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

[Helldritch]

Well we have a whole host of posts talking about DnD superheroes, healing, being able to swim in acid, and probably other stuff I’ve missed.

So yeah people very much are.

Let me do it again since you seems to be missing the point.

All hp are meat and none of them are. It is both at the same time.
Let's take a classic example I give to any new players.
An orc swings an axe at an NPC.
Case 1. The NPC is a commoner, 6 hp. The axe does 11 damages. The NPC is down, dying.
Case 2. The NPC is a veteran of many battles (use veteran's stats). The axe does 11 damages. The veteran's shield got the block barely in time. The elbow/shoulder have a strained muscle, a small bruise or contusion. Nothing serious, but it will hurt a few days. The veteran replies with a few thrusts of his.
Case 3. The NPC is a legend, a high level barbarian. The axe does 11 damages. The barbarian manages to deflect the head blow resulting in a small scratch on his shoulder. With a grumble, the barb presses on his own attacks.

In all three cases, a wound was inflicted. The difference is the severity of that wound. The higher the level, the smaller the wound. This explains why poisoned weapons will apply their poison on a hit, why cure wound is actually called cure wound and why magical healing is so impressive. Not because you can do it in combat. Because such strains should take days and weeks to actually heal. A high level character dies a death by a thousand cuts until the fatal blow.

This means that the higher in level you are, the more experienced you are, what could have been a fatal blow just becomes a little wound. Something that can be healed. HP are not only meat, but every hit will cause a small (or big) wound. The rest, will be strain, gods' favor going down, fatigue or whatever.

The DM is the one responsible for the narrative. I have been using the previous example for decades now and it always worked out to explain hp.

And in the above example, make it reverse. It is the orc being attacked. The narrative will work all the same.
A PC swings an axe at an Orc.
Case 1. The Orc is a commoner, 6 hp. The axe does 11 damages. The Orc is down, dying.
Case 2. The Orc is a veteran of many battles (use veteran's stats). The axe does 11 damages. The orc's shield got the block barely in time. The elbow/shoulder have a strained muscle, a small bruise or contusion. Nothing serious, but it will hurt a few days. The orc veteran replies with a few thrusts of his.
Case 3. The Orc is a legend, a high level barbarian. The axe does 11 damages. The orc barbarian manages to deflect the head blow resulting in a small scratch on his shoulder. With a grumble, the orc barb presses on his own attacks onto the PC.

It is a simple matter of description and common sense. This is also why, a lot of us do not like the "all damage get healed" over night. It breaks a lot of the immersion for a fantasy RPG. Wounds are very important, fatigue and wear should take their toll on the PCs. I know I did adapt 5ed with the optional rules in the DMG and guess what? It works. Players are more careful, take more precaution and act as if death is something that can happen and surely will if they are not careful. I have players negotiating for safe passage, trying different things to avoid combat simply because resources are now very important. I have players that literally play the game not on their chair, but standing up because the next die roll might be the last of their char. And when they succeed, they know it is their success, not some scripted stuff I decided. The story comes from their common actions and decision. Not from a nebulous background.

 

[Minigiant]

Again the real issue is that no amount of HP damage causes a wound that affects the character's

• ability to walk or run
• ability to attack with weapons
• ability to cast spells
• ability to make STR, DEX or CON saves
• ability to make INT WIS or CHA saves
• ability to see or hear
• ability to manipulate objects with the hands or feet
• ability to dodge

So no matter what the damage dealt until it is the last one, its a minor wound.

No if you want to make injuries a CORE rule, fine. But if no wounds are serious enough to cause injury, then HP loss is mostly fatigue, luck, and scratches. A night of bed rest should recover fatigue, resync luck, shrink bumps, and scab up little cuts.

5e is nice enough to make it take 2 days (a weekend) to get back all HP and HD.

Again, the point of old D&D editions slow healing was not to represent realstic wounds healing. It was to keep you from playing the same PC every week so you didn't get attached and didn't mind PCs having wide differences in power. This wayy you didn't complain about your PC ranndomly dying or your friend getting rolling a OP paladin.

 

[Helldritch]

Again the real issue is that no amount of HP damage causes a wound that affects the character's

• ability to walk or run
• ability to attack with weapons
• ability to cast spells
• ability to make STR, DEX or CON saves
• ability to make INT WIS or CHA saves
• ability to see or hear
• ability to manipulate objects with the hands or feet
• ability to dodge

So no matter what the damage dealt until it is the last one, its a minor wound.

No if you want to make injuries a CORE rule, fine. But if no wounds are serious enough to cause injury, then HP loss is mostly fatigue, luck, and scratches. A night of bed rest should recover fatigue, resync luck, shrink bumps, and scab up little cuts.

5e is nice enough to make it take 2 days (a weekend) to get back all HP and HD.

Again, the point of old D&D editions slow healing was not to represent realstic wounds healing. It was to keep you from playing the same PC every week so you didn't get attached and didn't mind PCs having wide differences in power. This wayy you didn't complain about your PC ranndomly dying or your friend getting rolling a OP paladin.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand?
That is your view. In my experience, I have never witnessed multiple characters owned by one PC for any one campaign ever. We had players play their henchmen and hirelings, of course, but a player with two or more PCs for the same campaign? Never, ever have I seen this. And I have seen a lot of campaigns. Players were encouraged to have multiple DMs and multiple PCs but they were not necessarily used interchangeably in all campaigns. In fact, back then, to bring a character not native to the campaign, we used to ask permission from our DM and the other DM as no two DM had the same playstyle. The best you could have is to copy your sheet and note on it with which DM you were with.

Also
With the cleric class, it would not be a matter of weeks but a few days, game time that a character would be forced to stay in town. Even the poor Keep on the Border Land had not only one cleric but 6! (ok, a few were chaos spies...) So healing was not that hard to get if you could get a cleric to cast the spells on you. And if you had a cleric in your party (as most had) then you did not even need to go to town. Only a raise dead would make you lose time and guess what? Unless time was a constrain, the party would wait for you.

Again, HP are not only meat. They represent luck, skills, god's favors and strange circumstances. But all hits apply some wounds. Otherwise, a poisoned arrow would not be that dramatic, especially in the old editions where you could save or die. It is the severity of the wound that change. The more HP you have, the less the injury is. What would kill a commoner one shot, will only graze the high level character, leaving a small scar.

 

[Minigiant]

That is your view

No. That's how Gygas designed it. Half the quirkiness of early D&D is traced to the assumption of running multiple PCs.

People not playing how the designers intended is one of the major drivers of edition rule change

 

[Minigiant]

Again, HP are not only meat. They represent luck, skills, god's favors and strange circumstances. But all hits apply some wounds

Again the point is the wounds are either fatal or minor.

You never take a serious nonlfe threatening wound in the base rules of any edition of D&D. That's a quirky feature of D&D. You literally can never get your hand bashed stiff or sprain an ankle in D&D until you use house rules or optional rules. By default, all wounds are very minor or very fatal.

 

[Cadence]

No. That's how Gygas designed it. Half the quirkiness of early D&D is traced to the assumption of running multiple PCs.

People not playing how the designers intended is one of the major drivers of edition rule change

I don't remember that in 1e or B/X. Do you have a favorite quote?

Or is this OD&D centric as far as being explicitly said and pushed?

 

[Minigiant]

I don't remember that in 1e or B/X. Do you have a favorite quote?

Or is this OD&D centric as far as being explicitly said and pushed?

The rules. The rules were harsh. You were expected to have henchmen and needed a leveled up cleric to magically heal. And many DM did real time healing.So the game taught youd be running multiple PCs.

It's mostly 0e. 1e and b/x softened it but kept many of the same expectations.

 

[Cadence]

The rules. The rules were harsh. You were expected to have henchmen and needed a leveled up cleric to magically heal. And many DM did real time healing.So the game taught youd be running multiple PCs.

It's mostly 0e. 1e and b/x softened it but kept many of the same expectations.

I wonder if it wasn't particularly hard coded in anymore for 1e or B/X (at least for below the levels that gave you henchmen), but seemed to be obvious for those coming from 0e? I think we (starting in 1981) might have had multiple characters in our shared DM world, but never had them sub in and out during an arc. And always treated henchmen and the like as player controlled NPCs instead of PCs, but I'm not sure that's a huge distinction.

Are there any good early dragon magazines with quotes on it, or are there good quotes in OD&D about multiple characters?

Here are the 1e DMG, 1e PhB, and Moldvay.

 

[Cadence]

Well we have a whole host of posts talking about DnD superheroes, healing, being able to swim in acid, and probably other stuff I’ve missed.

So yeah people very much are.

I'm not sure any interpretation of hit points or damage in any game makes sense for things like swimming in acid or reaching ones hand into lava or diving off of 200 foot cliffs head first unless it involves auto-death or maiming as appropriate.

I wonder if some of them were less of a problem in the early editions when full hit dice at each level stopped around 9th and the con bonuses were typically less, so that the damage from silly things might just be enough to kill the character. But even then just saying what some things did seems to make more sense to me than reaching into the lava to recover something.

 

[Ovinomancer]

It feels like this is a model for answering your above question about combat. Presumably a die roll to hit was made, wasn't it? If the roll failed then no damage was taken because not enough stress/luck-draining/anything was done to the target.



How would the player know about any secret inputs? What in game lets them know if they actually caused it to open, anymore than the sword swinger knowing if they actually damaged who they were swinging at?



There is no required fictional change I guess, but why would anyone not have it be "the fighter feels better". It feels bizarre to have to specify in every spell that such a thing happens when it seems like just about anyone would assume it occurred. (Of course, this is the game where seeing invisible things like they weren't invisible doesn't help you actually hit them like they weren't invisible...)


So how do you narrate a fireball spell? Are there any visual or audial components that affect the world in a meaningful way (assuming there are no uncarried flammables around)?

Here's the model:

(Fiction) Rogue attempts to open lock.
Triggers
(Mechanic) Check succeeds
Triggers
(Fuction) the lock opens.

This is compared to:

(Fiction) fighter attacks
Triggers
(mechanic) attack roll succeeds
Triggers
(Mechanic) damage roll reduces hp

There is no final trigger to fiction for the attack roll.