D&D General How has D&D changed over the decades?

[HammerMan]

I'm not sure why you feel the need to keep telling me that my bad experience with old school DnD fighters is wrong. It's my experience.

Someone asked for an example of a game where we felt like dirt farmer cannon fodder at low levels and how long ago we experienced it so I gave them a data point.

My table is a group of friends who have been playing together for just under 20 years now. Nobody is a jerk. The sour experience is a combination of the Harn setting (dirt farmer starting characters) with built in limitations of a 1st level fighter in the RC.

I have not at any point said RC is bad. I have not said fighters are bad. I have only said I won't play a fighter from the RC because I find it's lack of interesting mechanical abilities to be off-putting.

There is no need for you to pop in and defend the RC against a single person's opinion of a single class in the game.

in my experence there are a few things that can turn even friends that try to always share the spotlight into a sour experence... caster/non caster is near the top of that list.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Interesting metaphor. Even more interesting when you know that, despite being inferior to Andy in virtually everything (lower stats), Barney Fife was the character played to the point that he generated 5 Emmys. So... maybe it's the way things play out and not what you start with that generates the memories.

Plus, Barney was a good son, bought his folks a septic tank.

There are three letters in RPG. The first two are about the roleplaying, the last about the game. Most people aren't just there for the roleplaying or they could just do freeform (though they'd likely have a lot more choice on what character they got to roleplay than most random systems gave them) but some people care about the game part too, and spending all your time fighting uphill on that part is not what everyone wants.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's strange that you'd comment about how 3.x was the first that had something other than "crap" support for high power play as an option while we are discussing how modern d&d has made it the only supported style by removing things like the pointbuy options weaker starting levels & more difficult recovery 3.x had then jump to erven older editions to switch topics from how modern d&d has changed.

I quoted a few of the 8(one has 4 so technically 11) earlier from the 3.5 dmg pg169/170 methods for generating stats & wouldn't be surprised if the 3.0 dmg had the same or similar. When talking about prior editions of d&d, 3.5 is very much a prior edition. The importance of having a low baseline that the gm can choose to dial up is that it's easier to give players free & better stuff than it is to nerf or take it away. Back in the days of ad&d and 3.x it was common to see houserules & things that provided a higher powered start, those houserules could be used to stoke enthusiasm & player buyin for a game/campaign concept but you almost never see the same in reverse now because it's an extreme uphill battle in a system with too many other components designed to fight it(death saves, long/short rests & extreme recovery/etc).

I'll be honest here, man; I think I disagree with you but I find these two paragraphs so difficult to understand, I'm not even sure what you're saying.

 

[Thomas Shey]

One of the changes in theme that I’ve noticed is the players place in the campaign world.

In OD&D, BEMCI, 1e, there was an implied advancement from being dungeon crawlers to becoming landholders with broader responsibilities. They didn’t give many rules around that beyond the rules for setting up castles, temples etc and attracting followers, but it assumed that there would be a bunch more role playing around that.

Though as I noted, IME the amount most groups ever actually did with that was minimal.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have not at any point said RC is bad. I have not said fighters are bad. I have only said I won't play a fighter from the RC because I find it's lack of interesting mechanical abilities to be off-putting.

This was a big part of why I bailed out of OD&D many decades ago. Short of talking the GM into something, my meaningful choices in combat added up to "picking my target and deciding where to stand" (and often even the latter was meaningless).

 

[tetrasodium]

I'll be honest here, man; I think I disagree with you but I find these two paragraphs so difficult to understand, I'm not even sure what you're saying.

I don't understand you. I'm not sure what you are trying to say but I'll do better and voice my confusion by explaining that the disconnect is where you didn't actually include any detail about your confusion & lack of understanding while starting you do not understand.

 

[BookTenTiger]

In older editions, my mom would bring everyone an ice cream sandwich about 2/3rds of the way into the game.

In newer editions, she does not.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Gating the unusual behind dice rolls is fine.

As noted, some of us have very different definitions of "fine" here.

And yes, luck sometimes brings benefits. That's what luck is.

Cheating, however, brings a quick trip out the door - once.

Which is why people who have to deal with this nonsense learn to get good at it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't understand you. I'm not sure what you are trying to say but I'll do better and voice my confusion by explaining that the disconnect is where you didn't actually include any detail about your confusion & lack of understanding while starting you do not understand.

I was being quite literal there. I literally read those two paragraphs and could not make sense out of them. I don't even know where to start.

 

[Lanefan]

As noted, some of us have very different definitions of "fine" here.

OK, how else do you enforce rarity?

Let's take my current setting as an example, so I can't be accused of picking on anyone else.

In that setting Gnomes are a rather rare sight - there's only a few tens of thousands of them left worldwide, and many of those are widely scattered. Gnomes are, however, still a PC-playable species in my game. To reconcile the low odds of ever even meeting a Gnome with their PC-playable status, I want to somehow make them rare - but still available - as PCs, so as not to end up with a disproportionate number of them in adventuring parties.

It should be noted also that for a few classes Gnomes are a very optimal/powerful choice - their generally high Con, high Dex, and reasonable Int lends itself extremely well to low-hit-die back-line classes such as Thieves and Mages.

How would you mechanically enforce that rarity?

Which is why people who have to deal with this nonsense learn to get good at it.

How does one "get good" at luck without cheating?

And if you actually mean get good at cheating, the door is that way...