1E vs Forked Thread: Is 4E doing it for you?

[jadrax]

Yes, it might be a "brainwash" effect, and it was definitely a flaw I saw in 3E - once you had a feat for some ability previously undefined, you needed that feat to pull it off.

Contributing to this was the fact that some feats where pretty prohibitive. Take for example feats along the lines of "Sea Legs" - suddenly if your character concept was based on being a sailor, you essentially had to spend a feat upon it or be ludicrously penalised.

While the core pretty much avoided this, a lot of Splatbooks (Particularly 3rd party ones) spent more time punishing you for playing your concept than actually supporting you.

 

[MerricB]

Contributing to this was the fact that some feats where pretty prohibitive. Take for example feats along the lines of "Sea Legs" - suddenly if your character concept was based on being a sailor, you essentially had to spend a feat upon it or be ludicrously penalised.

While the core pretty much avoided this, a lot of Splatbooks (Particularly 3rd party ones) spent more time punishing you for playing your concept than actually supporting you.

They really did. I hated that aspect of 3e.

Cheers!

 

[ExploderWizard]

In old school play you challenge the player, not the character. In new school play, puzzles, riddles, tricks, traps and all the meat of exploration are solved by high dice rolls. Suspicious room? Search check. Dodgy NPC? Sense Motive check. Cryptic inscription? Knowledge Whatever check. In old school play, rather than rolling dice for those things you give your gray matter a go.

I think the majority of conflicts arise from these playing styles. A well designed game system should require thought and input from the player that goes beyond picking what trick to use from a menu, yet still making the attributes and qualities of the character matter in a way that is meaningful to conflict resolution.

A big problem with D&D over the years has been bonus envy. In every edition of the game beyond OD&D (and yes I am including my beloved Basic in this) stat bonuses have influenced play in a way that has led to an ever increasing degree of power creep. Lets take the standard AD&D fighter. We have 2 of these guys in a party and they have mostly equal stats,and they both have an 18 strength. The only difference is that Joe has 18/04 and Bob has 18/00.

Joe is now the Robin to Bob's Batman. Thats an extreme example but it carries over to most classes in every edition. This has led to more stat bloat and eventually to point buy systems that guarantee everyone starts off with the same exact amount of potential bonuses in order to be equally effective. This has in turn led to the focus of the game heading away from the adventure to a " look what I can do" contest. The fact that the "look what I can do" style of gaming sells more product doesn't make it any better (or worse) than the adventure focused style.

 

[Allister]

Nonesense. Most kits had drawbacks. Just none of the drawbacks BALANCED with what you were given as a benefit.

Typically:

FIGHTER KIT*
Benefit: You gain free weapon specialization in any weapon of your choice.
Negative: -2 to NPC reaction checks (yeah, who uses those).

OR

WIZARD KIT*
Benefit: You gain free proficiency in Longsword.
Negative: You only get 6 schools of magic, and have a -2 to saves against those schools you cannot cast from.

* based on, but not exactly like, real 2e kits.

The latter was the Complete Priest's Handbook. I think almost ALL of them were like that and back on r.g.f.d, finding a player who actually played one was impossible.

Finding a DM that used it though, that wasnt too hard.

Of course, once the greatest accesory for a specific campaign world was released, namely Faiths and Avatars, I don't think ANYONE, DM or player, bothered with Complete Priest's Handbok

Now, the former on the otherhand, that was the typical kit IMO. Still doesn't come close to the power of the Complete Book of elves. Now just the kits but even the fluff was such that my players thought "Wow, even their **** must be gold".

.

 

[catsclaw227]

Contributing to this was the fact that some feats where pretty prohibitive. Take for example feats along the lines of "Sea Legs" - suddenly if your character concept was based on being a sailor, you essentially had to spend a feat upon it or be ludicrously penalised.

While the core pretty much avoided this, a lot of Splatbooks (Particularly 3rd party ones) spent more time punishing you for playing your concept than actually supporting you.

Yea, I had a real problem with this too. And the slippery slope that the bad 3rd party 3.x splat books went down bugged me as well.

In old school play you challenge the player, not the character. In new school play, puzzles, riddles, tricks, traps and all the meat of exploration are solved by high dice rolls. Suspicious room? Search check. Dodgy NPC? Sense Motive check. Cryptic inscription? Knowledge Whatever check. In old school play, rather than rolling dice for those things you give your gray matter a go.

There is some truth to this, I will agree. Though I am not sure if 1e (and 2e) or 4e (and 4e) were "better" than one way or the other.

In 1e thieves still had a Find/Remove traps percentage. Now it's a search roll.

And even in 1e there were times when my players would gloss over all the poking around a room and just say "I search the whole room" so that they didn't need to go:

I search the altar. (roll percentage) Nope, nothing there.
I search behind the tapestry. (roll percentage) Nope, nothing there.
I search the front pew. (roll percentage) Nope, nothing there.
I search the second pew. (roll percentage) Nope, nothing there.
[players looking at each other, in frustration, big sighs all around].
OK, well then I search the unholy water dish. (roll percentage) Nope, nothing there.
How about I search that rug on the floor (roll percentage, a bad roll) Nope, nothing there [even though that's where the secret door was].

And before anyone says that this didn't happen in their games, then remember that this was the way it was supposed to work in 1e, so you were house ruling this.

 

[Mallus]

Three comments:

In old school play, rather than rolling dice for those things you give your gray matter a go.

Nothing stops a 3/4e group from playing in old-school, 'player-ability-solves-the-problem' mode, so long as the people playing want that. For example, in my 3.5 game, half the time we roll for Diplomacy, the half we just talk it out, depending on the group's preference at the time.

That's why in new school gaming, combat comes to the fore so much.

I started with AD&D. Combat was 'at the fore' in every campaign I played back then.

One more not, on "boring Fighters". Fighters are far more intersting in old D&D where you didn't have feats.

You left out the 'and you had a DM willing to improvise combat stunts on the fly' part. Otherwise, combat was a lot of 'I hit with my longsword for 7 damage'.

 

[Filcher]

Three comments:


Nothing stops a 3/4e group from playing in old-school, 'player-ability-solves-the-problem' mode, so long as the people playing want that. For example, in my 3.5 game, half the time we roll for Diplomacy, the half we just talk it out, depending on the group's preference at the time.


I started with AD&D. Combat was 'at the fore' in every campaign I played back then.


You left out the 'and you had a DM willing to improvise combat stunts on the fly' part. Otherwise, combat was a lot of 'I hit with my longsword for 7 damage'.

Mallus speaks my mind. I think it is easy to latch onto nostalgia. The good old days weren’t always that good, and I know I spent a lot of time rolling to hit.

I love Caves of Chaos but you can’t tell me that wasn’t “combat in the fore.”

 

[Greg K]

I love housecats!

In other news, I remember a common problem in 3.x was that I'd houserule how a thing would be done, only to see a book a few months later saying, "You need this feat to do that!" Or Pirate ship battles should go this way! Man, I hated that.

So, ignore the feat or the supplement and continue using the houserule. Neither the feat nor supplement are core (not that I won't change, replace or ignore core material).

 

[Dausuul]

In old school play you challenge the player, not the character. In new school play, puzzles, riddles, tricks, traps and all the meat of exploration are solved by high dice rolls. Suspicious room? Search check. Dodgy NPC? Sense Motive check. Cryptic inscription? Knowledge Whatever check. In old school play, rather than rolling dice for those things you give your gray matter a go.

Having started the post ranting about cliches, you then proceed to put forth another one.

My experience has been that in both schools of play, challenges are aimed neither strictly at the player nor strictly at the character-as-mechanical-construct, but somewhere in between.

In old-school D&D, players came up with clever solutions, but most DMs I played with would have a look at your stats and/or make you roll some dice in order to determine whether your clever solution worked. If you were a half-orc with a Charisma of 3, and your solution involved being all smooth-talking and diplomatic-like, it probably wasn't going to fly, even if you the player could talk the birds down from the trees.

In new-school D&D, skill checks and the like augment but seldom replace clever problem-solving by the players. If you have a dodgy NPC, you can make a Sense Motive check to try to pin down when he's lying, but that isn't going to make him tell you what the truth is, and you don't automatically have to trust every word out of his mouth if you fail Sense Motive - you just lack the ability to say for certain when he is or isn't lying. A Knowledge check might give you some background info and a useful hint or two on that cryptic inscription, but it isn't going to tell you what the inscription means in its current context.

As for Search, Catsclaw227 summed this up pretty well - if you have to declare your intent to search every little thing, then players are apt to make an inventory of the room and declare "I'm searching X" for each item. Rolling all that into a single Search check strikes me as a major improvement.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Mallus speaks my mind. I think it is easy to latch onto nostalgia. The good old days weren’t always that good, and I know I spent a lot of time rolling to hit.

I love Caves of Chaos but you can’t tell me that wasn’t “combat in the fore.”

I might be wrong, but I tend t believe that Korgoth does not just talk of the "good old days" but of his actual play experiences with the "old" edition these days. Which for me might also point out that his play style developed to the point where they avoided those "needless" rolls. Maybe it's a mistake of him to assume that people playing differently are only doing so because of the system?