D&D General Chris Perkins and Stan! - previous D&D edition thoughts

[tetrasodium]

I remember when I first got 5e, and it did remind me a lot of 2e in certain parts. The main one were magic items. In both 3e and 4e, there was an expected progression of magic items that you needed to have the right numbers, and items were meant to be able to be easily bought, sold, and made. In addition, in 3e the rules for pricing spellcasting items created ridiculously high prices for anything higher than level 1 (because it was based on spell level * caster level), with ridiculously low save DCs which meant you basically couldn't use them for anything offensive. For example, a pair of drums of panic that can cast a fear spell (with a different AOE) once per day cost 30,000 gp, which is more than the expected treasure of a level 16 encounter. And the save DC on that fear? 16. How often are the creatures a level 16+ character faces going to fail a DC 16 Will save? I'm pretty sure that any level 16 character who found a pair of drums would sell them off for 15k and put that toward upgrading their stat buff from +4 to +6 if they don't already have that.

But 5e doesn't have specific item prices, only very broad categories, and no expectations about what sort of items PCs are supposed to have. At some point they should probably get magic weapons because of all the creatures that are resistant/immune to non-magic damage, but that's it. In addition, bounded accuracy makes low DCs useful for a longer time, because unless a creature is proficient in a save it will stay at its baseline.

The other aspect that reminded me of 2e was how, once you had chosen your class and kit/subclass, your character was basically on rails for the rest of their career – particularly if you don't play with feats and multiclassing (which are specifically called out as optional rules in 5.0). That is not necessarily a good thing, but it does make it easier for newbies.

That's not to say that 5e as a whole is particularly similar to 2e, but aspects of it are.

There were some aberrations sure but overall 2e Magic items had the role of mitigating rush and reducing lethality when magic items were given in 2e at the time 2e was the norm. That role is one that 5e magic items are utterly incapable of filling because the PCs are demigods from chargen that grow nto full on God's and overgods while facing the trials of mere mortals.

 

[GreyLord]

And beside which... all 5E has to do is be more than 2E as compared to AD&D, 3E and 4E, LOL!

No one is saying 5E and 2E are mirrors of each other... all that is being said is that 5E and 2E are more alike than 5E and the other editions. The two might only have 15% in common with each other... but if AD&D, 3E, and 4E are only 5% like 5E... then that statement for a lot of people is going to be absolutely correct.

5e is more similar to 3.5 than 2e, any day of the week. It's far more a successor to 3.5 (and 4e even, where do you think bounded accuracy comes from???) than anything from TSR.

Similarities in rules, ideas, and how things work (HP dice keep coming, multiclassing, Feats, etc) are all more akin to how 3e worked than TSR D&D. 1e, BECMI, BX, 2e are all more closely related and work better than anything with 5e. 5e is far more compatible with 3e than 3.X or 5e are with 2e.

It's not even close. C&C is far more of a successor to 2e than 5e. Heck, almost any OSR game is more related to 2e, regardless of what version of D&D it is based on...than 5e.

People have short memories.

 

[GreyLord]

3E's character generation/advancement minigame is almost entirely absent from 5E.

It's absolutely there. People just choose not to use it, which they could also choose in 3.X, but it's absolutely there in 5e. Where do you think the Sorlock or other things come from.

3E's inherent reliance on magic items is entirely absent from 5E.
The skills systems are almost nothing alike.
3E advancement is based almost entirely around combat and the system is much more tightly bound to the grid.
That isn't even to mention tones and aesthetic choices.

5e's advancement is basically the same as 3e (and the rest of WotC's XP) which is either milestone or from encounters (encounters starting in 3e, though most use combat encounters rather than other things such as traps, or even people encounters to gain XP).

Gold for XP is nowhere to be found, nor is the situational XP that 2e used a lot.

 

[GreyLord]

That seems strange to me. Are you playing 5E super detailed, or did you play 3E super loose?

3e was made to be played super loose, which came to bite the creators of it hard.

3.5 they tried to make far more defined.

5e can't be played as loose as 2e, and how massively limted (+4 point range) they made bounded accuracy kills any chance of playing a lot of it like 2e to even begin to state the start of it.

 

[Zardnaar]

5e is more similar to 3.5 than 2e, any day of the week. It's far more a successor to 3.5 (and 4e even, where do you think bounded accuracy comes from???) than anything from TSR.

Similarities in rules, ideas, and how things work (HP dice keep coming, multiclassing, Feats, etc) are all more akin to how 3e worked than TSR D&D. 1e, BECMI, BX, 2e are all more closely related and work better than anything with 5e. 5e is far more compatible with 3e than 3.X or 5e are with 2e.

It's not even close. C&C is far more of a successor to 2e than 5e. Heck, almost any OSR game is more related to 2e, regardless of what version of D&D it is based on...than 5e.

People have short memories.

BA comes from B/X imho.

 

[GreyLord]

BA comes from B/X imho.

Not really. I can show how it's related (and even show how characters, such as Fighters and such have similar bonuses at each level), but BX absolutely did NOT have Bounded Accuracy. Not only did they not say it directly, but nothing was limited in how high your bonuses could go in any statistic. In fact, later on, they even show how to go far beyond what is shown in the books. The only limitation is that fighters are stuck to 4 attacks eventually (if I remember correctly, it may have not even limited that). It suggests things keep progressing onwards as they have already in other areas...without setting any limitation on how high things can go).

It was not designed with BA in mind, nor did it really utilize BA in any way. It was a product of it's time, though.

 

[Zardnaar]

Not really. I can show how it's related (and even show how characters, such as Fighters and such have similar bonuses at each level), but BX absolutely did NOT have Bounded Accuracy. Not only did they not say it directly, but nothing was limited in how high your bonuses could go in any statistic. In fact, later on, they even show how to go far beyond what is shown in the books. The only limitation is that fighters are stuck to 4 attacks eventually (if I remember correctly, it may have not even limited that). It suggests things keep progressing onwards as they have already in other areas...without setting any limitation on how high things can go).

It was not designed with BA in mind, nor did it really utilize BA in any way. It was a product of it's time, though.

I compared the numbers once.

Strength is capped at 18 vs 20.

AC tops out around-10 that's rare.

THACO can't remember but with 18 strength the numbers similar to 5E.


4E defenses and numbers are way higher. 5E numbers are a lot closer to B/X.

 

[TerraDave]

There is plenty of 4e in 5e, (and even more in 2024) and plenty of 1e, 2e, and 3e that are not in it. And goodness for that!

 

[TheSword]

Problem is, if they being more daring, it us hard to speculate.

But based on the "card-based" character design...they might mean genuinely different sorts of products, like The Deck of Many Things set?

Yeah. It could be that they plan to tackle IP that requires more care/dare than the low hanging fruit up to now.

Or it could be that it means they’re going to leave behind existing IP and create new things.

I guess we’ll wait and see.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

3E's character generation/advancement minigame is almost entirely absent from 5E.
3E's inherent reliance on magic items is entirely absent from 5E.
The skills systems are almost nothing alike.
3E advancement is based almost entirely around combat and the system is much more tightly bound to the grid.
That isn't even to mention tones and aesthetic choices.

I absolutely do not agree with point 1. I disagree significantly with point 2--it is not entirely absent. It's just that they've tried to pretend that it's irrelevant when it isn't.
The skill points are not alike, yes. But actually using the system? Far more like 3e than any other system--including 4e, the one that the rules actually did get more-or-less copied from. I have no idea why people choose to run 5e's system as if it were 3e. But they do, much to 5e's detriment. Its skill system, especially if they hadn't utterly jettisoned Skill Challenges, could've actually been good.
5e advancement is almost entirely around combat as well. It has nothing remotely like the non-combat sources of XP that were present in 1e/2e or 4e. It's entirely up to the DM to decide whether, when, and even how non-combat XP can be acquired. The 5.0 DMG literally has the most useless non-advice ever on that particular topic, something I've hammered it on repeatedly.

Aesthetics are completely irrelevant. Every edition has had distinct aesthetics, often to dramatic degrees. Two "editions" (if you consider PF an iteration on 3e) that have massively similar aesthetics and yet still are radically different are 4e and PF1e--because both of them heavily and prominently featured the same artist, Wayne Reynolds.