set. They are objectively more different from round to round or challenge to challenge than most non spellcasters are without using magic items to define your character in other editions. Fighters and rogues have never been more different from eachother in any other edition of dnd. Same Wizards and Sorcerers, Clerics and Druids, Fighters and Barbarians, War Clerics and Paladins. The list goes on until you run out of class that have been in previous editions.

Beyond that, a single target pure striker melee rogue is practically a different class from a secondary control, multi-target focused, dagger thrower or shortbow rogue. They simply do entirely different things.

The fact you didn't see any of that somehow doesn't make it not the case. You just missed it.

Which again, leads into what I said earlier. 4e divided the fan base in spite of commercially doing fine and still being the top of the RPG market, and being the edition during which the surge in DnD popularity in general started, because of presentation more than any other single factor.

The essence of DnD for many people is largely "look and feel", and familiarity of player options upon quick perusal. Hell, even I balked the first time I played it, until I actually had a DM that had read the DMG and understood how the game works. He was, ironically, an old 2e DM, and understood it as a game to be run about the same as how he'd always run 2e, with the addition of actual mechanics for everyone outside of combat, and everyone having something to do that was less samey than "I hit several times with my sword" in combat.

 

[Zardnaar]

No, he was asking who kept the wizard from dying to mooks in combat.

D&D is a team based game, that's the essence of it.
3E had it's issues, in most games I didn't see magic invalidate the other PCs although the Druid was close. It was overpowered sure but you could still have fun it was harder than say 2E. And that power level is goneburger.

OSR can't buy magic items, 3E and 4E disagreed but 3Evat least resembled 2E and could be played similar (alot if players were crap at buying items it's not fun).