D&D General D&D Evolutions You Like and Dislike [+]

[DammitVictor]

Oooof. I have got big feels on this subject. I was an ardent fan of D&D through the 90s and most of the 00s, but the mechanical paradigm and the play culture pivoted away from my sensibilities so fast and so hard that it's hard to remember it's not intentional. (Of course I know it isn't, but I really appreciate when developers or fans remind me.)

Cut my teeth on AD&D, First Edition, as a very late adopter in 1993. I didn't actually work out that AD&D 1e and AD&D 2e were separate rulesets until '95 or '96 or so-- when I got heavily into Player's Option-- or that my Rules Cyclopedia was Dungeons & Dragons, a separate game. Contrary to the stereotype, 1e is my least favorite version of D&D (not counting the pre-AD&D versions which I've never played) and I'm only really a fan of AD&D 2e if it includes at least the Player's Option rules and a fair chunk of 1e Oriental Adventures with The Complete Ninja's Handbook (to replace the Assassin).

Haven't really read the White Box or Holmes, but I am informed that AD&D specified and clarified a lot of rules that were only assumed in OD&D... so obviously that's a huge point in its favor, but aside from the new classes and the invention of multiclassing, most of the changes I know from OD&D to AD&D are terrible, and the history of D&D is practically the history of undoing them and rightfully so.

• AD&D mostly crapped up and janked upthe D&D rules, but it added more complicated and specialized classes than the Four in the Core and invented the concept of multiclassing-- something I have used for almost every D&D game I have ever played.
  • It also gave us Oriental Adventures, whose merits as an "Asian Fantasy" sourcebook have been thoroughly criticized, but as a conceptual expansion of AD&D's mechanics and worldbuilding is brilliant. Almost all of the most controversial parts of the book, too, would be completely inoffensive if they were applied to PCs of the PHB classes and races. It should have become part of the core rules in Second Edition, but sadly, Second Edition went the other direction.
  • The Weapon Proficiency and Non-weapon Proficiency rules are bad and they're not improved in 2e.
• Classic D&D (B/X, BECMI, and Rules Cyclopedia) is better than AD&D in almost every way, especially when you add in supplemental classes, or just straight up joink AD&D character options into the Classic framework.
• AD&D 2e: Mechanically, straight upgrade, no notes. The rules for class and race are greatly simplified. THAC0 is a lot easier than the Attack Matrix and Weapon vs Armor Table. The codification of "Mage" and "Priest" spells into categories makes it easier to tailor spellcasters to each setting's unique cosmology-- in the last editionof the game that bothered.
  • Content-wise? Ooooof. The settings are amazing, but as much of a big deal as the greybeards and OSR make of the bowdlerization of D&D's lurid pulp heritage... but I've always been crankier about the removal of non-Euro and weird fantasy influences.
• Player's Option: It's actually good, people. Treat it like a compilation of optional rules-- like the 1e and 3.X versions of Unearthed Arcana, in four volumes-- and it does more to expand what AD&D could be than those volumes combined. People say they were a testing ground for the 3e rules, and a lot of AD&D fans sneer at them for that reason, but even when I considered myself a hardcore 3.5 fan, I lamented how little it resembled all the parts of AD&D I liked.
• 3.X: Half-orc, monk, and assassin back in the Core Rules. Spontaneous spellcasting; Bards with healing spells. Class proficiencies and Feats are mostly better than WP; skill points with trained/untrained rules are entirelybetter than Thief skills and NWP.
  • 3.5 psionic classes, powers, feats. Soulknives. Warlocks and Dragonfire Adepts, Marshals and Dragon Shamans, Magic of Incarnum and Book of Nine Swords.
  • This is where WotC broke the saving throw math.
  • The d20 multiclassing system is hot garbage; using it as intended is too weak, while using it for shenanigans is too strong. Fans disagree, but WotC spent seven years trying to fix it, and then threw it out entirely.
  • Iterative attacks were awful and clunky; the Full Attack action ruined melee.

I'm going to include Pathfinder 1e here; PF1 is a continuation of the 3.5 rules by a company started by WotC and staffed by WotC alums.

• Pathfinder: The new class features for almost every core class, especiallythe Barbarian, Rogue, Wizard, and Sorcerer.
  • Which I love, but giving all the Tier 1 and 2 classes more class features, while giving everyone more Feats... and splitting all of the Fighter bonus Feats in half... I'm bringing this up because it is a recurring problem in PF1 products, they did stuff like this from the pre-launch playtests to the Shifter in Ultimate Wilderness.
  • Paizo's supplemental classes are way better than WotC's, hands down. Consolidating WotC's array of ACFs and Racial Replacement Levels into Archetypes.
  • Embracing the OGL means Pathfinder's 3PP ecosystem is much more vibrant than 3.5's was.
  • Pathfinder Unchained. I don't like the three-action economy that became standard in PF2. But Grouped Skills are head and shoulders above skill points and Skill Unlocks make "thief skills" a Rogue class feature again.
• Fourth Edition: I slept on this one hard because the PHB1 multiclassing were even worse than 3.5's. It was OOP before someone showed me I made a mistake, and I regret it. The A/E/D/U structure being identical for all classes was samey AF, but all classes having A/E/D/U was good. PHB3 multiclassing was good; PHB1 multiclassing is even good, if it isn't the only system. Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies as parallel advancement tracksalongside class.
  • The Bloodied condition. Healing Surges, and magical healing being limited by Healing Surges. And the Paladin being able to circumvent this limit by spending their own Healing Surges.
  • The Assassin and Vampire as the Shadow Power Source was great. The Assassin and Vampire being Essentials-only and not really compatible with the PHB classes... not great.
  • The mechanical impact of choosing your race in 4e is better than it's been in any other edition of the game, including the ones I like.
  • Honestly, the Dark Sun Campaign Setting is an awesome campaign setting for fans of 4e... but terrible for fans of Dark Sun since 2e. The Dragonborn and the Templar Pact Warlock are perfect examples of why reskinning is absolutely not a substitute for actually changing the game rules to fit the setting.

• 5e (2014): I ran a Fifth Edition game for eighteen months, in 2014 and 2015. I tried really hardto like it before I resigned myself to hating it. I have got a lot of crafty and well-honed snarky remarks about how and why I hate it, but I'm trying to do that sort of thing a lot less. I don't have a lot of good things to say.
  • Advantage/Disadvantage is just an elegant, good mechanic that is worth lifting for any/every other d20 game you play.
  • I actually like Hit Dice better than Healing Surges, except that decoupling them from magical healing was a mistake.
  • The difference between "prepared" and "spontaneous" spellcasting in 5e is great; the way Clerics and Druids split the difference is great. Augmented spellcasting is great. Multiclassed spellcaster stacking stinks on ice, but the spell slot progression is better than 3.5 without Prestige Classes and better than 3.5 with Prestige Classes
  • They fixed melee, and high level Barbarians, Fighters, Monks, Paladins, and Rangers all feel different.
  • The multiclassing system... is the exact same one as the 1999 version of the game. That they spent seven years trying to make work, and then discarded because it didn't work, and they just put it right back in. This isn't the only reason that 5e is my least favorite D&D since/except 1e... but it's the perfect symbol for all of the other reasons.
  • I don't like subraces; I didn't like them in 3.X and I didn't like them in AD&D. I still don't, but the way 5e handles them is a significant improvement over previous editions.
  • I love the way psionics works in Tasha, but they murdered the Soulknife (my favorite class) and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.

I own the 2024 core books, but I honestly don't know them well enough to compare them to the 2014 versions, except I love the 1st level/Origin feats and the fact that Tasha's psionics is now in the core, even with my poor mutilated Soulknife.

Ironically, though? 5e is the worst (IMO) version of WotC D&D, but it has the most genuinely good ideas that can be lifted for non-WotC D&D games. 4e is the best (again, IMO) but it's the hardest to do anything with but play the game as-written.

Hey, if you love Fifth Edition... I'm happy for you. I'm glad there's a version of the game for you. And it's the most popular and commercially successful as the game has ever been... so you're going to be able to enjoy it for a long time, with a lot of other gamers who think it's the best game ever. Between Phantasy Star and Level Up, I'm starting to warm up to the system a little, and I'm even going to run it again for my daughter. D&D just isn't my favorite game anymore, and it probably never will be again.

I wanted to include Level Up in my listing... but I'm still trying to learn the system. I like the racial gift/paragon mechanics, and the fighting styles, and the GPG and genre sourcebooks are just legit interesting and useful.

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The main things I abhor is hit point bloat, everything-is-a-spell design and at-will cantrips. On the last two, I like magic, but not that much magic.

More magic needs to be not-spells and available to not-spellcasters. Maybe we don't need all nine swords, but...

I agree, and i wish the druid were more of a scholar-priest instead of weird shapeshifting nature mage with incongruous divine magic.

The turn into animals class should, imo, be the barbarian or a separa4te class based on the 4e warden.

The Ranger should be the half-caster with the animal companion. The Shifter should be the half-caster with the shapeshifting.

The Druid shouldn't be the full-spellcaster with both, but the full-spellcaster with neither by default, and a weaker version of one or the other as a subclass feature.

The odd editions are the best.

Honestly, this opinion is so widespread and culturally dominant that sometimes I wonder if me holding the opposite opinion isn't just some kind of kneejerk hipster BS. Is there anyone else who thinks Classic, 2e, and 4e are better than 1e, 3.5, and 5e?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

To reiterate what Riggs said in his seminar, "one thing that stayed popular from the get-go was the idea of implementing "cooldown" periods for powers. This eventually became the AED part of the AEDU suites of abilities."

But "once per day" is already a "cooldown", so maybe they didn't see the forest for the trees, and though they had found something new when it was already there all along, contained in every D&D edition, and stolen by WoW and other MMORPGs? Maybe WoWs influence is more that they really thought about what game mechanics they have and to what kind of gameplay they lead?

There is currently a German "Sauercrowd" Event, where Streamers are playing WoW Classic (that means basically an original version of WoW before many expansions and QoL changes) in Hardcore Mode (that means characters die are basically deleted, and WoW is not really designed for you to never die). The Goal is to run a final 40 player RAID. I've never played WoW outside a brief (and to me, boring) demo session, but I am learning a lot by watching some long-term players that were addicted to the game when it was released - including that Blizzard apparently didn't really plan for a lot of the emergent gameplay, and so didn't really know how all these mechanics would work possible. (Not sure if that is still true for the current iteration of WoW, but that game definitely has a very different gameplay from WoW Classic.)

 

[W'rkncacnter]

I dislike how far the game has gone into the ethos that PCs are super exceptional beings, to the point where even the species abilities in the phb cannot be assumed to be shared by all members of that species?? So a PC Dwarf isnt the same type of creature as an NPC Dwarf?? I find this completely unacceptable.

wait, what? is that a thing? that's psychotic. that can't be a thing. what?

 

[Marc17]

wait, what? is that a thing? that's psychotic. that can't be a thing. what?

That is the general intent of 5E. Now, that was also the general intent of 1E AD&D. Most everybody was 0-level. Only leader types typically had any class levels and using just 2 or 4. Of course, walk into a village in an adventure and it seems like most NPCs you'll meet will have class levels. Then there were NPC classes that could do things PCs couldn't, sometimes much much better than (but those were mostly in Dragon magazine).

 

[Willie the Duck]

wait, what? is that a thing? that's psychotic. that can't be a thing. what?

The stat blocks of various creatures (like 'dwarf') do not necessarily match what a dwarf player character might have. The same was true in most versions of the game, excluding 3e (IIRC). Whether the current iteration is too far in this or not is a YMMV situation.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

That is the general intent of 5E. Now, that was also the general intent of 1E AD&D. Most everybody was 0-level. Only leader types typically had any class levels and using just 2 or 4. Of course, walk into a village in an adventure and it seems like most NPCs you'll meet will have class levels. Then there were NPC classes that could do things PCs couldn't, sometimes much much better than (but those were mostly in Dragon magazine).

ok but we're talking SPECIES abilities, not CLASS abilities. i get most npcs not having CLASS abilities.

The stat blocks of various creatures (like 'dwarf') do not necessarily match what a dwarf player character might have. The same was true in most versions of the game, excluding 3e (IIRC). Whether the current iteration is too far in this or not is a YMMV situation.

i always just figured that was abstraction and that, within the fiction, they'd have those species traits, even if they're not explicitly written down.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Interestingly, 4E NPCs, despite being differently derived then PCs, actually usually share the race's special ability. And I think it's often what made a group of NPCs of a race (like Goblins or Kobolds) feel more uniquely that race than in any other edition I played. I am surprised they didn't keep that for 5E.
Of course, to do this, 4E races also all had a special ability (often an encounter power) in the first place.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Interestingly, 4E NPCs, despite being differently derived then PCs, actually usually share the race's special ability. And I think it's often what made a group of NPCs of a race (like Goblins or Kobolds) feel more uniquely that race than in any other edition I played. I am surprised they didn't keep that for 5E.
Of course, to do this, 4E races also all had a special ability (often an encounter power) in the first place.

yeah one of the evolutions that sticks in my craw is the species abilities becoming so watered down and superficial, if i'm playing a different species i want their gameplay to feel like i'm playing a different species.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

Does that not also happen with the "organic" experience?

Like sincerely, if you've had a party of five characters consistently for (say) a year and a half of play, and then one of them dies, isn't that gong to lead to a lot of difficulties and dull, weak consequences because of dropped plot threads and "conclusions" that are anything but? Perhaps it is simply an attitude thing, but I find the "organic" method falls apart just as badly with character deaths. Especially TPKs. And to be clear, I run that method myself. I have used exactly one..."module", you might call it, and I heavily customized it for my own purposes--and it doesn't really have much of a "story" to it anyway. Otherwise, I do all bespoke work--and it is just as difficult to keep things sensible when you've had ten (or more?) different party members over the course of eight years. Maybe the change of just one character doesn't stress it that much, but it's still a stress, and the more you made it matter that it's these people in this place at this time, the more those deaths are going to strain things.

I agree with you, but I have to make a point. Making it important to the story that these characters do this thing in that place provides an opportunity to find out what happens if they don't.

Sure, we can upend the Dungeon Master's (our?) plans just as well as we can upend an adventure path. In a bespoke campaign we can take a hard left turn and completely change things. We can get on a new path that leads to a different place with new characters doing that same thing. Or not.

If we take a hard left turn in an adventure path, it might not make sense to call it an adventure path anymore.

 

[Remathilis]

yeah one of the evolutions that sticks in my craw is the species abilities becoming so watered down and superficial, if i'm playing a different species i want their gameplay to feel like i'm playing a different species.

I've been thinking how you can make species traits more prominent and I'm increasingly at a loss except to give them moar powah! I mean, species already can fly, teleport, breathe fire, resist energy, heal with a touch, cast up to 2nd level spells, see in darkness, and grow large. What can you even do to make a dwarf fighter feel different from a human or elf fighter?