D&D General D&D Editions: Anybody Else Feel Like They Don't Fit In?

[Mind of tempest]

Not sure how to do that. A low or rare magic game simply doesn't feel right if it's full of spells, even if the spells are cast by the PCs. It's still a ton of magic on camera. And in any case, it would be odd to see a bunch of PC spellcasters and no NPCs with similar abilities. So you add those in and BOOM!, you're back to WotC mega-magic.

so why not just go for historical fiction then?

Magic items are not spells.

and they are less magic how? magic is magic regardless of form, do you just dislike spell casters or something?
define more low magic in easy-to-grasp terms as I am lost as to what you want.

 

[Aldarc]

Shadowdark would love to talk to you about the latter.

FYI, there is neither Darkvision nor Low-Light Vision in Dragonbane.

Additionally, there is a single magical class: the Mage. The mage can pick one of three magical traditions: Animism, Elementalism, and Mentalism. Also metal interferes with magic, so mages can't cast spells if using metal weapons or wearing metal armor.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Of course. I'm a 4e fan. Welcome to the club.

 

[jasper]

For general simple rules I like 5e. But the flavor of the game has changed. For average heroes growing stronger as they survive. To Super Heros with swords. I have learn to embrace the cartoon anime flavor of 5E.

 

[Micah Sweet]

so why not just go for historical fiction then?

and they are less magic how? magic is magic regardless of form, do you just dislike spell casters or something?
define more low magic in easy-to-grasp terms as I am lost as to what you want.

Because I don't go in for hyperbolic polar arguments. I want less magic being thrown around, not no magic. That being said, history is a huge influence on my worldbuilding (it's what my degree is in after all) and you can do much worse than to use it as a guide to how the non-fantasy parts of the world work. Physics is also helpful in that regard.

Form of magic matters in feel. Casting spells feels different than having items. I dislike everyone being a spellcaster, not the idea of spellcasting. In Level Up, for example, six of the core classes don't cast spells unless you take a subclass that does, and four of them (fighter, marshal, ranger, and rogue) aren't even baseline magical.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I started back in 1978, and (A)D&D always had magic too powerful for my tastes. Not magic that was too common, but magic that was too powerful. "D&D doesn't have wizards. Instead it has artillery pieces disguised as wizards." The attempted balancing factor of sharply limiting the number of shells - er, spells - available, didn't work. Not for me, at any rate, and not for many others, judging by the long-running complaints over Vancian magic.

My preference is for a system where (to put it in HERO system terms) wizardly magic is "martial arts, usable at range" rather than artillery - with more spells but with each spell being of much lower power. I don't see D&D providing this, except maybe - maybe - with e6 or some variant thereof. But I have other reasons for disliking e6.

3.5e is still my D&D of choice when I play or run D&D, preferably with the rules heavily curated. Skills and feats are, for me, critical, need to have elements, and I'm not too bothered by the 'Monty Haul' aspects. (What does bug me is the way the mechanics push the Christmas Tree effect, instead of "A few cool items" and "A bunch of lesser items" both being viable choices for a PC.)

When 4e came out, I took one look and said "Nope!" Pathfinder 1e was "Eh, no" although it did have a few elements I'd want to retrofit (or that I'd already developed independently as 3.5 house rules). Pathfinder 2e and D&D 5e and beyond are likewise "Nope!" More generally I've become resigned to the fact that no one else is going to produce a D&D-style game that I'd like better than 3.5e, despite its annoyances, and that I'm going to have to fix those annoyances myself.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think it is possible to play a version of 5e that fits with the traditional play style of a bunch of martials adventuring with one (possibly multiclassed) spell caster.

I'm not sure I ever saw that pattern. Even in the pretty early days it was Fighter/Cleric/Thief/Magic User; if you added two more it was another Fighter and MU. Which doesn't mean it never happened but I'm not sure when it'd have been "traditional".

 

[Pauln6]

I'm not sure I ever saw that pattern. Even in the pretty early days it was Fighter/Cleric/Thief/Magic User; if you added two more it was another Fighter and MU. Which doesn't mean it never happened but I'm not sure when it'd have been "traditional".

Yeah we usually had a fighter then a fighter-thief, fighter-magic user, cleric, and sometimes thief. Magic-users and monks just kept dying. Rangers were cool if you could qualify. Paladins and druids were very rare on account of the charisma requirements. Assassins were more common. Illusionists very very rare.

Dragonlance heroes were actually atypical. We thought it cool but odd that there were so many fighters.

 

[overgeeked]

For general simple rules I like 5e. But the flavor of the game has changed. For average heroes growing stronger as they survive. To Super Heros with swords. I have learn to embrace the cartoon anime flavor of 5E.

I've tried to do that as well. I love me some anime. But 5E is just so bad at that. There are so many pointless rules getting in the way of really going for that style. And besides, characters in anime die a whole lot quicker and more often than is even possible in 5E.

 

[Lanefan]

Lots of us had high magic settings with 1E, inspired by Elric and other big magic fiction. Pretending high magic is a modern thing is not very convincing.

With 1e it was - and remains - fairly easy for a DM to tweak the magic-level dials via how many (or how few) magic items the party finds and-or accumulates, along with how powerful those items are.