D&D 5E (2014) So 5E is the Successor to AD&D 2nd Edition? How and How Not?

[Paul Farquhar]

If that's indeed what he meant, then I'd argue that he's very wrong. 5e is a streamlined reworking of 3e with a few 4e elements rebranded and relabeled. It didn't ignore 3e and 4e, it built upon them more than on any other previous version of the game.

I seriously doubt that that's what he meant, though.

Speaking as someone with 3e experience, you are very wrong. 3e is rules and jargon heavy, combat is incredibly slow, and roleplaying rather squeezed out by focus on min maxing builds. It’s a game of build optimisation. 5e is much loser, flexible, free of jargon and combat less slow, leaving more room for theatre kid play. It has gradually sneaked back in some of the better ideas from 4e, but 3e it’s completely unlike.

 

[Desdichado]

Speaking as someone with 3e experience, you are very wrong. 3e is rules and jargon heavy, combat is incredibly slow, and roleplaying rather squeezed out by focus on min maxing builds. It’s a game of build optimisation. 5e is much loser, flexible, free of jargon and combat less slow, leaving more room for theatre kid play. It has gradually sneaked back in some of the better ideas from 4e, but 3e it’s completely unlike.

Speaking as someone else who played 3e regularly from 2000 until about 2017 or so, and is currently re-reading almost all of my 3e collection, I can say that you are very wrong. Playing 5e feels like deja vu to playing 3e. I didn't even read the 5e rules when I started playing, I just played it like it was still 3e, and for the most part, I couldn't tell the difference for months. Combat is nearly identical, and to the extent that 3e was build and optimization focused, well that sorta depends on your table and at what point in the 3e cycle you're referring to. To what extent 5e DOESN'T focus on that, it sorta depends on your table and at what point in the 5e cycle you're referring to.

 

[Xenolith234]

How would/do you make 5e feel like 2e?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

didn't even read the 5e rules when I started playing, I just played it like it was still 3e,

So obviously it looked like 3e if you hadn’t bothered to read the rules! It plays just like 1st edition if you have only read those rules as well.

 

[tetrasodium]

Speaking as someone with 3e experience, you are very wrong. 3e is rules and jargon heavy, combat is incredibly slow, and roleplaying rather squeezed out by focus on min maxing builds. It’s a game of build optimisation. 5e is much loser, flexible, free of jargon and combat less slow, leaving more room for theatre kid play. It has gradually sneaked back in some of the better ideas from 4e, but 3e it’s completely unlike.

No. @Desdichado is correct. 5e is very much an overly streamlined overly simplified evolution of 3.x with some incomplete overly simplified 4e elements bolted on. Trouble with 5e is that the method for streamlining and simplifying was almost universally handled in an identical fashion no matter what the element in question was. Perkins himself has a tweet that perfectly demonstrates that method:
That statement takes only the bareist hint of understanding how d&d magic items function in a mathematical level or their motivational role in adventure design to recognize as obviously impossible to an absurd degree. The streamlining and simplification that 5e takes follows the same path over and over again where someone says "it's part of a complicated jenga tower of a subsystem and if we tank these parts of the jenga tower becomes simple, who cares what it does just tell them rulings not rules".

The system can only say "who cares what it does" so many times before there are more problems sandbagging the gm than subsystems supporting them. The complaints of "jargon" and the like really only work until you realize and remember that the people who actually played that edition for any notable length and started at low levels to grow into rather than trying to jump into a high level PC they have no experience with quickly learned to understand that "jargon" passively without needing to do much cross referencing beyond edge cases where the table disagrees with itself. Unlike 3.x though in 5e those disagreements still happen but the table now lacks both a term as well as any sort of answer to settle the disagreement

 

[Desdichado]

So obviously it looked like 3e if you hadn’t bothered to read the rules! It plays just like 1st edition if you have only read those rules as well.

That's absurd. It felt the same because combat worked the same. If I hadn't read the rules, then I would obviously have noticed when things didn't work the same as they did in 5e. The only things that caught me were some details of some spells, and how exactly bonus actions worked.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That statement takes only the bareist hint of understanding how d&d magic items function in a mathematical level

Which proves the point. In 1st and 2nd edition magic items were not incorporated into the rules in any kind of mathematical fashion. What you found is what you got. Trying to figure it into the game mechanics was very much a 3rd edition thing. 5e is like the earlier editions in that they are for people who want to pretend to be wizards and warriors and don’t care about any “underlying mathematics”. It’s for theatre kids, not maths geeks.

 

[ZeshinX]

While I think 5e is very much its own thing, it does feel a lot like 2e + 3e in a lot of ways. Granted, that is an entirely personally held, highly subjective opinion.

I think 5e dispenses with the build-focus that dominated the 3.x game (I enjoyed the options/customizability early on...but I found it went wildly out of control once 3.5e hit). Mainly (to my perspective) that occurred with Feats. Originally loved the idea, but the more I played and saw the system in action, the more it showed its nature to me...slow, feat trees mostly became 'take this line of general junk to finally get something cool only to see that by the time you got to the 'cool', it was no longer cool, not all that useful, not fun, more junk, etc).

3e gave the game the central core d20 mechanic (which 1e/2e had for some parts, but 1e/2e was also a pastiche of various, often nonsensical, mechanics). 1e/2e core combat mechanic was actually the d20 mechanic, but with a very sloppy/ugly way of doing it.

One of the big things I find 5e took from 2e was the narrow approach to classes. In 1e/2e, Fighter Bob was, mechanically, the same as Fighter Doug, who both looked an awful lot like Fighter Pete. The differentiation was mostly in role-play, less mechanical (the only real mechanical differentiation was with weapon/nonweapon prof choices and what armor fit the player's vision). Some classes offered a touch more mechanical choice, but ultimately the real differentiation was up to the role-playing. The Kits in 2e really offered some mechanical differentiation within a class, but they were all over the map as far as quality/playability. Some were really well done, some really poorly done, some made one wonder why even bother, and some were (mostly poor) attempts to reintroduce classes lost in the 1e -> 2e transition (i.e. assassins, cavaliers, monks, wu jen, kensai, samurai, etc). 5e's subclasses are its interpretation of 2e's kits (I find they're more akin to 2e kits than say 3.x prestige classes any way).

So I think 5e is its own, unique thing, but I find its bones are definitely an interpretive melding of 2e and 3e.

 

[tetrasodium]

Which proves the point. In 1st and 2nd edition magic items were not incorporated into the rules in any kind of mathematical fashion. What you found is what you got. Trying to figure it into the game mechanics was very much a 3rd edition thing. 5e is like the earlier editions in that they are for people who want to pretend to be wizards and warriors and don’t care about any “underlying mathematics”. It’s for theatre kids, not maths geeks.

The full sentence was as follows

Spoiler

That statement takes only the bareist hint of understanding how d&d magic items function in a mathematical level or their motivational role in adventure design to recognize as obviously impossible to an absurd degree.

partially quoting someone like that to misconstrue what was written wrote does not speak highly of your claim and that's before considering the fact that the ad&d2e DMG literally has an entire chapter and explicit guidance on it while 3.x breaks it up while going into even more detail with a wide array of subsystems to aid the gm in those things rather than the 5e style of sandbagging the gm with a wide array of interlinked incomplete "pure candy" subsystems in need of endless rulings.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Could it perhaps be that EVERY edition and version of D&D feels like every other edition and version of D&D... because they all have the same tropes, foci, jargon and essence that makes D&D D&D?

So while each person may try and draw lines between them to suggest this one is closer to that one, and that one is further away from this one... in truth they are all more alike than we want to give credit for?

I mean, I have not once ever played any version of the game and thought "Wow, this is more like Shadowrun than it is D&D!" Or that a Call of C'thulu edition felt closer to D&D than any of the various editions that have been produced. That's why I've always felt the argument kind of silly. "This isn't D&D!" someone shouts. Oh really? Then what is it? Hero System? Star Wars WEG? GURPS? Fudge?

Nope. They are all still within spitting distance of each other. They are all D&D in some form and fashion. So why get bent out of shape about it?