D&D 5E Is 5e really that different?

[Thunderfoot]

<SNIP> But, overall, the range of "hits a lot" and "hits a little" in both 4e and 5e are pretty close, whereas the range in AD&D is "hits a little" and "never misses".

I concur, but is it a bad thing? One of the comments I hear a lot is older games got boring a higher levels. And I hear a lot of people saying they usually shelve a campaign at about 9th. Is this a holdover of the 'boring high level game'? I used to think high level games were awesome, but have since seen I am in a very very tiny minority in that regard. And in THIS issue I'll 'die on the hill' for 5e, especially if it makes other folks see the untapped potential for high level adventuring.

 

[dave2008]

That's also a bit cherry picking as well though. An Ancient Blue Dragon has an AC of 22 for example.

Possibly, but I didn't try to. I literally looked up Orc in D&D Beyond notice Orcus was, not surprisingly listed directly after orcs. Also, dragons have the highest AC in the game - so I would say your example is cherry picking more than mine. For example:
A balor (CR 19) has a AC of 19. A nightwalker (CR 20) as an AC of 14. Archdevils and demonlords vary from 18-22, elder tempest (CR 23) AC 19, Greater Starspawn (CR 21) AC 15, kraken (CR 23) AC 18, leviathan (CR 20) AC 17, Lich (CR 21) AC 17, pit fiend (CR 20) AC 19. The fact is the majority of non-dragon, non-unique (and many of the unique was as well) have a CR of 20 or below.

Sure, the characters are getting better to hit. I agree. But, in AD&D, you go from barely hitting at all, to never missing, or only missing on a 1. A 20th level AD&D fighter has a THAC0 of 1. That means anything with a 0 or worse AC, which is 99% of the monsters, is an auto hit. Even the hardest to hit monsters in the AD&D Monster Manual are hit on around a 5 or better.

I don't disagree the change is more pronounced in AD&D. I wasn't try to argue it wasn't. Though we never made it past level 10 (and usually 5-6) in AD&D/BECMI so I didn't really experience it in 1e.

That's significantly different from 5e. 5e is far closer to 4e here actually. Where a high level fighter will hit more than other characters because high level fighters get bonuses to hit that other characters don't. But, overall, the range of "hits a lot" and "hits a little" in both 4e and 5e are pretty close, whereas the range in AD&D is "hits a little" and "never misses".

Not sure what your point is here in comparing to 4e (or 3e). I was responding to this quote of yours:

In 5e, because of bounded accuracy, your chances of success remain largely static at any level.

I was simply pointing out that in reality it is not static. Though the design intent is for it to be more static, as the sense of improvement is intended to be expressed more by damage inflicted than change in to accuracy.

 

[Jer]

To be even more fair, natural healing in 1e and 2e was quite slow.

To be even more even more fair, the number of tables that ignored the natural healing rules in earlier editions probably dwarfs the ones that didn't.

If there's one major change to the game that I've seen from the transition from the 90s into the 00's it was the number of tables that were focused on trying to play RAW.

 

[Maxperson]

I concur, but is it a bad thing? One of the comments I hear a lot is older games got boring a higher levels. And I hear a lot of people saying they usually shelve a campaign at about 9th. Is this a holdover of the 'boring high level game'? I used to think high level games were awesome, but have since seen I am in a very very tiny minority in that regard. And in THIS issue I'll 'die on the hill' for 5e, especially if it makes other folks see the untapped potential for high level adventuring.

I think that's a holdover from 1e and 2e where once you hit 9th level, there was very, very little PC advancement for a lot of time and effort. People don't like to feel like they are wasting their time and if PC advancement is a big part of player enjoyment, the game is going to suffer post 9th level. 3e on the other hand didn't do that and was very fun, though very unbalanced at high level.

 

[DarkCrisis]

To be fair... sleep fixed 99% of issues in every edition.

No it didn’t. You could take days to heal HP. Level drain had to be fixed by a cleric. Etc etc. most issues stuck with you for days/weeks or until you got them magically fixed.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I've always made games as lethal as the group wanted, 5E is no exception. Back in OD&D, we always started a new "day" at full health. In 5E I use the gritty rest rules and after a while the casters are running nearly on empty. As a DM I have infinite dragons, not to mention attacking PCs that are unconscious (auto crit, crit causes 2 failed saves). Then drag the body off or just eat it.

We've always had raise dead. Revivify just lowers the amount of time a player has to sit out the game. In my experience people always wanted to go into combat fully charged, with the base rules it's just a matter of pacing.

Hence where money sinks came in. Want to be able to raise the dead sooner? Buy a scroll. Want to not sit for 3 days to heal? Buy some potions/scrolls/wand of cure. Early Eds solved those issues as money sinks because just like now, PCs are usually flush with an over abundance of treasure.

 

[tetrasodium]

I concur, but is it a bad thing? One of the comments I hear a lot is older games got boring a higher levels. And I hear a lot of people saying they usually shelve a campaign at about 9th. Is this a holdover of the 'boring high level game'? I used to think high level games were awesome, but have since seen I am in a very very tiny minority in that regard. And in THIS issue I'll 'die on the hill' for 5e, especially if it makes other folks see the untapped potential for high level adventuring.

It's complicated & there was a lot of things that were involved in it. I'll mostly talk about 3.5 because ad&d was too long ago to speak on more than vague recollections.

• Starting at 2 or 5 was not uncommon if the PCs were intended to start out a little bit seasoned (ie town guard not hero of $event type analog). Even if a group started with a couple levels they still felt much weaker out of the gate than in o5e level one. The important difference though is that there was the ability to start at those lower levels when there was a desire to explore that end of the scale or a need to point at it when a player brings backstories like this to the table.
• Games tended to run a little higher into the low/mid teens. Some of that was because of the lower levels in the last point still existing, but there was a lot of other factors like vancian casting making it so on any given adventuring day there were good odds that casters had a decent chunk of their spell slots devoted to situations that didn't come up but spells scaled by caster level rather than slot level & there were a lot more spell slots available(5e slows the gain rate down at 3/7/9/11) so even the low level slots stayed powerful when they were used.
• the hit chance thing was a big part of why the higher levels fell apart though. Part of that is because it wasn't uncommon for a character to have 24/26++ in their prime stat for +6/+7 or much more to hit from that alongside the BaB gains A fighter gained 1 BaB per 1 level while something like a rogue gained 2 points of BaB across every 3 levels & was more MAD so probably has a slightly lower bonus to hit on top of the BaB difference. At level 20 a rogue would have +15/+10/+5 tohit from BaB on their first second & third attacks while a fighter or paladin would have +20/+15/+10/+5 on their 1st/2nd/3rd/4th attack before a point or three from stats further expanded the gap. You wound up with a situation where in order for the fighter to have a chance of missing the rogue could basically only hit on the most amazing rolls while a 1/3 BaB class like cleric wizard or whatever would be pretty much incapable of hitting with an attack roll against AC on anything but a 20.

 

[Oofta]

Hence where money sinks came in. Want to be able to raise the dead sooner? Buy a scroll. Want to not sit for 3 days to heal? Buy some potions/scrolls/wand of cure. Early Eds solved those issues as money sinks because just like now, PCs are usually flush with an over abundance of treasure.

Then don't give them much treasure. My player's PCs are frequently broke because they spend so much on healing potions.

EDIT: when it comes down to it, in 1E and 2E we just took days off for the cleric to recover and heal everyone. That and we either avoided or house ruled various insta-death things because it wasn't fun. D&D has always been and continues to be as lethal as the group wants.

 

[GreyLord]

I concur, but is it a bad thing? One of the comments I hear a lot is older games got boring a higher levels. And I hear a lot of people saying they usually shelve a campaign at about 9th. Is this a holdover of the 'boring high level game'? I used to think high level games were awesome, but have since seen I am in a very very tiny minority in that regard. And in THIS issue I'll 'die on the hill' for 5e, especially if it makes other folks see the untapped potential for high level adventuring.

9th level (for Fighters and Warriors at least, 10th for Rogues/Thieves, 11th for Wizards/Mages, and also 9th for Clerics/Priests unless you were a druid and then it was 12th, 8th for Monks and Barbarians) was seen as the end game in AD&D for many.

The rules had an implied change about them where the PC has reached the Zenith and become the Lord of the manor. It switches from being the adventurer to the rulers of the land, and as such, many would then transition to being retired or NPC's in the campaign for many.

It was a different "ending point" than many games that came after.

Various editions of D&D have tried different tiers of gaming where different ideas apply. Even 5th edition does this. The only edition that really didn't do it or imply it as much was 3.X, and even then, they did "Epic Levels" for those who wanted to...though in theory you could use other advancement schemed past 20th level (for example, my favorite was the Swords and Sorcery version in the Advanced Players Guide) and even had 2 different versions to choose from (the one in the Epic Level Handbook and the simpler found in the FRCS).

4th edition had it divided into 3 tiers...sort of copying the idea that you transition from Adventurers and Heroes to Leaders of the Land (Heroic to Paragon Tier) and then the 3e idea of going beyond to battling in the Cosmos (Paragon to Epic). This also was sort of implied in AD&D, but to a much SMALLER idea than the Adventurers to Heroes idea, in that around 16th - 20th level (depending on Class) you are suddenly these guys taking on the Arch Devils and Demon Lords and such (H4 for example, in which you attempt to destroy Orcus himself).

5th edition has you top out at 20th level instead of 9th - 12th level. After that it also has a sort of continuing adventure thing, just like AD&D did, but with Epic Boons and and such. You can continue to grow your character, but with slightly different applications of the rules.

To understand the change of the game for someone who never really played it, I suppose the best analogy for that would be to look at 5e with 20th level characters capping out and look at how the game advances after that.

 

[teitan]

See, this I don't get. I really don't.

In what way is 5e like AD&D? The classes aren't even remotely close. What we call a fighter in 5e would be completely unrecognizable on a table playing AD&D. He still uses a sword? Maybe? Virtually none of the mechanics of AD&D exist in any shape or form in 5e. Right from the stat bonuses all the way through, nothing of AD&D, other than maybe proper nouns, exists in 5e.

Bounded accuracy is identical to how 4e's escalating numbers worked. All bounded accuracy is, is 4e math without the level bonuses. And, in AD&D, that never happened. In AD&D, you went from very low chances of success to virtually guaranteed success as you advanced levels. Since AC was (more or less) static, and your THAC0 increased by level, your characters were going to hit more and more often as they gained levels. In 5e, because of bounded accuracy, your chances of success remain largely static at any level.

Heck, look at how thief skills worked. At 1st level, you were going to fail far more often than you succeeded. By high levels, the reverse was true. The task never actually mattered. You opened a lock, full stop. The idea that one lock would be a different difficulty than another didn't exist in AD&D. You opened a lock X% of the time, dependent on your character's level.

It absolutely baffles me when people try to link 5e to AD&D. There's just virtually no commonality.

Did I say the same? I did not. That's projection. Take my words for what they are, the game is more like earlier editions than 4e is not the same as 5e is just like 1e... at all. I compared the actual power levels and AD&D had a bounded accuracy built in because of the AC scale being 10 to -10, there wasn't an ever escalating AC to hit as you leveled up. Each pip or bonus to hit represented a 5% increment towards hitting AC -10. AC didn't go lower than -10. AC in 5e doesn't really cap out hard at 20 but it doesn't get ridiculous like in 3.x, PF or 4e at high levels. I mean, Orcus, as previously cited... 48 AC in 3.x era and in 4e. 17 in 5e... B/X? -7... SOOO 16 and in 1e... -6... a 17 because 0e AC was 9 and 1e it was a 10 without Armor and Dex bonuses... IF they applied. Hit points: 0e: 12 hit dice, you rolled it. B/X was crazier: 620 hit points. 1e: 120. 3.x: 455, not as crazy as B/X/BECMI. 4e: 1,525... holy crap no wonder it was a slog. 5e: 405. Not as much as B/X/BECMI, more than 1e though but hit points work differently in 5e than older editions which is a big difference granted. But the analysis shows that the progress was BACK toward earlier editions in the approach to armor class etc and more towards B/X and BECMI style design. Not exactly the same, but closer.

Another factor to consider is that in AD&D and and BD&D, a round of combat represented a much longer time period and a series of feints and parries, jockeying for position while 3.x and up is 6 seconds vs 1 minute in older editions. So the variance there is you're actually hitting MORE often in 3.x to 5e than in older editions.