Does anyone else think D&D 4th edition should be more like 2nd edition

[Doug McCrae]

A high roll is *always* better than a low one

Except for the 10% stabilisation roll when a character is bleeding to death.

 

[scourger]

I liked 2e. Played quite a bit of it. Loved it when I took it back to the core and kept out all the optional rules & junk.

Same with 3.0. Even though I resisted 3e at first, when I read it I found it to be quite good. Wouldn't change a thing.

3.5 is less satisfying for me.

So, no I wouldn't want 4th edition to be more like 2e. 4e needs to improve on the game as 3e did. I'm not sure how they did it.

 

[Ranger REG]

Anyway, since I invested the time, I'll chime in with my "not in a million years." I am glad somebody else remembers that THAC0 actually was better than looking up tables, though. I thought it was just me.

THAC0 is an improvement over the combat matrices, though my friends prefer table spreadsheet before 3e came along. But it is still based on the same flaw: Armor Class value going down with a limit of -10, unless you're a dragon or huge monsters.

 

[TimSmith]

Uh, sorry and all that, but I'm not 100% sure I understand the jargon- what exactly is a troll (apart from a regenerating green thing you'd rather not meet)? Don't want to jump to conclusions....

 

[Ranger REG]

no on going toward a 2e feel.

I hated a lot about 2e.

I did however, like weapon speed rules. I know this puts me in a minority, but I would like to see them come back, even if as an optional rule.

To be brutally honest, I don't want to see weapon speed factor rules in any WotC's printed RPG product, now and in the future. Not even in the big book of variant rules, Unearthed Arcana.

If you want it, houserule it on your own.

 

[Akrasia]

There is no chance that a 4th edition will mark a return to an earlier edition in actual game mechanics.

It might be like the earlier editions, though, in trying to be more modular. Although not explicitly designed this way, you could easily ignore large aspects of 1st edition (as well as the RC DnD rules, and I assume 2nd edition too), and add optional rules to it, without "breaking" the game. On the other hand, eliminating some feature of 3rd edition -- e.g. feats -- or radically changing some other feature -- e.g. the combat system -- can cause the whole system to collapse. (I am not saying that it is impossible to do these things in 3.x, just that it is much more difficult than it was in earlier editions).

The rules of 3.x are much more interdependent than they were in earlier editions. It would not surprise me if a new version of DnD tried to be modular, in order to better please both players weary of the complexity of 3.x (e.g. the seemingly endless numbers of modifiers to skill checks, the slow and detailed combat system, etc.) and those who love additional complexity (e.g. want more feats, more complex combat, prestige classes, etc.).

Anyway, if you really prefer the earlier editions, nothing is stopping your from playing them! (I recently played an "old-school" RC campaign -- and loved it!) As mentioned earlier in this thread, Dragonfoot supports an active OOP DnD community (including free downloads of new material for 1st edition ADnD). The OD&Dities site produces new material and a very good fanzine for people who play the "Basic/Expert" or Rules Cylcopedia DnD systems.

And finally, as Krieg and Turanil have already mentioned, TLG is coming out with "Castles and Crusades," which attempts to recapture the "feel" and simplicity of earlier editions (no feats!), while using the d20 mechanic.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I played in AD&D for it's last year. I couldn't learn or understand most of the rules. Then 3E came out and in a month or 2 we all had a good grip on the system.

I once played 1E for about a month it was better than 2E AD&D.

Bottom line is 3e/3.5e is much more logical (thus easier to learn) system, much more customizable and is still a tactical game while maintaining a fair degree simplicity.

 

[Orius]

While 3rd edition D&D certainly does have some flaws, it's still a VAST improvement over 2nd edition. I mean, what's so cool about having a seperate XP table for every class, have just about no balance at all between classes (even with the different progressions), have stupid level caps for demihumans or lower attribute caps for female characters (or was that 1st? ), and so on... !?

Seperate XP tables existed because classes weren't balanced in 2e. The classes that were theotically more powerful generally needed more XPs to advance than others, because they were more powerful. Of course that lead to the standard 2e arguments about rogues and cleric being more powerful because they generaly needed less XP to advance. And there was that wierd bit with wizards needing more than fighters except for a stretch at mid levels where they more quickly advanced for no apparent reason. And the bard was really broken by that reasoning; it was a combination of the fighter, wizard and thief, and used thief XP which was the most generous in the game!

But then the classes weren't originally intended to be balanced anyway. The 3d6 method of character generation was considered standard, which meant if you used it, the power classes, that is bards, rangers and paladins would be pretty rare. However, most people IME used a system like the 4d6 method where they could assign scores; this made the power classes more common and threw the rarity out of whack. In any case, I prefer the 3e approach which makes 4d6 standard and attempts to balance the classes and make them more or less equal. The old way tended to force players to play specific characters based on dice rolls, and that just doesn't cut it today.

Level caps for demihumans was supposed to be another aspect of balance, but most people seemed to think that was stupid too.

The lower attribute caps for females was 1e's bit of sexisim in the game. 2e had the infamous "A Note About Pronouns" section at the beginning of the PHB (which eventually was completely ignored).

 

[wingsandsword]

Uh, sorry and all that, but I'm not 100% sure I understand the jargon- what exactly is a troll (apart from a regenerating green thing you'd rather not meet)? Don't want to jump to conclusions....

<minor threadjack>
It is common net jargon meaning an post designed to be inflammatory and provoke a heated reaction and many replies. A true troll post has no real merit as a post and isn't legitimately trying to argue any real point, merely make a statement guaranteed to provoke heated and vehement replies to the contrary.

A person who posts trolls is also referred to as a troll, and the act is considered "trolling". It is considered a form of high rudeness on the net to engage in trolling.
</minor threadjack>

Now, back to the subject at hand.

It's amazing that 3.0 seemed to incorporate so many of our local "house rules" like eliminating level limits, and letting any race being any class, as well as bringing back assassins and monks, we even had a house rule that let characters improve their ability scores as they levelled up. We even had a system for using the character-points from Skills & Powers to buy NWP's as well as special abilities like letting characters use their dexterity on to-hit rolls with light weapons, letting mages have their spells do subdual damage (or not have V, S, or M components), and other abilities, in other words, feats. 3e was taking all our house rules for 2e (which we needed to make it playable really), and remounting them on a consistent, easy to use framework.

3e also solved one of the biggest problems 2e was having towards the end, "legacy code" and rules-bloat. Countless systems in different books for different things (different martial arts rules in Complete Fighter's Handbook, Complete Priest's Handbook, Combat & Tactics, Oriental Adventures & I think also in Complete Gladiator's Handbook), and references to rulebooks you'd need to use a new book, rulebooks that had been out of print for years and never had a big print run to begin with. As well as a gordian knot of rulings, errata, precedent, subtle changes different printings of books, and utterly incompatible or broken suppliments.

 

[Orius]

I'm glad that others have understood Thaco, I've seen Thaco bashed in every discussion of 2nd Ed. and never understood why, it wasn't that hard to understand and replaced a DM screen full of charts to see if you hit or not. 3.0/3.5 is simpler still and I like it as well os many other changes they made, but Thaco was a step forward.

THAC0's problem was that is was non-intuitive. But it was an improvement over pages of combat matrices used to determine hits. Charts slow down the game even more than subtraction.