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

[Thomas Shey]

I saw many 1st ed fighters with 18/percentile Strength, but it was by no means universal.

Are we at data yet?

It's obvious that Hussar's original claim can be accurate to his experience, but was not universal. He was either hyperbolic or sloppy in his usage.

I saw plenty of OD&D fighters with less than an 18 Strength. What I didn't see (at least for long) was many with a Strength low enough post-Greyhawk to have a penalty (or worse, Con). If there were people who wanted to deal with that, they were thin on the ground. And this was a time when I was playing with a lot of different people over a period, usually as a GM, so I got to see actual character sheets pretty frequently.

This tells me that either people weren't doing the roll-by-the-book method (whether using some other methodology or outright cheating) or weren't playing every character they rolled (either by just ignoring them or swordbushing them). Given how often in those early days characters were moved from game to game, there was going to be no way to say which. Even characters that were primarily played in my own games I didn't try to supervise generation of.

 

[Minigiant]

No, I'm just not agreeing it was the whole issue.

What I am saying is this is the core of most the issues complained about.

Everything is connected to the imbalance of archetypes and the design of ability modifiers themselves.

 

[Minigiant]

I think quite a lot of people would regret putting high rolls in stats other than their primary, even today. People might even argue about it on the internet...

Well the hope is to have warriors and casters not all use the same primary so there is no regrets.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What I am saying is this is the core of most the issues complained about.

Everything is connected to the imbalance of archetypes and the design of ability modifiers themselves.

And I'm disagreeing with that.

One of the most frustrating things about discussion, especially Internet discussion with strangers, is how hard it is for some people to get that you can understand their point and simply not agree. That repeating it doesn't actually help because they got it the first time.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Of course it does. You compare a dying man to a game??????? Do you know how that sounds?

Well they're both things that can only really be done right it you make them yourself?

I don't see why this is so outrageous when you yourself considered the example hyperbolic. They're not real dying men unless I missed a post somewhere.

 

[Minigiant]

And I'm disagreeing with that.

One of the most frustrating things about discussion, especially Internet discussion with strangers, is how hard it is for some people to get that you can understand their point and simply not agree. That repeating it doesn't actually help because they got it the first time.

The repetition was a way to get you to explain what you think the core issue is or if you think there is one.

I very often have conversations on ENworld where I am the only one giving explanations of my side of the debate.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The repetition was a way to get you to explain what you think the core issue is or if you think there is one.

I don't think there is a single one. I think there's a number of different things bundled up in it.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't think there is a single one. I think there's a number of different things bundled up in it.

Don't all those things bundled up fall under simplistic and traditional game design. A game design meant to model traditional D&D characters with mechanics too simplistic and linear to create any sense of nuance.

I mean, people were fudging, cheating, and using favorable rolling methods because there were few supported paths to power so you had to roll one of them.

 

[David Howery]

I'm not sure I'd call "how Lanefan actually runs his game" or "how a few others have /do run their game" an "experiment".

Um.... I think you missed part of the conversation. I was talking about how my group way back in 1E days rolled up PCs using '3d6 in order' just as an experiment to see what we'd come up with. We didn't use them, it was just a test to see what would happen.

 

[Helldritch]

Actually, the standard array, despite getting a bad rep on this thread, is a (poor) model of expected roll array of 4d6-l.

Fully agreed. It is way stronger. But this is what players expect to have and dare I say, rightly so. This is what is written, this is what they want.