D&D General D&D Evolutions You Like and Dislike [+]

[Lanefan]

How would a Strength score 20 work? Or Giants with a Strength score 28? At a glance, to roll d20 under the score seems like less design space for gameplay?

Easy: natural 20 always fails.

 

[Lanefan]

AD&D 2E was very clear that ability scores went up to 25, which was their absolute maximum, and the tables in the PHB reflected that.

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The extension to 25 was to give the numbers for things like Girdles of Giant Strength; and also helped if one wanted to give Giants and other strong creatures their proper bonuses in combat.

The mistake, IMO, was to keep the several steps at 18 rather than making each its own integer (i.e. 18/01-50 becomes 19, etc.) with the listed 19 becoming 25 and the giant-strength table going to 30.

 

[Remathilis]

I was clearly wrong, but are you sure that 2e one is from the PHB? IIRC, they did change the art in the 2e PHB at one point so maybe that is in the one I don't have.

Yeah that's the Revised (black border) PHB for 2e.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

One reason I like this thread is that you can see that D&D lives on…it changes some but the essence lives.

I also like that there are things to be brace in a lot of places.

My group has played and enjoyed so much over the years from three editions at least. We played AD&D from high school to grad school when 3e came out.

Rumbled with 3e for years and were brought back in with 5e. And we have not looked back much.

With garycon around the corner, I am hoping to delve into 5e with new DMs but also to relive some AD&D! Loving one does not mean hate for another…pumped for the buffet to come!

 

[Lanefan]

Giants didnt have STR scores.

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On the other hand....

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ahhhh! the good old days....

IMO that was one of 1e's biggest inherent design mistakes: not giving its monsters the benefits and bonuses their high stats in theory entitled them to have (nor the associated penalties for their low stats). Good on 3e for fixing this.

 

[Parmandur]

IMO that was one of 1e's biggest inherent design mistakes: not giving its monsters the benefits and bonuses their high stats in theory entitled them to have (nor the associated penalties for their low stats). Good on 3e for fixing this.

Making Monsters work like PCs is one of the central aims of 3E, for me. Reading old Editions was revelatory.

 

[Remathilis]

The extension to 25 was to give the numbers for things like Girdles of Giant Strength; and also helped if one wanted to give Giants and other strong creatures their proper bonuses in combat.

The mistake, IMO, was to keep the several steps at 18 rather than making each its own integer (i.e. 18/01-50 becomes 19, etc.) with the listed 19 becoming 25 and the giant-strength table going to 30.

Percentile strength was in general a mistake, but it's one they could have fixed as you said. They just didn't because leaving bad ideas fester for the sake of backwards compatibility isn't something WotC invented in 2024...

 

[Lanefan]

Making Monsters work like PCs is one of the central aims of 3E, for me. Reading old Editions was revelatory.

3e, as with many things it tried, had a good idea here and vastly overdid it.

Had they done this only for humanoid monsters - i.e. those creatures that could be more or less directly compared to a Human - and stopped there, it would have been great.

Trying to make oozes and plants and horses and so forth fit the same mold was never going to work well.

And now we have 5e where doesn't even put playable-species NPCs on the same chassis as PCs. Sigh.....

 

[Lanefan]

Percentile strength was in general a mistake, but it's one they could have fixed as you said. They just didn't because leaving bad ideas fester for the sake of backwards compatibility isn't something WotC invented in 2024...

The idea of percentile strength - that exceptional individuals could have crazy-high strength scores - is IMO sound enough. But those percentile rolls then immediately need to be converted to integer scores.

We had to do this conversion-to-integers in about 1985 in order to make the Cavaliers' percentile-increment system (a brilliant innovation that should have been given to all classes!) work side-along with exceptional strength.

 

[Zardnaar]

I lijevAD&D buy i think I woukd ne happier eith an expanded Basic line. Exceptional strength good riddance.

I miss a lot of things from 2E. AD&D mechanics not so much. Spell spheres for example.