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

[Lanefan]

Well yes. That's the price you pay for getting rid of dead levels.

If you're getting added h.p., improved saves, and maybe a jump on the combat matrix, that's not a dead level. It's a normal level, and anything else you happen to get on top of that is gravy.

Having such normal levels come up here and there is a quick way to flatten the game's power curve and thus should IMO be encouraged rather than not.

 

[Lanefan]

Proficiencies weren't part of my discussion because they are a.) not in all older D&D versions b.) optional in the ones they were and c.) not tied to your class anyway.

Fighters got weapon specialization in 2e (and UA) and at level 1. The next time they get something that isn't hp, saves, or Thac0 is 7th level when they get an extra attack every other round. Then at 9th, followers. That's all a fighter got that wasn't improving their math.

Weapon proficiencies (as opposed to specialization) were a thing in 1e. A fighter started with four and gained another one at 4th, 7th, 10th, etc. level. A cleric started with three and gained one at 5th, 10th, 15th etc. level. Using a non-proficient weapon carried a to-hit penalty that varied by class.

You're also, I think, vastly discounting the value of that improved math, even if the player didn't necessarily see all of it.

These features are now class defining. A barbarian without rage is a fighter.

There's IMO a good argument to be made that barbarian as a class has never worked in any edition and should probably be scrapped outright.

Which finally gets to my point: AD&D and Basic isn't as overwhelming because your character barely changes. A fighter is basically the same for the first 10 levels, barring numbers getting better an an extra attack. Thieves never gain any new abilities, just get better at the ones they always had. At least casters got new spell levels every other level to give them new options, but that's ALL they get. And that works because you can't cherry pick class levels.

The character still changes, but those changes are much more driven by magic items and effects (and are thus far less predictable, which is IMO a feature not a bug) rather than by intrinsic class features.

Once you add open multiclassing, dead levels no longer work.

If it's additive multiclassing like the WotC editions use, yes. But 2e-style multiclassing doesn't hit this problem.

The horse left the barn in 3e. The 3.0 ranger was built like a AD&D class: front loaded and only numeric improvements for the majority of its life. It's widely considered the worst D&D class in history. The Monte cook variant and later 3.5 version filled it with sweet treats to keep you in the class and it kinda worked. The lesson was learned. You give something every level or the class ends the minute you don't.

Then the wrong lesson was learned. Pity.

 

[Lanefan]

Yes.

OSR-style players.

Are you prepared to bet the whole game on the rather slim probability that most players are OSR-style?

If D&D 6e turns out to be a full-on OSR-style system I'd bet the farm that a huge number of players would quickly become OSR-style.

You know, following the new shiny and all that.

 

[Zardnaar]

If D&D 6e turns out to be a full-on OSR-style system I'd bet the farm that a huge number of players would quickly become OSR-style.

You know, following the new shiny and all that.

Speculation though. Odds are they won't go full ISR. They may borrow elements of it. Eg bit more gritty or dial down the complexity.

Depends how 5.5 pans out.

Need a cool term that means the contradiction between enjoying OSR games to DM and 5.5 as a player.

 

[Hussar]

Weapon proficiencies (as opposed to specialization) were a thing in 1e. A fighter started with four and gained another one at 4th, 7th, 10th, etc. level. A cleric started with three and gained one at 5th, 10th, 15th etc. level. Using a non-proficient weapon carried a to-hit penalty that varied by class.

Except that the additional weapon proficiencies were largely pointless. You used two, maybe three different weapons throughout the entire lifetime of the character and, barring a few exceptions, never even considered using anything else. Fighter? Longsword and longbow and that was pretty much all you needed 99% of the time.

Like THAC0, these are mechanics that have been ejected out of the hobby for decades for very good reasons.

 

[Hussar]

If D&D 6e turns out to be a full-on OSR-style system I'd bet the farm that a huge number of players would quickly become OSR-style.

You know, following the new shiny and all that.

I'd take that bet.

It's funny how incredibly dismissive fans are of the tastes of other fans. Apparently, huge numbers of players only "follow the new shiny" instead of actually making deliberate choices to play games that they think are better for their tastes.

IOW, this idea that the only reason we're not playing OSR games is because players are too easily swayed by "the new shiny" instead of the very real possibility that we've played those older games, played newer games and have chosen newer games because we find them a better experience.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

If D&D 6e turns out to be a full-on OSR-style system I'd bet the farm that a huge number of players would quickly become OSR-style.

You know, following the new shiny and all that.

Would they become that?

Or would they try it and then bounce off?

Because--if I were a betting man, which I am not--that'd be what I put my money on. That it would kill the game stone dead for easily 50% of current players, and probably a lot more.

"Hardcore" difficulty is absolutely a thing, and the people who love that sort of thing L O V E it, unreservedly. But such people are also a distinct minority. Video games demonstrate this handily. E.g. BG3, less than 10% of players have even attempted Honor Mode, and of those who have, only ~10% have succeeded at it. Are you wiling to bet the farm that D&D-in-general is somehow radically different? Or is it much more likely that you'd lose 90% of players just from them bouncing off the brutal difficulty and then a further 90% of the remainder from burning out trying to endure it?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'd take that bet.

It's funny how incredibly dismissive fans are of the tastes of other fans. Apparently, huge numbers of players only "follow the new shiny" instead of actually making deliberate choices to play games that they think are better for their tastes.

IOW, this idea that the only reason we're not playing OSR games is because players are too easily swayed by "the new shiny" instead of the very real possibility that we've played those older games, played newer games and have chosen newer games because we find them a better experience.

It's the reverse of chronological snobbery. What one might call "old masters" syndrome.

The work of the old masters is not to be improved upon. How dare you think you can do better!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think you meant to say "...when essentially all cars were stick shift" at the end there.

Aye. I blame being tired. I wrote that while on sleep meds waiting to finally get tired enough to sleep!

Cars today are much more complicated under the hood, no argument there. Impressively little of that added complication translates to the driver experience, however, which if anything is considerably less complicated than back in the day.

There's the disagreement: modern D&D still makes that initial hurdle just as complex, only that complexity has been somewhat shifted from in-play complexity to char-gen or char-build complexity.

I disagree--flatly. THAC0 complexity crops up every single time you have to make an attack. Five obscure ridiculous save categories crop up nearly every time you need to make a save or induce a save.

Having the complexity tied only to character creation (and, with 5e at least, relatively reduced for 1st-level characters) means, yes, there is a hurdle, but it's in ONE place, and once you're done with it, you focus most heavily on the mechanics that are now dramatically simplified.

Yes, there is complexity, but it is contained. It can be dealt with in a single session every few weeks when characters level up. Once that's done, however? You focus almost entirely on the streamlined, simplified, and most importantly highly consistent mechanics. That, that lone single thing, is already a huge boon that completely goes against the grain of old school design, where you need at least four different dice just for resolving stuff (d6, d20, d100, and occasionally d12, IIRC?)--and the resolution methods are all over the map, roll over in some places and roll under in others, modifiers might apply or might not apply, whether a penalty or a bonus is a positive or negative number constantly varies (roll-under, a bonus is negative--you want to roll small numbers; descending AC a bonus is also negative, but written as a positive, e.g. a +4 weapon subtracts 4 from your THAC0, a +2 armor decreases your AC by a further 2), etc., etc.

Removing this needless complexity from the actual, minute-to-minute play of D&D is a significant savings, and matters a LOT more than the once-a-month "okay, time to level up" or once-a-campaign "alright, time to put together a character" moments. Yes, those things are complex, and yes, it is useful to find ways to mitigate or manage or distribute that complexity helpfully. But shifting the complexity to only-sometimes stuff, while making the base game simpler to actually play? Absolutely an improvement.

There's a reason a lot of OSR games nick contemporary-design mechanics on this front. It actually does make playing the game easier.

 

[Umbran]

Are you wiling to bet the farm that D&D-in-general is somehow radically different? Or is it much more likely that you'd lose 90% of players just from them bouncing off the brutal difficulty and then a further 90% of the remainder from burning out trying to endure it?

Or, what I imagine is a bit more likely - you'd see a lot of GMs softballing that nominally brutal game, at least for a while.