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

[Eric V]

I presume as an educational experience?

I don't think it's (1e and 2e, anyway) being designed as an educational experience, and if it were, by any decent pedagogical rubric, it would be a poor one; especially since we say things like -10 ac is higher than -8.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

In any case, WotC clearly thought differently about their design choices and how much appeal they would garner in the 3e era.

Yes, and 4E, for that matter.

3E, for example, did actively perverse and hostile-to-the-playerbase stuff like intentionally designing in "noob traps" and so on because the guy in charge of 3E thought that was cool and fun - and that was what a lot of 3E's design was - whatever Jonathan Tweet thought was cool, without any research to check if it actually was! Luckily he and his team were mostly on-beam initially (at least for the first 2-3 years). But I really think that aside from the art direction (and the d20/OGL thing, which was Ryan Dancey's baby), that was more luck than judgement.

4E made massive changes to D&D and I don't think the designers really considered how well those changes, especially stuff like ditching the OGL and big lore changes would actually go down with the playerbase. It was designed to succeed, but the mechanism of success they expected to engage (digital) didn't actually work out, and they hadn't attempted to maximize popularity.

Both also were designed to absolutely pump out splatbooks to maximize potential sales (or that was the thinking).

5E was designed on a different principle - I've referred to it as the "apology edition", because that's essentially how Mearls said they approached it - they very intentionally tried to build a very broad church (but a modern one under the hood) and to get back lapsed 3E/PF players, without driving away 4E players, and made accessibility and simplicity and not messing with players nor pumping out splatbooks important. Indeed, 5E really has gone light on splatbooks compared to 2/3/4E. Fundamentally 5E is pitched at the largest possible audience for D&D in a way no previous edition was (1E and 2E weren't operating at the same level of intentionality, design-wise, because it wasn't really yet "a thing"). 5E was also freer because it didn't have the expectation from WotC of "high sales", ironically enough. 4E had been required to make $50m/year in revenue - it never did - and WotC said they'd kill off D&D if it didn't. But they relented, and essentially let 5E exist just to keep the IP going, and to make some money without investing heavily. And of that actually turned into them making crazy money compared to previous editions!

 

[Remathilis]

This is something that has bugged myself and most of those I have played with regularly for a long time now. The shift from actually playing the character in the adventure being the "fun part" to the "give me more when I level" fun part.

The back and forth here isn't working because we're mixing and matching TSR editions in attempts to gotcha each other. I'm not interested in that.

My point was that the idea that players would be happy with getting just some hit points and a +1 approvement to attack rolls died circa 2000. I'm not saying that's good or bad thing, but like downward AC or race/class restrictions, the smoke is out of the bottle. The only way you could remove much of feature bloat is to stone dead kill multiclassing so that people have no choice but to be happy with having six abilities that only improve periodically. Your fighter could look forward to 10 levels of lowering Thac0 and d10 HP because he didn't have a choice. Once he can branch into other classes, there is no reason to stay.

Again, my point wasn't to besmirch older D&D (despite the fact you were absolutely ready to defend it's honor at the perceived slight). Merely that you could get away with huge stretches of getting nothing but number go higher because players didn't have a choice. That kind of design no longer works in a game where you can freely multiclass and cherry pick.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, and 4E, for that matter.

3E, for example, did actively perverse and hostile-to-the-playerbase stuff like intentionally designing in "noob traps" and so on because the guy in charge of 3E thought that was cool and fun - and that was what a lot of 3E's design was - whatever Jonathan Tweet thought was cool, without any research to check if it actually was! Luckily he and his team were mostly on-beam initially (at least for the first 2-3 years). But I really think that aside from the art direction (and the d20/OGL thing, which was Ryan Dancey's baby), that was more luck than judgement.

4E made massive changes to D&D and I don't think the designers really considered how well those changes, especially stuff like ditching the OGL and big lore changes would actually go down with the playerbase. It was designed to succeed, but the mechanism of success they expected to engage (digital) didn't actually work out, and they hadn't attempted to maximize popularity.

Both also were designed to absolutely pump out splatbooks to maximize potential sales (or that was the thinking).

5E was designed on a different principle - I've referred to it as the "apology edition", because that's essentially how Mearls said they approached it - they very intentionally tried to build a very broad church (but a modern one under the hood) and to get back lapsed 3E/PF players, without driving away 4E players, and made accessibility and simplicity and not messing with players nor pumping out splatbooks important. Indeed, 5E really has gone light on splatbooks compared to 2/3/4E. Fundamentally 5E is pitched at the largest possible audience for D&D in a way no previous edition was (1E and 2E weren't operating at the same level of intentionality, design-wise, because it wasn't really yet "a thing"). 5E was also freer because it didn't have the expectation from WotC of "high sales", ironically enough. 4E had been required to make $50m/year in revenue - it never did - and WotC said they'd kill off D&D if it didn't. But they relented, and essentially let 5E exist just to keep the IP going, and to make some money without investing heavily. And of that actually turned into them making crazy money compared to previous editions!

Sadly, because of 5.0's success, 5.5 has moved back to the status of WotC's high sales expectation.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The back and forth here isn't working because we're mixing and matching TSR editions in attempts to gotcha each other. I'm not interested in that.

My point was that the idea that players would be happy with getting just some hit points and a +1 approvement to attack rolls died circa 2000. I'm not saying that's good or bad thing, but like downward AC or race/class restrictions, the smoke is out of the bottle. The only way you could remove much of feature bloat is to stone dead kill multiclassing so that people have no choice but to be happy with having six abilities that only improve periodically. Your fighter could look forward to 10 levels of lowering Thac0 and d10 HP because he didn't have a choice. Once he can branch into other classes, there is no reason to stay.

Again, my point wasn't to besmirch older D&D (despite the fact you were absolutely ready to defend it's honor at the perceived slight). Merely that you could get away with huge stretches of getting nothing but number go higher because players didn't have a choice. That kind of design no longer works in a game where you can freely multiclass and cherry pick.

Plenty of OSR-style players still seem plenty happy with that design.

 

[ezo]

That kind of design no longer works in a game where you can freely multiclass and cherry pick.

Which is a reason why I abhore 2024's move to mainstream multiclassing when in 2014 it was explicitly optional at the DM discretion. Bad call.

It is also why, personally, I don't allow cherry picking multiclassing even now... it has to be built into the story. Perfect example in my current game is a Rogue (Arcane Trickster) who, after a wizard joined the party briefly, studied under the wizard and picked up a level of Wizard to augment his roll as caster via his rogue subclass. Now a monk is in our group, and that character is impressed by his abilities, and will likely add some monk levels to his PC. How many wizard and monk levels in total he will add I can't say, but so long as it is part of the story I am ok with it.

My point was that the idea that players would be happy with getting just some hit points and a +1 approvement to attack rolls died circa 2000.

I disagree. I think a lot of people would be happy with it, but it isn't the "flavor of the month" so have no other option, either, unless someone points it out to them (the numerous OSR and 5E alternatives, for example, with less feature bloat).

Again, my point wasn't to besmirch older D&D (despite the fact you were absolutely ready to defend it's honor at the perceived slight).

You made a good show of it.

 

[Remathilis]

You made a good show of it.

We're done here

 

[Staffan]

PF2 does not have a lightning quick levelling system.

I wouldn't call it "lightning quick", but it is surprisingly quick – primarily because of efficient siloing. In most cases, you have two choices to make every time you level up. There's a four-level cycle that goes like this:
2: Class feat, skill feat.
3: General feat, skill increase.
4: Class feat, skill feat.
5: Ancestry feat, skill increase.
+4: Repeat. This is the same for every class except Rogues and Investigators, who both get skill feats and skill increases every level.
Class and ancestry feats are usually chosen from a list of about 5-10 options (of course, with more expansion books this goes up). In many cases, you are strongly incentivized to take one particular option because it improves one you took at an earlier level – e.g. a monk with Mountain Stance doesn't have to take Mountain Stronghold at 6th level, but they probably want to. Technically you have more options than this because you can go back and pick options you didn't before, and you have archetypes which vastly increase what you can do with a class feat, but those are "opt-in" complexity. They are basically the equivalent of multi-classing in 5e.

Skill increases can technically be taken in any skill that hasn't hit the ceiling yet (there are like 15 skills, plus Lore which is an umbrella skill for all sorts of narrow knowledge skills), but I've never seen anyone dither all that much about it. You generally know what skills you use a lot and need improving.

What does take time IME is choosing general feats or skill feats. Both of these are fairly open-ended, and at least at lower levels you might not have much to go on when choosing what to get. Things tend to narrow down somewhat at higher levels because by then you (a) have a better handle on your character and what they want to do, and (b) have probably improved some of your skills, and you'll likely want to have skill feats that take advantage of those improvements.

Another thing that takes time when leveling up is book-keeping, at least if you're sticking to pen-and-paper. Pretty much every calculation in the game uses your level as a bonus, so all those values will need to be adjusted by one point (or three, if you also increased the proficiency the value was based on). And spellcasting of course adds some choices about which spell to take.

 

[Zardnaar]

Why dont you want us to have treats?

Makes life easier for DM. Of you want to play above level 12 for example develop a taste for older D&D or find a different DM. Or pull out your wallet.

I suspect I play higher level more than most groups. Higher level here being 8-12. I suspect I play more D&D than most here.

Due to those treats start thinking of level 10 being your capstone and 11/12 as epic levels.

 

[payn]

Makes life easier for DM. Of you want to play above level 12 for example develop a taste for older D&D or find a different DM. Or pull out your wallet.

I suspect I play higher level more than most groups. Higher level here being 8-12. I suspect I play more D&D than most here.

Due to those treats start thinking of level 10 being your capstone and 11/12 as epic levels.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Players have to have dead levels because its too difficult and/or you are too lazy/broke for high level?