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

[TerraDave]

That's the key difference here. The substantive similarities are almost entirely to 3e. Nearly everything--not truly everything, but nearly everything--"taken" from 4e only looks like 4e if you're someone who never/minimally played it and, in most cases, generally disliked it.

5e does not play like 3e. Except to the extent that it plays like any other version of D&D. Skills, spell casting, combat, modifiers and (all those) subsystems, npcs, assumptions about magic items and treasure, all very different.

And you’re certainly wrong on “your someone”. I’m not.

 

[Zardnaar]

5e does not play like 3e. Except to the extent that it plays like any other version of D&D. Skills, spell casting, combat, modifiers and (all those) subsystems, npcs, assumptions about magic items and treasure, all very different.

And you’re certainly wrong on “your someone”. I’m not.

It's a modern D&D drawing heavily on 3E, 4E, 2E and B/X imho.

 

[Chaltab]

It's a modern D&D drawing heavily on 3E, 4E, 2E and B/X imho.

And the fact that all those games are so vastly different in approach is probably why people have such conflicted opinions about which edition 5E is most like. 5E takes elements of all the past editions and sort of blends them into a game that looks like past editions from certain angles, but it never includes everything people loved or hated about those editions, and saying that it does causes people with strong feelings about said editions to reflexivley say "Yeah, I agree!" or "No, that's totally off base."

It's D&D as a holographic image. And not cool Star Trek holograms, I mean those trippy comic book covers from the 90s. How it looks depends on the angle you view it from.

 

[Zardnaar]

And the fact that all those games are so vastly different in approach is probably why people have such conflicted opinions about which edition 5E is most like. 5E takes elements of all the past editions and sort of blends them into a game that looks like past editions from certain angles, but it never includes everything people loved or hated about those editions, and saying that it does causes people with strong feelings about said editions to reflexivley say "Yeah, I agree!" or "No, that's totally off base."

It's D&D as a holographic image. And not cool Star Trek holograms, I mean those trippy comic book covers from the 90s. How it looks depends on the angle you view it from.

Yeah it's D&D greatest hits in a blender. If you don't like xyz you xan point to 5E and claim it's just like xyz I hates it.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Looking forward to watching the video, commenting on it here, and moving past the 4E debate...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is completely untrue. 5e's skill system looks nothing like 3e, setting aside the question of skill points entirely. 3e skill entries start with a complete description of what each skill allows, followed by a table of modifiers, followed by any modifying kinds of checks (climbing 1-handed, for example). 5e has nothing like:

Instead we get a fun note buried in the Move action, that specifies sometimes your DM might ask you to make an Athletics check as part of movement, or they might not.

After all that, 3e skills specify the time it takes for each attempt, whether or not you can take 10/20 (a thing you were frequently expected to do, because the results of getting specific number were spelled out above), and then guidance on whether you can try again. Hard to compare to 5e's comparatively quite abbreviated skill section, and absolutely opposite in orientation. Given a description of a situation, skills in 3e simply don't offer choices to the DM about adjudication; you don't set DCs in 3e, you derive them.

You're correct in identifying the 5e skill system is largely taken from 4e; all it's removed is the table 42 set of difficulties by level in favor of a single band of difficulties. In play, it's got far more to do with skill challenges than 3e's skills; you propose a course of action, the DM decides a difficulty with some guidance, you succeed or fail. The difference is entirely down to the number of checks involved before the result is determined.

The most uniquely 5e skill design choice is automatic pass/fail on natural 1/20s.

My problem with this interpretation of the 3e skill system is that it reifies exactly the complaint that I had always understood you (and any other diehard fan) vehemently rejected: that 3e's rules hard-code what you are allowed to do, and anything outside that cannot be done. But that's precisely the conclusion to draw here; since "you don't set DCs in 3e you derive them" (emphasis in original), and since anything not specified would necessarily have to be invented, by your own argument, 3e fundamentally operates on an "anything not permitted is forbidden" philosophy. If you can't derive a DC, the action isn't even possible.

Is that actually want you want to argue here?

 

[payn]

I admit I've never played P2E but it just seems like more trouble than it's worth. I read through the Fighter feats and what strikes me is how nearly every one of them has specific rules about how it interacts with the multiattack penalty. It feels like a nightmare to keep track of and it's one of the reasons I've no interest in actually playing the system. At least not with a martial class, maybe as a caster if I otherwise really clicked with the group and campaign pitch.

PF2 appears to be more of a beast than it is. It’s ditched much of its 3E legacy. There are a lot of actions and conditions but the application is uniform and easy to grok especially in VTT use. Don’t be intimidated to give it a whirl it might surprise you.

 

[Pedantic]

My problem with this interpretation of the 3e skill system is that it reifies exactly the complaint that I had always understood you (and any other diehard fan) vehemently rejected: that 3e's rules hard-code what you are allowed to do, and anything outside that cannot be done. But that's precisely the conclusion to draw here; since "you don't set DCs in 3e you derive them" (emphasis in original), and since anything not specified would necessarily have to be invented, by your own argument, 3e fundamentally operates on an "anything not permitted is forbidden" philosophy. If you can't derive a DC, the action isn't even possible.

Is that actually want you want to argue here?

I think you may have confused me with someone else. My stance has always been that it's preferable the rules be as complete as possible, making situations you can't reference them to resolve a course of action rare. If that does occur, the GM will ultimately have to adjudicate, extrapolating from the most similar set of existing rules, but the design task is to cover as much ground as possible.

That being said, that's a bit of a swerve; it's not really a matter of interpretation that 3e has significantly more detailed skill rules than 5e, and that they're very different in orientation. You apply them to things the DM has described to get the relevant DC out, picking from a set of actions you can leverage against the world for fixed result. 5e skill rules are all about the DM determining a sense of internal relative difficulty, and then narrating a result of whatever magnitude the DM determines is appropriate.

 

[Thomas Shey]

PF2 appears to be more of a beast than it is. It’s ditched much of its 3E legacy. There are a lot of actions and conditions but the application is uniform and easy to grok especially in VTT use. Don’t be intimidated to give it a whirl it might surprise you.

Honestly, the only elements I'd probably find a nuisance to do manually is the conditions.