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

[Lanefan]

As some one that didn't like the roles becoming so distinctly built into the tactics of the game, this is a literal interpretation that is strange to me.

Given that the opposite of "leader" is "follower", I don't see it as anything but the obvious interpretation: leaders lead and followers follow.

Problem is, not that many players want to play a follower.

 

[soviet]

Given that the opposite of "leader" is "follower", I don't see it as anything but the obvious interpretation: leaders lead and followers follow.

Problem is, not that many players want to play a follower.

Did the defenders never make attack rolls because they weren't strikers?

 

[payn]

Given that the opposite of "leader" is "follower", I don't see it as anything but the obvious interpretation: leaders lead and followers follow.

Problem is, not that many players want to play a follower.

Well, in a certain context that is true, but its not the context used in 4E.

 

[Flying Toaster]

I think nearly every time, in the wild, I've always seen people verbalize framing along the lines of 'weapon/strength/specialization bonuses total +4, I rolled a 12 (totaling 16) and my ThAC0 is 18, I hit a (18-16) 2 AC.'

Yes, IIRC that was exactly the way my junior high school AD&D groups did it. 2E made THAC0 more official, but we were already used to using it anyway. Players always had their PC’s THAC0 written on their character sheet, and all of the DMs owned some version of the official TSR DM screen, so in practice we rarely had to stop and consult the books.

Much of the contemporary discussion about the difficulties of using THAC0 and/or situational modifiers to d20 rolls confuses me, because in my experience of actual 1980s AD&D play even the most casual players and indifferent math students had no problem with those game mechanics once they got up to speed with playing the game. I don’t want to downplay anyone’s actual difficulties related to, say, different learning styles, because there was little awareness of those issues back then, and I am quite sure no one at TSR ever factored any of that into the writing of the rulebooks. But once we had settled on a standard method we no longer really needed to stop and think about it much at all because it just became second nature.

AD&D had relatively few situational modifiers anyway, and they were often so deeply buried in odd corners of the 1E or 2E DMGs that most DMs did not even know about them, let alone use them. I never played any games in the “D&D 3” family of rule sets (3.0, 3.5, PF1, etc), but I get the impression that there were tons of possible modifiers that added to the high crunch level of those games, and contributed to the desire to simplify everything with the advantage mechanic. I like advantage but I think it should complement a robust system of pluses and minuses applied to d20 rolls, not replace them altogether.

 

[Maxperson]

B/X is a very logical clean system open to possibility.

Whereas 1e was such a jumbled mess of contradiction, it forced possibility.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes. That.

Yep. If I walk outside the house, that's "a thing that happened." It doesn't have to be a completed series of things that happened. 1, 2 or 100 things are all a story.

 

[Maxperson]

4e was not afraid to slay some secret cows.

Yeah. I thought I'd hidden them well enough, but 4e made its perception check.

 

[Marc17]

For evolutions I like, I'm going to go back to the original D&D. It's not anything to do with the system. I'm sure there is plenty there but I don't think the system is what made it really special. Between the history books that were coming out, the Secrets of Blackmoor video, and read through of the 1E DMG, and just reading some of the old modules, I don't think the rules were the main evolution, although I'm sure they had some in them. The real evolution between the wargame to RPG was using the rules as a backdrop for the theater of the mind game of "What does you character do?". I think the Braunstein experience of such was the important part that was really being explored in the early games, but being wargamers, they could never allow things like combat to be resolved as such. Thus, the system existed to fall back on in such cases, and they certainly didn't have the experience of vocabulary to explain that let alone offer aid to running it.

 

[Minigiant]

Yeah. I thought I'd hidden them well enough, but 4e made its perception check.

4e had those special feats

 

[GrimCo]

One thing that I think 3.X and PF1 and 4E do not get nearly enough credit for, and which 5e again leaned away from, was letting players play healers without forcing them to be clerics. I don't want to get into why this is so important to me, but it was a big deal when 3.X and PF offered me non-Cleric primary healer options... and mildly frustrating that Bards in 5e have to struggle to keep up with even non-healing focused Clerics, and Druids are not much better (than Bards as healers, or Clerics as not-being-clerics).

Sure, you could play Druid as a healer in 3.x/PF1. But primary healer in those editions still was - cleric. Bards were crap healers, since they were not full casters (they only got 2 0lv spells at 1st level in 3.x, 1 slot of 1st lv in PF1 and they had very limited number of spells know, which was also fixed). But druids also prepared spells and they couldn't swap prepared spell for healing spell. Ability to convert any spell into healing spell was big deal with vancian style casting ( preparing each spell slot individually ) since you could prepare buffs/damage spells as a cleric and still, if need be, burn them for healing spells. In PF1, with channeling, cleric got even bigger buff to healing ability. Paladins? They were non casters for first 3 levels.

Now, it's been a while since i played 3.x, but PF1 i played in relativley recent times. I still can't remember what class was even close to being as good as cleric for primary healer. If you know, please, share.

Another dislike i remembered. Bards becoming full casters. Just no. They have enough other stuff going for them, they don't need full caster progression on top of that.