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

[tetrasodium]

My experience with that is basically it turns the game into a game about a bunch of people trying for the next score, which is valid, though not typically something i associate with fantasy fiction. I've played games that were very much transparently fantasy characters trying to get a quick buck, and i've played the old games, but putting so much of the game around it doesn't really work. That being said, I do think mixing high-dollar rewards and not a lot of stuff to use it on is kinda weird. Having there be a lot of gold under the ground either as gold or as loot one sale removed strikes me as a somewhat strange assumption to demand for something that is supposed to be broadly fantasy. I think i prefer to keep the wealth light, and that artifacts found in weird tombs have more symbolic than monetary value, letting the characters gain experience just by being there for the sessions and going through the adventure.

It's a lot of words, I guess, to say, i find xp = gold to be wrong for the kind of fantasy i'm looking for. It works well for the board-game style d&d that can accomodate huge tables and where character isn't very important, or even for a more character-based game about outright thieves and brigands, but I think for the kind of stuff I play and run, it's just not what i'm looking for.

Gold=xp had a lot of problems that absolutely led to the split of xp & gold, it only got mentioned to show how gold was never something without any particular value like in 5e even back in 1e. In modern d&d though gold & basically every other lever (ie magic items) that relied on some degree of supply from the gm is no longer a thing player characters need aside from something to kill. The gm loses the ability to shift balance or influence player choices without overt heavy handed means

 

[Remathilis]

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.

D&D is specifically a system without a death-spiral/injury system because hp doesn't associate directly with a wound.

A fighter with 50 hp gets hit with a dagger for 4 points of damage. We say "ok, that took less than 1/10th of the PC's hp, it's a superficial wound." The next round, the fighter gets sneak attacked by a rogue with a dagger for 26 points of damage. Significant hit right? Better than half the fighter's hp. Still the same type of dagger, so what changed? How did the rogue get 26 points out of a 1d4 dagger, and what did it do the fighter to take five times the damage?

We say, "well, the rogue is a master of anatomy, and he got a blow that made some grievous wounds." But the fighter isn't suffering from any grievous injury. He doesn't have any broken bones, ruptured organs, internal bleeding, or the like. He isn't blinded, stunned, or even knocked prone. In fact, he's fine enough to action surge and bum-rush that sneaky little bugger who backstabbed him, even with 60% of his total hp gone.

Which all goes back to point: Attack rolls, AC, saving throws and HP damage don't represent anything in the fiction directly, and there is no one correct way to narrate it. HP is meat? Explain how a fighter who took a dagger wound can use second wind and heal it up. HP is luck? Explain how rogues are the masters of defeating other's luck? Healing to full doesn't matter narratively because HP doesn't matter narratively, all that matters in the intended action (I attack, I cast fireball, etc). The resolution (the roll vs AC, the saving throw, the HP damage) does not. Its but a means to figure out who lived through the encounter. Flavor it how you like.

 

[Yardiff]

Did a little digging and found the 3.5 "cantrip" style abilities. They were from Complete Mage and we're a series of reusable spells and abilities. Below is the fire related power....so compare to 5e Firebolt.


Fiery Burst
( Complete Mage, p. 43)

[Reserve]

You channel your magical talent into a blast of fire.

Prerequisite
Ability to cast 2nd-level spells,

Benefit
As long as you have a fire spell of 2nd level or higher available to cast, you can spend a standard action to create a 5-foot-radius burst of fire at a range of 30 feet. This burst deals 1d6 points of fire damage per level of the highest level fire spell you have available to cast. A successful Reflex save halves the damage. As a secondary benefit, you gain a +1 competence bonus to your caster level when casting fire spells.

Now I know where at-will cantrips started. Pathfinder 1e gave casters unlimited cantrips.

 

[overgeeked]

Gold=xp had a lot of problems that absolutely led to the split of xp & gold, it only got mentioned to show how gold was never something without any particular value like in 5e even back in 1e. In modern d&d though gold & basically every other lever (ie magic items) that relied on some degree of supply from the gm is no longer a thing player characters need aside from something to kill. The gm loses the ability to shift balance or influence player choices without overt heavy handed means

It's basic game design. Reward the behavior you want to encourage. The designers rewarded securing gold instead of killing monsters because they wanted to encourage a smarter, more thoughtful style of play. Sneak in, be smart, steal the loot, avoid combat as much as possible. Once you started getting XP for killing monsters, the game became a bad combat sim. Kick in the door, kill the monsters, loot the bodies, search the room, repeat. More and more about combat, longer and longer combat rules, more and more spells just about dealing damage and imposing conditions, etc. XP for gold encourages exploration and smart play. We could use more of that, not less. And with how inconsequential combat is in 5E, the players need something to do that's not a waste of time. 5E combat is a really long series of rolls to see if you die. I'd rather just make a single save vs monster and get on with the rest of the game.

 

[Panzeh]

It's basic game design. Reward the behavior you want to encourage. The designers rewarded securing gold instead of killing monsters because they wanted to encourage a smarter, more thoughtful style of play. Sneak in, be smart, steal the loot, avoid combat as much as possible. Once you started getting XP for killing monsters, the game became a bad combat sim. Kick in the door, kill the monsters, loot the bodies, search the room, repeat. More and more about combat, longer and longer combat rules, more and more spells just about dealing damage and imposing conditions, etc. XP for gold encourages exploration and smart play. We could use more of that, not less. And with how inconsequential combat is in 5E, the players need something to do that's not a waste of time. 5E combat is a really long series of rolls to see if you die. I'd rather just make a single save vs monster and get on with the rest of the game.

XP for gold encourages playing for nothing but gold. I don't care for XP for monsters, either(if i play d&d, i usually do milestones), but I don't think 'be smart" is what XP for gold encourages. What I got was more players itemizing every possible thing they could empty from a dungeon and somehow finding ways to pawn off everything they found. I could be realistic about it, but then i'd just be robbing them of character progression.

The experience of cashing out every iron thing on the enemies they just bushwhacked drove me off of that paradigm forever.

 

[Remathilis]

The designers rewarded securing gold instead of killing monsters because they wanted to encourage a smarter, more thoughtful style of play.

And here I was thinking it was a high-score mechanic akin trying to get your initials in the top slot of a Gauntlet arcade machine. How much gold could you acquire before GAME OVER.

 

[Minigiant]

D&D is specifically a system without a death-spiral/injury system because hp doesn't associate directly with a wound.

A fighter with 50 hp gets hit with a dagger for 4 points of damage. We say "ok, that took less than 1/10th of the PC's hp, it's a superficial wound." The next round, the fighter gets sneak attacked by a rogue with a dagger for 26 points of damage. Significant hit right? Better than half the fighter's hp. Still the same type of dagger, so what changed? How did the rogue get 26 points out of a 1d4 dagger, and what did it do the fighter to take five times the damage?

We say, "well, the rogue is a master of anatomy, and he got a blow that made some grievous wounds." But the fighter isn't suffering from any grievous injury. He doesn't have any broken bones, ruptured organs, internal bleeding, or the like. He isn't blinded, stunned, or even knocked prone. In fact, he's fine enough to action surge and bum-rush that sneaky little bugger who backstabbed him, even with 60% of his total hp gone.

Which all goes back to point: Attack rolls, AC, saving throws and HP damage don't represent anything in the fiction directly, and there is no one correct way to narrate it. HP is meat? Explain how a fighter who took a dagger wound can use second wind and heal it up. HP is luck? Explain how rogues are the masters of defeating other's luck? Healing to full doesn't matter narratively because HP doesn't matter narratively, all that matters in the intended action (I attack, I cast fireball, etc). The resolution (the roll vs AC, the saving throw, the HP damage) does not. Its but a means to figure out who lived through the encounter. Flavor it how you like.

As an former serious video game player and former practitioner of martial arts, I tend to not make the hits more damaging but make the defense more complex and strenuous when narrating higher damage.

Parrying a Hadoken is easier and less stressful that parrying a whole Hoyokusen.
That's why I narrative HP loss as most physical and mental fatigue

• Goblin Cutter hits 6th level Human Fighter with his dagger
  • Normal hit for 1d4 damage: The fighter expends a small energy parrying the dagger with his weapon or blocking with his shield
    • but it's a 5d6 sneak attack: Turns out the attack was for the face. The shock and sense of urgency rattles the fighter's mind, leaving him more open to future attacks until he can center
      • and the dagger has 3d4 poison: Turns out the attack scratches the fighter on the parryng arm. the poison gets in and the pain saps some stamina.
        • and the goblin was buffed by the fire cleric's magic: Turns out the daggers heat saps more strength out of the fighter

But overall HP, AC, and hits don;'t really represent anything inthe fiction. It's all Schrodinger's HP Loss just to make the game easier to deal with.

 

[overgeeked]

XP for gold encourages playing for nothing but gold. I don't care for XP for monsters, either(if i play d&d, i usually do milestones), but I don't think 'be smart" is what XP for gold encourages.

Right. Players are generally wicked smart and will be devious as sin to get what they want. They want XP...if that XP is behind looted gold...they will focus being smart on getting that gold. Things like flooding dungeons by diverting rivers comes to mind. Smoking out monsters from their lairs. Playing monster factions against each other, then mopping up whoever remains. Coming up with wild heist plans to secure the gold with a minimum of fighting. That's infinitely more entertaining than "kick in the door, kill the monsters..."

What I got was more players itemizing every possible thing they could empty from a dungeon and somehow finding ways to pawn off everything they found.

Of course. But you don't let them.

I could be realistic about it, but then i'd just be robbing them of character progression.

What an odd juxtaposition. The DM's job is to keep the game from "devolving" into a video game. Letting the PCs have infinite, consequence free time to loot every scrap of tin or iron from a massive underground structure, and somehow haul an infinite load of stuff back to town, only to sell it all to the unquestioning merchants at retail...sounds like it's a video game.

The experience of cashing out every iron thing on the enemies they just bushwhacked drove me off of that paradigm forever.

Well, of course. That's why you don't treat it like that. Your job as the DM is to play the world as realistically (in a verisimilitude sense, not a simulation sense) as possible. Do you live anywhere near where meth is a problem? Addicts will break into places and steal every scrap of metal they can and sell it. Businesses have to put safeguards in place to prevent it and merchants have to prevent the addicts from selling the stolen metal. Same with regulations about pawn shops. Port that stuff into your XP for gold game and you'll see a dramatic drop off of nonsense.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Right. Players are generally wicked smart and will be devious as sin to get what they want. They want XP...if that XP is behind looted gold...they will focus being smart on getting that gold. Things like flooding dungeons by diverting rivers comes to mind. Smoking out monsters from their lairs. Playing monster factions against each other, then mopping up whoever remains. Coming up with wild heist plans to secure the gold with a minimum of fighting. That's infinitely more entertaining than "kick in the door, kill the monsters..."

A lot of people have gotten rid of XP.

So I don't think really all that many PCs 'want' XP. XP was just the goal they were given.

What an odd juxtaposition. The DM's job is to keep the game from "devolving" into a video game. Letting the PCs have infinite, consequence free time to loot every scrap of tin or iron from a massive underground structure, and somehow haul an infinite load of stuff back to town, only to sell it all to the unquestioning merchants at retail...sounds like it's a video game.

1) Again, why the one-sided grudge against videogames?

2) The 'infinite time and weight' thing is only a problem if the logistics puzzle is the point.

3) Irony: talking about how time and logistics puzzles are anti-videogame somehow while I suffer through Pathfinder: Kingmaker's timed logistics puzzle of a front half. And it's not because it's a D&D-based game because they stole that crap from Fallout 1.

Well, of course. That's why you don't treat it like that. Your job as the DM is to play the world as realistically (in a verisimilitude sense, not a simulation sense) as possible.

If the players and you want that. I certainly don't. My players don't.

 

[Hussar]

So, if HP are partially meat, and our characters aren't superheroes, that explains how all hits are minor.

But, it doesn't really explain how my character can swim in acid without dying or ever being so much as scarred. So on and so forth.

And, since we are claiming that HP mean that successful attacks are turned into minor wounds, what is the problem with overnight healing again? Since I've never taken a serious wound until I fall down (which, in AD&D means I'm dead), why does it take significant time to get HP back?

Also, on the, "play occurs in real time" I'm pretty sure there's a quote in Moldvay Basic that talks about this. Gonna go do some closet diving to dig up my book. But, I'm 99% sure that there is something in there about real time being used to measure time passage in a campaign.