D&D 5E Behind the design of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons: Well my impression as least.

[Celtavian]

Done and done. OD&D , B/X, and AD&D advancement is most quickly achieved by gaining treasure. To that end, engaging in the most combat possible does not equal the greatest treasure gain possible. Fighting everything then hoping there is treasure will more likely kill you than produce XP.

Finding out where the treasure is via exploration, then figuring out how to get it while expending the least amount of resources possible while avoiding conflict with broke monsters is the smartest path to the most XP.

In 3E onward "the encounter" became the basis for XP so more killing DID become the fastest way to gain levels. This was a major game changer and quite a few people noticed the shift in playstyle that resulted from this.

So saying EVERY edition was combat driven is simply incorrect.

You checked absolutely nothing.

I know how the game was played at conventions, general groups, and the like. They fought and took treasure. Parties were made up of very few classes that didn't have to fight and take treasure. Getting around encounters without fighting was not only impractical, but boring.

Done chatting with you. You obviously don't want to admit how the game was designed...and more important how it was played by 90% plus of groups. Since I'm going by experience playing with a lot of different people and playing through every designed module from one of the least combat focused like Tomb of Horrors or Slavelords to the most combat focused like Against the Giants or Keep on the Borderlands, I'll trust my view over your theory. I also played competitively a few times cons. Those games focused quite a bit on combat, though they did include more puzzles. Almost never did they include accumulating treasure absent combat.

D&D was designed to focus on combat because the most people have the most fun doing combat. Doesn't mean you can't do other things. The design of the game is built for killing and taking things. It is the paradigm of the system.

Everywhere I ever played, we spent well over 50%, probably nearer to 70 or 80%, of the time in combat. That means the other two "pillars" divided up what remained.

 

[Sacrosanct]

So what you're saying with your ridiculous...unbelievably ridiculous argument...that strength was the most important stat for the entire game. You were supposed hit things with your big, strong strength score...then go to intelligence after you couldn't beat it. Did you seriously just make the argument that the order statistics were listed in the older game was somehow a determiner of their importance? Did you just seriously make that argument?.

No I didn't. Go back and reread my post. He made that argument. I guess I'm glad we agree that it's a ridiculous one, because I don't agree with anything else you said.

These conversations could be avoided if you actually read my post.

I swear, these conversations could easily be avoided if people that played the game even back in the day realized it was always built to focus on combat. Why anyone would pretend 3rd edition changed the basic way D&D was played is beyond me.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ll-my-impression-as-least/page7#ixzz3LQJIsYIi

Because as has been explained, more than once, 3e changed the entire dynamic, placing XP awards on the combat encounter. TSR D&D did not. Not sure how many times this needs to be repeated. It's even right there in the rules.

I do not see why anyone continues to argue something that has never been in dispute. Not even a game designer would dispute my statement form any edition. D&D by design has always been a combat focused game

Now you're just making up. This has been in dispute for a long time, usually between the people who actually played TSR D&D vs. the ones who came on board only in the past 20 years or so. Guess what? I'm also a game designer, and I adamantly disagree with you, so you're wrong on that assumption as well. You are just flat out wrong.

Let's just look at one of the most popular AD&D adventures of all time: T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil. If you go into that adventure expecting to fight every encounter there, you're in for a hard time. One of the best ways (and the published suggest way as a matter of fact), was to get the denizens and various elemental cults to fight against each other, without you getting directly involved.

The older game was far more lethal than recent editions. Then again, making characters was easy and fun back in the day. The ones that survived were highly memorable.

I hate to tell you this, but players were also pretty attached to their PCs even back in the 70s. This implication that they would be OK with dying all the time because chargen is fun and easy is pure bollocks. High fatality meant doing what you could to avoid getting killed when you could.

 

[halfling rogue]

I'm of the opinion that the game isn't designed for players to be rewarded with XP via combat or anything else. I think, at core, the game was/is designed to have fun. XP and level advancement only serve to augment the fun. If you get stuck thinking that the game was designed to get XP (in whatever way your table gains it) rather than to have fun then you are playing it wrong.

 

[ExploderWizard]

And, what makes you think that folks generally engage(d) in optimal play strategies?

Earning XP is certainly the basic reward in the game rules, but what makes you think that's the major reward players were actually pursuing? You figure folks weren't getting a thrill out of kicking butts, such that this reward can be discounted?

What makes you think GMs of the era fairly enabled non-combat approaches to getting that treasure, when the rules were mostly about combat?

We were discussing rules, rewards, and the types of activities the reward system looked on most favorably. Optimal strategies may or may not be used to obtain those rewards. Quite often, the method was whatever seemed like most fun at the time. Butt kicking is fun and has its place among other strategies but rules simply do not support it as the ONLY strategy that will lead to success. That is the beauty of an activity independent measure of success such as treasure for XP. The treasure can be aquired in a number of ways depending on what the group finds most fun.

Combine that with brutal lethality of 1st level combat in the earlier editions and all kinds of methods for obtaining treasure that don't involve getting stabbed start to look pretty good.

As to the fair enabling of non-combat strategies, I only have data for the groups I was involved with. But based on the rules of those early systems some DMs had to have run with such strategies or drastically fudged to avoid a TPK with regularity. Is that a fact? I can't be sure but if you claimed to have gotten 4 18's rolling 3d6 in order it would in theory be possible but how likely would it be?

 

[Chocolategravy]

Because it's a role playing game?

In which your characters are expected to have 6-8 combat encounters per game day. That isn't actually a role playing game, it's a combat simulator. The characters see more eviscerated corpses and gore in a day than is in a season of CSI.

 

[Sacrosanct]

In which your characters are expected to have 6-8 combat encounters per game day. That isn't actually a role playing game, it's a combat simulator. The characters see more eviscerated corpses and gore in a day than is in a season of CSI.

Two corrections. 6-8 encounters per adventuring day. Not necessarily combat encounters every day. Secondly, even if you assume that, you're talking about only the most modern iterations of D&D.

Once again:

These conversations could easily be avoided if people realized that D&D existed long before WoTC D&D.

 

[Lanefan]

Keep in mind that at least in RAW 1e you were supposed to get the same xp for avoiding an encounter as defeating it; so again, combat wasn't necessarily intended as the default encounter resolution.

That said, it's quite true that in many of the classic modules there's points where combat is pretty much unavoidable, which is fine; and I don't think anyone is complaining about that. What I'm complaining about is the focus on all-combat-all-the-time (and I've seen this at a few tables) where any sort of exploration and-or not-plot-essential roleplaying gets skipped because the DM says "You reach the next encounter, roll initiative (or surprise)" as soon as you've healed up from the last one. Bleah!

Lan-"pace each campaign as if it will last the rest of your life instead of just the rest of the year and you'll have a deeper and richer game for it"-efan

 

[Anth]

I know how the game was played

You know?
Then let me propose some house rules to your 5E-game:

---

1. Everyone start at level 1. Even when they die, they start over at level 1 with zero xp.

2. Change the xp-level goals for the first levels, instead of:
Level 1: 0 xp
Level 2: 300 xp
Level 3: 900 xp
Level 4: 2700 xp
Level 5: 6500 xp
Level 6: 14000 xp

Change to:
Level 1: 0 xp
Level 2: 750 xp
Level 3: 1500 xp
Level 4: 3000 xp
Level 5: 7000 xp
Level 6: 14000 xp

3. Lower the HD for everyone:
Fighters get d8 hp
clerics and Rogues get d6 hp
Wizards get d4 hp

4. Skip the rule of max hp at level 1, You roll hp for every level, and if you roll 1 at level 1 you start with 1 hp.

5. Get rid of the death saves. When you're at zero hp you're dead.

6. Roll abilities with 3d6, in order, No changes alowed.

---

Most of todays players wouldn't like these house rules.
Why?
Because most of todays players would die, die, die if they used them. And they would never level up.

But these was the standard rules 40 years ago.
And people actually played with these rules.
I did.
And people actually leveled up without dying.
How come?
Because people tried to avoid fights as much as possible.
This doesn't mean that we didn't fight. There was lots of fights. But we tried to choose our fights: pick the easy ones, and run away from the tough ones, That was how we survived.
This doesn't mean that the fights was boring, but that the fun part was that you risked your characters life all the time, not in fancy combat maneuvers as it is today.

Everywhere I ever played, we spent well over 50%, probably nearer to 70 or 80%, of the time in combat. That means the other two "pillars" divided up what remained.

My guess is that combat took about 20 % of the time, and yes I also played classical modules like "Against the Giants". But if you ask me what I remember from that time I would answer the combat. So it felt like there was combat 80 % of the time, but it was combat only 20 % of the time.

 

[Umbran]

We were discussing rules, rewards, and the types of activities the reward system looked on most favorably.

With respect, this branch of the discussion started with Celtavian saying:

"Combat is always and has always been the largest pillar by a huge margin in any edition of D&D. A DM might adjust that if his group does not mind. My group likes combat. They don't like to spend very much time on out of combat material. I very much doubt a very sizeable majority does not play exactly the same way. That is why combat balance should always be one of the largest factors in RPG design that involves combat simulations decided by numbers. Combat is the equivalent of glory in an RPG. He who kills the most and fastest accumulates for himself the most glory."

Which is a discussion of how the game was played.

You came back with a discussion of rules. In context, the implication being that the way the rules were designed indicated the mode of play. I am questioning the solidity of that implication.

Do you wish to claim that you did not intend that implication? If so, then I will point out that without it, this branch of discussion does nothing to refute Celtavian's point, and is largely a red-herring rabbit hole. His assertion about the primacy of the combat pillar would then remain, and is supported by the weight of rules on combat.

That is the beauty of an activity independent measure of success such as treasure for XP.

But treasure for XP isn't activity-independent. It is highly activity-dependent. The activity being "gather treasure"! That's a pretty specific activity.

As to the fair enabling of non-combat strategies, I only have data for the groups I was involved with. But based on the rules of those early systems some DMs had to have run with such strategies or drastically fudged to avoid a TPK with regularity. Is that a fact? I can't be sure but if you claimed to have gotten 4 18's rolling 3d6 in order it would in theory be possible but how likely would it be?

I have an alternate narrative for you. It starts with: Gygax and Arneson weren't actually great game designers. Visionary, perhaps, but their actual game design, in retrospect, is pretty shoddy.

D&D came out of wargaming. Wargaming *is* all about the combat, thus the name. With that history, their rules are, for the most part, all about combat. This is not by well-considered design intent, but due to weight of history. Other bits were slapped on as they saw need. Sometimes, the bits slapped on didn't really fit very well. Thus, we get a ruleset that has the vast majority of its rules about combat, but the rules setting what passes for the game's win condition disjoint from the bulk of the rules! It is as if someone published Monopoly with the rules as they are, but the win condition was, "Whoever draws the most Chance cards in five tiems around the board wins." The bulk of the rules are largely tangential to the activity that wins.

If someone tried to publish a game with that kind of mismatch today, they'd get laughed at as rank amateurs. And that's the key - Gygax and Arneson were amateurs. There were no practiced professionals at the time. With such design flaws, it is no wonder we argue about which pillar was primary. The fact of the matter being that the designers didn't have a good handle on the pillars, or how to balance them or aim the game for one over the other! That understanding only came with time, and is not extant in the early editions.

Here's another support for my thought on the matter. I quote the Alexandrian:

"Interesting fact about the basic rules for experience point awards in OD&D: They don’t actually exist.

Instead you have to intuit them out of an example on pg. 18 of Volume 1: Men & Magic, which states that you would get 7,700 XP for killing a troll with 7,000 gp of treasure: 7,000 XP for the 7,000 GP + 700 for killing the troll (which is a 7th level monster).

From this example you are forced to intuit that PCs receive 1 XP per gold piece of treasure and 100 XP per level of a defeated monster. (A monster’s level is basically determined by its Hit Dice.)"

When they don't even actually state the rule, do you trust that the rule is designed with well-considered intent?

 

[Mistwell]

Yeah it's not combat encounters per day, it's encounters per day. An encounter where the party creates a clever distraction and then sneaks by a pack of trolls is an encounter, but it's not a combat encounter. An encounter where the party persuades some angry dwarves to help them pass through a landslide-prone ravine is an encounter, but it's not a combat encounter. You're expected to have roughly X number of encounters per day, not X number of combat encounters.

As for old adventures where combat was unavoidable - it was not. You just had to be clever. You had to turn monsters against each other, lure them away, mess with terrain to prevent monsters from getting to you, bribe them, come to an agreement with them, trick them, and do all sorts of stuff to not have to fight them.