Unpopular opinions go here

[Warpiglet-7]

I get that was the way it was for some people, but I'll just note I felt the way I did in 1978 when I hopped out of D&D and didn't go back until the 3e era.

My point was that assuming people just shrugged about the inadequacies of D&D characters rather than going and finding other games is a little tunnel-vision.

Inadequacies…

Assuming everyone saw these things as inadequacies merely is looking down a different tunnel.

 

[Velderan]

Is it a lot? I'm not well-versed in many official settings and can only think of 2e/3x Ravenloft, which had domain languages, with often multiple domains sharing a language. At least with D&D; no idea about other fantasy games, since all of the non-D&D medieval fantasy games I own are generic. Or Numenera, which had The Truth as its Common.

Personally, I think the core books should deal with it and bring up the idea of Regional languages. Get rid of racial languages altogether. The books should say something like this: A large country, a connected group of smaller groups, or a large swathe of terrain should have its own Regional Language, and people within it speak that Regional Language as either their primary and secondary languages.

Or if they don't get rid of racial languages, at least include the above paragraph as an optional rule/world-building idea.

Dragonlance in 2e/3e definitely had different languages for different nations, so there was no elven racial language and instead each elven nation had their own language.

 

[Faolyn]

You are forgetting multiple attacks, which changes things a lot in a game where the monsters have far fewer hit points. As to criticals: i don't remember if there were actual rules but we always did max damage on a nat 20.

Ah, yes. It's on a different table so it wasn't immediately obvious.

Still, you need to be 7th level to get 3/2 attacks, versus being a 5th-level magic-user...

 

[Reynard]

Ah, yes. It's on a different table so it wasn't immediately obvious.

Still, you need to be 7th level to get 3/2 attacks, versus being a 5th-level magic-user...

Right, but the MU gets to be awesome that one time and the fighter gets to do it all day (or as long as the cleric has spells).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Inadequacies…

Assuming everyone saw these things as inadequacies merely is looking down a different tunnel.

So? It still shows that the fact people had problems with it years ago doesn't mean it wasn't that bad; it just means that for people who did find it that bad, they were more likely to bail than stick around and try and fight it out to fix it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Right, but the MU gets to be awesome that one time and the fighter gets to do it all day (or as long as the cleric has spells).

As long as "just does a lot of single target damage" is sufficient to fit your concept of awesome.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

So? It still shows that the fact people had problems with it years ago doesn't mean it wasn't that bad; it just means that for people who did find it that bad, they were more likely to bail than stick around and try and fight it out to fix it.

Never said it proved anything other than different strokes.

The tenor of many threads belies the most paraimonious explanation: people don’t play D&D because they don’t know any better or because they have not been exposed to options: many people like it and what they see as a “true issue” is super opinion based.

I have things I would like changed…but I am not in the majority on those issues. I would not be able to say more than that.

 

[Reynard]

As long as "just does a lot of single target damage" is sufficient to fit your concept of awesome.

Unpopular Opinion: if you want to do crowd control and weird reality altering stuff, play a caster.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Unpopular Opinion: if you want to do crowd control and weird reality altering stuff, play a caster.

I don't think the first half should require a caster; doing things like tripping, getting characters into a blade bind, attacking armor pieces and more is not magical. And it shouldn't require GM buy-in just to be able to do it.

 

[overgeeked]

Appeal to tradition is how we get stuck with really bad and outdated design.