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

[Fifth Element]

Mental gymnastics might allow noncombat encounters to award experience

Or you could just read the DMG. From page 261:

"NONCOMBAT CHALLENGES

You decide whether to award experience to characters for overcoming challenges outside combat. If the adventurers complete a tense negotiation with a baron, forge a trade agreement with a clan of surly dwarves, or successfully navigate the Chasm of Doom, you might decide that they deserve an XP award.

As a starting point, use the rules for building combat encounters in Chapter 3 to gauge the difficulty of the challenge. Then award the characters XP as if it had been a combat encounter of the same difficulty, but only if the encounter involved a meaningful risk of failure.

MILESTONES

You can alo award XP when characters complete significant milestones. When preparing your adventure, designate certain events or challenges as milestones, as with the following examples:

• Accomplishing one in a series of goals necessary to complete the adventure.
• Discovering a hidden location or piece of information relevant to the adventure.
• Reaching an important destination.

When awarding XP, treat a major milestone as a hard encounter and a minor milestone as an easy encounter."

There you go, guidelines for awarding XP for non-combat encounters, right in the core book for the DM. No mental gymnastic required; it's in the rules.

 

[tetrasodium]

Unless you're just making naughty word up as you go along when designing a game, there will always be an assumption. It doesn't have to be that specific assumption, but there will be an assumption. And by explicitly stating what the assumption is, it helps people who would prefer a different assumption to make modifications to get closer to their preferred assumption. They had to settle on some assumption, but were also open about it so that you can make changes if desired.

Just because assumptions were not stated in previous editions doesn't mean they're not there. And in early days especially, the designers probably didn't explicitly analyze what assumption they were making, they were probably more internalized. But they were always there. If they weren't, the game system would essentially be random.

In 3.x it was 4-6 appropriate crencounters. Based on average party level I believe

 

[Thomas Shey]

Though I should note when you get outside the D&D sphere, setting up things for resource management is a much lesser consideration, because there's much less difference between steady-state power and the alpha-strike thing D&D creates.

 

[Hussar]

While wizard wands were always handy, CLW wands were always the first item purchased and restocked from the party gold pile. Restoration scrolls right after.

Basically the cleric got dibs on the gold because their items were everyone's friend.

Yeah. Pretty much.

 

[Hussar]

Ok. Generally speaking, I don't like this.

Fair enough. And really there’s nothing to discuss at that point.

So what’s the goal of telling people repeatedly that you don’t like something that they do like?

 

[Kannik]

Perhaps the art bit of this thread has run its course, but if we’re talking about age groups or whether the recent art is embarassing, let’s not trick ourselves too much given this:

Which shows up within the first dozen pages of the PHB. Wizard in pointy hat, monkey, slapstick slippage, loincloth… not exactly traces of adventure and epic. (And that’s OK!)

 

[Minigiant]

I never got the prevailing dislike of cute, silly, or colorful art and themes when 10 minutes after the PCs give their serious intros 50% act like cute, silly, or colorful nutcases.

I mean if a DM wants a serious game they more or less have to stress and police it constantly OR screen method actors for players.

actual paraphased game conversation from last week with grown ass adults.

DM: Lady Redshade enters the room. (proceeds to describe woman)
Dwarf: Does she have a big butt?!
Elf: Describe her dress. She better not wearing the same one I have on or I will slap her, questgiver or not. #$%& diviners!
HalfOrc: I told you all. I don't want to do quests for this lady. I aint kissing anymore frogs and frog witches. Besides your dress changes colors.
ELF: NO. I DON'T CARE! If she is wearing red I'mma make her redder!

 

[theCourier]

I wouldn't mind playing in a mostly serious game at least once. As in, taking the NPCs and settings seriously. There's plenty of serious stuff that is naughty word hilarious though, like the Sopranos.

 

[overgeeked]

Perhaps the art bit of this thread has run its course, but if we’re talking about age groups or whether the recent art is embarassing, let’s not trick ourselves too much given this:

View attachment 153987

Which shows up within the first dozen pages of the PHB. Wizard in pointy hat, monkey, slapstick slippage, loincloth… not exactly traces of adventure and epic. (And that’s OK!)

Love the goofy art.

 

[overgeeked]

Surprisingly, it’s harder to die in 5E than 4E.

Both editions have three failed death saves and you die. Straight d20 roll vs DC10.

In 5E death saves reset when you get up to 1 hp. And you can take two non-crit hits of up to (max hp -1) without dying outright.

In 4E, however, death saves don’t clear until you rest. And you keep on tracking and taking damage and die if you take 1/2 max hp after hitting zero.

So, while you’re down, you can take about four times as much damage without dying in 5E compared to 4E. And you have to rest to clear death saves.

Man. That’s wild.