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

[Cruentus]

I am always amazing at how the anemic healing of 5e is called 'superhero'.

Unless you both consider all HP meat and the long rest reset as 'healing' instead of a reset of a game resource like it actually is.

Its easy:

5e: Character with 172 HP goes down to one HP. Rest overnight. Returns to 172 HP (Heals, resets game state, resets resources, whatever)
1e/2e: Character with 172 HP goes down to one HP. Rest overnight. Returns to 2 HP. (Natural healing, whatever)

So its considered "superhero" in that a character can, by doing absolutely nothing but rest, regain all of its HPs overnight (and all its other resources, which was also true in previous editions). What a character could not do easily in previous editions was heal without outside assistance (spells, potions, long periods of convalescence, paladin lay on hands, etc).

And everything in all the games is 'resetting game resources', I don't understand the point of this comment. It is, after all, a game....with resources...

 

[Helldritch]

Agree about liking 5e, but it also requires me to do so much futzing (as a DM who plays with optimizers), that it becomes unfun for me (directly to the adversarial vs cooperative DM).

That being said, I also think a lot of the disconnect (at least for me) around these discussions has to do with the tables being played at. I have NEVER played at a game store or a walk up, or an Adventurers League style game. And realistically never would. So, that element of the "DM's work" and "player agency" isn't ever an issue.

I do, however, play with the same group of 5-6 (+ or - a couple of new players) players since gradeschool. So all the agency/table issues disappear - we all know each other, grew up together, experienced the game the same way, etc. We also pitch the "style of game" to the group, and if folks want to play, we play. If they don't like it, they opt out, or we switch things up. It works for us.

I think that is a major element in the changes from older editions (Basic, 1e, 2e, etc.) to now with 5e. Many more games are being played with people you don't know/just met/in a public space/one-shot/whatever now, than they did "in the old days". Its great for exposure and finding games, and less great in other respects.

For the bolded part.
I do up to a certain point. We do friday night magic once a month and though it is not AL stuff, lots of questions happen and many young DM ask how to prevent some players to do things that they do not want (read here, player's agency). We used to have these questions pop once in a while in older editions, but in 5ed, it is every single friday night (especially that we are now only once a month). When I do show up for the MTG games, guess what? I am asked about how to control player agencies again... Something in 5ed made player agency really strong. Or it is something with the new generation. One thing is for sure, I never had that much question about "the problem".

 

[Helldritch]

Still disagree. The DM controls the reward of XP. That is the power of the PCs.

Yes and no. When your players know how much is worth the monster in xp you're done. If you do milestones, then the player will expect to level every three games or so. Go higher on milestone, and your players will grumble at first and rebel if you change nothing.

And there's nothing stopping the DM from boosting the monsters, throwing infinite dragons at the PCs, and playing the monsters as smart, thinking creatures who generally don't want to die...as long as that all applies to a given monster. Nothing stopping DMs from having flanking monsters or monsters fishing for advantage.

Yep, and at which point to you become adversarial?

Agency is a weird one. To me, agency isn't the players being able to choose anything that's printed in an official D&D book. Agency is the player having the ability to effect the world their character exists in. If you use the illusion of choice, that destroys player agency. Railroading destroys player agency. Limiting character creation options does not.

Nope, it is the player acquiring powers without anything done by the DM or despite of it. Before, power spikes were given by leveling, of course, but also by giving magical items a bit beyond the norm. It was an edge to give to your players (usually the weakest one to give them a chance to shine). Now, players do not need that edge. This facet of the game isn't in the hands of the DM anymore.

5E seems to have two big things going for it. 1. It's where the players are. 2. Dis/advantage. Beyond those two, it's not drastically different from any other edition of D&D. Most of the same basic rules, same general ideas, though the particulars here and there are different. You could remove a few things, tweak a few things, and roughly replicate any older edition with a bit of work. Though admittedly, some of those differences are huge. Superhero healing, PC power scale, etc.

Heal overnight is way more powerful than what was before.
The reset of all spell slots is also a huge power boost! It took a 20th level M-U almost 3 days (with 16 hours of hours of memorizing each day) to recover his full allotment of spells. Now a single good night sleep is required. If that ain't super hero, nothing is.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Its easy:

5e: Character with 172 HP goes down to one HP. Rest overnight. Returns to 172 HP (Heals, resets game state, resets resources, whatever)
1e/2e: Character with 172 HP goes down to one HP. Rest overnight. Returns to 2 HP. (Natural healing, whatever)

So its considered "superhero" in that a character can, by doing absolutely nothing but rest, regain all of its HPs overnight (and all its other resources, which was also true in previous editions). What a character could not do easily in previous editions was heal without outside assistance (spells, potions, long periods of convalescence, paladin lay on hands, etc).

And everything in all the games is 'resetting game resources', I don't understand the point of this comment. It is, after all, a game....with resources...

If you accept that regaining HP is not literal regeneration, then there's nothing 'superhero' about it other than another dumb one-sided buzzword rivalry some D&D folk start ranting about when they can't just say they don't like the style of something and just want to compare it to something they inexplicably think they're preaching to the choir on when they say it's bad.

A slow, fiddly resource reset has been replaced by a more expeditious one.

 

[Lanefan]

A slow, fiddly resource reset has been replaced by a more expeditious one.

At great cost to believability; a cost that's simply too high to be worth paying.

 

[Vaalingrade]

At great cost to believability; a cost that's simply too high to be worth paying.

What believability? HP aren't wounds. You aren't regenerating.

 

[Lanefan]

What believability? HP aren't wounds. You aren't regenerating.

Even if hit points are just fatigue, you're still recovering.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Even if hit points are just fatigue, you're still recovering.

Ah. The believability of having to sleep in for a month to free fresh.

 

[theCourier]

HP isn't wholly "not wounds" either. It's meant to be whatever the DM deems them to be, though there's the common explanation of "a combination of wounds, luck, stamina, and other things (even if it's made weird that that's the explanation considering you can apparently heal Luck using Cure Wounds).

 

[Hussar]

The point about magic items is true though. It's a "lever" I guess the word is, that the DM doesn't really have anymore. Because magic items tend to be a "big deal" - particularly when you can only have 3 attuned items, it means that the DM has less ability to massage the power level of the group.

Another way of looking at it is that D&D now has a flatter power distribution between groups. In one group, you might be absolutely dripping in magic items, meaning your power level is much higher than another table which doesn't have a lot of items. Now, you aren't really ever supposed to be dripping in items. The whole 10+ magic items expectation of AD&D isn't there anymore.