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

[tetrasodium]

getting to play the class you want is now main character syndrome...

I'd agree with you but that's not what was being discussed. Getting to demand the gm change the rules they have set for a particular game is what makes it so. I'd the gm says that everyone needs to play a warforged pc for a campaign intended to dive into the struggle between the newly but not quite free warforged & meat races in brelsnd that's the game he's going to be running. If you show up with a lender from Dragonlance demanding to explore your innocents with the shield of old school absolute morality or complain that the gm is forcing you to play a character that you don't want to you are showing profound entitlement. Thdt unreasonable entitlement is even worse if you do so while ignoring the character creation rules the gm has said exist for the game you are welcome to not play in because you are instead playing your lawful good lender at a tsvle with some other gm that fits the character you wanted to play but could not at the table of the gm running a restrictive warforged only game.
Remember this all started because someone asked why a gm might say roll stats in order and expect players to play the resulting characters when I have a hypothetical answer about how it pushes them out of their comfort zone. It's not why can't I use chsrgen rules like that, it's how dare you force players to play a game they agreed to

 

[Remathilis]

Anecdote aside - unfair is not necessarily equivalent to undesirable. If you know the rules before you roll and agree to them, it's hard to call it unfair. (Unless it's one player - let's call them the DM - who insists on using certain rules that no one else at the table wants to use). But you can still call it undesirable. You can still say it's not as fun, even if it's fair according to the rules. Those collective groans suggest that it was suboptimal for no one to be able to play a paladin.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing that if the DM sets down table rules and you agree to them but they don't work out, the rule becomes unfair. The DM sets the rules, the players take it or leave it.

But a RAW system of character generation has been included in every edition of the game, and the nature of the RAW defines what the game assumes, even if the DM does change it for better or worse.

A good example is HP. Basic D&D assumed rolling for HP (1d4 mu and thief, d6 cleric, d8 fighter). HP is very low and 0 is dead. Basic assumed a lot of dead PCs. AD&D raised the hd size for all classes but magic users one step and included options for negative HP to raise PC survival, but rolled HP and 0 = death was still the default. 3e codified the common max HP at first level and negative HP as the RAW and not an option. 4e did away with rolling HP altogether and streamlined negative HP into death saves. 5e rolled it back with the OPTION to roll HP, with the assumption being fixed HP and 4e's death save. 5e also raised the HD for the lower HP classes like rogues and mages.

Now how you feel about that general trend towards increased sustainability of PCs depends on how fragile you liked your PCs. If you liked PCs who a kobold could sneeze and kill, this increased sustainability is bad. If you don't like going through a character a session and like to develop the one you have, extra survivability is a must to keep playing the character you like.

It reminds me of the combat as sport/combat as war analogy. People who want to play and explore a single character idea want a more sports-like combat, while those who favor more warlike combat don't mind death because soldiers die in wars all the time. The campaign is the focus, not the character.

That all being said, the game assumptions have very much shifted from campaign/war/randomness towards character/sport/survivability. That's been a trend for 30 years. Every edition has moved the game closer to that end because that's the end people have wanted. If lethality was a desirable goal, Max first level HP and negative HP rules wouldn't have gained traction to move from house rule to Core. If randomness was desirable, more class features like spells known would be randomized. If limitation as a method of world-building was desirable, we'd still have race/classed based minimums and maximums for ability scores and level limit and alignment restrictions on race and class.

But we don't. The market has spoken.

 

[Remathilis]

I'd agree with you but that's not what was being discussed. Getting to demand the gm change the rules they have set for a particular game is what makes it so.

That might be what you are discussing, but it's not what we were discussing.

In 1e, an elf MUST have an 8 Charisma. (PHB). You have a cool idea for an elf wizard. You roll in SDCIWCh order and get 9, 14, 12, 15, 10, 6. You cannot be an elf per the RAW. Is that acceptable? For a number of people: no. The rolls I got shouldn't disqualify me from the race I wanted. Not for something as common as an elf. Now you as a DM might opt to allow me to adjust something. Perhaps I can ignore the racial minimum and play an awkward elf. Perhaps you'll allow me to switch scores, or arrange them to taste, or maybe just raise a 6 to an 8 since that's not like it's going to be power creep. Or you can put your foot down, scream RAW is RAW and demand I play something else other than my elf idea.

THAT'S what people are having a problem with. And it was an easy problem to fix since removing racial min/max doesn't seem to have broken the game except for some people still upset halflings can get as strong as half-orcs.

 

[HammerMan]

I'd agree with you but that's not what was being discussed. Getting to demand the gm change the rules they have set for a particular game is what makes it so.

I would agree if the reason given wasn't 'to get them out of there comfort zone'

I'd the gm says that everyone needs to play a warforged pc for a campaign intended to dive into the struggle between the newly but not quite free warforged & meat races in brelsnd that's the game he's going to be running. If you show up with a lender from Dragonlance demanding to explore your innocents with the shield of old school absolute morality or complain that the gm is forcing you to play a character that you don't want to you are showing profound entitlement.

yeah but that wasn't the scenero at all. It was "This person likes playing fighters so I will make them roll in order stats so they don't get to play a fighter unless they are lucky"

Remember this all started because someone asked why a gm might say roll stats in order and expect players to play the resulting characters when I have a hypothetical answer about how it pushes them out of their comfort zone. It's not why can't I use chsrgen rules like that, it's how dare you force players to play a game they agreed to

except you aren't making a world and character creation rules to play but to 'teach your players' that sounds like entitlement on YOUR end

 

[overgeeked]

SDCIWCh

Wrong order. That change still bugs me.

 

[Umbran]

(and the inverse, and how frequent will depend on how the point value is set up).

Tangent, but may be relevant...

Do not confuse probability with observed frequency. A given group of people does not generate a statistically relevant number of characters. The probability that any one character will be above, or below, the set point-buy level may be known, but the frequency is only guaranteed to match that over large numbers of characters. A typical group is very likely to defy that it in some way or other, due to the small number of characters generated.

So, while the odds are one way, the result can easily be one person getting repeatedly hosed or favored by this approach.

 

[Fifth Element]

Anecdote aside - unfair is not necessarily equivalent to undesirable. If you know the rules before you roll and agree to them, it's hard to call it unfair. (Unless it's one player - let's call them the DM - who insists on using certain rules that no one else at the table wants to use). But you can still call it undesirable. You can still say it's not as fun, even if it's fair according to the rules. Those collective groans suggest that it was suboptimal for no one to be able to play a paladin.

To follow on this, although my comment holds as a general case, you could in fact make the argument that 3d6 in order is not actually fair due to the ability requirements of a paladin. The 1E PHB presents playing a paladin as an option. But if you do 3d6 in order, your chance of rolling a paladin is 1 in 1,062 characters due to the requirements of 12 STR, 9 INT, 13 WIS, 6 DEX, 9 CON and 17 CHA. You could certainly make an argument that it's unfair to suggest that playing a paladin is a possibility in the game when the chances of doing so are that low. If you have say four players in the game it would take 266 parties of adventurers to expect to have one paladin in game. Even if each party lasts only one game session, and you play a session every single week, it would take over 5 years of playing to expect there to be one paladin rolled up. Much more realistically a typical character would last multiple sessions - some few will even last dozens or even hundreds of sessions. But even if they last an average of only say three sessions, you're now looking at 15 years for there to be one paladin. If someone were to argue it's unfair that the book (and DM) claims a class is available as a PC but you could play the game for a dozen years and no one has been able to play one, I would be sympathetic to that argument.

Edit: Can you imagine rolling say 15 STR, 12 INT, 13 WIS, 5 DEX, 16 CON and 18 CHA and being forced to play a cleric because any character with less than 6 DEX has to be a cleric?

 

[Minigiant]

Well, really early on (pre-Greyhawk OD&D) they didn't need anything particular in anything but Strength because attributes had so little impact; all they really did if within your prime requisite was effect your experience (this was often true even after Greyhawk unless they were particularly high).

Indeed. The earliest D&D was very Ability Score Independent because they didn't do much.

Once ability scores granted real benefits, Everything changed.

Though I'd argue that one attribute was more important for long-term play than those three were for a fighter. A fighter with middle-of-the-road attributes just hit a little worse, did a little less damage and had a little less hit points than one with good ones. A mage with a sub-par Int couldn't use higher level spells at all.

Well the game wasn't designed to go high level for most PCs so a meh INT wizard or WIS cleric won't be hurt.

 

[Remathilis]

Wrong order. That change still bugs me.

At least it's not SCDIWCh. I never groked to that.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That might be what you are discussing, but it's not what we were discussing.

In 1e, an elf MUST have an 8 Charisma. (PHB). You have a cool idea for an elf wizard. You roll in SDCIWCh order and get 9, 14, 12, 15, 10, 6. You cannot be an elf per the RAW. Is that acceptable? For a number of people: no. The rolls I got shouldn't disqualify me from the race I wanted. Not for something as common as an elf. Now you as a DM might opt to allow me to adjust something. Perhaps I can ignore the racial minimum and play an awkward elf. Perhaps you'll allow me to switch scores, or arrange them to taste, or maybe just raise a 6 to an 8 since that's not like it's going to be power creep. Or you can put your foot down, scream RAW is RAW and demand I play something else other than my elf idea.

THAT'S what people are having a problem with. And it was an easy problem to fix since removing racial min/max doesn't seem to have broken the game except for some people still upset halflings can get as strong as half-orcs.

This seems like a larger mismatch in expectation, in that things are expected but that's not how the system agreed to works. In this case, if you're going to engage a random chance mechanism to determine what options you can select, selecting an option first and then engaging and becoming upset that the mechanism didn't provide your wants seems to be a bad match. I 100% agree, though, that this is exactly what is happening. This tells me that the expectations of play are not being well aligned to the process of play. There's three ways to fix this -- adjust expectations, adjust process, or compromise. This is the fundamental discussion -- some are arguing that the expectations should serve process, some that process should serve expectations, and some that there's movement needed for both. But what's happening is that the examples are being argued rather than the fundamental questions -- should process or expectation drive play?

I think a lot of people would answer one way but an examination of their play would reveal many instances of the other.