D&D Combat Time - Edition comparisons

[Wik]

Good point, but almost nobody in 2E ever took Rope Use as an NWP.

It's use was far more limited than a lot of the other NWPs that were available to PCs. Tumble, Track, Armor/Weaponsmith, Healing, Survival and a few others were far more common from what I remember.

Yeah. I think I only saw Use Rope taken once, and that guy did it to stand out. As for us, the big ones were Blind Fighting, Set Snares, Local History, Gaming, Herbalism (but NOT healing), Riding, Read/Write Languages, Weaponsmith, and strangely, Etiquette (I blame Shadowrun, which made Etiquette a much more important skill than in D&D).

 

[NewJeffCT]

Yeah. I think I only saw Use Rope taken once, and that guy did it to stand out. As for us, the big ones were Blind Fighting, Set Snares, Local History, Gaming, Herbalism (but NOT healing), Riding, Read/Write Languages, Weaponsmith, and strangely, Etiquette (I blame Shadowrun, which made Etiquette a much more important skill than in D&D).

Forgot about blind-fighting - I'm pretty sure that was big with my old groups as well. I think we had Etiquette or Diplomacy as a NWP as well.

We also had a "Monster Lore" NWP that the group had employed as a house rule - which allowed you to get info on monsters that were not common (i.e, not humanoids)

 

[Plane Sailing]

But in 2e, monsters that had 1hp (effectively - enough that a single hit kills them) were identical to the other monsters in the encounter. That's a big factor in why 2e combats were quick: a significant proportion of monsters had rolled really low hitpoints OR died instantly to spells (either way, effectively minions) without being different in any other way (which is why the threat was still high).

Do you think lots of people did this? My group always used hp to reflect the toughness of the critters. If there were four orcs with hp 8, 8, 5 and 1 then they party might see two tough males, one female and one teenager (for instance).

- essentially drawing inspiration from the dragon rules which associated hp per die with age category.

Worked OK for us.

Cheers

 

[pemerton]

Do you think lots of people did this? My group always used hp to reflect the toughness of the critters. If there were four orcs with hp 8, 8, 5 and 1 then they party might see two tough males, one female and one teenager (for instance).

My approach was closer to Saeviomagy's than yours (except for dragons, where I followed the rules, and also horses, where I followed an article from a Dragon magazine - maybe #92?), but I can see the logic of your position.

 

[mhensley]

I have data for 1 on 1 fights at first level in different editions which shows some definite differences. The tests run were for a 1st level fighter vs. a goblin.

Complete explanation and data here-
http://1d8.blogspot.com/2011/03/evolution-of-fighter-in-d-take-2.html

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I have data for 1 on 1 fights at first level in different editions which shows some definite differences. The tests run were for a 1st level fighter vs. a goblin.

Complete explanation and data here-
1d8: The Evolution of the Fighter in D&D - Take 2

Is your second experiment less utter and absolute garbage then your first in which you openly admit that you specifically optimized the 3e and 4e characters to do well in the specific test?

Hmmm....

...Nope, looks just as laughably biased and uneven.

Charts don't make you official.

 

[dagger]

Not sure what that chart is supposed to really show when it comes to anything at all like playing the real game.

 

[Mark CMG]

I have data for 1 on 1 fights at first level in different editions which shows some definite differences. The tests run were for a 1st level fighter vs. a goblin.

Complete explanation and data here-
1d8: The Evolution of the Fighter in D&D - Take 2

To get a good average result, the tests for each edition are run 10,000 times.

That's an impressive amount of testing. Were all of the fighters optimized, as much as any edition would allow?

 

[NewJeffCT]

I have data for 1 on 1 fights at first level in different editions which shows some definite differences. The tests run were for a 1st level fighter vs. a goblin.

Complete explanation and data here-
1d8: The Evolution of the Fighter in D&D - Take 2

One thing the chart does not say is how long each round takes. In 3E/3.5, once we got into double-digit levels (10 and higher), each combat round took our group a good hour or more at the table. Granted, we had a big group of players (me as DM, plus 7/8 people running PCs), but it is still a lot to ask for somebody to sit on their hands for an hour while the other 6 or 7 players take their turns and the DM takes his turns.

4E combat rounds are much quicker so far than 3E/3.5 - I think I can run 5 or 6 rounds of 4E combat compared to one round of 3.5E combat. I'm guessing that they're still not as quick as 1E/2E rounds, though.

 

[wolfpunk]

My current gaming group is playing a pathfinder/4e hybrid, we see about 4-5 combats each session and we play for about 6 hours at a time.

To me, the interesting part of this is that, in previous editions I have played 2e, 3x, after about 3 hours my attention span was waning to the point where I could fall asleep at the table.

However, I can play 6 hours in the current campaign and stay wide-eyed and engaged the entire time. It isn't that the adventures are suddenly more interesting, it is simply that I am constantly "playing" my character. I am planning my tactics, I am helping place status condition tokens, or corpse tokens, or whatever. So while combats may take longer, I am overall having a better time and more importantly staying awake.

Net result, I am happier to be more engaged at the gaming table, even if I don't unfold as many events in a single session as I could have before.