D&D 4E Am I crazy? I've just gotten a hankering to play 4e again...

[Zardnaar]

So eliminate all the optional rules, implement the "gritty rest" rules. Heck, if you want to take Gygax's opinion to heart eliminate cantrips. Anything else you wanted to pull in from previous editions (wands with n number of charges ever, scrolls, etc) is easy.

As far as being easier to mod that's not an opinion that's going to be shared by everyone. I find 5E incredibly easy to mod, even though I don't do it much.

But, like I said ... separate thread.

2E has a lot more toolbox type books and settings.

The griity rules in 5E actually fail they just stretch out the 6-8 encounters over a week instead of a day.

It doesn't really change the baked in encounters, rapid healing, high powered PCs etc.

 

[dave2008]

I have to say, I've never understood the desire to go back to 2e or B/X either. Play 5E with just PHB classes and subclasses, no feats. Maybe ignore backgrounds and skills. Wouldn't the result be close? That's probably a topic for a completely separate thread.

Probably best to get rid of ASIs too, and use variant death/dying, healing/ rest rules

 

[Oofta]

2E has a lot more toolbox type books and settings.

The griity rules in 5E actually fail they just stretch out the 6-8 encounters over a week instead of a day.

It doesn't really change the baked in encounters, rapid healing, high powered PCs etc.

I disagree. With 2e we had no guidelines for number of encounters, no limit to number of magic items. Casters regained spells every morning with a few exceptions.

The DMG has old school healing along with permanent debilitating wounds as options. It doesn't assume any magic items and limits the more powerful ones.

You can make 5e as gritty as you want.

I will agree that B/X was probably simpler. It didn't have rules for much of anything.

 

[Zardnaar]

I disagree. With 2e we had no guidelines for number of encounters, no limit to number of magic items. Casters regained spells every morning with a few exceptions.

The DMG has old school healing along with permanent debilitating wounds as options. It doesn't assume any magic items and limits the more powerful ones.

You can make 5e as gritty as you want.

I will agree that B/X was probably simpler. It didn't have rules for much of anything.

Encounter guideline NES and magic items are irrelevant.

There's more toolbox type books in 2E to run the type of game you want. Rules that completely change the classes, the nature of the game itself.

Low magic, technology type levels, character points, build your own races and classes etc.

You can almost rebuild it from the ground up.

 

[Tony Vargas]

but I distinctly remember a "players want crunch, not fluff in the MM so we're not going to provide much if any".

Don't recall the quote, and the MM was DM-facing, not player, but the first two MM's did have a lot less fluff, which was not setting-oriented, but just what might be of use in the encounter. So none of the Ecology of... type bits like their environment or diet or religious beliefs or whatever - part of the non-assumption of a default setting, really. With MV, especially, for obvious reasons, the Threats to the Nentir Vale, they went ahead and put in all sorts of that exact kind of fluff.
That and "Every Monster" had an illustration. Not really /every/ monster, because there might be multiple ____ Monster variations sharing one illo, of course...

 

[Oofta]

Encounter guideline NES and magic items are irrelevant.

There's more toolbox type books in 2E to run the type of game you want. Rules that completely change the classes, the nature of the game itself.

Low magic, technology type levels, character points, build your own races and classes etc.

You can almost rebuild it from the ground up.

So guidelines are not relevant, but you can claim that 5E can't be gritty because you're just stretching out the 6-8 encounters? Okay.

While there are fewer officially published toolkits for 5E, if you want options there are a ton out in the DmsGuild. Not officially playtested you say? How much playtesting went in to 2E mods?

As far as building custom races, classes, monsters there are guidelines in the DMG. With 2E there were no guidelines for XP for creating a monster. Heck, even the devs didn't have a system for calculating XP, they just kind of winged it*.

So again I'm not sure what's missing that we don't have or couldn't easily tweak. A lot of what you're saying doesn't exist is covered, at least briefly, in the 5E DMG.

* I was lucky enough to have a private game at WOTC's HQ with one of the devs back in the day and we chatted about it.

 

[Oofta]

Don't recall the quote, and the MM was DM-facing, not player, but the first two MM's did have a lot less fluff, which was not setting-oriented, but just what might be of use in the encounter. So none of the Ecology of... type bits like their environment or diet or religious beliefs or whatever - part of the non-assumption of a default setting, really. With MV, especially, for obvious reasons, the Threats to the Nentir Vale, they went ahead and put in all sorts of that exact kind of fluff.
That and "Every Monster" had an illustration. Not really /every/ monster, because there might be multiple ____ Monster variations sharing one illo, of course...

I may well be mis-remembering the source of the monster that had no description. It may have come from a mod and not a book.

I think some of the older editions got a little carried away with fluff, but the first MM books swung too far the other way IMHO.

 

[Zardnaar]

So guidelines are not relevant, but you can claim that 5E can't be gritty because you're just stretching out the 6-8 encounters? Okay.

While there are fewer officially published toolkits for 5E, if you want options there are a ton out in the DmsGuild. Not officially playtested you say? How much playtesting went in to 2E mods?

As far as building custom races, classes, monsters there are guidelines in the DMG. With 2E there were no guidelines for XP for creating a monster. Heck, even the devs didn't have a system for calculating XP, they just kind of winged it*.

So again I'm not sure what's missing that we don't have or couldn't easily tweak. A lot of what you're saying doesn't exist is covered, at least briefly, in the 5E DMG.

* I was lucky enough to have a private game at WOTC's HQ with one of the devs back in the day and we chatted about it.

There's a system for creating monsters lol.

I never claimed anything about playtested that's another poster.

I'm not claiming anything about quality either but it's verifiably false that 5 E has more options than 2E.

You might like 5E better but once again that's irrelevant.

The gritty rules in 5E don't actually make the game gritty.

It only changes how long long rests and short rests take. It changes the pacing of the game in terms of in game time

It doesn't change the actual wayvtge game runs or expected encounters.

It just slows down the level 1-20 thing game year you can pull off.

Compare with say the historical ha books where all magic is ritual magic and high level spells don't exist.1-3 points if healing a day and clw is a miracle.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I may well be mis-remembering the source of the monster that had no description.

It was an (intentional IIRC) design/layout oddity that the monsters all got illo's instead of descriptions. I mean, I guess it did away with the issue most RPGs seem to suffer from, at some point, where the illos and descriptions flatly contradict eachother (and often don't match the game stats, either).

I think some of the older editions got a little carried away with fluff, but the first MM books swung too far the other way IMHO.

I remember when The Dragon ran the first Ecology of... article. I do believe it was the Piercer - turned out to be a mollusk. It was awesome, at the time. But it did spin out quite a bit over the years.
That pendulum's always swinging.

Encounter guideline NES and magic items are irrelevant.

While I agree that Nintendo is irrelevant, the other two seem significant. ;P

There's more toolbox type books in 2E to run the type of game you want. Rules that completely change the classes, the nature of the game itself.
Low magic, technology type levels, character points, build your own races and classes etc.
You can almost rebuild it from the ground up.

5e is lousy with variants just in the DMG, and very open to new ones. So, not really, s'much.
Except for the class design thing - 2e did have that, and 5e doesn't. It was awful, but 2e had it. I even used it.

 

[Zardnaar]

It was an (intentional IIRC) design/layout oddity that the monsters all got illo's instead of descriptions. I mean, I guess it did away with the issue most RPGs seem to suffer from, at some point, where the illos and descriptions flatly contradict eachother (and often don't match the game stats, either).

I remember when The Dragon ran the first Ecology of... article. I do believe it was the Piercer - turned out to be a mollusk. It was awesome, at the time. But it did spin out quite a bit over the years.
That pendulum's always swinging.

While I agree that Nintendo is irrelevant, the other two seem significant. ;P

5e is lousy with variants just in the DMG, and very open to new ones. So, not really, s'much.
Except for the class design thing - 2e did have that, and 5e doesn't. It was awful, but 2e had it. I even used it.

Not all of it was awful. It was awful if you let players use it.

If you want to make a spell less ranger variant it's easy and works well enough.