D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[The Firebird]

Would they?

Learning to drive a stick shift is necessarily harder than learning to drive an automatic. Yet the cars of today are much, MUCH more complicated than they were ~70 years ago when essentially all cars were automatic.

Does this increased back-end complexity of automatic shift cars mean people would reject buying a car?

Because that's the issue here. Modern D&D makes the initial hurdle less complex. But the race is now somewhat longer.

You are responding to, "We shouldn't have the initial hurdle be too high" with "Well then we shouldn't have any extra hurdles either!" Different kinds of things. Different purpose, different user response, different expectations.

That's not the right comparison, because it isn't significantly harder to drive a modern car.

It takes significantly longer to make a d&d character now than it did with B/X. In some cases, with new players, it takes hours. And then people struggle at the table to keep track of their abilities, from species, class, subclass, some recharging on SR, some on LR...it's a hard game to play.

And that means that people do bounce off it or decide it's not for them.

 

[ezo]

You, of course, mean lower than -10, which is exactly the problem.

Not a problem at all. "Higher" in terms of AC means improvement or better.

You were saying, ezo?

Just what I said, EzekielRaiden.

Yes, you can shift up or down a certain number of places. But the point remains: ordinal numbers aren't and can't be added or subtracted.

Correct.

"First class" plus "second class" doesn't equal anything--it's nonsense.

Not "plus" as addition, "plus" as improvement. Not nonsense. Again, Millions of kids and adults in the 80's and 90's used AD&D AC without issue. How many had problems with it? Who knows? I can only go by my own experiences and that would be 0. Others here have said they struggled with it or knew players who did. I believe them, but since I don't know those individuals I cannot know how AC was explained to them, if the person who was explaining it understood it themselves, or not.

Maybe a magical spell can add that, I won't drag in any argument about that here--but why would a SHIELD do this? This is like saying if you increase any horse's speed by the same fixed amount, it would guarantee move any horse up one place or down one place regardless of what place they're in. It's like saying that combining (not even digging into the ambiguity of how you're "combining" them) a first-class ticket and a second-class ticket will somehow directly produce...what? Should it be one place better? Two? How would you even answer that question? But that's exactly what a shield does.

Why does a shield do that:

A shield is the base measure to represent 1 class better than no armor. So, the +1 factor just means one armor class better. Since these are ordinal numbers (as opposed to cardinal numbers).

As for your horse's speed, which is a cardinal number, this doesn't apply. Would a faster horse place better? Likely, but you have all sorts of other variables involved so it's impossible to know.

For tickets, I don't think you can get better than 1st-class, but I know of people who've been able to combine two-second class tickets into a 1st-class ticket at the whim of the airline. Improvement is possible, certainly.

It takes significantly longer to make a d&d character now than it did with B/X. In some cases, with new players, it takes hours. And then people struggle at the table to keep track of their abilities, from species, class, subclass, some recharging on SR, some on LR...it's a hard game to play.

Yep. It is much more involved, especially for a higher level character, than AD&D was, certainly.

And that means that people do bounce off it or decide it's not for them.

Defintely. I've had more people try 5E and leave the game than I ever did with 1E or 2E. I won't claim other factors might not contribute to that trend, but frankly it amazes me how much I see people struggle with 5E. Perhaps it is just "the times"? I couldn't say, but it does seem strange. It is the reason why myself and others are homebrewing a simpler 5E game, more akin to B/X.

 

[Remathilis]

The thing is that even though I can admit descending AC is more complex than ascending AC it doesn’t change the fact that modern D&D is more complex than say B/X.

Well yes. That's the price you pay for getting rid of dead levels. Compare a 5e class to it's AD&D counterpart and you'll see the AD&D class can go multiple levels in a row without gaining anything but HP and attacks/saves improvement. A fighter gains nothing but stat improvement to name level (and an extra attack at higher level). Thieves only increase their skill % (and in AD&D, backstab multiplier). Clerics and magic users get new spell slots, but no other abilities. Rangers, paladins, bards and druids all gain few abilities along the way, but nothing like they gained later. There is no bard songs, no rage, no paladin smites, and wild shape is a 7th level noncombat ability. But 3e proved if you have a dead level, people will multiclass to something that gives treats, so classes all now 20 levels of treats.

 

[jayoungr]

On the other hand, it's far easier to create a character in 5E than it was in 3.X. Fewer moving parts and less pressure to know exactly where you're going right from the start.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Well yes. That's the price you pay for getting rid of dead levels. Compare a 5e class to it's AD&D counterpart and you'll see the AD&D class can go multiple levels in a row without gaining anything but HP and attacks/saves improvement. A fighter gains nothing but stat improvement to name level (and an extra attack at higher level). Thieves only increase their skill % (and in AD&D, backstab multiplier). Clerics and magic users get new spell slots, but no other abilities. Rangers, paladins, bards and druids all gain few abilities along the way, but nothing like they gained later. There is no bard songs, no rage, no paladin smites, and wild shape is a 7th level noncombat ability. But 3e proved if you have a dead level, people will multiclass to something that gives treats, so classes all now 20 levels of treats.

One of the things I enjoy about going back to 2E is you have dead levels

 

[Bedrockgames]

On the other hand, I think it's far easier to create a character in 5E than it was in 3.X. Fewer moving parts and less pressure to know exactly where you're going right from the start.

I found this to be true. I liked 3E but most GMs I knew ended up relying on online NPC generators a lot of the time because it took so long to make a character (however the system pushed towards optimization so you still had to make lots of NPCs from scratch)

 

[payn]

Well yes. That's the price you pay for getting rid of dead levels. Compare a 5e class to it's AD&D counterpart and you'll see the AD&D class can go multiple levels in a row without gaining anything but HP and attacks/saves improvement. A fighter gains nothing but stat improvement to name level (and an extra attack at higher level). Thieves only increase their skill % (and in AD&D, backstab multiplier). Clerics and magic users get new spell slots, but no other abilities. Rangers, paladins, bards and druids all gain few abilities along the way, but nothing like they gained later. There is no bard songs, no rage, no paladin smites, and wild shape is a 7th level noncombat ability. But 3e proved if you have a dead level, people will multiclass to something that gives treats, so classes all now 20 levels of treats.

Why dont you want us to have treats?

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I found this to be true. I liked 3E but most GMs I knew ended up relying on online NPC generators a lot of the time because it took so long to make a character (however the system pushed towards optimization so you still had to make lots of NPCs from scratch)

This isn't an indicator of system complexity, but of bad design aesthetics. The system should be asymmetric. There's no reason why an NPC should be designed using the same rules as a PC.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This isn't an indicator of system complexity, but of bad design aesthetics. The system should be asymmetric. There's no reason why an NPC should be designed using the same rules as a PC.

I wouldn't call it bad design. It is just a design choice. There are advantages and disadvantages to both

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I wouldn't call it bad design. It is just a design choice. There are advantages and disadvantages to both

I mean in this case whether it is good or bad is fairly obvious, yeah?

The more complex PC-generation is, the less you want the NPC and PC systems to be symmetrical.

I don't think there actually is any benefit to having the two character generation procedures be the same where it takes this much time to make an NPC.