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

[Ovinomancer]

The picture is there, I believe, but if you focus on the details, you'll never get it.

So, here's the problem, people are seeing different pictures and then insisting that this is because of the dots. I'm great with different pictures, but I'd like to make sure we're all using the same dots for when discussion has to deal with them. The assumption that there are different dots because someone sees a different picture is the primary root of most of these discussions.

 

[Helldritch]

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

But not how the rules are explained, written (1ed and up, including BECMI) and played at almost all tables that I ever saw. Even in tournament a hit is always a minor wound. Want a proof? Just read carefully what @Cadence supplied in post #1978

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.

With the example I gave you in post #1973, you are saying exactly the same thing as I. These are incorporated into the narrative but have no mechanical bearing. These, cuts, bruises, contusions and whatnot are simply there to "explain" the HP loss without major wounds. This has been this way since the beginning.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh, I see. Well, here I'll say two things, but I'm not madly emotionally invested in either of them:

Understood.

1. I'm not confident it matters much. Relentless pursuit of verisimilitude in a game like D&D is tantamount to demanding fried ice.

While true, there's still room for people to suggest that this is an element that skims out context about what's going on that has effects well beyond versimilitude.

1. I'm not confident changing the mechanics to something less abstracted from the in-game physical combat injuries, etc. would be guaranteed an improvement. Make-believe only really works so long as we're willing to make believe, and especially in a fantasy setting like D&D, that's going to involve a lot of stuff a lot hokier than mere HP-vs-meat concerns. Have you ever looked at one of those paintings that look like bunches of dots, but when you un-focus your eyes the right way they turn into these 3-D images? The trick to them is in not focusing too hard on the little dots, right? As I see it, D&D works in a similar way.

I will just note there are plenty of games, even fantasy games, that somehow still manage to work while not being that abstract. There are ways to bake defensive capability and luck into a game that doesn't require rolling all that into hit points.

Basically, there are degrees of abstraction that end up compounding things together to a degree that end up making process so amorphous that any story extraction from them is despite them, not as a consequence them. Hit points are one of these. And it only exists in its form because its archaic and people had gotten used to it and thus passively attached to it so early there was no real chances it was going to get changed no matter there were better solutions.

The irony of this thread is that for all the discussion of the tone and feel of changes over time is that the fundamentals have almost not moved at all from all the way back in OD&D. D&D is still wrapped around classes. It still has the same six attributes. It still does attacks fundamentally the same way, with bonus to hit versus armor class. It still has level elevating hit points. The basic approach to handling spells is still pretty much the same.
There have been extensions of some of these, and some elements that were more important earlier have less importance (races, alignment) but none of the basics have every really changed. And its unlikely they will, no matter what they are, because there are too many decades of inertia behind them.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Gold didn't have any particular meaning in half the lifespan of the game; in OD&D I saw tons of characters buying random things with it because they had nothing to do with it that was actually relevant to the game in-play. It wasn't like in the early days most GMs would let you buy magic items beyond the occasional potion or scroll anyway.

My point about eminent domain was that if you essentially had to use magic item availability to steer people, there was nothing "soft" about that; it was flat out saying "the only thing besides levels that matter to you in this game are entirely in my control and you'll either do what I want or not get them." That's not "soft".

Soft in this context means essentially anything except actual physical force or threat of same. Since you're unlikely to hold your players at gunpoint, it doesn't really mean much in this context.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Oh, I see. Well, here I'll say two things, but I'm not madly emotionally invested in either of them:

1. I'm not confident it matters much. Relentless pursuit of verisimilitude in a game like D&D is tantamount to demanding fried ice.
2. I'm not confident changing the mechanics to something less abstracted from the in-game physical combat injuries, etc. would be guaranteed an improvement. Make-believe only really works so long as we're willing to make believe, and especially in a fantasy setting like D&D, that's going to involve a lot of stuff a lot hokier than mere HP-vs-meat concerns. Have you ever looked at one of those paintings that look like bunches of dots, but when you un-focus your eyes the right way they turn into these 3-D images? The trick to them is in not focusing too hard on the little dots, right? As I see it, D&D works in a similar way.

I've never got any of those pictures to work for me.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

Well, or the characters are simply assumed to be able to ignore major wounds until they put them down. That's not exactly unknown in some types of fiction.

And truth to tell, there are big problems with death spiral systems, both in terms of reality and in terms of game play cycle. Its not a shock the game doesn't do that (even games with more mappable damage often don't).

Honestly, the only purpose in having the healing system at all was it was assumed there should be such a thing. Yes, I'm sure some people actually used it, but I'd be surprised if as much as 20% of the people using the game were doing so.

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.

Except it didn't do that, at least in OD&D. As noted, what ended up happening most of the time was people, unless under massive time pressure, just took the time to do the restore-spells/heal cycle enough to handle it, and moved on. People often played multiple characters in the OD&D days, but it was because they wanted to, not because events forced it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Where in 1st ed does it say that? I've literally never heard of that as an excuse for slow healing before.

 

[overgeeked]

Where in 1st ed does it say that? I've literally never heard of that as an excuse for slow healing before.

There’s a lot of odd hidden things in old-school D&D that even the old timers missed. Check out this video for a summary.

 

[overgeeked]

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.

And to simulate an injury that affects those stats or abilities in 5E, all you have to do is tie in exhaustion. Something not too brutal that makes sense would be gaining one level of exhaustion every time you drop to zero hp.

 

[Azzy]

A bastard sword against a large target does 2d8 damage, 16 max. The strength modifiers don't hit +3 damage until you get into the 18%...in a system that rolled 3d6 in order. So...I think we're defining "decent" quite differently. So, while technically a possibility...it's not going to be a thing.

AD&D's method one for generating ability scores was 4d6d1 in any order.